MoU Stacked in Holding Pattern as U.S. Pivots to Plan 'B'

Alastair Crooke • July 6, 2026

https://www.unz.com/acrooke/mou-stacked-in-holding-pattern-as-u-s-pivots-to-plan-b/

With Hormuz still squeezed and White House factions at war, who’s really playing whom?

Plan ‘A’ was to topple the Islamic Republic which was seen as nothing more than a fragile house of cards. That collapse – it was expected – would ripple through, and take down several connected Axis of Resistance fronts, according to the analysis of Mossad and interlinked Israeli power centres in the U.S. (Certain U.S. officials did, however, entertain doubts).

The prediction of a popular uprising in Iran has proved to have been a strategic mistake of such bearing that per contra, it catalysed a stronger, more defiant and assertive Republic. Even Israeli experts admit that the false premise underlying the war has generated a new balance of power in the Middle East. Until then, a top Israeli military commentator (Alon Ben David) could say, Israel was the ‘go-to’ address in the Middle East for the world’s interests; but that from now on, the ‘go-to’ state is, and will be, Iran. That comment exemplified the extent to which a Rubicon had been crossed.

So the collective pro-Zionist bloc has shifted to plan ‘B’ – a ‘deceit’ based on the MoU, which were Trump’s interpretations to be accepted by Iran (unlikely), would effectively lead to the disarming of Iran through a nuclear agreement that would strip the state naked by virtue of its ‘verification’ requirements: Intrusive, ‘go-anywhere’ surprise IAEA inspections of ‘secret underground sites’ and interrogations of scientists and research academies. All would (again) be exposed.

Taken in tandem with Plan ‘B’s wider Israeli hegemonic aspiration, the aim would be to concurrently lobotomise Hizbullah through a separate disarmament agreement effected through compliant Lebanese government factions pressing down on the movement from the north, whilst Israel pursued ‘desertification’ in the south.

In parallel, the plan envisages the sterilisation of Palestinian resistance by drawing from the Vietnam ‘Strategic Hamlet Programme’ forerunner of forced relocation into sterilised, fenced ‘concentration camps‘.

The third component comprises the cauterisation of the Iraqi Resistance via a compliant new American installed Prime Minister, Ali al-Zaidi, who under the cover of anti-corruption campaign, with U.S. support, is demanding the disarmament of the Iraqi resistance by 30 September. The neutralisation of the Iraqi resistance is seen as key to facilitating a Syrian incursion by President Jolani’s jihadist militia into northern Lebanon to complete the vice closing in on Hizbullah.

All in all, Plan ‘B’ seemingly suggests a very comprehensive regional pacification project, especially when taken in conjunction with U.S. efforts to try to force open an ‘American Corridor’ on the Omani side of the Hormuz Strait.

Likely, the regional pacification scheme will be viewed as a clever move by Trump to mitigate the pressure exerted on him by the neo-con’s anger at his MoU ‘concessions’ to Iran.

But is it so clever? Marco Rubio was instructed to oversee the Beirut establishment making pretty with Israel in their shared antagonism towards Hizbullah. But the resulting ‘bout de papier’ for the disarming of Hizbullah enjoys no legitimacy; it contradicts the Lebanese Constitution and would require cabinet endorsement and parliamentary approval to have any validity or meaning.

What the Israel-Lebanon agreement does do, however, is to stick a dagger in Vance’s separately agreed Qatari-chaired U.S. and Iran co-ordination structure for overseeing MoU compliance in Lebanon. Rubio’s initiative to cut Iran out from the Lebanese co-ordination framework cuts across the MoU and Vance’s mediation efforts. Rubio’s tripartite ‘paper’ will solve nothing, but will leave the ‘Lebanon issue’ to continue as an open sore.

Yet a “ceasefire in Lebanon and Israeli withdrawal” is pivotal to the functioning of the MoU. It appears that Netanyahu tee’d up Ron Dermer to get Rubio to sabotage the MoU.

So, now we have civil war inside the White House over Iran – Vance vs Rubio – whilst the MoU slides into abeyance, likely remaining in situ, albeit in comatose state.

In parallel, things are falling apart: leading challenger to Netanyahu in the upcoming elections and former IDF chief and former war cabinet member, Gadi Eisenkot, confirmed this week that “Iran never obtained nuclear weapons. I’m well aware of all the intelligence . . . Netanyahu is inventing a reality, manufacturing threats, and that’s how he frightens the Israeli public”. Former PM Bennett agreed, saying that Netanyahu’s claims are ‘lies’, accusing him of “reverse-engineering history”.

All this will not help Trump’s urgent need to fully to open Hormuz in order to prevent a major economic crisis. Contrary to the view that this is a clever move, one view (that is increasingly held by Iranians inter alia), would be that Iran is being played by the U.S. – that the MoU is a deceit to force the immediate reopening of Hormuz, as Vance has inferred, in order to fill up the U.S. and western strategic oil reserves, as well as to buy time to see where the U.S.’ leverage cards might then lie in respect to other elements of the MoU.

Opinion in the crucial Iranian Assembly of Experts (and on the street) has hardened against Iran making any concession to the U.S., especially in respect to permitting passage to (unfriendly) vessels transiting Hormuz. The consensus is to retain Iran’s squeeze on Hormuz until the pain throbs.

So, as fractures open in Washington – and with Iran becoming increasingly distrustful of Trump and his zigzagging – the MoU shows itself to be a deceit intended just to get the Strait open before striking Iran both indirectly (via its resistance allies), and harder.

Interestingly, this sedimenting opinion coincides with Russian FM Sergei Lavrov giving voice to his own judgement that the Anchorage ‘understandings’ reached with Trump were likely a U.S. deceit, too.

So, who has ‘played’ whom? For now, the oil coming out of the Persian Gulf is not heading to the U.S. According to Reuters, at least five super tankers carrying a total 10 million barrels ‌of Saudi oil loaded from Ras Tanura have exited the Strait of Hormuz. Two of the five very large crude carriers ⁠that have left the Strait are heading to Japan, while another two are making their way to China. Which means – as Larry Johnson has outlined – that even were tankers to head to the U.S. now, the U.S. would still face a serious deficit of sour crude until 23 August at the earliest, given the 42 days voyage time to the U.S. (Sour crude is crucial feedstock for complex U.S. refineries to produce diesel and jet fuel).

The post-mortem on the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran must be suspended as both Trump and Netanyahu enter a holding pattern ahead of elections. Trump might threaten to ‘obliterate’ Iran if it does not capitulate and bend the knee before him, but it is doubtful that the U.S. can long maintain its military presence in the region with munitions in short supply. Nonetheless, a further round of intense kinetic war is highly probable – and widely expected in Iran.

A short ‘performative’ U.S. military strike on Iran is possible, but would achieve little – and nothing strategic.

So who is losing in this ‘war’? Israel – and Netanyahu. Netanyahu is in deep distress electorally too.

The expected triumph of Israel over the Middle East has failed. The connected revolutionary war on Russia and the siege of China are faltering also, and Israel’s (until now unassailable) hold over the U.S. is in question too.

In wake of Netanyahu convincing Trump to withdraw from the JCPOA in 2015, leading Israeli security commentators began to lament their strategic mistake as “one of the greatest strategic mistakes of the twenty-first century“. Amazingly, some in Israel – including senior military figures – are already lamenting Israel’s assassination of the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, on 28 February 2026 – “At least we knew where we stood with Khamenei”, a senior Israeli military source told Ben Caspit –

“[Khamenei] had red lines, he had a strategy, and he was sober to some extent. There was a certain stability to the Iranian madness. The current leadership is much less stable, far more extreme and unpredictable. They are intoxicated by power and hubris, convinced that they defeated both America and Israel”.

America’s Hard Left and Right Have Had It with Israel

New York socialists are done with these wars. So are America First conservatives.

Jack Hunter

Jul 2, 202

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/americas-hard-left-and-right-have-had-it-with-israel/

Last week, POLITICO published a story about New York City’s recent congressional primaries, noting that “moderate Democrats fear they’re on the verge of losing the party’s ideological civil war to progressives.”

On X, Krystal Ball replied, “They already lost.”

The progressive Breaking Points podcast host was partaking in the left-wing jubilation that followed the victories of three insurgent candidates in New York’s closely watched primary races. 

In NY-10, former city chief financial officer Brad Lander defeated incumbent Dan Goldman; in NY-13, student and activist Darializa Avila Chevalier won against incumbent Adriano Espaillat; and in NY-7, state assemblywoman Claire Valdez beat Brooklyn borough president Antonio Reynoso. All are expected to win their deep-blue districts easily in November.

Each of these candidates has ties to the hard left Democratic Socialists of America: Valdez and Reynoso are current members, while Lander was a member until 2023. And all enjoyed the support of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (their opponents, meanwhile, were backed by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries).

While various reasons have been given for these victories, one common thread is that the winning candidates all made intense, vociferous criticism of Israel a central part of their campaigns. Those who lost, on the other hand, pursued a softer line on Israel, more closely resembling establishment Democrats on foreign policy even while taking leftist positions on other issues. 

In the NY-10 race, for example, the Democratic pollster Adam Carlson told Responsible Statecraft there was “very little daylight between Brad Lander and Dan Goldman ideologically, except when it c[ame] to Israel.” Yet Lander beat Goldman—who received significantly more funding—by a whopping 30 points.

Nor has the success of anti-Israel progressives been limited to New York. Earlier this year, similar candidates won Democratic primaries in Maine and California. And polling suggests that the issue resonates with Democrats nationwide. A June Quinnipiac poll showed that 66 percent of Democrats thought “the U.S. was too supportive of Israel,” while a May New York Times/Siena poll found that nearly three quarters of Democrats opposed U.S. aid to Israel and 60 percent of Democratic voters said they were more sympathetic to the Palestinians than to Israel. (By contrast, only 15 percent had more sympathy for Israel.)

A similar trend can be seen on the right. Just one month after President Donald Trump launched the U.S. war on Iran, slightly more than half of Republican voters answered “yes” when polled on the question of whether Israel had too much influence over American foreign policy. And although the majority of Republicans are still broadly supportive of Israel, multiple polls have shown significant drops in the country’s favorability over the past several years, particularly among younger conservatives.

There are even stirrings on Capitol Hill. Last summer, then-Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene became the first member of the congressional GOP to call the Gaza crisis a “genocide.” And Representative Thomas Massie attracted national attention—and lost a primary—in part because of his staunch opposition to U.S. aid for Israel.

Rather than debate their critics on the merits, many in the establishments of both parties have sought to dismiss any criticism of Israel as antisemitism, pure and simple. As Sen. Ted Cruz said last month during a diatribe against the popular commentator (and noted Israel skeptic) Tucker Carlson, “We are seeing a cancer on the right. It is rising antisemitism…. Here’s the scary thing: I’ve seen more antisemitism on the right over the last 18 months than any time in my life.” Cruz went on to try to tar opposition to Israel as an inherently left-wing position, claiming it was a “gateway drug to anti-capitalism and anti-Americanism.”

Leaving aside the histrionics, the Senator from Texas is right about one thing—both the hard right and the hard left have ended up in a similar place on Israel. And for similar reasons: opposition to American vassalage, disgust with the treatment of Palestinians, skepticism of the endless regional wars, and a conviction that our resources are better spent at home.

As the independent journalist Glenn Greenwald observed of the NY-7 winner on Thursday, “Note how Claire Valdez—when asked about Israel or foreign policy generally—emphasizes the need to stop burning American resources on Israel and foreign wars and instead invest them in American communities for the American working class: a potent MAGA political message not all that long ago.”

Exactly.

Right and left will disagree, profoundly, on how to use those resources (the progressives’ aim of building socialism in this country, for example, should be vigorously opposed by everyone who calls himself a conservative). But what we can and should agree on is the notion that America’s interests must be prioritized above those of foreign nations. And in this important respect, there is a natural and important alliance to be made.

The hard left House and Senate candidates of this cycle, current Israel-skeptic lawmakers like Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), and journalists like Krystal Ball and Glenn Greenwald can work with America First conservatives in Congress (outgoing Representative Thomas Massie and current Senator Rand Paul, for example), in the media (Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Steve Bannon, etc.), and elsewhere. Such a partnership could speak to the majority of patriotic Americans much more effectively and authentically than either the Democratic or Republican establishments.

For the undeniable fact is that, when it comes to the U.S.-Israel relationship, most voters are ready for a new chapter. And the energy is clearly with the insurgents. This is especially true now that the administration is in peace talks with Iran. Both Trump and Vance have expressed frustration with Israel, with the latter recently articulating what few American politicians have been allowed to say openly: the two countries have different interests.

At the same time, many of our political elites are scrambling to save the pro-Israel consensus. The uniparty loves its wars, and will stoop to any low or call their political opponents any slurs in order to keep them going. Just ask Vance.

Hence the need for a left-right alliance.

We understand our differences. Conservatives will never acquiesce to wealth confiscation, abortion-on-demand, DEI, speech codes, open borders, or any of the other noxious policy priorities beloved of the left. And we certainly don’t expect our progressive counterparts to suddenly disavow their most deeply-held principles (no matter how wrong or ill-considered).

But should the America First right and the antiwar left unite to restore our national sovereignty, rein in the war machine, extricate ourselves from endless, far-off quarrels, and ensure that this country’s energies and resources are applied to its own problems?

The Middle East Has a New Saudi-Led Axis

The newfound bloc has emerged as a potential winner from the Iran war.

By Anchal Vohra, a columnist at Foreign Policy

July 1, 2026

https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/07/01/saudi-qatar-pakistan-turkey-egypt-uae-axis-alliance-iran-middle-east

The Iran war inflicted substantial pain on Persian Gulf states, as their exports and sense of safety declined. Yet some have emerged more resolute about cooperating together on regional politics. A new grouping outside the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) has emerged, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and non-Gulf actors Egypt, Pakistan, and Turkey. The United Arab Emirates is conspicuous by its absence.

Some of these states have emerged as clear winners from the war, while others are content with having built new resilience. There is a veneer of camaraderie among them, but deep divisions lie underneath regarding how best to deal with Iran and whether to pursue normalization with Israel or brace for its feared hegemonic expansion. Either way, it’s clear that the war in Iran has produced a new order in the Gulf that extends beyond to the larger Islamic world.

The new bloc is defined by two goals: containing the Iranian threat while also regaining influence in countries dominated by Iranian proxies or allies such as Syria and Lebanon; and also pushing back against Israel to define limits to its military adventurism. One regional observer said Israel’s strike on Doha last year—to hunt Hamas members—spooked Gulf nations into thinking that they could be next. It brought rivals such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey closer together. Pakistan’s nuclear weapons underpin the alliance, serving as a bulwark against Israel, under the Saudi-Pakistani defense framework.

While there is no official name for the grouping—only described as a Sunni alliance in Israeli reports or an expanding Islamic NATO—it signals realignment built on deepening mistrust between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. As both wean away from an oil-based economy, Saudis are competing with Emiratis to win over the same foreign investments.

In the post-Arab Spring phase, Saudis and Emiratis saw eye to eye on the Muslim Brotherhood as a common threat and were aligned on regional policy questions. Now interests appear to have diverged. The UAE believes normalization and peace are the way forward with Israel, while Riyadh has banded together a more Israel-critical bunch.

The grouping of five is also a Saudi bid to claim the regional leadership role. The UAE’s exit from OPEC questioned the Saudi position as the unofficial leader of the pack. Riyadh has now decided to host a regional summit between Arab states and Iran, but it is unclear when it will take place and whether the UAE will attend—but it will be circumspect of any assurance.

Saudi Arabia came under relatively fewer attacks than many of its neighbors, but its sense of security was no less shaken. Reuters reported that it even carried out numerous strikes against Iran in response. Riyadh said whatever little trust had been built with Iran as a result of the 2023 Beijing-led rapprochement was quashed.

On the economic front, Saudi Arabia benefited from the rise in demand and the price of oil. In March, even as the Strait of Hormuz remained shut, the value of Saudi exports recorded a three-year surge. Saudi oil company Aramco’s net profit jumped 26 percent for the first quarter as prices spiked from $74 to over $119 a barrel, said Hesham Alghannam, a Riyadh-based scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Center. The East-West Pipeline offered an alternative export route via the Red Sea coast and operated at its full capacity of 7 million barrels.

However, Saudi GDP growth slowed to 2.8 percent from 3.7 percent because wells were shut, even as flows were rerouted, Alghannam added. Experts are divided over Saudi Arabia’s economic projections, yet the war has spurred the kingdom to strengthen its Red Sea infrastructure.

Another player in the new alliance is Qatar. In 2017, Qatar was ostracized by a quartet of Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, but now it is recognized as a diplomatic leader. During the war with Iran, Qatar’s geographical constraints, Washington’s inability to prevent Iranian strikes on the Gulf, and Doha’s comparatively warmer prewar ties with Tehran all led its leadership to conclude that diplomacy with Iran offered the best path forward.

Qatar faced the fewest Iranian strikes during the war, though attacks did target a key installation. A strike shut down its key Ras Laffan refinery—one of the world’s largest liquefied natural gas facilities—reducing its export capacity by an estimated 17 percent.

It then jumped full throttle into mediation efforts in mid-May when Pakistan’s efforts to broker peace proved insufficient. Last week, as U.S. and Iranian negotiators huddled for 18 hours at a luxury resort overlooking Lake Lucerne in Switzerland, there was reason to believe that an exchange of fire between Israel and Hezbollah might derail the talks, a person familiar with the events told me.

“Even as the principals sat down for talks”—referring to U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance, Trump advisors Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, and chief Iranian negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf—“there were tensions over Lebanon,” the person said. He complimented Qatari mediators for extinguishing last-minute fires, adding that Qatar used its channels with Iran to get Hezbollah to release a statement agreeing to a cease-fire and also encouraged the Americans to get Israel to back off.

Other members of the Saudi-led grouping also intend to gain from the war. Egypt hopes to benefit from a Saudi rush to expand its infrastructure. Riyadh has formalized plans to build a bridge to Sinai, aiming to turn Egypt’s Mediterranean coast into a gateway to Europe. Turkey hopes to boost arms sales, as apprehensions over security are unlikely to subside anytime soon. Pakistan, for its part, enjoyed some good press after years of international condemnation for supporting terrorist networks.

The UAE has also decided to improve its logistics and reduce dependence on the Strait of Hormuz to zero. Even during the war, it managed to export via its Fujairah port and is now looking at expanding eastern ports along the Gulf of Oman. The UAE, however, is outside the Saudi-led bloc. Alghannam of the Carnegie Middle East Center said the bloc exists “because the GCC itself is unlikely to unify on Iran” but also because for Saudi Arabia it is a “vehicle to project Arab leadership.”

Over the last few months, the mentor-protégé relationship between Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman and Emirati President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan turned sour, largely over disagreements over Yemen and Sudan.

It is unclear whether the UAE will attend any Saudi-led Iran summit. The country endured more than 3,000 Iranian missile and drone attacks—more than the total number of attacks on the other five GCC members—and is thus more at odds with Iran. It would have preferred a longer U.S. military operation against Iran to debilitate Iranian capabilities before a cease-fire was struck.

A more divisive divergence between the two blocs, however, is over Israel. “There are two camps: one pro-Israel, and the other is an Israel-cautious camp,” a Gulf official told me over the phone.

The Emirati commitment to the Abraham Accords weathered the recent conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon, whereas Saudi Arabia found it difficult to pursue normalization in such an atmosphere. The UAE reportedly received key defense equipment from Israel during the war: “an Iron Dome air defense system with troops to operate it,” Axios reported in April. That indicates an enhancement in future defense-related cooperation against Iran.

The Emiratis see Iran as a bigger threat than many of their neighbors, including those now following the Saudis’ lead. The UAE was struck by Iran with an unmatched ferocity and helped by Israel, while Saudi Arabia wants to contain both Iran and Israel. What’s clear is that the divergence over how to manage the collective security of the Gulf will define the future of the region—and that the UAE is likely to be on the outside with its own vision to break with the status quo.

The End of Neoliberalism

The virtues it extolled—cosmopolitanism and competition—led to its demise.

June 15, 2026

By Branko Milanovic, a research professor at the CUNY Graduate Center

https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/06/15/neoliberalism-globalization-competition-cosmopolitanism-economics-reagan-thatcher/

If one were to define neoliberal globalization during the 40-year period from the early 1980s to around 2020, one could say it was driven by two ideas: cosmopolitanism and competition. One could also say these same features have now led to neoliberalism’s undoing.

Cosmopolitanism was an essential neoliberal idea going back to the meetings of the Walter Lippmann Colloquium in 1930s Paris and the early Mont Pèlerin Society. Cosmopolitanism meant that every individual in the world was to be thought of as equally important and equally capable of economic improvement if they faced optimal economic conditions—which implied security of private property, free trade, low taxes, and a “tolerable administration of justice.” Very little else, in the words of economist Adam Smith, was needed to fulfill the universal desire of all persons to “better their own condition” and for the world to attain unimagined levels of prosperity.

Cosmopolitanism was also the political idea underpinning a neoliberal world where national government as such would be out of sight and would leave individuals free to pursue their self-interest. This was, ideally, a world of small or almost invisible government. In the language of early advocates of neoliberalism, “imperium”—that is, flags, anthems, languages, and other paraphernalia of nationhood—would be left to politicians (and to voters, if citizens insisted on voting), and the more consequential world of “dominium” would consist of the movement of goods, capital, technology, and people.

For cosmopolitanism to create global wealth and prosperity, the world also had to be competitive. Not only would people be allowed to compete with (or against) one another regardless of national borders, but they also needed to be stimulated to compete by the display of all the goods that could be theirs and by the societal approval they would command if they won in that competition.

Competition produced global growth: Between 1980 and 2020-21, the average world GDP per capita more than doubled, jumping from $7,700 (in 2005 international dollars, adjusted for purchasing power parity) to almost $17,000. This makes the worldwide yearly average growth rate 2.1 percent per capita, an extraordinarily high rate for a period of 40 years. (And this despite the increase of the world population from 4.4 billion in 1980 to 8.3 billion now.) The more than doubling of per capita income combined with an almost doubling of the world population means that the total amount of goods and services produced in the world quadrupled during the era of neoliberal globalization.

But this “anonymous” growth rate, realized principally thanks to the high growth rates of Asian countries and notably China, did not help neoliberals’ case in rich countries. What was politically salient was not the 2.1 percent global rate but the fact that in the United States and in most rich Western countries, much of the population registered real (adjusted for inflation) growth rates of approximately 1 percent per year, while incomes of the rich grew two to three times faster.

Moreover, the neoliberal period (dated from Ronald Reagan’s presidency onward) was not only pro-rich, in the sense that incomes of the rich increased faster than those of the middle class and the poor. It also represented a slowdown in across-the-board growth compared with the preceding period. In fact, at every point of U.S. income distribution—except at the very top—growth was slower during the neoliberal era than during the previous decade and a half.

The world, at least for a while, seemed to become uniform, divided not by borders of nation-states, race, or gender but by differences in people’s abilities, skills, and effort. It was approaching the neoliberal ideal of a borderless world full of intensively competitive individuals whose competitive juices were additionally stimulated by the ability to communicate with any part of the globe and to learn what potential competitors may do—and then to try to outdo them.

But cosmopolitanism and competition, however attractive in themselves, were an unstable combination.

Cosmopolitanism crashed against national political borders. Excessive competition created a world of greed, amorality, and commercialization of all activities, even those that used to be the most private ones. Fundamentally, it threatened to make family superfluous.

The winners of neoliberal globalization in rich countries—inspired precisely by their cosmopolitanism, which they regarded as a moral virtue (being free of poisonous nationalism)—were quick not only to treat their less fortunate compatriots’ welfare as of no greater importance as the welfare of a foreigner or a stranger but also to believe that their compatriots’ failure in such an open competition was indicative of some moral flaw. Economic success meant being virtuous, or as Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, whose rise to power coincided almost perfectly with those of Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom, did not deny: “To be rich is glorious.”

The political system however is organized within nation-states. The less fortunate compatriots felt forgotten and ignored, and they were resentful of the way in which they were treated. They saw the readiness, even eagerness, of the rich to invest in faraway places as callousness toward domestic workers. Promises of new jobs that would replace those lost due to cheaper imports or online work elsewhere were hard to materialize.

The resulting discontent created political turbulence in the richest democracies. The 2007-08 global financial crisis made obvious what had previously only been implicit. The rich did not care for those left behind, and when the costs of the crisis had to be paid, they made sure that the bill was not sent to them.

The malcontents who in previous times would equally replenish extreme left-wing and extreme right-wing parties, as they did during the Great Depression in the 1930s, had now much less choice. The left-wing parties were either discredited by the failure of the “real-existing socialism” or, through their accommodative third-way policies, seen as accomplices of the center-right parties in promoting the type of neoliberal globalization that so disenchanted Western working and middle classes. Indeed, the peak of neoliberal globalization was achieved under the notionally left-wing governments of Bill Clinton in the United States, Tony Blair in the U.K., and François Mitterrand in France.

So, the disappointed masses turned toward the right-wing parties that promoted national solidarity, an end to the (economically) equal treatment of the domestic population and foreigners, and even a return of industrial jobs. In the international arena, neoliberal globalization thus became increasingly replaced by neomercantilism, which used economic coercion, the seizure of foreign assets, import bans, and extravagant tariff policies to cut, or at least control, the free flow of goods and services. Free flow of labor was even easier to cut because its political popularity, even at the peak of neoliberal globalization, was small.

The second part of the neoliberal equation—competition within society and across borders and time zones—created, with the assistance of technical advances, a world where the upkeep of one’s homes and cars and even domestic chores, from cooking to elder- and childcare, were shifted precisely to the people who no longer had steady jobs and were part of the class of malcontents. The moral norms that previously held societies and families together and would have forestalled such outsourcing had become effaced by a desire to be “glorious”—that is, to be rich. That perceived amorality also helped the rise of anti-systemic right-wing parties. They grew on the promise of restoration not only of lost jobs but of self-respect among malcontents and a return to allegedly traditional values for society as a whole.

In short, neoliberalism has succumbed to its own substitution by a combination of protective barriers for foreign goods and foreign people and vain attempts to return to a more traditional world at home. As in a Greek tragedy, the very features that ensured neoliberal globalization’s success for decades produced its inevitable demise.

Iran announces deal with Oman to 'manage' Strait of Hormuz traffic

Iran’s parliament speaker told Chinese officials that the Islamic Republic will block any US ‘interference’ in the strait

News Desk

JUL 3, 2026

https://thecradle.co/articles/iran-announces-deal-with-oman-to-manage-strait-of-hormuz-traffic

The Islamic Republic of Iran and the Sultanate of Oman have reached an agreement on the joint management and regulation of traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf announced on 3 July. 

The announcement was made during a meeting with Chinese officials visiting Iran to attend the funeral of late supreme leader Ali Khamenei – who was killed by a US-Israeli strike on 28 February – set to begin on Saturday.

“During my visit to Oman a few days ago, based on Article Five of the memorandum of understanding, we reached an agreement on organizing maritime traffic,” Ghalibaf said.

He added that Tehran and Muscat are “determined to implement this, and we will certainly consult with the Persian Gulf littoral states as well.”

“The Israelis are undoubtedly seeking to undermine the … understanding between Iran and the US. However, the deterrent power of … Iran in the region will prevent them from reigniting the war. At the same time, we must reduce these tensions through a well-organized strategy and careful political measures,” he went on to say. 

Ghalibaf also expressed appreciation for Beijing–Tehran relations and thanked the Chinese officials for participation in the upcoming funeral of the late leader. 

“In the Strait of Hormuz, we resolved the issues affecting the passage of Chinese vessels, as China stood by us during difficult times, ” he went on to say. 

He stressed that the Islamic Republic “will not allow any US interference in the strait.”

Talks have been ongoing between Tehran and Muscat regarding joint post-war management of the strait. 

Iranian management of the vital waterway, along with Oman and with the potential cooperation of other regional states, has been included as an official term in the Washington–Tehran memorandum of understanding (MoU).

At the end of last month, Oman had announced that it endorsed an Iranian proposal to levy maritime “service fees” on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. 

This came after the recent announcement on the activation of a US–Omani shipping corridor through Hormuz, which Tehran had considered a violation of Clause 5 of the MoU.

Tehran has repeatedly vowed that the strait will not return to its pre-war status despite an illegal US blockade on its ports and attempts to undermine Iranian control of the waterway. 

“Hormuz is defined under Iran's command, not CENTCOM,” Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister and top negotiator Kazem Gharibabadi said in a statement on 2 July.

Weeks earlier, Tehran announced the formation of the Persian Gulf Strait Authority (PGSA), a new body to oversee its management of the Strait of Hormuz.

Washington accepted the inclusion of practically all of Iran’s demands in the MoU, including a full halt to war in Lebanon, asset releases, sanctions removal, a lifting of the illegal blockade, and Iranian–Omani management of Hormuz.

A 60-day period, consisting of several rounds of talks aimed at hammering out details, was scheduled to commence. 

Yet Washington continued to violate the MoU through multiple attacks on Iran, and a failure to rein in Israel’s brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing and occupation in Lebanon.

The first 30 days of talks were meant to facilitate a gradual opening of the Strait of Hormuz and end the US blockade. Washington’s attacks and threats, as well as Israel’s behavior in Lebanon, complicated the process.

Tehran has repeatedly responded to Washington’s violations of the MoU, striking US assets in the Gulf following continuous attacks on the southern Iranian coast.

New Bipartisan Bill Seeks to Outlaw Criticism of Israel and Jewish Power

Eric Striker • July 1, 2026

https://www.unz.com/estriker/new-bipartisan-bill-seeks-to-outlaw-criticism-of-israel-and-jewish-power/#comment-7677344 

Last year’s defeat of the Antisemitism Awareness Act (AAA) by a coalition of progressive Democrats and patriotic Republicans caught the Jewish community off guard.

According to a report by Jewish Insider, Chuck Schumer and his Republican collaborator’s attempt to sneak the AAA into the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act was thwarted when a coalition of nationalist podcasters such as Tucker Carlson and various Palestine sympathetic left-wing groups called attention to its draconian provisions and drew backlash to the bill.

Rather than give up, Jewish groups reeling from the defeat have decided to launch a renewed offensive, this time attacking opposition to their Zionist agenda at its root: freedom of speech, especially on social media.

In May and June, a bipartisan coalition of 15 House Republicans and 14 Democrats formally sponsored the Jewish American Security Act (JASA), a piece of legislation that if passed would constitute one of the most sweeping attacks on the First Amendment in American history. The bill enjoys practically universal backing from Jewish non-profits and Zionist activist groups.

The new law presents four major demands: the appointment of a specialized Anti-Semitism commissar to manage the Department of Education’s campaign combating pro-Palestinian activism on college campuses, a $1 billion dollar cash injection to “secure” Zionist non-profits and Jewish houses of worship, mandatory state monitoring of online social media platforms in order to force them to censor “anti-Semitic” political speech on their platforms, and officially reorienting the mission of the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and National Counterintelligence and Security Center as instruments for targeting critics of Jews and Israel as foreign enemy actors and domestic terrorists.

On the education front, JASA strengthens and makes permanent Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14188 (“Additional Measures to Combat Antisemitism”), which emphasizes that Israelis are a protected class above criticism under the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Under executive orders signed by Joe Biden and Donald Trump, this interpretation of the law has been used to weaponize access to federal subsidies to American higher learning institutions in order to shut down pro-Palestinian and anti-war activism among students.

In addition to having an “Antisemitism Coordinator” micro-manage this ongoing war on dissent, JASA calls for a “public awareness campaign” that will plaster propaganda posters in “high-traffic public places, such as a cafeteria, gymnasium, or student center, and digital posting on 1 or more high-traffic institution web pages, such as a web page for a student services department” warning students and professors about the consequences of partaking in speech and activism that offends Jews or singles out Israel.

JASA also seeks to bump FEMA’s Nonprofit Security Grant program, which currently provides $300 million dollars meant to be shared among different houses of worship facing security threats (though Jewish groups still eat up the majority of the grants), up to $1 billion in subsidies directed for the exclusive use of Jewish organizations. This specific Jewish set-aside likely violates normative Constitutional provisions preventing government favoritism to a single religion, but this does not seem to be a concern in the legislation.

If passed, JASA would represent a militarization of American-Jewish life, which contrary to claims from Jewish grievance groups, is no more susceptible to bias or violent interference than Christian worship. In 2025, 24 people were killed in homicidal attacks targeting Christians across the nation to practically no media fanfare, including a massacre at a Mormon church in Michigan and a shooting of several Catholic children hearing mass in Minnesota.

Most concerning is JASA’s requirement that online social media companies provide mandatory reports every six months to Congress on anti-Semitic and anti-Israel opinions being shared on their platforms, outline their strategies for content removal and suppression, as well as coordinate with federal law enforcement in real time to combat what the bill’s authors judge as “extremist antisemitic calls.”

A fixation in JASA and much of the Jewish discourse around shutting down debate is the assertion that growing American antipathy to the role of Jews and Israel in Washington is a foreign conspiracy emanating from China, Russia, Qatar, and Iran. A recent State Department report trying to make people take this claim seriously was circulated among the US Congressmen, but not made public, likely to avoid scrutiny of its methodology.

In response to this supposed “foreign interference” seeking to “erode public trust in institutions,” JASA calls for action against “inauthentic amplification on digital platforms, such as bots or campaigns, and any involvement of foreign state and non-state actors.” Under the new law, federal law enforcement and intelligence services will be officially transformed into a secret police force dedicated to combating “Antisemitism” and required to create reports categorizing protected political speech as violence by featuring “(i) an overview of violent extremist ideologies that include antisemitic components; (ii) a review of the extent that actors in the United States have engaged in violent conduct in furtherance of the ideologies described in clause (i); (iii) the origins and online platforming and online activity or presence of antisemitic domestic violent extremist ideologies, groups, and individuals.”

Such a law, if passed, would treat figures as prominent as Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Megyn Kelly, Thomas Massie, Ana Kasparian, Ilhan Omar and Candace Owens, as well as many smaller critics that have arisen in recent years, as terrorists and enemies of the state.

Congressional backing for the Jewish American Security Act remains small for now, but the extent of support it enjoys from the organized Jewish community in conjunction with the outsized role of Jewish billionaires in financing both parties means that it is guaranteed to rapidly gain traction in the near future and become a threat. Let’s call attention to this audacious attack on our civil liberties and make sure JASA is killed in its crib.