Opinion: Marco Rubio embarrasses himself — and America — on Iran

Marco Rubio embarrasses himself — and America — on Iran

Lim Tean *

06-23-26

On Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/PeoplesVoiceSingapore

 

The US Secretary of State has just told the world that Iran’s foreign policy is driven by “pure theology” and that “no one has ever been able to do a successful deal with Iran.”

 

Both claims are demonstrably false. Both reveal a man profoundly unqualified for the office he holds.

 

Abbas Araghchi is one of the finest diplomatic minds operating in the world today. A career diplomat of thirty years, he was the technical architect of the JCPOA — mastering every clause, every verification mechanism, every sanctions schedule across eighteen months of gruelling negotiation with the world’s major powers. He does not need briefing notes. He is the briefing note.

 

When Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner sit across the table from him to negotiate, the contrast is almost painful to witness. Here is a man who has spent three decades studying the granular architecture of nuclear nonproliferation, sanctions law, and regional security arrangements — facing two real estate developers from New York who cannot tell a centrifuge from a footnote. 

 

Araghchi has every detail at his fingertips: the technical specifications, the legal precedents, the diplomatic history, the red lines and their rationale. His American counterparts are essentially improvising.

 

This is not negotiation. This is a doctoral examiner sitting down with students who have not read the syllabus.

 

Iran has concluded deals — repeatedly. The 2015 JCPOA was negotiated with five permanent Security Council members plus Germany. It was verified by the IAEA. It worked. It was America that tore it up.

 

And then there is Rubio himself. Anyone who has watched him testify before Congress will know exactly what I mean. What you witness is not statecraft. It is a man who has made a career of spouting propaganda and ideological talking points — recycling neoconservative slogans in place of analysis, substituting bluster for knowledge, and confusing belligerence with strength. He has never demonstrated a serious understanding of Iran’s political structure, its factional dynamics, its strategic doctrine, or its negotiating history. 

 

The words in that image are not merely wrong — they are terrifying in what they reveal about the man now simultaneously occupying the offices of Secretary of State and National Security Adviser. That such extraordinary concentration of foreign policy power should rest in hands this ignorant is one of the most alarming facts about American governance today.

 

What Rubio is actually revealing is not Iranian irrationality. He is revealing Washington’s own incapacity — its inability to honour commitments, sustain agreements, or treat adversaries as strategic actors deserving of serious engagement.

 

The most dangerous diplomats are not the radical ones. They are the ignorant ones — those who mistake their own ideological blinkers for geopolitical insight.

 

In my assessment, Rubio is the most ignorant and incompetent Secretary of State the United States has produced since the Second World War. That is not hyperbole. It is a considered judgment from someone who has studied American foreign policy across eight decades.

 

The world deserves better. So, frankly, does America. 

Lim Tean is Secretary General and founder of the People's Voice Party of Singapore

Ken Klippenstein: Minnesota “Antifa” Terrorists Charged

 Minnesota “Antifa” Terrorists Charged

Federal prosecutor can't explain why or who Antifa is

Ken Klippenstein June 23 2026

U.S. Attorney for Minnesota Daniel Rosen

NSPM-7 is a scandalously under-covered story, please subscribe so I can cover it more

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Last week’s federal indictment of 15 anti-ICE protestors in Minnesota as alleged “Antifa” members — and thus domestic terrorists — is a masterclass in how the FBI is now practicing “pre-crime,” arresting normal citizens beforethey commit a crime, or without regard to whether they’ve committed a crime at all.

It is one of the first cases where presidential national security memorandum 7 (NSPM-7) has been explicitly referenced by the Justice Department as directing arrests, a new practice that began this month. U.S. Attorney for Minnesota Daniel Rosen said that the directive established Joint Task Force Vanguard to “prioritize politically motivated violence,” which to the Trump administration of course means its opponents. The directive, Rosen, also said, directs federal investigators “to investigate, prosecute, and disrupt those who engage in political violence and intimidation.” 

Rosen was asked at the press conference how the Justice Department defines Antifa, and basically had no answer. “What is Antifa goes beyond, goes beyond, I think, the scope of what this indictment is,” he replied. “But what I can tell you is that we have plenty of people that self-identify in that way, and you might wanna ask them that question.”

And as to whether anyone was actually hurt, here too Rosen stumbled. “Whether or not they actually, at the end of the day, caused bodily harm is not the measure of whether or not they committed a serious federal crime,” said, sounding like a kid who hadn’t done the homework being called on in class.

In other words, the federal government is prosecuting a group it cannot even define.

The Trump administration’s war on its opponents finds its solid form in the war on Antifa. Because President Trump “designated” Antifa as a terrorist group, “counterterrorism” rules apply. Think of the modern day FBI objective as preventing another 9/11: that is, following the doctrine of the past two decades, which is to stop an attack before it happened.

Though they don’t say it explicitly, Task Force Vanguard is in the business of pre-crime. Under NSPM-7, the feds require no crime to actually have been committed. They only need “indicators.” The indicators are broad enough to sweep in millions of Americans: “anti-Americanism,” “anti-capitalism,” “anti-Christianity,” “extremism on migration,” as I’ve previously reported.

Trump’s NSPM-7 Labels Common Beliefs As Terrorism “Indicators”

KEN KLIPPENSTEIN · SEPTEMBER 27, 2025

With the mainstream media distracted by the made-for-TV drama of James Comey’s indictment, Trump has signed a little-noticed national security directive identifying “anti-Christian” and “anti-American” views as indicators of radical left violence. Called National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, it’…

Read full story

Antifa as an indicator is absurd. At protests I’ve covered over the past couple of years, when I asked people what they thought of Antifa, the answer I heard again and again — from moms, from grandpas — was “I’m Antifa!” Some of the protestors were being playful, some were being defiant. But what they didn’t mean was that they were part of some organization as Washington imagines it. When I asked them why Antifa, the answer was universal. They are anti-fascist, which in non-national security terms is what they thought the word simply meant.

That confusion has produced mishaps that would be funny if the stakes weren’t what they are — like the time federal law enforcement was convinced it had identified the “leader of Antifa,” who turned out to be some random guy in Portland, as I reported.

U.S. Attorney Rosen announced at his press conference:

“Today, a federal indictment was unsealed charging 15 defendants with conspiracy to impede or injure federal officers and other charges related to efforts of two Minneapolis-based Antifa groups that violently opposed the enforcement of federal law in our state. The defendants are members and associates of Direct Action Minnesota… These defendants have been charged not for what they said, but for what they did. They all joined an agreement, a conspiracy, to interfere with lawful immigration enforcement operations.”

“Conspiracy” sounds to me like an awful lot like civil disobedience or free speech. Note, for instance, that the most vivid piece of evidence Rosen actually presented to reporters was a video of one defendant, Kyle Wagner, using violent rhetoric — speech — which sits awkwardly beside Rosen’s insistence that nobody was being charged “for what they said.”

NSPM-7 was signed in September 2025, three days after Trump’s executive order designating Antifa a domestic terrorist organization. It directs the government to disrupt networks supposedly “animated” by beliefs that include anti-capitalism, anti-Christianity, and “extremism on migration.” Attorney General Pam Bondi’s implementation memo — titled “Ending Political Violence Against ICE” — pointed that apparatus squarely at people accused of impeding immigration enforcement. Joint Task Force Vanguard is now the enforcement arm with a much broader target.

In its zeal to arrest and convict its political opponents, the Trump administration has so far been unsuccessful. In January, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem proudly announced that ICE had survived “an attempted murder of federal law enforcement” in north Minneapolis, suggesting protestors were directly threatening law enforcement officers. What she described as federal officers “ambushed and attacked by three individuals who beat them with snow shovels and the handles of brooms,” forcing one officer to fire “a defensive shot,” ended up being two Venezuelan DoorDash drivers with no violent records.

Then the video surfaced. City surveillance footage showed a scuffle lasting about 12 seconds, with no snow-shovel beating; a shovel sat on the ground the entire time. Authorities had the footage within hours of the shooting. Prosecutors didn’t bother to watch it until weeks after they’d charged the men and put an agent’s sworn account in front of a judge. In February, Rosen’s own office moved to dismiss the charges with prejudice — meaning they can never be refiled — citing evidence “materially inconsistent” with the affidavit. A federal judge agreed. Two ICE agents were placed on administrative leave for apparently lying under oath. 

Minneapolis’s police chief offered the epitaph: the agents “hung themselves.” 

This was no one-off. The local CBS affiliate in Minneapolis combed throughcourt filings and found at least 18 Minnesotans whose assault-on-an-officer cases were dropped, with a judge dismissing charges for 15 of them. The sworn affidavits of a single ICE agent turned up in roughly ten of the dismissed cases. In one case Rosen himself moved to drop charges, the defendant said federal agents had shackled him to a hospital bed for days without access to his phone.

Another case collapsed after a judge found that Bondi had publicly named arrested protesters in a social-media post — violating the court’s sealing order and, the judge wrote, “likely” several Justice Department policies.

And the pattern isn’t confined to Minnesota. In Chicago’s “Operation Midway Blitz,” prosecutors charged the “Broadview Six” — a group that included a Democratic congressional candidate and a Democratic candidate for the state legislature — with conspiring to “impede” an ICE officer outside a detention facility. A federal judge tossed the case over prosecutorial misconduct, including allegations of jury tampering and misleading the court.

Of 22 prosecutions in the Chicago area under the federal impeding-an-officer statute, 16 have been dismissed or never reached indictment, according to a Chicago Sun-Times tally cited by CNN.

In Los Angeles, the government has lost all five such cases that reached trial — five straight acquittals.

None of this is slowing down the White House. “Trump Administration Delivers Another Crushing Blow to Antifa Terrorist Network,” the White House announced with the Minnesota arrests. The release details federal cases against “Antifa” individuals in states including Minnesota, Oregon, Texas, Washington, New Jersey, California, and Indiana.

Trump spews and the machinery of government plods along behind. Yes Noem, Bondi, and Kash Patel can tweet as if there is both a threat and the feds are quickly responding, but Task Forces have to iron out their budget and their letterheads before they can get to the X (née Twitter) on-ramp.

Rosen closed by calling political violence “a national scourge in our times.” Not gas prices. Not rent. Not the cost of healthcare. Or childcare. That’s what you get when the imperatives of “national security” are allowed to set a society’s priorities — especially once “national security” has been redefined to mean almost anything the government wants it to.

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Michael Roberts: On the Death of Alan Greenspan

Greenspan and Ayn Rand

Michael Roberts

Alan Greenspan, the US Federal Reserve chair who dominated global markets in the late 20th century has died at the age of 100. 

 

He was heralded as the great guru of the credit-fuelled boom of the 1990s and 2000s, earning him the epithet “Maestro” in a hagiographic book by Watergate chronicler Bob Woodward in 2001. 

 

Greenspan was showered with accolades and honours thanks to the period of apparent stability over which he presided. Among them was an honorary knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II and the Presidential Medal of Freedom — America’s highest civilian award — which was bestowed on him in 2005 by George W Bush.

 

Greenspan was a disciple of the fascist intellectual Ayn Rand. Greenspan joined Rand's "Collective," a small group of friends and thinkers who would gather regularly at Rand's midtown Manhattan apartment to discuss politics, world events and ideas. He became a Collective regular. 

 

"Ayn Rand became a stabilizing force in my life," he wrote in his memoir. "She was a wholly original thinker, sharply analytical, strong-willed, highly principled, and very insistent on rationality as the highest value. In that regard, our values were congruent – we agreed on the importance of mathematics and intellectual rigor."

 

He advocated 'light touch' regulation of financial markets, also adopted by Britain's Gordon Brown and Ed Balls in the Labour government of the 2000s. But Greenspan's free market philosophy got sunk when the Global Financial Crisis broke in 2008. 

 

He admitted that he never saw it coming. As I wrote in my book, The Long Depression, Greenspan told the US Congress in October 2008 in the depths of the Great Recession, "I am in a state of shocked disbelief" It was a chance in one hundred year event, according to him.

 

So only once in one hundred years of his life - but not in the life of capitalism. 

Photo: Alan Greenspan and Ayn Rand are pictured in the Oval Office on Sept. 4, 1974, after Greenspan's swearing in as Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors.

  

Analysis on the UK Labor Party, the end of Keir Starmer and Burnham's Rise.

 Richard Sanders is an author and writer and has made documentaries and written articles about the Middle East (West Asia). He is connected to the website, Middle East Eye from what I can gather and formerly worked for the UK's Channel Four. 

Double Down News is an independent UK News organization.

Exposing US Poverty: How a Rich Country Keeps People on the Edge.

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

HEO/GED

Thought I'd share this video from Catherine Liu.  I think the talk is in response to the view gaining some traction in China that there is a "kill line" in the US, as the introduction to the talk states: "The idea of a U.S. “kill line” is going viral in China, fall below it, and the system lets you die. Is that actually how America works? Catherine Liu examines how a wealthy country produces mass poverty, turns everyday life into profit for capital, and fragments society through identity politics while class struggle is pushed aside."

 

Ms. Liu argues that a small number of powerful corporations dominate major sectors of life in the United States — from agriculture and food production to health care and the mass media. This concentration of ownership shapes not only the material conditions of society but also how Americans understand our own country and its role in the world. 

 

The same individuals often sit on the boards of these corporations, reinforcing a unified worldview that serves the interests of the ruling class.

 

Through these media institutions, we are encouraged to believe that success is purely a matter of individual effort — the familiar myth that anyone can “pull themselves up by their bootstraps.” When this narrative clashes with lived reality, people are pushed toward the conclusion that poverty or hardship is a personal failure rather than the result of structural forces. This internalized blame contributes to social crises such as domestic violence, addiction, and other forms of self‑destructive behavior, turning people against themselves or others who are struggling, “It’s their own fault”.

 

Ms. Liu also criticizes the liberal left, particularly the Democratic Party, for its fixation on identity politics. By dividing people into competing groups seeking a slightly fairer share of an unequal system, this approach fragments the working class and undermines the possibility of building a unified movement capable of resisting corporate power. Recognizing the specific forms of oppression faced by different groups is essential, but genuine liberation requires solidarity on a class basis. As Malcolm X observed, “You can’t have capitalism without racism.” Ending racism, sexism, and all forms of oppression ultimately depends on global working‑class unity.

Epstein Was a Network, Not an Island . (In the Sea of Capitalism)

 

Richard Mellor

I really enjoy Bruce Fanger’s writing, especially in the way he captures the strange, disorienting processes unfolding around us. Yet what stands out just as much is what he doesn’t say. He never names capitalism, never touches on the underlying system of production that shapes the very events he’s describing. His commentary is an attempt to explain our moment as we live through it, but it stops short of identifying the structural engine driving these crises. This is all too common with opponents of the present state of affairs in the US and internationally.

I’m not sure whether this omission is intentional. Perhaps Bruce sees these developments as failures of human nature — a common explanation these days — rather than as the predictable outcomes of a particular economic and social order. I am not in the slightest questioning his integrity. But if we’re honest about what we’re experiencing, we have to recognize that this is not simply a moral or psychological breakdown; the product of personality flaws. It is the late stage of a social system in decay, to borrow the words of a well‑known Russian revolutionary.

 

And if that’s true, then the path forward is not nostalgia, not moral renewal, not minor reform and certainly not more organised religion. And I am not saying Bruce is recommending any of these as I have not spoken with him about his political views. But my view is that what will resolve these crises is systemic change. Without it, we risk losing far more than we realize. Richard Mellor FFWP Admin.

 

Epstein Was a Network, Not an Island

Bruce Fanger

White Rose June 19, 2026

 

How Peter Thiel, tech oligarchy, and elite access turned private rooms into power

 

The mistake is thinking Jeffrey Epstein was only an island.

 

The island matters. The mansion matters. The planes matter. The victims matter most of all. Nothing should blur that. But if we stop at the island, we miss the machinery that made Epstein useful to powerful people long after any decent society should have shut every door in his face.

 

Epstein was not merely a predator hiding among elites. He was an access broker moving among them.

 

That distinction matters because the network changed over time.

 

Donald Trump belonged mostly to Epstein’s earlier world: Palm Beach, Mar-a-Lago, New York money, beauty-pageant culture, models, celebrity real estate, and rich men orbiting one another in rooms where money mistook itself for innocence. That connection was public enough that Trump once praised Epstein as a “terrific guy” and acknowledged his taste for younger women. The later explanations about when the relationship ended and why it ended have shifted, which carries its own distinct odor.

 

But Trump’s Epstein connection does not appear to be the same play as the later tech-oligarch layer. That is the important distinction. Trump was the gaudy old-world layer: gold trim, private clubs, social access, rich-man sleaze in Palm Beach lighting.

 

The tech oligarchs show up in a different phase of Epstein’s usefulness.

After Epstein’s 2008 conviction, any normal person would have treated him as radioactive. Instead, parts of the elite world treated him like a damaged but still functioning connector. He moved through finance, science, academia, philanthropy, technology, and political influence. The point was not simply sex or scandal.

 

The point was access.

 

That is where Peter Thiel becomes the more serious figure.

 

Elon Musk belongs in this story, but not at the center of it. Musk is spectacle: rockets, social media, political noise, government contracts, artificial intelligence, Starlink, Trump-world proximity, and the constant toddler-with-a-flamethrower performance. His documented Epstein references deserve scrutiny, especially because Epstein appears to have tried to cultivate him. But Musk is not the foundation of this argument.

 

Musk is the flare in the sky.

 

Thiel is the architecture underneath.

 

Peter Thiel sits at the intersection of venture capital, surveillance technology, defense contracting, right-wing political engineering, elite secrecy, and the fantasy of escape. PayPal made the network. Palantir made the surveillance state profitable. Founders Fund helped seed the future these men now claim only they are qualified to govern. Thiel’s support for figures like JD Vance shows the movement from influence to installation. That is not just donating to politics.

 

That is building political hardware.

 

The Epstein-Thiel connection is not merely social fog. Reporting has tied Epstein to planned meetings, correspondence, and investment in Thiel-linked Valar Ventures funds. That does not prove participation in Epstein’s crimes. It does not need to. The significance is not that every person near Epstein was criminal. The significance is that Epstein still had access to powerful men after his conviction, and some of those men were helping build the machinery of the future.

 

Then there is Dialog, the private invitation-only network co-founded by Thiel and recently exposed through leaked reporting.

 

Dialog is not alarming simply because powerful people meet privately. That is old news. Elites have always preferred rooms without the public in them. The concerning part is the particular mixture: tech capital, political figures, finance, media, academia, artificial intelligence, defense-adjacent interests, surveillance power, and off-the-record secrecy at a time when these industries are moving deeper into the machinery of government.

 

That is the new ruling-class style.

 

Not smoke-filled rooms. Clean rooms.

 

Not mob bosses. Platform owners.

 

Not only oil men. Data men.

 

The people who want to manage the future meet away from the people who have to live in it.

 

This is why Epstein’s later tech connections matter even if they do not prove criminal wrongdoing by everyone named in his records. The careful distinction must be made: appearing in Epstein’s schedules or documents does not prove participation in Epstein’s crimes. Planned meetings do not prove meetings happened. Mention does not equal guilt.

 

But the pattern still matters.

 

Epstein’s genius, if one can use that word for something so diseased, was understanding that access itself is power. A billionaire does not need every person in the room to be criminal. He needs them flattered by invitation, softened by convenience, protected by status, and trained to believe that normal rules do not apply in private spaces.

 

That is why the timeline matters.

 

Trump represents Epstein’s earlier social-access world. Thiel represents the later tech-finance-power world. They do not need to be one continuous crew from the beginning. In fact, the distinction makes the story sharper. Epstein adapted. First came Palm Beach sleaze. Later came futurist power. First came clubs and models. Later came tech capital, science prestige, venture money, AI, rockets, surveillance, and private governance.

 

Trump was old-money sleaze with gold trim.

 

Musk is future-money spectacle with rockets and a propaganda platform.

 

Thiel is the server room.

 

Thiel’s New Zealand story exposes the psychology of this class. His proposed Wānaka compound was described as a luxury lodge, not officially an apocalypse bunker, and that distinction matters. But symbolism has a way of telling the truth before the press release catches up. Remote land. Earth-sheltered design. Elite refuge. A private sanctuary at the edge of the world.

 

It was not proof of an end-times plot.

 

It was evidence of an instinct.

 

The same men who sell disruption to the public often buy isolation for themselves. They preach the future while reserving escape routes from it. They tell ordinary people to adapt, compete, retrain, sacrifice, endure, and trust the market. Then they purchase distance from the consequences of the world they help create.

 

Epstein’s island was a private room surrounded by water.

 

The tech oligarch’s refuge is a private room surrounded by collapse.

 

That is the tell.

 

Oil barons threaten humanity by burning the physical world while funding delay, denial, and dependence. Tech oligarchs threaten humanity by building the control systems for the damaged world that follows: surveillance platforms, AI decision systems, border enforcement tools, privatized intelligence, social-media propaganda, military logistics, and political candidate pipelines.

 

The oil baron says the house can keep burning.

 

The tech oligarch says he can manage the ashes.

 

Humanity should reject both.

 

Epstein sits in this story not as the only villain, but as a window. He showed how the ruling class actually moves when no one is watching closely: private planes, private islands, private meetings, private money, private introductions, private reputational laundering, and public denial once the lights come on.

 

The scandal is not that one monster fooled polite society.

 

The scandal is that polite society kept answering his calls.

 

That is why the Thiel focus matters. Trump’s Epstein connection is ugly and real, but it belongs largely to the earlier social world. Musk deserves scrutiny, but in this story he is not the foundation. Thiel gives us the architecture: surveillance, capital, politics, secrecy, elite forums, and escape.

 

Epstein was not an anomaly.

 

He was a method.

 

He was a private operating system for elite access, and the tech oligarchs did not invent that system.

 

They upgraded it.

 

The old oligarchs wanted the oil.

 

The new oligarchs want the operating system of society.

 

Epstein opened doors.

 

Thiel builds rooms without windows.

 

That is the real threat.

Future of Lebanon after years of war

 Future of Lebanon after years of war

Large swathes of Lebanon have been reduced to rubble during Israel’s war with Hezbollah. But that isn’t stopping people from returning to their homes, writes Secunder Kermani.

Secunder Kermani

June 17 

The highway leading south from Beirut teemed with traffic: cars carrying families displaced by the war returning home, vans with mattresses piled on their roofs.

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A few waved Hezbollah or even Iranian flags, others just wanted to get back as quickly as possible.

The agreement between the US and Iran has brought a cautious sense of relief to Lebanon, bringing with it a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, even if no-one seems clear yet on its full terms or how long it will last. It already appears to be fraying with allegations that Israeli troops have killed several people in a number of strikes, amid claims Hezbollah fired at them.

You’re reading the latest edition of FourGround, a bespoke newsletter brought to you by Channel 4 News’ experienced journalists reporting on the ground from locations across the world.

Déjà vu

I witnessed almost identical scenes alongside the same stretch of road in late 2024, following another devastating war between Israel and Hezbollah.

That round of the conflict was followed by a ceasefire, in which Israel continued carrying out what it claimed was “targeted” strikes in southern Lebanon, killing at least 400 people. Israel says it was preventing Hezbollah rearming in the region in 2024. The victims included around 50 women and children.

Hezbollah did not strike back until Israel, alongside the US, began attacking the group’s sponsor Iran in February. Many in Lebanon accused Hezbollah of dragging the entire country into a war they wanted no part of.

2026 conflict

When I spoke with one of Hezbollah’s members of the Lebanese Parliament, Hussein Hajj Hassan last week, he rejected that, insisting the group entered the war to try and improve the situation in southern Lebanon and put an end to the Israeli attacks that had continued throughout the “ceasefire” period.

Hezbollah can point to some battlefield achievements: It has killed a few dozen Israeli soldiers and, despite Israel’s heavy airstrikes, its army has been unable to come anywhere close to eradicating Hezbollah’s capabilities.

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The group has made effective use of new fibre-optic drones, complete with videos released on social media showing them crashing into their Israeli targets.

However, the toll on Lebanon as a nation has been far greater. Around 3,800 people have been killed in the country since the conflict began, and Israel now controls significantly more territory in southern Lebanon than it previously did.

What next?

Even the Hezbollah MP I spoke with, Hussein Hajj Hassan, said the situation in southern Lebanon had only deteriorated further following the war. But he insisted Iran would help press for a full withdrawal of Israeli troops and an end to the attacks.

Iran’s Foreign Minister has said a full peace deal with the US would require Israeli troops to leave. Israel’s Prime Minister however, has announced its army will not pull back from the areas it currently occupies. Many people believe that means the conflict in Lebanon could still have the potential to derail the fragile US-Iran negotiations.

President Donald Trump, pictured above, is growing ever-more frustrated with Israeli actions in the country, but it’s not clear how much he is willing to lean on Netanyahu, who is himself facing significant internal criticism for not having made further progress in fighting Hezbollah and preventing the group from being able to fire across the border into northern Israel. 

Opinion on the war in southern Lebanon can be hard to truly gauge for outsiders, with public criticism of Hezbollah rare.

But it’s clear from my time here that the group still enjoys significant support.

In the city of Nabatieh, where the historic central market now looks as if it’s been flattened by an earthquake, such has been the ferocity of Israel’s airstrikes, many we met proclaimed their continued support for the “resistance”, as Hezbollah is often referred to locally.

“If it weren’t for Hezbollah, Israel would have taken control of the city,” one woman told me as she began assessing the damage done to her home and watering the houseplants she had to leave behind when fleeing the war.

Martyrdom and sacrifice

Paramedics who had been allegedly repeatedly targeted by Israeli “double tap” and even “triple tap” strikes were now busy raising a banner ahead of Ashura, the annual, deeply emotive commemoration of the 7th century martyrdom of Hussain ibn Ali, a foundational figure in Shia Islam whose followers dominate southern Lebanon.

This year the paramedic teams will no doubt be commemorating their colleagues’ own sacrifices too, killed in attacks human rights groups describe as clear war crimes. Israel has offered no meaningful justification for claims it carried out double tap strikes, but has accused ambulances of transporting weapons and fighters.

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Hussain is believed to have been killed on the battlefield, fighting against a far more powerful and tyrannical leader. His refusal to submit to injustice, even though it would cost him his life, is considered an example to aspire to by all Shia Muslims, and is routinely cited by those supportive of Hezbollah’s fight against Israel.

At the funeral of a paramedic in earlier Beirut last week, one of the victim’s grieving friends referenced the Battle of Karbala, in which Hussain was killed, before turning to the contemporary conflict in Lebanon in poetic terms laden with spiritual symbolism.

Why Iranian-Americans are divided over World Cup - and peace deal ANUSHKA ASTHANA · JUN 16 Read full story

“This land must be irrigated with blood,” he said. “It is never satiated… We must keep sacrificing until it is liberated.”

‘We are so tired’

Others within the community are exhausted by the bloodshed and multiple rounds of conflict.

“We can’t blame them,” one man told me, referring to Hezbollah, at another funeral ceremony. “But we are tired, so tired.”

And not everyone from southern Lebanon is yet able to return home. Israeli soldiers are still occupying Shia villages along the border, razing many of them completely to the ground, explicitly following similar tactics to those carried out in Gaza.

Rabeeh and his young children live in a flimsy tent, under the baking sun and overshadowed by some of Beirut’s most expensive property. They come from Khiam, a village that has been largely demolished.

“I feel like stepping in front of an Israeli tank that’s on my land and telling them: ‘Shoot me, do whatever you want with me’,” he told me.

He vents his ire in all directions: “I place my fate and my children’s fate on the responsibility of those in charge, whose children stay in the most luxurious hotels whilst my children suffer here.”

Life under Israeli control in southern Lebanon’s ‘buffer zone’

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