Continued Israeli violations in Lebanon and Gaza are the 'main obstacle' to lasting peace, mediators say

Diplomatic efforts to finalize a peace agreement between the US and Iran ran into significant delays due to Israeli violations across West Asia, Pakistani government mediators revealed to Anadolu Agency on 9 June.

US President Donald Trump told reporters in New York on Monday that a settlement could be reached in "two or three days," yet Pakistani mediators say that such an immediate breakthrough is "unlikely."

While Trump continues to maintain that a peace deal is close at hand, officials in Islamabad stress that the "situation is complex and has entered a sensitive phase" due to persistent Israeli military aggression in southern Lebanon.

'We're certainly going to investigate this,' Vice President JD Vance said

Vice President JD Vance announced on Monday that he has referred allegations involving Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison to the Justice Department's fraud division for a potential criminal investigation over alleged fraud in federally funded social services programs.

Vance made the announcement during an appearance on Fox News' "Jesse Watters Primetime" when he was asked about a report released by the House Oversight Committee alleging that state officials, including Walz and Ellison, were warned of fraud in the state but did not take action to stop it in part because of litigation threats and concerns about being accused of discrimination.

"We're certainly going to investigate this, Jesse, and I guess now I can make a bit of breaking news because I left the White House to come here to do this interview with you. And before I did, we actually referred this particular case to the Department of Justice for a full criminal investigation. We are not going to do what the Biden administration did and make judgments of the law before all the facts are in," Vance said.

We've been documenting the apparent immense strain in the US-Israel relationship related to Iran policy and strategy. In this latest round of trading major blows, President Trump reportedly not only told Israel to immediately halt its response and to not retaliate, but gave no order for US forces to protect Israel, for example by manning and operating crucial anti-air defenses.

While Iranian ballistic missiles were inbound, "The US military didn't take part in the Israeli attacks against Iran, the first since the ceasefire, and the Trump admin didn't order any US defensive action to shield Israel from incoming Iranian missiles, per a US official" - according to CBS White House correspondent Jennifer Jacobs.

If accurate, this marks a major change in US priorities and the Pentagon's posture in the region. Going back to last year's 11-day June war, as well as from the start of Operation Epic Fury, Washington has previously provided consistent cover and protection for Israel, especially on the anti-air defense front.

The global economy has yet to grasp the main military secret of the Middle East: the next big war will not begin with a strike on oil rigs but with a "silent shutdown" of the internet.

While the Pentagon spends billions on missile defense, Iran has found an asymmetric response to the technological superiority of America and Israel. That response lies at the bottom of the Persian Gulf, hidden beneath the water, and it is virtually invulnerable to conventional weapons.

The Hidden Artery: Why the Persian Gulf Matters More Than Wall Street

We are used to thinking that the Strait of Hormuz is a narrow chokepoint for 20% of the world's oil. But after 2024, that picture is outdated. Today, digital arteries run along the seabed of the strait, through which 99% of intercontinental data and financial transactions worth about $10 trillion are pumped every second.

Key cable systems run through the strait's waters: AAE-1, FALCON, Gulf Bridge International. Physically, they are less protected than any oil tanker. The materials provided point to a shocking fact: there are about 200 cable-damage incidents worldwide every year, and most are caused not by saboteurs, but by accidentally dropped anchors. But that very "accidental" nature becomes the perfect cover for sabotage in wartime.

Donald Trump's attempt to tie an Iran peace settlement to a mandatory expansion of the Abraham Accords reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of how dramatically the Middle East has changed since the Gaza war and why old diplomatic formulas no longer work.

Donald Trump has a habit of mistaking the décor of diplomacy for its substance. His latest demand — that Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan, Turkey, and others must "mandatorily" join the Abraham Accords as a condition for any Iran peace settlement — is not bold dealmaking. It is a category error dressed up as statecraft, one that conflates a 2020 diplomatic triumph with the profoundly different geopolitical realities of 2026. The silence that reportedly greeted Trump on his conference call with regional leaders was not awkward; it was diagnostic.

Imported democracy, far from emancipating Africa, locks it into a vicious cycle that perpetuates its underdevelopment.

Through a sociometric, synchronic, and diachronic approach, this article seeks to deconstruct the foundational lie upon which the established order rests (I), before highlighting the mechanisms of the democratic trap in which African peoples are ensnared (II). It then draws lessons from the Russian and Chinese experiences (III), before issuing a passionate appeal to African youth to remain steadfast and determined in the face of the challenges of their time (IV), at this decisive moment when Africa must choose its destiny (V).

I. The founding lie

In July 2009 in Accra, Barack Obama, the first American president of African descent in modern times, delivered a speech before the Ghanaian Parliament that would resonate for decades:

"Africa doesn't need strongmen, it needs strong institutions."

The room applauded. Western chancelleries rejoiced. The conditionalities of the IMF and the World Bank finally found their political catechism.

But behind the rhetorical elegance lies a conceptual trap of formidable effectiveness. For what institution in world history has emerged from a void? Which one preceded the will of a man determined to found it, to defend it, to breathe life into it?

None. Never. Nowhere. Montesquieu, in The Spirit of the Laws, states definitively:

"Give me a man capable of governing, and I will create institutions for you. But do not give me institutions without men: you will only have a skeleton."

Yesterday Iran struck Israel with ballistic missiles after Israel's bombing of a Beirut neighborhood which had been a red line for Iran.

The attack was in some ways unprecedented, as it represented Iran preemptively striking Israel for the first time without Israel having struck Iran first.

For the first time on the back foot, it was Israel and the US that were forced to "defensively" retaliate in kind:
Iran has shifted the entire calculus and achieved something long thought impossible. For years it was considered unthinkable that Iran would ever strike Israel directly, even after Iran was hit first. Then Iran began responding to Israeli attacks, first with 'demonstrative' strikes, then increasingly crippling ones.

Now Iran has established total strategic dominance of the escalation ladder to the point where it can treat Israel as Israel has treated other regional countries since its founding, punitively hitting it at will for violations that no longer necessarily include direct attacks on Iran's home territory.

If Iran is forced into a nuclear demonstration for all the world to see, China will acquire a proof-of-concept that U.S. deterrence is hollow.

On Monday, June 1^st, on Power Shift, a new independent geopolitical platform, Zulfiqar Ali, Larry Johnson and myself revealed what for all practical purposes is an uber-bombshell piece of information: if long dark clouds keep coming down, Tehran is ready to pivot from nuclear ambiguity to actually detonating a nuclear device on Iranian soil.

Less than a week later, the Power Shift page was censored on YouTube - with no explanation and no appeal. Yet what we revealed had already been detailed in several podcasts and interviews throughout last week, as in here and here (with myself and Larry); here; and at the St. Petersburg forum, here.

I published a detailed background preceding the release of the information, written just before Iran's negotiating team suspended the exchange of all (italics mine) texts and messages with the U.S. via mediator Pakistan.

When it comes to the redaction of perhaps the final draft of an endlessly debated Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Iran and the U.S., it suddenly became crystal clear that it's all about Lebanon.

War and profit are intimately tied together. The billionaires cannot secure their profits without war, or the threat of it - whether against workers at home or against other nations abroad.
I am old enough to remember the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the wave of excitement it unleashed. With the Soviet Union consigned to the history books, the world was going to become a better, safer place.

Liberals crowed that the West's superior, democratic values had won out. Intellectuals like Francis Fukuyama wrote about the "end of history": the triumph of free-market capitalism and a resolution of ideological struggle.

Nearly half a century on, the celebratory mood of that time looks not just misplaced but positively deluded.

The end of the Cold War brought not a peace dividend. Rather, it unleashed a surfeit of greed and hubris.

With the fear of mutually assured destruction behind it, the United States unveiled a new doctrine: "full-spectrum global dominance", militarily and economically.

Fukayama's vision of a world rallying to capitalism's side ignored the fact that capitalism isn't just a neutral, disinterested idea that everyone can subscribe to on equal terms.

It has a physical form too. Giant corporations that seek monopolistic control over other countries' resources. And a gargantuan war machine headquartered in the US, but with 800 bases around the globe, that is ready to crush those who stand in the way of ever-greater wealth accumulation by a tiny elite of billionaires.

There could be no end of history because capitalism's billionaire stewards are never satiated. They are driven to constantly entrench and expand their control, to amass more wealth, to buy more influence in our pretend-democracies, to be more ruthless against anyone or anything that threatens their dominance.

Fukayama forgot that capitalism isn't socialism. It doesn't seek the best for everyone. It doesn't want to share the wealth. It doesn't prioritise dignity over profit. Its lifeblood is exploitation - of individuals and of entire peoples.

Fukuyama forgot that capitalism without constraints would produce resistance.

MOSCOW and ST. PETERSBURG - On Monday, June 1st, on Power Shift, a new independent geopolitical platform, Zulfiqar Ali, Larry Johnson and myself revealed what for all practical purposes is an uber-bombshell piece of information: if long dark clouds keep coming down, Tehran is ready to pivot from nuclear ambiguity to actually detonating a nuclear device on Iranian soil.

Less than a week later, the Power Shift page was censored on YouTube - with no explanation and no appeal. Yet what we revealed had already been detailed in several podcasts and interviews throughout last week, as in here and here (with myself and Larry); here; and at the St. Petersburg forum, here.

I published a detailed background preceding the release of the information, written just before Iran's negotiating team suspended the exchange of all (italics mine) texts and messages with the US via mediator Pakistan.

When it comes to the redaction of perhaps the final draft of an endlessly debated Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Iran and the US, it suddenly became crystal clear that it's all about Lebanon.

Iran repeatedly reiterated it was ready to ditch the already comatose "ceasefire" if the death cult in West Asia proceeded with its threat of bombing Dahiyeh, the Shi'ite-majority suburb of southern Beirut.

Confronted by Trump, the leader of the death cult was forced to back down. For only a few days. Trump desperately needs an MoU and an extended ceasefire to be marketed as "Victory". His (italics mine) Victory.

All that was happening, fast and furious, on the trail of a fateful, extremely sensitive, 105-minute phone call on Thursday, May 28, between Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.

Islamabad is the sole functioning and trusted head-of-government back-channel between Tehran and Washington. Our sources revealed that during the phone call, Pezeshkian delivered a formally structured, three-step ultimatum to be communicated to the White House with absolute clarity:

1. No more nuclear talks. As in the priority is the end of all wars, against Iran and the Axis of Resistance.

2. No more prospective nuclear treaty framework. As in no discussions leading to a possible, diluted JCPOA 2.0; only after settling the end of the wars and the status of the Strait of Hormuz.

3. If US threats persist, Pezeshkian said, that would lead to the "detonation of a nuclear device on Iranian soil" - executed not as an act of war, but as an irreversible, sovereign demonstration of capability to control escalation dominance.

What is particularly stunning is none of the above is about diplomatic posturing. What we had is the President of Iran relaying what is essentially a decision by Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, signaling that if Washington crosses the next threshold, Tehran would pivot instantly from nuclear ambiguity to undeniable demonstration.

And that would imply a permanent rupture of the global non-proliferation system - with unforeseen consequences.