U.S. policy – Globalities

The status and meaning of Trump’s Gaza ceasefire deal

Helena CobbanOctober 14, 2025October 14, 2025Diplomacy, Gaza, Global balance, Israel, U.S. policy

On October 10, the devastating bombings and other attacks that the Israeli military has undertaken against Gaza nearly continuously for the past two years finally came a halt. (Or nearly so, see below.) The Israeli military’s massive tanks and bulldozers began to lumber their way out of some– but far from all– of the parts of Gaza they had devastated over those 24 months. Some aid trucks started to roll in. Hundreds of thousands of the Palestinians who’d been forced, under withering Israeli fire, to evacuate south from Gaza City started to trudge back north to their former– very often completely pulverized– homes.

Phases of withdrawal in Trump’s plan. Source. Click to enlarge.

U.S. Pres. Trump was the one who successfully forced the Israeli government to sign onto that ceasefire agreement. (He could, at any moment since his inauguration back in January, have used Washington’s near-complete sway over Israel’s military decisionmaking to force that same outcome… And so, at any point in the preceding 15 months, could his predecessor in the White House. How many thousands of lives and destinies would have been saved?)

On October 13, as the reciprocal captive-exchange portions of the October 10 agreement were completed, Trump organized two large, splashy public events– one in Israel, one in Egypt– at which with his now horribly familiar braggadocio he took his victory laps for the ceasefire.

Hamas in negotiations– and on the ground

Helena CobbanOctober 10, 2025October 10, 2025Diplomacy, Gaza, Hamas, Israel, Qatar, U.S. policy

Text of Oct. 9 agreement. Click to enlarge.

The clock started ticking at Noon Palestine Time today on implementation of the 6-step ceasefire + captive-release agreement negotiated in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, by Pres. Trump and his three Muslim-state mediation partners. Those talks were held on a “proximity” basis with, presumably, the Israeli negotiators in one room, the Palestinian resistance alliance led by veteran Hamas negotiator Khalil al-Hayya in another, and various groups of mediators shuttling between them.

(That’s Khalil Al-Hayya, above.)

The negotiators in Sharm had reached agreement on their 6-step plan on Thursday, but per Step 2 therein, implementation awaited the approval of the Israeli government. That was achieved this morning.

The prescribed ceasefire and many signs of an Israeli military pullback started at Noon today (local.) By that time, thousands of Palestinians whom the Israelis had previously expelled south from Northern Gaza under fire were already streaming back toward their homes in the north.

On ‘Condemning Hamas’

Helena CobbanOctober 1, 2025October 2, 2025Diplomacy, Discourse suppression, Gaza, Israel, U.S. policy

I was at an in-person event here in Washington yesterday, and I raised the matter of Hamas, noting that the title of Rami Khouri’s and my recent book Understanding Hamas And Why That Matters is still very relevant. One of the speakers was the Egyptian-American Washington Post columnist Shadi Hamid. He responded by making a few fairly smart observations– but then he loudly repeated the injunction that has been his watchword throughout the past two years: “We must condemn Hamas!”

I guess that is the price Hamid feels he must pay to have access to the pages of Jeff Bezos’s failing, but still influential, rag here in the U.S. capital. Maybe he even believes it. But why? What does it actually mean to “condemn” an entire movement– and one, moreover, with which our national government has been negotiating, with varying degrees of intensity, for more than 18 months now?

A movement, therefore, whose inner workings and worldview it would presumably be very useful for both government officials and informed citizens to understand as well as possible…

Netanyahu’s big roll of the dice in Iran

Helena CobbanJune 21, 2025June 21, 2025Iran, Israel, U.S. policy

In the early hours of June 13, the Israeli Air Force, reportedly aided by special forces/spy units pre-deployed into Iran, launched a barrage of massive strikes against Iranian air-defenses, nuclear facilities, command-and-control nodes, and individual targeted Iranians, military and non-military. Iranian government negotiators were planning to meet in Muscat, Oman, just two days later, in the next phase of the talks that U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff had maintained for the previous two months. (Israel’s attack reportedly killed some of the Iranian specialists who were planning to attend those Muscat talks.)

The Israeli attack almost certainly took the Iranians by surprise. Israel killed many senior military leaders, especially in the elite Iranian revolutionary Guard Corps. But within just a few hours, Iran’s command system proved capable of responding in kind; and since June 13, every night has seen an exchange of deadly missiles between the two countries. Israel has delivered much of its ordnance against Iran from air-force planes flying right over Iran, or close to its Western border in the skies of Iraq and Syria protected by U.S. surveillance (and potential interception) capabilities, while Iran has delivered its missiles, including some hypersonic missiles, from its own home turf.

The Israelis claim they have destroyed many significant Iranian military and nuclear-research facilities. Their attacks– along with calls from Pres. Trump for the “evacuation” of the whole of Tehran–have caused deep disruptions in the lives of millions of Iranians.

The human casualties of this war have been very much higher in Iran than in Israel–though not on a per-capita basis. In Israel, families who have never previously experienced “incoming” attacks that caused more than minor damage have now been seeing the much larger level of damage inflicted by those Iranian missiles that manage to evade Israel’s multi-layered (and partly U.S.-supplied) anti-missile shields.

The two sides have seemingly become locked into a deadly war of attrition with no clear end– or even a plausible diplomatic off-ramp– in sight. (There have meantime been some reports that Israel’s stock of “Arrow” anti-ballistic missiles has been depleting at a rate that can’t be sustained for very much longer.)

Within this picture of a possibly lengthy, slugging-it-out war of attrition, there are a number of possible wild cards:

For the commanders of Western hegemony, cruelty is a vital tool

Helena CobbanApril 19, 2025April 20, 2025China, Global governance, Indian Ocean, Israel, Settler colonialism, U.S. policy

The painting above is of Portuguese conquistador Afonso de Albuquerque

For Pres. Trump, cruelty is a vital tool as he bulldozes through all constitutional requirements to undertake (and publicize) exemplary deportations of undocumented immigrants and of any legally documented visitors like Columbia University’s Mahmoud Khalil whom he arbitrarily chooses to punish.

For Israel’s PM Netanyahu and his ministers, cruelty is similarly a vital tool as they deploy waves of bombers and incendiary drones against two million Palestinians huddling under tarps on Gaza’s trash-piled shores while totally blocking the entry into Gaza of all the basic necessities of life.

Indian Ocean trading routes before da Gama. Click on image to enlarge.

It’s worth noting that cruelty has been a vital, and deliberately deployed, tool for the architects and commanders of “White” empires ever since the 15th century CE. In 1415, Portuguese navigators started carving their way down the coast of West Africa to establish heavily fortified “trading” (plunder) posts in their quest for gold. Those navigators were also intent on finding a sea-route to the richest trading zone they’d ever heard of, the one that traversed the Indian Ocean and wove the riches of East Africa, India, and distant Cathay (China) into the most advanced manufacturing and consumption area then known to humankind…

Musk’s digital coup in Washington: Effects and prospects

Helena CobbanFebruary 4, 2025February 4, 2025U.S. policy, U.S. politics

(Above: A scene from the post-Inauguration lunch in the U.S. Capitol. See Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Justice Bret Kavanaugh, Apple’s Tim Cook, and others…)

The digital coup that Elon Musk launched to capture the U.S. government started on January 20 (though it had been prepared for many weeks before then.) On January 20, shortly after Pres. Trump took the oath of office and briefly dropped by a lunch at which tech billionaires mingled closely with Supreme Court justices and senior legislators, he signed an Executive Order that stated,

This Executive Order establishes the Department of Government Efficiency to implement the President’s DOGE Agenda, by modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.

We could think of this as “Communiqué Number 1” of the Musk-Trump coup that we’ve seen playing out ever since.

On January 20, Musk and his digi-goons were ready. By the next day, civil servants arriving in the White House-adjacent Eisenhower Executive Office Building found the door to the space there that had long housed the White House’s Office of Digital Services (ODS) sported a note describing it as now housing “DOGE.” DOGE, the non-governmental body that Musk had been running for some time out of the DC office of his Boring company, had already burrowed itself deep into the core of the U.S. federal apparatus.

My grandkids and my vote. Go Greens!

Helena CobbanNovember 3, 2024November 3, 2024Climate crisis, Diplomacy, Military-industrial complex, U.S. policy

The news from Gaza continues to be unspeakably disturbing. The UN’s humanitarian agencies haven’t even been able to get enough data to compile their longstanding weekly info-roundup from Gaza. The images, the news that we are able to get all add up to a vile record of a deliberate– sometimes even gleefully pursued– campaign by Israel’s military to destroy the lives and life-supporting infrastructure of the enclave’s whole Palestinian population.

And this genocide is being pursued with the unstinting support (military, financial, political) of my government here in the United States, and other like-minded “Western” governments.

So we have this presidential election going on here this week. For the longest time I was in a complete funk about it. In our political system here, there are only two “plausible” options to vote for. And either of these two candidates will, if elected, most likely bring only continued– or perhaps even exacerbated– misery to the indigenous peoples of Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and the rest of West Asia. I have long felt unable to vote for either of them.

Hence, the funk.

One of my progeny started needling me about this. “But Mom! Think about how how long women in America fought to get the right to vote and how important voting has always been in our family! Think about your grandchildren and the kind of world we are all building for them!”

Washington’s Israeli Rottweiler: Is it on or off the leash?

Helena CobbanOctober 11, 2024June 21, 2025Gaza, Israel, U.S. policy

In the 40-plus years I’ve been studying the US-Israeli relationship up close, my views of its dynamics have changed (as have the dynamics themselves.) However, one view of the relationship that has lasting validity and some inherent elasticity of its own is to view Israel as a sometimes out-of-control attack dog that over the past few decades has been built and sustained overwhelmingly through the support of– and as a perceived longterm investment for– the U.S. military-industrial-governance complex.

But has the Rottweiler now slipped the leash and started to turn on its master?

Some thoughts on today’s perilous situation in West Asia and the world

Helena CobbanOctober 5, 2024October 6, 2024Diplomacy, Gaza, Global balance, Hamas, Israel, Persian Gulf, Qatar, U.S. policy, West Asia

Back in October of last year, I was already writing that Israel, in its reactions to Hamas’s breakout of October 7, was acting in a distinctly unhinged manner. I suppose you could perhaps understand that, given that within just 2-3 hours on that Saturday morning, the Hamas fighters and their allies destroyed the Israeli military’s entire “Southern Command” along with the aura of deterrent invincibility that Israel has counted on since its founding– through acts of extreme violence and ethnic cleansing– back in 1947-48.

It is now clear, however, that (like, I believe many other people) I seriously underestimated the sheer depth of the derangement to which large numbers of Jewish Israelis succumbed on that day, and in which they have been mired ever since. I have only watched a portion of Al-Jazeera’s excellent 80-minute investigation into the extent of the Israeli war crimes in Gaza. But much of what their team pulled together so cogently there has already been widely known. Not just the deliberate blocking of food and other vital necessities to the beleaguered population 2.3 million Gazans, but also the use of massive (and US-supplied) 1,000-lb and 2,000-lb bombs against urban areas, the deliberate destruction of broad swathes of urban infrastructure, the widespread forcing of Palestinian civilians to act as human shields, the attacks on hospitals, the systematized use of torture in prisons and detention facilities– and also the gleeful self-glorification with which so many Israeli soldiers have share their images of these acts quite freely and proudly on global social media.

At least the Nazis seemed a bit embarrassed by what they were doing inside their concentration and extermination camps. They built high walls around them and worked hard to keep their actions well away from public view. Not so, the very large numbers of Israeli soldiers who seem happy to share the records of their inhumanity very widely… and then seem to suffer no reprimands or disciplining from their superiors. Those superiors, indeed, at many levels of the Israeli military and at some of the highest levels of the government, seem pretty happy to have those acts of brutality widely displayed. I think it is supposed to have a deterrent effect on Israel’s potential rivals or foes. But this blatant brutality also seems designed to signal to Israel’s own domestic public that, “Hey look, we are re-establishing our deterrence! You should all be proud of us!”

…

So the genocide in Gaza and its many attendant brutalities grinds on. And Pres. Joe Biden has never taken the few simple steps it would take to end it. Such as: Simply ending the flow of US arms to Israel. Simply ordering the US military in the region to end its round-the-clock provision of vital operational intel to the Israeli military. Simply going to the UN Security Council and joining (rather than blocking) the global consensus that the conflict in Gaza has to end, right now.

Instead, throughout the past year, he has prevaricated, endlessly. His alleged “Red Lines” against Israeli escalation have simply dissolved, time after time after time. So PM Netanyahu has continued to push his luck and see how far he could go. He indicated to Biden back in spring that he would support the three-phase ceasefire-for-hostages deal that was the on the table. Then he went back to his cabinet and said of course he didn’t support it. (Biden was left hanging out to dry, after even persuading the rest of the Security Council to adopt his plan.)

In early April, Netanyahu and the hawks with which he surrounds himself considerably upped the regionwide ante when they ordered the assassination by air attack of two senior Iranian generals who were located in a diplomatic facility in Damascus, Syria. No U.S. response. So on July 30-31, Netanyahu ordered the killing in Beirut of Hizbullah military chief Fuad Shukr and also the killing in Tehran of Hamas’s over-all political head, Ismail Haniyeh. That, at a time when Biden administration claimed it was still working hard to negotiate the ceasefire-for-hostages deal for Gaza– and his prime negotiating partner in that effort was none other than Haniyeh itself.

What a humiliating position Netanyahu and his cronies had put Biden into. If Biden had wanted to retain any credibility at all for the role of the United States as a competent and trustworthy mediating force, then he should have punished Netanyahu immediately for that deeply provocative act. (See “cut off arms”, etc, above.)

But nothing.

For their part, both Hamas and the Iranians acted with great strategic restraint. Hamas stayed in the ceasefire negotiations and appointed a new Secretary General. The Iranian government said it would respond to the gross July 31 violation of its sovereignty at a time and place of its choosing, but it would hold its response in check for a while so as not to interrupt the (hopefully) continuing effort to secure the Gaza ceasefire.

Then eight days ago on September 28, Netanyahu– while sitting in the UN headquarters in New York, no less– ordered another extremely serious Israeli provocation: the use of a clutch of U.S. bunker buster bombs to demolish four buildings in Beirut underneath which the Israelis had (accurately) assessed that Hizbullah’s secretary-general Sayed Hassan Nasrallah was located.

At that point, the Iranian government, for whom Hizbullah and its very competent long-time head had long been key allies, decided the time for a firm response– though not the complete abandonment of strategic patience– had come.

On Tuesday evening (October 1), the Iranian forces launched a barrage of around 200 ballistic missiles across the intervening areas of Arab lands and targeted them, with remarkable accuracy, on four or five key military installations inside Israel.

The Israeli government, which as I well know exercises very tight censorship over the reporting of any journalists working inside the country, whether local or foreign, tried to downplay the effects and effectiveness of that missile barrage. But numerous Israelis living near the targeted facilities had their cellphone and their social-media accounts at the ready; and they very widely shared both the clips of the missiles raining down on the bases and the sounds of their own amazement and fear that this was happening. Those clips were all over the internet. See some of them, gathered by the WaPo’s Evan Hill, here.

Electronic Intifada’s Ali Abunimah happened to be in Jordan that evening. In the EI livestream on Wednesday he recalled the previous evening he had learned from Al-Jazeera that Iran had just launched its missiles. So he went up to the roof of his family home in Amman:

“We went up on the roof to watch and everyone was outside on their roofs and balconies cheering. And there’s lots of social media showing that people were celebrating all over Jordan, just as they were in Palestine… And it struck me that if this had been during the daytime, we probably would not have seen very much because the sky would have been too bright. And I don’t know if there were specific tactical or technical reasons why Iran carried out the attack after dark. But one clear result of that is that millions of people across the region witnessed it with their own eyes.

“And if that was Iran’s intention to make it visible in such a spectacular way, then it was a really brilliant move from a public relations standpoint.”

He also noted that of the large number of missiles flowing over Amman, he saw only a few attempts by interceptors to stop them. Pres. Biden very speedily got on the air-waves to assure Americans and Israelis that the air-defense operations against the missiles had been very effective, but the evidence from both Jordan and from Israel showed that this was clearly not the case.

—-

Pres. Biden is now caught in a politically fraught trap that is almost wholly Made In Israel. PM Netanyahu has been “playing” him for a sucker for many years now, and most especially since last October. And when Netanyahu and his cabinet undertook teach step in the series of escalatory provocations that they’ve launched since early April, they must have thought that– especially in a presidential election year here in the United States– they “had Biden exactly where they wanted him.”

But over those past few months, too, the government of Iran has shown considerable strategic wisdom. It acted with restraint in the (very limited) response it launched in mid-April to Israel’s killings of its generals in Damascus. It kept the focus tightly on the need to win the ceasefire deal for Gaza.

But that restraint, like the inaction/complicity of Washington in the face of Israel’s many provocations, served merely to encourage Israel’s many successive escalations. Clearly, the Israelis’ killing of Nasrallah was a tipping-point for Tehran. Tehran’s actions in response to it have thus far been impressively focused and strategic:

The missile attacks launched Tuesday evening were impressive in size and capability but were tightly targeted on military facilities– including three key air-bases and the HQ’s of intel/spy agencies.
The very next day, Wednesday, Iran’s president, Dr. Masoud Pezeshkian, visited Doha, where he had key meetings with the Emir of Qatar, with the Saudi Foreign Minister, and with representatives of other GCC leaders.
Yesterday, Friday, the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamene’i delivered the first public sermon he has given for more than four years, assuring the congregation of tens of thousands who attended that Iran was ready for any response.

Within the past two days many voices have been raised in the United States and Israel calling for further, harsher punishment of Iran. Donald Trump has called for Israel to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. Hawkish voices in Israel and the US have called for attacks on Iranian oil facilities. But through their assured and smart regional diplomacy, the Iranians appear for now to have prevented any such escalation– acts that would, if carried out, bring both the global economy and the whole worldwide political balance into extreme jeopardy. (Not to mention the possibility of the bodies of many of the 40,000 members of the US military now strung out throughout West Asia, being brought home in body bags.)

Not a great thing for Pres. Biden and his sidekick Kamala Harris to have happen on the eve of a consequential national election.

I am not privy, of course, to whatever Pres. Biden might have said to Netanyahu and other Israelis in recent days. By Biden’s own (somewhat muddled) telling, he has “been discussing various responses” to the Iranian missile barrage with the Israelis. But the fact that the Iranians have lined up an impressive coalition of Arab parties to stand with them in the present face-off certainly constrains whatever Washington or Tel Aviv might be able to do. (As it very likely constrained whatever their two militaries were able to do to try to intercept the Iranian missiles back on Tuesday night.)

The skimpy nature of the international support Biden thought he could count was also indicated when he mumbled something about “the G7” all supporting his actions on Iran– though the G7 is supposed to be only an economic-affairs bloc… In the current international environment, and in the face of repeated, serious Israeli provocations, not to mention genocide and war-crimes, it seems that not even NATO could agree to line up behind the US-Israel alliance.

For their part, of course, the Chinese must be quietly congratulating themselves on having pulled off a significant Saudi-Iranian rapprochement in March last year; and Beijing, Moscow, and many other non-NATO powers must have notice that the United States’ global standing has taken such a steep nose-dive throughout the past year…

—-

My current expectation, then, is for no large-scale US or Israeli retaliation against Iran within the immediate future. (I may be wrong. I hope not.) But meantime, the Israeli military will be redoubling its efforts to do what it knows best, which is genocide, genocide, genocide. And not just in Gaza, but also now in Lebanon to a very significant degree, and also in the West Bank.

The onset of winter will be particularly harsh for the barely surviving Palestinian population of Gaza. But so long as Washington continues to dominate the whole world system, then those families and amazing people will continue to be abandoned to their fate.

USA takes sledgehammer to international law

Helena CobbanJuly 25, 2024July 26, 2024Diplomacy, Global balance, Global governance, Israel, U.S. policy, Uncategorized, United Nations3 Comments

The great artist Michaelangelo completed his “David” and some other seminal works before he turned 30. Imagine if, a few decades later, he had carried a sledgehammer along to where “David” stood in Florence’s most famous public square, and set about smashing his masterpiece to pieces…

That is, roughly, analogous to the story of what the U.S. government has been doing in recent years– and more intensively, over recent months– to the whole structure of international law that Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt so painstakingly crafted at the end of World War 2.

The past seven days have seen two momentous events. On July 19, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which is the highest court in the whole world, adjudicating only conflicts between states, not individuals, issued a landmark judgment to the effect that, inter alia: