Trump’s Iran war speech revealed an American imperial crusade disguised as "defence"

With its war against Iran and other aggressions—Venezuela, Cuba, Greenland—the United States has shown itself to be the greatest threat to global peace and stability in 90 years.

By Fareed Khan 
A version of this can be found on Substack.

 

If anyone familiar with the history of the Middle East over the past 150 years had been thoughtfully absorbing President Donald Trump’s April 1, 2026, address to the nation, the words emanating from the screen would have transported them not to the present-day battlefield in Iran, but to the drawing rooms of 19th-century European chancelleries. There, kings and prime ministers justified the carving up of Africa at the Berlin Conference and the conquest of ancient Asian societies by invoking divine mandate and racial superiority.

This colonial mindset, once used to legitimize European domination over “uncivilized” peoples and their resources, has found a strikingly modern echo in Trump’s rhetoric. Beneath the boasts of military success and appeals to American strength lies the same underlying assumption: that certain racialized societies are inherently chaotic and backward, requiring the forceful hand of a superior power to impose order. The speech did not merely announce tactical victories; it revealed a deeper imperial logic that treats the Middle East as a theatre for great-power manoeuvring rather than a region of sovereign nations with millennia-old civilizations.

Trump’s triumphant declaration—that in just one month the US had destroyed Iran’s navy, reduced its air force to ruins, killed its leaders, and decimated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps—read like a dispatch from a European viceroy announcing the subjugation of some “backward” colonial territory. He framed America as the indispensable force restoring order to a “fanatical regime” whose citizens have been chanting “Death to America” for decades, while congratulating troops on victories “like few people have ever seen before.” Yet the real barbarian in this picture is not Iran, a nation that has never invaded or attacked another sovereign state since long before the United States achieved independence. It is the United States itself—an agent of chaos and destruction that has destabilized the Middle East for generations in pursuit of its own geopolitical agenda and its enduring desire to control the region’s oil resources.

Trump’s speech was a masterclass in reductive Orientalism, the kind Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said dissected decades ago in his critique, where he asserted that European and Western powers simplify and stereotype the region and its societies as primitive, irrational, violent, despotic, fanatic, and essentially inferior to Western societies, and thus in need of civilizing. The president cast Iran as the world’s “No. 1 state sponsor of terror,” responsible for everything from the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing to the October 7 Hamas attack, while glossing over America’s own violent and destructive history of intervention. From the overthrow of governments in Central America, to the 1953 coup against Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, to the illegal Iraq War, and support for proxy wars that have turned the Middle East into a perpetual theatre of instability and conflict.

He boasted that the US is now “totally independent of the Middle East” thanks to his Venezuelan oil venture, yet insisted on remaining in the region “to help our allies.” This is the colonial logic laid bare. The US doesn’t’ need their resources, but will bomb their societies into submission to dictate who controls them. It mirrors the European scramble for Africa, where powers like Britain and France invoked civilizing missions while securing diamonds, rubber, and trade routes. Trump’s divine flourishes—”God bless” the astronauts and troops—echo the manifest destiny that sanctified earlier empires, now repackaged as another example of American military aggression and exceptionalism.

This war is not only completely illegal it is unnecessary and unprovoked, as there was no impending threat to the US, as verified by intelligence leaks. In reality, it is the fulfillment of a fantasy Benjamin Netanyahu has harboured for nearly 40 years. For the better part of four decades, he has repeatedly claimed that Iran was weeks or months away from a nuclear bomb, using the spectre of a nuclearized Iran to lobby Washington for military action while sabotaging diplomacy at every turn. Wisely, no previous American president was reckless enough to listen to him and be sucked into a war of choice. They understood what Trump chose to ignore—subjugating Iran, a civilization with roots stretching back millennia, is impossible without catastrophic consequences. Previous administrations recognized the quagmire that would follow—endless insurgency, regional upheaval, and the risk of wider war. Trump, in his address, claimed to have corrected their “mistakes” by killing General Qassem Soleimani and tearing up Barack Obama’s nuclear deal. He presented these as acts of strength, but the truth is they were the opening salvos in a conflict that Netanyahu has long craved, that could be reminiscent of the US failure in Vietnam.

Additionally, Iran remains the last major Middle Eastern power that unequivocally supports freedom and justice for Palestinians. Through funding, arms, and diplomatic backing to groups resisting Israel’s occupation, Tehran has stood as a patron where other Middle East nations—Egypt, Syria, Libya, Iraq, Saudi Arabia—have been neutralized through diplomacy, economic incentives, or military action. Remove it, and Palestinians face a future of more Israeli subjugation, oppression, and occupation with no significant state-level ally left to help them achieve freedom.

Trump’s address barely mentioned Gaza, and didn’t even use the word “genocide”, focusing instead on Israel’s security as a core justification. This omission is deliberate, with the war serving as a grotesque distraction. As global eyes remain fixed on Iranian missile sites and oil tankers set ablaze, Israel continues its documented campaign of mass murder in the enclave—a genocide that the world has done nothing to halt. With attention diverted to the war against Israel presses forward unchecked, continuing the destruction of Gaza and the annihilation of its people.

The speech’s tone of bravado cannot mask the deeper truth—that the United States is showing itself to be the greatest threat to world peace and global economic stability in 90 years with its aggressions against Iran, (and Venezuela, Cuba, and Greenland). Trump claimed “core strategic objectives are nearing completion,” but the conflict has already exposed America’s limits. Despite its military might, the US has failed to achieve a swift victory. Iran’s resilience—its ability to absorb strikes and maintain asymmetric pressure—signals to Russia and China that Washington is not invincible despite its military power. If the mightiest military in the world cannot impose its will on a mid-tier adversary without calling for help from its NATO allies, Moscow and Beijing may calculate they could fare even better were a conflict to breakout with the US.

This war has not stabilized the region; instead it has brought the world palpably closer to World War Three, with supply chains fracturing, oil markets convulsing, and alliances realigning. Trump’s claim that “America is winning bigger than ever” rings hollow against the funerals at Dover Air Force Base and the American lives already lost.

As people listened to the address, they would likely be reminded of the casual racism that has underpinned American Middle East policy for decades. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld under George W. Bush once reportedly dismissed Arabs as “lazy” because they sat atop too much oil. Texas Rep. Keith Self has claimed Islam is “stuck in the 8th century,” while Sen. Lindsey Graham quipped that anything starting with “Al” in the Middle East is bad news—oblivious that “algebra,” “alchemy,” and “algorithm” entered Western knowledge through Arab and Persian scholarship. Florida Rep. Randy Fine’s preference for a dog over a Muslim ignores Jalal ad-Din Rumi, the 13th-century Persian poet whose wisdom graces countless lives today, or the fact that Arab numerals underpin modern mathematics.

These stereotypes, as Said warned, erase the Middle Eastern society’s foundational contributions to human civilization. No one denies the region’s post-colonial challenges resulting from Western intervention—artificial borders drawn by former colonial masters, autocracies born of foreign meddling, and tensions exacerbated by external destabilization. But the notion that it requires Western “wisdom” imported at the barrel of a gun is the same conceit that justified colonial conquest. Iranians, like all peoples, deserve safety, freedom, and respect, not bombs justified by clichés of a “blood-stained land.”

Essentially, Trump’s address was more than just a war update. It was a declaration of imperial continuity. By aligning so brazenly with Netanyahu’s long-sought war against Iran, the US has cast itself as the latest in a line of powers convinced of their divine right to reshape ancient societies.

Iran did not seek this fight but it is prepared to fight to the bitter end to preserve its society and sovereignty. The chaos we now see in the Persian Gulf originates in Washington’s endless quest for dominance. As gasoline prices continue to rise and the shadows of a wider war lengthen, Americans should ask--who is the true threat to civilization—the nation defending its people and territorial integrity against an unprovoked attack, or the superpower carving up the map once more?

History’s verdict on 19th-century colonialism is clear. The question is whether we will see that historic barbarism repeated, or finally reject it and then toss it onto the trash heap of history where it belongs.  

© 2026 The View From Here. © 2025 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.

Stephen Lewis—a political giant—leaves a legacy of justice and shows what a good politician should be

Stephen Lewis had a higher purpose of public service—to work tirelessly to build a better society for those who were not members of society’s elite class.

By Fareed Khan 
A version of this can be found on Substack.

With the death of Stephen Lewis on March 31, 2026, Canada has lost a political, moral, and intellectual giant. At 88, Lewis departed this life just days after his son Avi’s election as federal New Democratic Party leader, closing a chapter of extraordinary public service while opening another. Few figures in our history combined such fierce intelligence, unyielding moral clarity, and oratorical power. In an era when politics too often feels small, transactional, and beholden to the wealthy, Lewis stood apart—a voice that elevated debate, challenged power, and reminded us that public life could be a noble calling.

No political leader of recent memory possessed the intellectual and moral strength of Stephen Lewis. As Ontario NDP leader from 1970 to 1978, he brought a razor-sharp mind and passionate eloquence to the legislature and the hustings. His speeches were not mere sound bites, they were rigorous, evidence-based arguments wrapped in moral urgency. He could dissect economic inequality with the precision of a scholar while stirring the conscience of ordinary Canadians with the fire of a prophet.

Later, as Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations and special envoy on HIV/AIDS, he confronted global indifference with the same combination of intellectual rigour and ethical conviction. Where others offered platitudes, Lewis demanded action. Where others courted donors and pollsters, he spoke truth to power. In the decades since he left provincial politics, no federal or provincial leader—Conservative, Liberal, or even New Democrat—has matched that rare fusion of brilliance and principle. Lewis did not merely participate in politics, he ennobled it.

It is regrettable that we rarely see political figures of his calibre any more in Canadian politics. Today’s leaders too often default to scripted talking points, focus-grouped slogans, and carefully managed social-media moments. The grand rhetorical tradition that once animated Canada’s political culture and public squares has been diminished by the demands of 24-hour news cycles and social media algorithms. Lewis’s ability to hold audiences spellbound with his words, to weave complex policy into vivid human narratives, and to inspire collective action feels like a relic of a more courageous age. In the era of performative politics and corporate and billionaire influence, the absence of voices like his leaves a void that needs to be filled. Public discourse has suffered, because unlike Lewis, today’s leaders fear bold ideas because it may mean losing power.

Yet even as many mourn Lewis’s passing, there is reason for hope. With the recent election of his son Avi as leader of the federal NDP, we may witness a rebirth of the sort of the sort of progressive politics that gave Canada its most cherished social programs. The NDP and its predecessor, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, have long been the engine of social democratic advance in this country. It was that tradition—fiercely championed by figures like Tommy Douglas—that delivered Canada’s public health care system, a single-payer model , however flawed, that Canadians value as a critical part what it is to be Canadian.

The Canada Pension Plan, which provides retirement security to millions, owes its existence to the determined advocacy of NDP parliamentarians who refused to let Lester Pearson’s minority government settle for less. The 40-hour work week, once a distant dream of labour activists, became reality through decades of union and political pressure rooted in the same progressive ethos. More recently, public dental care and publicly funded day care have moved from aspiration to policy, thanks in no small part to NDP insistence during minority Parliaments.

These are not abstract achievements. They are the concrete expressions of a politics that puts people before profits. Canadians take them for granted precisely because they have become woven into the fabric of our national identity. Avi Lewis’s leadership, taking from what his father taught him, offers the chance to revive that tradition at the federal level, to remind us that bold social policy is not radical—it is Canadian.

What Canada needs today is political leaders cast in the mould of Stephen Lewis—men and women who do not serve the rich and powerful but represent the interests of the 99% of Canadians who are not part of the millionaire and billionaire class. Too many in our current political class have internalized the notion that economic policy must first appease Bay Street, corporate boardrooms, and the ultra-wealthy. The result is a new Gilded Age in Canada, where a tiny elite grows obscenely richer while wages stagnate, housing becomes unaffordable, and essential services strain under chronic under funding. The super-rich are not merely benefiting from the system, they are shaping it—through lobbying, political donations, and media influence—to ensure policies flow upward.

Stephen Lewis never accepted this arrangement. His higher purpose of public service was to work tirelessly to build a better society for those who were not members of society’s elite class—the working families, the poor, the marginalized, the vast majority who labour every day without the cushion of inherited wealth or corporate connections. He understood that governments too often pursue policies that benefit the rich and powerful at the expense of the bottom 99%. Lewis rejected that approach to governing. He believed public office existed to restrain excess, expand opportunity, and guarantee dignity for all, not just those of wealth and privilege.

If given a chance, Stephen Lewis’s son Avi, as the new leader of the NDP, could be the political leader who begins the process of ending this new Gilded Age. The current Liberal government under Prime Minister Mark Carney has adopted fiscal and economic policies that often resemble those of past Conservative administrations—cautious on taxation of extreme wealth, deferential to market orthodoxy, and slow to confront the structural inequalities that define our time.

Carney, a former Bank of Canada governor and Goldman Sachs executive, brings formidable expertise to the role of prime minister but also a worldview shaped by elite financial circles. His minority government has shown flashes of progressive instinct, yet more often it has prioritized fiscal conservatism and investor confidence over the transformative change Canadians need to reduce extreme wealth inequality and raise the wages of the vast majority.

Avi Lewis has the platform, the pedigree, and the passion to push the Carney government—and the broader political spectrum—back toward the left of the political centre by demanding universal pharmacare, stronger labour rights, meaningful wealth taxes, and aggressive action on housing and climate justice. An emboldened NDP, echoing the legacy of the elder Lewis, could force the Liberals to choose between the status quo and the bold social democracy that once defined Canadian politics in the 1960s and 70s.

As Canadians mourn the passing of Stephen Lewis, let the example of his life—in politics and beyond—serve as a guiding light for the future of our public life. His intellectual honesty, moral courage, and unwavering commitment to the common good should not slip into mere nostalgic memory. Instead, they must inspire a new generation of leaders who understand that the true measure of a nation lies not in the height of its stock market, but in the depth of its compassion and the breadth of its opportunity.

Avi Lewis now carries that torch. As he works to restore the federal NDP to the principled, fighting spirit that once made it the conscience of the nation, Canadians have a chance to reclaim the progressive legacy that built our greatest public institutions. Stephen Lewis showed us what politics at its best can achieve. His son now has the opportunity to prove it can happen again.

The passing of a giant leaves a huge silence, but in that silence echoes a clear challenge, to reject complacency, to demand better, and to build the fairer Canada that Lewis always believed was possible. If we seize this moment, perhaps we can achieve in our lifetime what Stephen Lewis could not fully realize in his.

© 2026 The View From Here. © 2025 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.

Iranian president speaks directly to the American people about US-Israeli war on Iran

Attacking Iran’s vital infrastructure directly targets the Iranian people. Beyond constituting a war crime, such actions carry consequences that extend far beyond Iran’s borders.

By Fareed Khan 
A version of this can be found on Substack.

BREAKING FROM IRAN: In a calculated diplomatic maneuver released just hours before President Donald Trump’s televised address to the American people, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has issued an open letter directly to US citizens. The timing appears deliberate: an effort to get ahead of what Tehran anticipates will be a speech filled with justifications, distortions, and rationalizations for the ongoing US-led war against Iran.

Framing the conflict as one rooted in long-standing American aggression rather than any inherent Iranian threat, Pezeshkian urges Americans to look beyond what he describes as a “flood of distortions and manufactured narratives” emanating from Washington. He portrays the impending Trump address as likely to recycle familiar anti-Iranian talking points—depicting Iran as an existential danger, an aggressor, or a destabilizing force—while downplaying or ignoring the broader context of US interventions in the region that has made them and Israel the most destabilizing actors in the Middle East.

In the letter, Pezeshkian firmly denies that Iran poses any threat to the American people or harbours enmity toward them. He points out that Iran has never initiated aggression or sought expansion since the US achieved independence, positioning its actions instead as measured responses grounded in legitimate self-defence against foreign attacks. Portraying Iran as a menace, he argues, is inconsistent with both historical reality and observable facts, and stems more from America’s geopolitical and economic agenda rather than from genuine security concerns.

A central warning in the letter focuses on the human and global costs of US strikes. Pezeshkian highlights that any US or Israeli attacks on Iran’s vital infrastructure—including energy and industrial facilities—would be actions that directly target ordinary Iranian civilians. “Beyond constituting a war crime,” he states, “such actions carry consequences that extend far beyond Iran’s borders.” He questions whose interests are truly being served by prolonging the war, asking pointedly whether Trump’s “America First” agenda is genuinely guiding US policy or if other influences are at play, in a veiled reference to Israel.

By appealing straight to the American public over the heads of their government, Pezeshkian seeks to sow doubt about official US justifications, evoke shared humanity between the two peoples, and preempt any narrative that casts Iran solely as the villain. The letter blends defiance with a call for reflection, suggesting the path of confrontation is costlier and more futile than diplomacy, while reminding Americans of past US actions in Iran, such as the 1953 coup which overthrew a democratically elected government, installed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as its absolute ruler, and sowed the seeds of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, and decades of anti-American hostility by Iranians.

As Trump prepares to outline his administration’s stance on the conflict—potentially defending escalation, outlining military objectives, or framing the campaign as necessary for regional stability and American security—Pezeshkian’s message stands as a direct counter-narrative. It aims to frame the US as the escalator and aggressor, urging US citizens to scrutinize the rationales they are about to hear and consider the wider repercussions before further support solidifies behind continued hostilities.

---

FULL LETTER:

“To the people of the United States of America, and to all those who, amid a flood of distortions and manufactured narratives, continue to seek the truth and aspire to a better life:

Iran—by this very name, character, and identity—is one of the oldest continuous civilizations in human history. Despite its historical and geographical advantages at various times, Iran has never, in its modern history, chosen the path of aggression, expansion, colonialism, or domination. Even after enduring occupation, invasion, and sustained pressure from global powers—and despite possessing military superiority over many of its neighbors—Iran has never initiated a war. Yet it has resolutely and bravely repelled those who have attacked it.

The Iranian people harbor no enmity toward other nations, including the people of America, Europe, or neighboring countries. Even in the face of repeated foreign interventions and pressures throughout their proud history, Iranians have consistently drawn a clear distinction between governments and the peoples they govern. This is a deeply rooted principle in Iranian culture and collective consciousness—not a temporary political stance.

For this reason, portraying Iran as a threat is neither consistent with historical reality nor with present-day observable facts. Such a perception is the product of political and economic whims of the powerful—the need to manufacture an enemy in order to justify pressure, maintain military dominance, sustain the arms industry, and control strategic markets. In such an environment, if a threat does not exist, it is invented.

Within this same framework, the United States has concentrated the largest number of its forces, bases, and military capabilities around Iran—a country that, at least since the founding of the United States, has never initiated a war.

Recent American aggressions launched from these very bases have demonstrated how threatening such a military presence truly is. Naturally, no country confronted with such conditions would forgo strengthening its defensive capabilities. What Iran has done—and continues to do—is a measured response grounded in legitimate self-defense, and by no means an initiation of war or aggression.

Relations between Iran and the United States were not originally hostile, and early interactions between the Iranian and American people were not marred with hostility or tension. The turning point, however, was the 1953 coup d’état—an illegal American intervention aimed at preventing the nationalization of Iran’s own resources. That coup disrupted Iran’s democratic process, reinstated dictatorship, and sowed deep distrust among Iranians toward U.S. policies.

This distrust deepened further with America’s support for the Shah’s regime, its backing of Saddam Hussein during the imposed war of the 1980s, the imposition of the longest and most comprehensive sanctions in modern history, and ultimately, unprovoked military aggression—twice, in the midst of negotiations—against Iran.

Yet all these pressures have failed to weaken Iran. On the contrary, the country has grown stronger in many areas: literacy rates have tripled—from roughly 30% before the Islamic Revolution to over 90% today; higher education has expanded dramatically; significant advances have been achieved in modern technology; healthcare services have improved; and infrastructure has developed at a pace and scale incomparable to the past. These are measurable, observable realities that stand independent of fabricated narratives.

At the same time, the destructive and inhumane impact of sanctions, war, and aggression on the lives of the resilient Iranian people must not be underestimated. The continuation of military aggression and recent bombings profoundly affect people’s lives, attitudes, and perspectives. This reflects a fundamental human truth: when war inflicts irreparable harm on lives, homes, cities, and futures, people will not remain indifferent toward those responsible.

This raises a fundamental question: Exactly which of the American people’s interests are truly being served by this war? Was there any objective threat from Iran to justify such behaviour? Does the massacre of innocent children, the destruction of cancer-treatment pharmaceutical facilities, or boasting about bombing a country “back to the stone ages” serve any purpose other than further damaging the United States’ global standing?

Iran pursued negotiations, reached an agreement, and fulfilled all its commitments. The decision to withdraw from that agreement, escalate toward confrontation, and launch two acts of aggression in the midst of negotiations were destructive choices made by the U.S. government—choices that served the delusions of a foreign aggressor.

Attacking Iran’s vital infrastructure—including energy and industrial facilities—directly targets the Iranian people. Beyond constituting a war crime, such actions carry consequences that extend far beyond Iran’s borders. They generate instability, increase human and economic costs, and perpetuate cycles of tension, planting seeds of resentment that will endure for years. This is not a demonstration of strength; it is a sign of strategic bewilderment and an inability to achieve a sustainable solution.

Is it not also the case that America has entered this aggression as a proxy for Israel, influenced and manipulated by that regime? Is it not true that Israel, by manufacturing an Iranian threat, seeks to divert global attention away from its crimes toward the Palestinians? Is it not evident that Israel now aims to fight Iran to the last American soldier and the last American taxpayer dollar—shifting the burden of its delusions onto Iran, the region, and the United States itself in pursuit of illegitimate interests?

Is “America First” truly among the priorities of the U.S. government today?

I invite you to look beyond the machinery of misinformation—an integral part of this aggression—and instead speak with those who have visited Iran. Observe the many accomplished Iranian immigrants—educated in Iran—who now teach and conduct research at the world’s most prestigious universities, or contribute to the most advanced technology firms in the West. Do these realities align with the distortions you are being told about Iran and its people?

Today, the world stands at a crossroads. Continuing along the path of confrontation is more costly and futile than ever before. The choice between confrontation and engagement is both real and consequential; its outcome will shape the future for generations to come. Throughout its millennia of proud history, Iran has outlasted many aggressors. All that remains of them are tarnished names in history, while Iran endures—resilient, dignified, and proud.”

© 2026 The View From Here. © 2025 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.

Israel, the US, and the dawn of "technologically advanced barbarism"

Humanity has reached a profound existential inflection point. The fragile 75-year interlude of relative global peace that followed the Second World War is now over.

By Fareed Khan 
A version of this can be found on Substack.

The following was inspired by a speech delivered by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Chris Hedges at Princeton on March 25, 2026.

The world stands at a metaphorical precipice, pushed by two nations that have surrendered to the ugly and dangerous impulses of fascism. Because of Israel under Benjamin Netanyahu and the United States under Donald Trump—two narcissistic psychopaths—the world is tumbling toward an time of war, global instability, and economic chaos that we haven’t seen since the 1930s.

As in the past, the rich and powerful will navigate the descent with their yachts, private planes and fortified compounds, and profit from the oncoming misery, insulated by influence and wealth. However, average people, as they always do when the powerful wage war for power, control, and resources, will bear the brunt of the misery with ruined lives, shattered economies, and generational trauma. This is not hyperbole. It is the endpoint of the collapse of the post-World War Two international rules-based order, an order now openly defied by one of the architects of that order (the US), and a nation (Israel) which benefitted from that order since its creation as a settler-colonial state.

The immediate evidence supporting this view has unfolded in the Middle East beginning in October 2023. For more than 900 days Israel has unleashed unrelenting violence in Gaza—labelled a genocide by the UN, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem, the International Association of Genocide Scholars and prominent Israeli Holocaust scholars Raz Segal, Omer Bartov and Amos Goldberg. The apartheid nation has reduced swaths of the territory to rubble in what has been called by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Chris Hedges as the opening act of a new global order defined by “technologically advanced barbarism.”

Saturation bombing, forced displacement, and the deliberate targetting of civilian infrastructure have created a humanitarian catastrophe of historic proportions across the Middle East. In Gaza, over two million Palestinians have been rendered refugees in their own land. And now Israel’s aggression has expanded, with southern Lebanon facing obliteration, as the tactics of the Gaza plan are used as a “blueprint for destruction” perversely framed as a “path to peace” by Israel. More than one million Lebanese—one-fifth of the population—have been ethnically cleansed in mere weeks. Simultaneously, the US-backed war on Iran, launched February 28, 2026, has displaced three million Iranians. In all three conflicts more than six million have been made homeless across the region, a demographic change that clears a path for the idea of a “Greater Israel” stretching “from the Nile to the Euphrates.” This is no isolated geopolitical spasm. It is a deliberate replay of the chaos inflicted on Iraq, Syria, and Libya by the US and its key Middle East ally.

In Iraq, 23 years after the 2003 US invasion, the country lurches under economic headwinds, with the government’s almost total dependence on oil revenues to fund government operations, forcing austerity measures that threaten public salaries and pensions, while unemployment and corruption fuel street protests. Stability is relative, and prosperity remains elusive. The Iraqi economy, more than 90% percent dependent on oil, offers no buffer against regional shocks, like the war against Iran.

Syria, a little over a year after Bashar al-Assad’s fall in late 2024, has achieved fragile transitional gains under Ahmed al-Sharaa—sanctions relief, some territorial integration with territory controlled by Kurdish forces, and an end to the Assad torture state. But it remains economically devastated by 14 years of war, with reconstruction stalled, and new threats from the expanding Israel-US conflict looming over its borders, risking renewed fragmentation.

Then there is Libya, a nation made into a failed state since the 2011 NATO intervention, which endures in a delicately managed stalemate between the Tripoli-based Government of National Unity and the eastern Libyan Arab Armed Forces. Militias control its resources and territory, while oil-funded patronage creates division rather than resolution. Elections remain indefinitely postponed as repression rises, and the country teeters on the brink of renewed collapse, exporting instability across its borders.

In each case there is a pattern—Western-orchestrated regime change or destabilization that results in failed or fractured states, where ordinary citizens inherit poverty, displacement, death and endless insecurity while external powers secure oil, influence, or outright control, and in the process deny it to rivals like Russia or China. The architects of this disorder—Israel and the United States—have taken the strategy used on these three nations and are using it to accelerate the collapse of the rules-based international order which has maintained a fragile global peace for almost eight decades.

In all of this bodies like the United Nations and International Court of Justice, once guardrails against Darwinian power politics, have been relegated to the sidelines. Their resolutions and rulings are contemptuously ignored by these two rogue nations. Fundamental human rights, the evolution towards more open borders between trade partners, and international law lie shattered.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney captured the world’s attention in his January 20, 2026, address at the World Economic Forum in Davos when he spoke of a “rupture, not a transition.” He declared that the old order was dead and was not coming back. He said publicly what had been discussed privately in the back rooms of governments in Ottawa, London, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo and beyond since the return of Donald Trump to the Oval Office—great powers now wield economic integration as coercion, tariffs as leverage, and supply chains as weaknesses. “The strong can do what they can, and the weak must suffer what they must,” he warned, urging middle powers to unite in realism rather than nostalgia.

The post-1945 era of relative world peace—over 75 years without global war, however imperfect—has ended. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s illusory “peace in our time”—a statement made after signing the Munich Agreement with Adolph Hitler on September 30, 1938 allowing Germany to annex the Sudetenland—finds its modern echo in the hollow invocations of the “rules-based order” by leaders who exempt themselves and their nations whenever politically expedient.

This psychopathic display of power knows no limits for strong military powers like the US and Israel, making the weak their prey whenever they desire. Oppose them, refuse to bow to their capricious demands, and you face economic blackmail through strangled trade, sanctions, or face the prospect of being targeted with missiles and bombs. Netanyahu has lobbied Washington for four decades to launch a war against Iran but previous administrations, Republican and Democratic alike, wisely refused, recognizing that there was no existential threat and foreseeing disaster if they took a step in that direction. Trump, prodded by fervent Zionists Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, foolishly took the bait and went where past presidents were too intelligent to tread. Joseph Kent, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, resigned and in his resignation letter stated plainly that Iran posed “no imminent threat,” and that the war began “due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”

Shifting rationales for the war have included: halting Iran’s nuclear program—which Trump said had been “obliterated“ in the US attack on Iranian nuclear facilities in June 2025—the threat of Iranian missiles, regime change, and threats of state terrorism. They all served as deception for the Greater Israel plan, a vision which included shattering Iran into ethnic and religious enclaves like what happened in Iraq, Syria and Libya. Another goal was to secure the world’s second-largest natural gas reserves and 12% of the global crude oil supply, and controlling what would be left of Iran through proxies. The same thing happened to Iraq, Syria, Libya, and is now happening in Lebanon.

Israel justifies its military actions by invoking the Holocaust and taking advantage of Western guilt over the international community’s failure to halt Nazi atrocities. Yet this invocation reveals a profound hypocrisy when nearly all major Holocaust institutions and scholars steadfastly refuse to condemn the ongoing events in Gaza or draw any historical parallels, effectively hijacking the memory of the Holocaust. They have transformed this singular event into a shield that sanctifies eternal Jewish victimhood while absolving Israel of the crimes of settler-colonialism, apartheid, and genocide.

Effectively the slogan “Never Again” has been narrowed to mean “Never Again only for Jews,” with any attempt by Holocaust-related institutions or individual scholars to express even modest sympathy for Palestinian suffering triggering a swift, orchestrated backlash from Zionist organizations and their online trolls. They often include public denunciations, threats of funding cuts, or character assassination, creating a glaring “Palestinian exception” to universal lessons about preventing mass atrocity crimes.

Concrete examples illustrate this selective enforcement. In September 2025, the Holocaust Museum LA posted on Instagram a message stating “‘Never Again’ can’t only mean never again for Jews,” accompanied by imagery suggesting shared humanity. Many interpreted it as a subtle acknowledgement of Palestinian suffering amid the Gaza genocide. After a barrage of criticism and accusations of politicizing the Holocaust, the museum quickly deleted the post and issued an apology, promising more careful vetting of future content to “avoid misinterpretation.”

In a related incident around April 2025, staff at Germany’s Buchenwald Memorial pressured a visitor to remove her Palestinian keffiyeh (black-and-white scarf), claiming it violated house rules during a commemoration event. A German court later upheld the memorial’s right to refuse entry in such cases when the scarf was worn as a political statement. Critics, including the European Legal Support Center, argued that this reflected broader censorship where expressions of solidarity with Palestinians or references to genocide in the current context are increasingly suppressed at European Holocaust memorial sites, often with implicit or explicit support from German authorities.

Scholars who dare cross the line also face intense personal and professional repercussions. Israeli Holocaust scholar Amos Goldberg drew fierce criticism for publicly stating “Yes, this is genocide” regarding Gaza. He highlighted an unprecedented level of dehumanization of Palestinians in Israeli society that he had never witnessed before in his lifetime. Similarly, American-Israeli scholar Raz Segal faced significant backlash—including the withdrawal of a job offer to lead a Holocaust and genocide studies centre—for his October 2023 article in Jewish Currents titled “A Textbook Case of Genocide,” in which he analyzed Israel’s actions in Gaza through the lens of the UN Genocide Convention.

German Holocaust historian Michael Wildt, a leading expert on the Nazi regime, was slandered by the tabloid BILD as a “Jew-hater” after voicing concerns about the situation in Palestine. The article received endorsement from Israel’s ambassador to Germany, Ron Prosor, amplifying the attack.

These cases expose the contradiction at the heart of contemporary Holocaust remembrance. The atrocity, which resulted in the death of over 17 million people, six million Jews among them, is upheld as a singular, incomparable event whose lessons must never be diluted. Yet any analogy or universal application of “Never Again” to Palestinian suffering is denounced as trivialization, antisemitism, or betrayal. This selective memory does more than protect a narrative, it undermines the very moral foundation of Holocaust education. If the purpose is truly to guard against future genocides by confronting the dark potentials of dehumanization, ethnic supremacy, and unchecked power, then exempting one group from scrutiny while weaponizing historical trauma against another reveals a profound ethical failure.

The result is a distorted framework in which Jewish suffering retains unique sanctity, while Palestinian deaths are framed as unfortunate necessities of self-defence or security. This hypocrisy erodes the universalist promise of “Never Again,” and risks turning Holocaust institutions into instruments that perpetuate, rather than prevent, cycles of violence and exclusion. True remembrance would demand consistency by applying the same rigorous standards of scrutiny, empathy, and prevention to all instances of mass suffering, without exception. Until that consistency is restored, invocations of the Holocaust in defence of current policies will continue to ring hollow for much of the global audience, particularly in the Global South, which recognizes patterns of selective outrage all too well.

History has shown that genocide is not an anomaly in human affairs. Rather, it is deeply encoded in the patterns of behaviour exhibited by European colonial powers and, more broadly, by “white” and nominally Christian nations throughout modern history.

The British, for instance, nearly annihilated Tasmania’s Aboriginal population through systematic dispossession, violence, and displacement. In the Belgian Congo, King Leopold II’s regime (1885–1908) unleashed mass murder and horrific atrocities against Black Africans, with a death toll estimates as high as ten million, with millions more suffering mutilation, including limb amputations, as punishment for failing to meet rubber quotas.

Germany carried out the slaughter of the Herero and Nama peoples in German Southwest Africa (present-day Namibia) between 1904 and 1908. This campaign featured explicit extermination orders and the establishment of concentration camps, resulting in the deaths of up to 80,000 Herero (more than 80 percent of their population), and 10,000 Nama (roughly half of theirs).

During World War Two, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill played a central role in the 1943 Bengal famine. He refused to divert food aid to millions of starving Indians, reportedly dismissing them as “a beastly people with a beastly religion.” The famine claimed more than three million lives, and is classified as genocide by many scholars.

The United States, for its part, dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. These attacks killed over 140,000 civilians in Hiroshima and approximately 74,000 in Nagasaki by the end of 1945, with total deaths topping 240,000 when including later effects from injuries and radiation. The bombings were justified as necessary to end the war quickly, despite objections from numerous American political, military, and scientific figures who argued that the use of atomic weapons was unnecessary with Japan already on the verge of defeat.

These grim episodes form a consistent and damning historical thread. Whenever European and Western powers have exercised unchecked dominance, the dehumanization of non-European peoples has repeatedly paved the way for mass killing on an industrial scale. Such atrocities are almost always followed by elaborate rationalizations that minimize, justify, or try to erase the crimes from collective memory. Far from isolated aberrations, these events reveal a recurring pattern—one that thoroughly undermines any claim of unique moral exceptionalism by the modern West.

The violence that has engulfed Gaza since October 2023—indiscriminate bombing, deliberate starvation tactics, targeting of civilians, the routine dehumanization of Palestinians as “human animals,” and genocide—represents only the opening chapter of what is coming down the road, according to Hedges. The aggression now spreading to Lebanon and Iran simply extends the same blueprint tested and refined in Gaza. The age of “technologically advanced barbarism,” is here. It is an era in which psychopathic elites—the billionaire “Epstein class” and their political enablers in Washington, Tel Aviv and beyond—operate with superficial charm, grandiosity, habitual deceit, lack of a moral compass, and an absence of remorse.

Humanity has reached a profound, existential inflection point. The fragile 75-year interlude of relative global peace that followed the Second World War is now over. Today, Israel and the United States stand as the greatest threats to world stability. They are exporting chaos across the Middle East without a thought about its impact on the innocent or the economic impacts of their actions around the world. Meanwhile, ordinary people—workers, families, and the displaced—will continue to pay the heaviest price in blood, poverty, and shattered futures.

The choice before the vast majority of humanity is stark and urgent. We can either actively obstruct this descent into a law-of-the-jungle world order, or we can surrender to it. Whatever happens, history will render a harsh and unforgiving verdict on Israel and the US, nations which have deliberately set us on this dangerous path.

© 2026 The View From Here. © 2025 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.

West is the main source of global Islamophobia, and has been waging “war” against Muslims for decades

The evidence is overwhelming—Western political and cultural portrayals, amplified by conservative media and leaders, are the primary drivers of the explosion in Islamophobia.

By Fareed Khan 
A version of this can be found on Substack.

 

For decades, Western governments and societies—particularly in the United States, United Kingdom, and France—have waged a war against Islam and Muslims. This is not a conflict of tanks and missiles but of narratives, policies, and cultural framing that have systematically portrayed Muslims as hostile, perpetual threats, incompatible with Western values, and inherently suspect. Through political rhetoric, conservative media amplification, negative portrayals in films and on TV, and institutional bias, these forces have cultivated hostility toward Muslim diasporas, Muslim-majority societies, and the Islamic faith itself. The result has been an explosion of Islamophobia since the mid-1970s, a surge after the Persian Gulf War in 1990, a sharp escalation after the 9/11 attacks, and a renewed torrent following Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, which experts and respected global human rights organizations describe as genocidal. This manufactured fear doesn’t serve security or truth, but rather political expediency, cultural dominance and oppression.

The roots of the Islamophobia seen today in Western society and globally has a long history, but traces back to the mid-1970s. The 1973 oil crisis, the Iranian Revolution, acts of resistance to Israeli occupation by the Palestinian Liberation Organization were all used by Western governments and news media to frame Muslims as geopolitical adversaries in Western discourse. Academic analyses documents how US and European media shifted from neutral coverage of Muslim societies to one dominated by “Islamic threat” narratives. A foundational 1997 report by the Runnymede Trust in the UK identified this as “Islamophobia”—a form of prejudice rooted in negative media stereotypes and institutional exclusion that viewed Muslims as monolithic in their thinking, inferior, and violent. By the 1980s and 1990s, narrative shifts in Western journalism—documented in studies of US and European outlets—recast “Islam” as synonymous with extremism, laying the groundwork for widespread hostility towards people practicing the faith, even if they had lived in Western societies for generations.

The terrorist attack on September 11, 2001 supercharged this dynamic. What followed was not balanced news coverage but agenda-driven media narratives that equated Islam with terrorism. A 2024 computational analysis of over 10,000 articles in major US and UK newspapers (New York Times, Washington Post, Guardian, Daily Mail, etc.) between 2003–2018 found systematic biases in how Muslims were portrayed.  Muslims accused of planning violent attacks but not carrying them out received 700% more media coverage than attacks that resulted in death by non-Muslims, with the reporters using more fear-inducing and violent descriptive language. This framing, echoed in a 2020 analysis of Western media from 2011–2019, created a feedback loop, with negative portrayals fuelling public anxiety, which was exploited by politicians through their own anti-Muslim rhetoric and social media posts. In the US, post-9/11 policies like the Patriot Act and FBI surveillance programs disproportionately targeted Muslim communities, reinforcing a public image that the community was suspect. Similar patterns emerged in France, where laïcité (secularism) was weaponized against visible Muslim practices, and in the UK, where Prevent programs cast Muslim communities as breeding grounds for extremists.

Recent events have intensified the attacks against diaspora Muslim communities in the West. Since Israel’s genocide in Gaza began in October 2023—widely condemned internationally as disproportionate and inhumane—Islamophobia has surged globally. In the US, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) documented thousands of bias incidents, linking the rise directly to media and political narratives that conflate those criticizing Israeli actions as enemies of the West. Canadian data mirrors this, with the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM) reported a 1,800% spike in hate incidents targeting Muslims and Palestinians between October 2023 and August 2025. European studies, including those on France, show parallel increases tied to Gaza coverage that frames Muslim anti-genocide protests as threats while downplaying Palestinian suffering. These events did not create Islamophobia, they exposed and amplified a pre-existing infrastructure of prejudice that had been built over decades.

Key instigators of this metaphorical war against Muslims are Western political leaders, especially from right-wing or conservative parties, and conservative-leaning media outlets. They platform and amplify far-right voices and issue vilifying statements that normalize hate against Muslims. In the United States, Donald Trump’s 2015 call for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” exemplified this, framing them as an existential threat to Americans, while Conservative media amplified it. Additionally, there are Republican figures, like Representatives Randy Fines openly and unapologetically calling for hate targeting Muslims, Andy Ogles saying that “Muslims don’t belong in American society,” and Sen. Tommy Tuberville posting on social media, “The enemy is inside the gates,” in reference to Muslims in the US. CAIR has repeatedly condemned such rhetoric as fanning “anti-Muslim bigotry,” noting in reports that it renders Islamophobic language “socially acceptable” among conservatives.

In the United Kingdom, right-wing media and politicians also bear primary responsibility for an explosion in Islamophobia. The Centre for Media Monitoring’s 2025 report analyzed over 40,000 articles and found nearly 50% contained measurable bias, with 70% linking Muslims or Islam to negative themes like conflict or threat. Outlets such as The Spectator, GB News, Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, and The Sun—often aligned with Conservative or Reform Party voices—drove the most egregious distortions. Rizwana Hamid, Director of the Centre, stated: “When nearly half of all articles referencing Muslims or Islam are biased, and almost 70% associate Muslims with negative aspects or behaviours, it points to a systemic problem within our media ecosystem.” Conservative Party politicians have also platformed white nationalist figures like Tommy Robinson, whose anti-Islam activism receives sympathetic coverage in right-wing British media, while at the same time they downplay the dangers of far-right extremism. The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) has highlighted how this media and political bias manifests itself in “hate crimes, media misrepresentation, and institutional discrimination,” with nearly 40% of religious hate crimes in 2024 targeting Muslims.

Canada also provides a stark North American parallel—the only G7 nation where 11 Muslims have been murdered in a series of Islamophobic attacks in 2017, 2020 and 2021. While the political and media rhetoric is less overtly inflammatory than in the US or Europe, Conservative politicians and media have contributed to rising Islamophobia. A prime example occurred during the February 2017 parliamentary debate on an Islamophobia motion, which took place in the wake of the Quebec City mosque attack that killed six Muslim men. Despite the targeted mass murder of Muslims, Conservative and Bloc Québécois MPs spoke against the motion, with some even endorsing or participating in anti-Muslim protests across the country.

There is also the case of audits by the Canada Revenue Agency disproportionately targetting Muslim charities. This despite the fact that they account for less than 0.5% of registered charities but for 67% of audits, reflecting a systemic bias documented by experts like Prof. Jasmin Zine. Conservative political discourse has echoed US-style “invasion” narratives around immigration, while right-leaning outlets amplify stories framing Muslim communities as culturally incompatible with Canadian society. The NCCM has testified before Parliament that such environments fuel violence, noting in 2024 hearings that “being Muslim in Canada is not as safe as it should be,” with post-Gaza surges in incidents tied to political inaction and media framing.

These portrayals do not exist in a vacuum. They generate real hostility toward Muslim diaspora communities, Muslim societies, and the Islamic faith in general. This cultural war extends deeply into entertainment media as well. For decades Western films and television shows have consistently portrayed Muslims negatively or with outright hostility, often as violent extremists, cultural invaders, barbaric villains, or one-dimensional antagonists. These depictions embed Islamophobic narratives into popular consciousness far beyond news cycles, reaching billions through global distribution and normalizing prejudice in everyday entertainment.

Scholarly and advocacy analyses document a century of such tropes in Hollywood and Western cinema, routinely casting Muslim characters as fanatical, culturally backward, or existential threats, with little nuance or positive representation. Classic examples include Disney’s Aladdin (1992), widely critiqued for orientalist stereotypes that depict Arabs and Muslims as dishonest, menacing, and exotic dangers, as well as pre-9/11 films like True Lies (1994), Executive Decision (1996), The Siege (1998), and more recent blockbusters such as American Sniper (2014) and Zero Dark Thirty (2012), all of which have been shown to exacerbate anti-Muslim sentiments by framing Islam as synonymous with violence and Muslims as barbaric enemies. Psychological and media studies confirm that repeated exposure to these hostile portrayals heightens public support for discriminatory policies and contributes directly to the surge in societal Islamophobia since the 1970s and especially post-9/11.

National Muslim organizations in Western nations have long warned of this dynamic. In the US, CAIR has stated that conservative media and politicians “fan the flames of anti-Muslim bigotry” through disinformation and false narratives, directly linking it to extremism and policy harms. In the UK, the MCB has called for audits of media toxicity, asserting that biased coverage “poisons our nation” and demands accountability from outlets and leaders. In Canada, the NCCM has urged governments to address systemic racism and Islamophobia, highlighting how political and media failures exacerbate anti-Muslim hate, and calling for public education campaigns to counter the hostility. These voices—representing millions—underscore that the metaphorical war against Islam and Muslims is not abstract, it inflicts daily harm on communities seeking only dignity and belonging.

The evidence is overwhelming—Western political and cultural portrayals, amplified by conservative media and leaders, are the primary drivers of the explosion in Islamophobia. From the 1970s oil embargo era to post-9/11 national security narratives targetting the Muslim community, and the vilification of Muslims protesting the Gaza genocide, this is a deliberate ecosystem of hostility that has been labelled “The Islamophobia Industry.”

Until societies confront this war on Muslims—through media accountability, political courage, and rejection of far-right bigoted narratives—Muslims will continue to pay the price of engineered fear and hate. The path forward demands recognizing that anti-Muslim prejudice weakens the West’s social fabric and its own democratic ideals. Only by dismantling these biased structures can genuine coexistence emerge, and can there be peace within the multicultural societies where members of the Muslim diaspora have sunk their roots and built their lives. 

© The View From Here. © Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.

Gaza Genocide and the US-Israeli War on Iran signal the collapse of the “international rules-based order”

We are witnessing a repeat of the 1930s, where the League of Nations collapsed because it could not—or would not—restrain the aggression of its powerful members.

 

By Fareed Khan 
A version of this can be found on Substack.

For nearly eight decades, the global community has been lectured on the sanctity of the “international rules-based order.” We were told that the post-World War Two framework—built upon the wreckage of the Holocaust and codified through the Geneva Conventions, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Genocide Conventions—was a shield for the vulnerable and a leash for the powerful. This order was founded on the promise of “Never Again,” a solemn vow that the industrial-scale extermination of a people would never be permitted to recur.

 

However, as we enter the 31st month of Israel’s genocide on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip—with a so-called ceasefire proving illusory and the slaughter continuing unabated—that shield has been revealed as a sieve, and the vow as a hollow ethno-specific mantra. Compounding this betrayal is the US-Israeli illegal war of aggression launched against Iran on February 28, 2026. In both instances, the two nations have flagrantly violated the aforementioned treaties and conventions, and the fundamental norms of international law. Together, these atrocities signal the effective collapse of the international rules-based order and the myth of universal human rights.

The discrepancy between the “official” reality and the truth on the ground in Gaza is the first indication of this collapse. As of January 2026, mainstream Western outlets cautiously cite a Palestinian death toll topping 75,000. Yet rigorous academic and epidemiological analyses reveal a far more harrowing reality. Peer-reviewed studies and models, including those by Australian scholars Richard Hil and Gideon Polya, Israeli academic Yaakov Garb’s analysis published by Harvard, and The Lancet’s projections, demonstrate that when accounting for bodies buried under millions of tons of rubble, indirect deaths from the total collapse of healthcare, starvation, and untreated disease, the true toll exceeds 680,000 lives—primarily women and children—as of April 2025, with the figure climbing further into 2026 as the Israeli assault continues.

If we accept the figures from these studies—derived from the same scientific methodologies used in other global conflicts—the scale of the slaughter rivals or exceeds the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Yet unlike Rwanda, which the West later lamented as a failure of intervention, the Gaza genocide is a willful failure to intervene in the most transparent genocide in human history. The “rules-based order” is not failing because it’s weak. It is failing because its architects are the primary financiers of the carnage being inflicted on the Middle-East.

The United States has funnelled over $21 billion in military aid to Israel since October 2023, with billions more arriving from Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and Canada. These nations, which frequently invoke international law to sanction adversaries, have simultaneously provided the diplomatic cover and the weapons required to systematically level 80% of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure. By weaponizing international law against the powerless while suspending it for their allies, the Western alliance has exposed the “order” as a criminal cabal that prioritizes geopolitical hegemony over human life.

This betrayal is rooted in a profound, institutionalized anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia that permeates Western institutions and discourse. The systematic dehumanization of Palestinians—who have endured more than a century of occupation, dispossession, and Zionist settler-colonialism—has been crucial in sustaining Western silence and complicity amid the ongoing horrors in Gaza.

A stark illustration of this double standard emerged in the immediate aftermath of October 7, 2023. The killing of 1,195 people during the Hamas-led attacks triggered swift, intense moral outrage across the Western world, with leaders and media outlets universally condemning the violence as an atrocity. Yet as the Palestinian death toll in Gaza climbed to ten, fifty, and eventually hundreds of times that number—reaching catastrophic scales through relentless bombardment—the same Western leaders responded with only tepid, “measured” appeals for restraint, even as they continued supplying Israel with massive quantities of bombs, missiles and other munitions.

Investigations, including reports from Israeli sources like Ha’aretz and international bodies such as the UN Commission of Inquiry, have since revealed that the October 7 death toll included casualties from Israeli forces’ application of the controversial Hannibal Directive in multiple locations. This procedure, aimed at preventing captures of Israeli Jews at all costs (even if it risked or caused the deaths of Israelis), was invoked during the chaos, leading to incidents that killed hundreds of civilians and potentially endangered others. Despite these complexities and the acknowledgement in some accounts that not all deaths were solely attributable to Hamas, the Western reaction remained one-sided--unqualified horror at Palestinian-perpetrated violence contrasted sharply with muted or enabling responses to Israel’s far deadlier genocidal campaign.

This selective outrage underscores how deeply entrenched biases allow the West to rationalize or overlook massive Palestinian suffering while amplifying lesser-scale violence against Israelis, perpetuating a hierarchy of human worth that has enabled the ongoing catastrophe.

The moral abyss is further deepened by the “visibility” of this genocide. Unlike the Holocaust, which the Nazi regime attempted to hide in isolated camps like Auschwitz, the annihilation of Gaza is the first live-streamed genocide in human history. We see the emaciated frames of starving children and the obliteration of entire families in high definition on our smartphones. We see Israeli soldiers filming their own war crimes for social media, mocking the ruins of schools and mosques. The world watches in real-time as a population of approximately 2 million is squeezed into “safe zones” that are then systematically bombarded.

The fact that this transparency has prompted no meaningful intervention from the powers that defeated the Nazis is a devastating indictment of those nations and our era. It suggests that the “international community” is not a collective of nations bound by law, but a hierarchy of human value where Palestinian blood is deemed “lesser” than that of those within the Western sphere of influence.

The invocation of “Never Again” has been particularly perverted. Originally intended as a universal promise to protect all of humanity from the “crime of crimes,” it has been narrowed into a tool of Jewish exceptionalism. Every year, Western leaders hypocritically stand at Holocaust memorials and pledge to uphold justice, even as they provide the white phosphorus and intelligence used to displace 99% of Gaza’s population. This victim-perpetrator inversion, where the state committing genocide is shielded from accountability by the memory of a previous genocide, is a moral perversity that the international legal system cannot survive.

We are witnessing a repeat of the 1930s, where the League of Nations collapsed because it could not—or would not—restrain the aggression of its powerful members. Today, the United Nations and the International Court of Justice are being rendered obsolete not by their own design, but by the brazen defiance of the United States and its allies. When the ICC seeks warrants for war crimes, it is threatened with sanctions by Washington. When the UN General Assembly votes for a ceasefire, it is ignored.

The betrayal extends directly to the US-Israeli war against Iran. On February 28, under President Donald Trump and in coordination with Israel, the United States launched unprovoked strikes targeting Iranian nuclear facilities, military infrastructure, and leadership—including the assassinating Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and members of his family. A girls’ elementary school in Minab was deliberately hit, killing at least 165 children, alongside strikes on hospitals and civilian areas with no military value. These actions constitute a blatant and criminal war of aggression with no UN Security Council authorization and no valid claim of imminent self-defence under the UN Charter. Additionally, diplomatic talks with Iran were making significant progress hours before the strikes, and leaks from within the US intelligence establishment confirmed no imminent Iranian threat or nuclear warhead capability.

Under the Geneva Conventions, the deliberate targeting of civilians and civilian objects qualifies as war crimes. Israeli and American hypocrisy is blatant and staggering in this regard when compared to the war in Ukraine. The same nations that imposed sanctions on Russia for its 2022 invasion of that nation and condemned it for bombing schools and hospitals, offered complicity, muted criticism, or outright endorsement for identical violations against Iran. This selective enforcement—condemning aggression when committed by adversaries but exempting allies—lays bare the double standards that have defined the international order from its inception in the late 1940s.

Both the Gaza genocide and the aggression against Iran directly contravene the foundational principles established by the Judgment at Nuremberg (1945-1946), the bedrock of all international law created after World War Two. The Nuremberg Tribunal declared that “to initiate a war of aggression is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” It established individual accountability for crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity—principles that directly birthed the UN Charter (prohibiting aggression), the 1948 Genocide Convention (acts with intent to destroy a group in whole or in part, as Israel’s systematic killings, starvation policies, and destruction of life conditions in Gaza fulfill), the Geneva Conventions (civilian protections violated in both Gaza’s bombardment and Iran’s school and hospital strikes), and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. By committing these crimes with impunity, the US and Israel have not merely violated these instruments, they have demolished the post-war legal order built explicitly on Nuremberg’s vow to prevent such atrocities from recurring.

In his special address at the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 20, 2026, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney invoked Thucydides’ dictum that “the strong can do what they can, and the weak must suffer what they must.” He declared that the rules-based international order was “fading,” a “fiction,” an “illusion,” and no longer functioning “as advertised.” He acknowledged that nations like Canada had prospered under it for decades, but “we knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false—that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient.”

Carney urged middle powers to accept the reality—a system of intensifying great power rivalry where the most powerful pursue their interests using economic and military might as a weapon of coercion. This speech inadvertently confirms the core truth—that the order Carney described was never universal or impartial. It primarily benefitted the West and aligned powers—delivering prosperity and security to Canada, the US, and Europe—while adversaries and the Global South were its perpetual victims, subjected to occupation, sanctions, regime-change wars, economic colonialism, and now live-streamed genocide and unprovoked aggression.

Carney’s own actions and those of his government powerfully illustrate the selective nature of the rules-based order he described in Davos—one that privileges Western powers and their allies while leaving others to bear the consequences of the actions of the powerful. In the immediate aftermath of the US-Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28, Carney quickly voiced support for the actions, framing them as necessary to prevent Iran from completing construction of nuclear weapons and to curb threats to regional stability, even as the UN and international law experts condemned the illegality of the actions. He has similarly refused to issue any outright condemnation of Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, which has been condemned as such by genocide and Holocaust experts, and respected human rights organizations.

This pattern of selective outrage extended further when Canada joined European allies in condemning Iran’s actions in blocking or threatening the Strait of Hormuz—actions that disrupted global oil shipments—while remaining conspicuously silent on the longstanding and intensified US economic measures against Cuba, including an effective oil blockade that has exacerbated humanitarian hardships on the island without comparable international push back. Such inconsistencies reveal the hypocrisy Carney himself stated in his Davos remarks.

Palestinians and Iranians, positioned as non-Western and comparatively “weak” actors in this hierarchy, were always intended to endure the system’s double standards. Exemptions granted to the powerful—through sustained US arms shipments to Israel, repeated vetoes of accountability at the UN, selective enforcement of international norms, and diplomatic or rhetorical endorsement of aggressive actions like the Iran strikes—have ensured that the order was intended to serve Western hegemony rather than universal principles of humanity or equity. The unfolding realities in Gaza and Iran stand as irrefutable evidence. What was once presented as a principled global framework was, in practice, a mechanism of power that the dominant nations of the world discard or bend whenever it suits their interests.

The evidence that the rules-based order is now non-existent is overwhelming. After 30 months of ongoing genocide in Gaza, the most powerful nations of the world (primarily the US and NATO nations) have done nothing to stop Israel’s slaughter, which continues despite a so-called ceasefire that came into effect in October 2025. Billions in military aid flowed uninterrupted, International Court of Justice orders were defied, and UN resolutions vetoed. The same superpower that frequently lectured the world on abiding by international law enabled the carnage in Gaza, and then pivoted to fresh aggression against Iran without justification and without consequence.

The Gaza genocide and the US-Israeli war against Iran have shattered the illusion of a global conscience and of the international “rules based order.” They have shown that “Western humanity” is a bedtime fable, a “sick joke” told to citizens who want to believe their governments are the “good guys.” In reality, the “rules” only apply when they serve the interests of the powerful. For the Palestinian and Iranian people, the international order has not been a protector, but a jailer, an executioner, and a propagator of narratives of hate.

As the ruins of Gaza continue to smoulder and the skies over Iran fill with the smoke of an illegal war of aggression, these scenes stand as stark monuments to the end of the post-World War II era. We can no longer speak of “universal human rights” with any credibility while the world’s most powerful nations actively underwrite the systematic erasure of entire peoples. The so-called international rules-based order did not fade away gradually or die of natural causes—it was deliberately murdered in the streets of Gaza and the cities of Iran, with the full knowledge, material support, and diplomatic cover provided by the very nations that once positioned themselves as its chief guardians and moral exemplars.

Any hope for a genuine future of global justice cannot be rebuilt on the shattered, hypocritical foundations of this broken system. The mass graves in Gaza and the fresh rubble across Iran hold far more than the hundreds of thousands of victims claimed by US- and Israeli-led crimes; they also entomb the long-standing pretenses of Western moral authority. The comforting fairy tale—that a system of international laws applies equally to all nations—has been exposed as a dangerous illusion. We now confront a harsh moral abyss, thrust upon the world by the very powers that long preached restraint and accountability. In this new reality, the United States and Israel operate like unchecked gunslingers in a lawless frontier, casting themselves as the corrupt sheriffs determined to “clean up” the Middle East on their own terms, regardless of the human cost or the wreckage left behind.

© The View From Here. © Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.