Antiwar.com Blog

Conflicts of Interest: US Support for Israeli War on Gaza Fuels Terrorism Recruitment

On COI #630, Kyle Anzalone breaks down the latest news on Ukraine and Israel.

Starmer’s War Party Ascends to Power as Anti-War Candidates Secure Key Seats

July 4th, a day of freedom for Americans, has become a day of infamy for Britons opposed to Israel’s genocidal war in occupied Palestine. Keir Starmer, leader of the Labour Party and stalwart supporter of the Israel and its war crimes, has successfully led his party to a comfortable majority in the British House of Commons. His success is unsurprising as major polls correctly predicted how unpopular the Conservative Party has become after fourteen years of rule. Major factors contributing to this unpopularity were the Conservatives’ mismanagement of the economy and public services. Clearly, voters wanted an alternative to the disastrous policies of the Conservative Party; yet, Starmer’s Labour Party does not provide a true alternative.

Starmer truly revealed the ugly nature of the Labour Party under his leadership when he expelled anti-war crusader and former leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, for not bending the knee when it came to baseless accusations of systemic antisemitism in the Labour Party. Starmer, clearly very afraid of the anti-war left, has also expelled Graham Jones who sensibly stated, “No British person should be fighting for any other country at all… It is against the law and you should be locked up.” Dissenting opinions in regards to the Israeli regime are obviously not inherently anti-semitic. Such an opinion is as idiotic as saying that someone is “sinophobic” for disliking the Chinese government. Nevertheless, political elites like Keir Starmer have continuously used baseless charges of antisemitism to silence free speech and unfairly sanction Labour Party members.

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Joint Statement of US Government Officials Who Have Resigned Over US Policy Towards Gaza, Palestine, and Israel

We are former U.S. Government Officials who resigned from our respective positions over the last nine months due to our grave concerns with current U.S. policy towards the crisis in Gaza, and U.S. policies and practices towards Palestine and Israel more broadly. We are subject matter experts representing the interagency, and are a multifaith and multiethnic community of professionals and patriots dedicated to the service of the United States of America, its people, and its values. Whether in the civil service, foreign service, armed forces, or as political appointees, each of us has sworn an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, and as our nation celebrates its Independence Day, each of us are reminded that we resigned from government not to terminate that oath but to continue to abide by it; not to end our commitment to service, but to extend it.

Alone, we each made the somber and difficult decision to resign based on the individual circumstances we encountered at different times during these past nine months as we performed our specific jobs. But today we stand united in a shared belief that it is our collective responsibility to speak up.

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The Dreadful Continuity of British Foreign Policy

Robert Wright doesn’t think much of the foreign policy direction of the new Labour government in Britain:

[Labour shadow foreign secretary] Lammy depicts his foreign policy vision as new, but it’s pretty much the same vision that has long guided his party and comparable western parties, including the Democratic Party in America. And this vision is, in critical respects, not very different from the neoconservatism that has dominated Republican foreign policy for most of the past few decades. Lammy’s progressive realism is one of the several variants of Blobthink that have together played such a big role in creating the mess we’re in.

Wright is responding to Lammy’s article in Foreign Affairs from earlier this year, and his assessment lines up with what I wrote about it then. In my post, I focused on Lammy’s rote recitation of the conventional talking points about the “red line” episode in Syria and its supposed implications for U.S. credibility, but I also noted that it seemed as if Lammy had learned nothing from his party’s last stint in power. As I said, “I suspect Lammy is just trying to put the bad ideas of New Labour under a new label.” International relations scholar Van Jackson raised similar concerns that Lammy’s vision “shows worrying signs of rehashing Blair-style neoconservatism, which was of course disastrous.”

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Reformist Wins in Iran – What Are the Implications for the World?

All indications are that the Reformist candidate, Dr. Masoud Pezeshkian, has won the Presidential snap elections in Iran and defeated ultra-hardliner Saeed Jalili.

What does this mean for Iran, its foreign policy, and US-Iran relations?

A few thoughts:

1. Turnout appears to have been around 50%, which is an increase over both the first round (~39%) and the 2021 elections (47%). But this is still very low for Iran, where participation often has been above 70%.

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