On June 11, the US House voted down — on a bipartisan basis, with 19 Republicans joining most Democrats — the latest attempt to renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Absent some kind of mid-June legislative miracle, Section 702 will expire on June 12. Good! FISA itself is a terrible law, and […]

Note from Tom: TomDispatch (at least as run by me) is now done, but if all goes well, Tom himself isn’t. And with that in mind, here’s what I hope will be but the first of a series of pieces that I’ll be writing on this ever-stranger world of ours at this new Substack of […]

Starting from the modern-day West Bank, Jesus rode his donkey westward around the Mount of Olives toward Jerusalem for what would be his Last Supper. As he passed through the ancient olive groves that blanketed the hillsides, he would have been surrounded by the rich natural life of the Levant. Nestled between the Eastern Mediterranean […]

When the US-Iran conflict escalated earlier this year, the immediate concern centered on oil prices and the Strait of Hormuz. But the real danger was never confined to crude oil. The crisis has evolved into a broader energy, logistics, fertilizer, food and financial shock. What began as a regional conflict has become a structural drag […]

It all started with a call to my family in a displacement camp in northern Gaza. Since internet lines rarely stay connected, I managed to send a message to the widow of my cousin – who was killed along with all of his sons during the ongoing Gaza genocide. I asked her a simple question: […]

InSight Crime, a thinktank which claims to fuse “investigative journalism with academic rigor,” accuses Nicaragua’s government of “hiring assassins” to hunt down and kill opponents abroad. This bold accusation is based on no more than “circumstantial” evidence, strongly suggesting political motivation. This fact-impoverished rush to judgment reflects a more general bias of the US-aligned corporate […]

It remains unclear whether Iran’s effort to establish a new equation in the region has truly succeeded — an equation in which, for the first time, Iran would directly strike Israel if Israel attacks Lebanon. What is clear is that recent events suggest the strategic landscape may be shifting. Israel chose to defy President Trump […]

Buried deep within the thousands of pages of the annual U.S. National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a single provision labeled Section 224 has quietly become one of the hottest political flashpoints in Washington this year. On the surface, it looks like standard bureaucratic language — just another push to strengthen technological and military cooperation between […]

Not since the notorious 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) provided for indefinite detention of American citizens, has the annual funding bill been as misused as this year. Embedded in the bill is an insult to every American who values our national sovereignty. The NDAA’s Section 224, the “United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative,” would […]

Reprinted with permission from Trita Parsi’s Substack. Israel has now responded militarily to Iran, defying Trump’s publicly expressed wishes. Israeli commentators have been explicit that Israel could not allow Iran to establish a new regional equation – one in which Tehran successfully extended deterrence over Lebanon. But by defying Trump, Israel has done more than […]

Editor’s Note:   Tom Engelhardt has been an important part of Antiwar.com for 22 years.     His TomDispatch site has contributed 1,469 articles to our site.   His list of authors includes many of the best in the antiwar movement.   The presence of TomDispatch articles helped make Antiwar.com what it is today. The staff of Antiwar.com sends […]

In his highly-regarded podcast, Judging Freedom, on June 1, Judge Napolitano asked British diplomat Alastair Crooke if the Israelis really cared if the Strait of Hormuz remained closed and the U.S. economy, and by extension the world economy, suffered. Crooke replied that the billionaires who support Israel so strongly have so much wealth that many […]

The images that have emerged from Gaza reveal the anatomy of a desolate landscape that defies human comprehension. Nothing can prepare the conscience for the sheer suffocating scale of a seemingly endless treeless terrain overwhelmed with millions of tons of concrete and rebar. There is a distinct agonizing geometry to the destruction of buildings folded […]

The United States is not approaching collapse because it lacks power. It is approaching collapse because it has too often mistaken power for wisdom. Its armed forces remain unmatched in reach, its financial system remains central to global commerce, and its technology sector continues to shape the future. Yet these advantages can conceal a more […]

On May 31, Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam gave a televised address in which he condemned Israel’s invasion and intensified attacks on southern Lebanon as a dangerous escalation, warning that a “scorched-earth policy” will never bring security to Tel Aviv: “Israel must understand that with its scorched-earth policy, collective punishment, and the bulldozing of villages and […]

Reprinted with permission from Trita Parsi’s Substack. “You’re fucking crazy. You’d be in prison if it weren’t for me. I’m saving your ass. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this.” According to Axios, this is what Donald Trump said to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in “an expletive-laden call” earlier today. Trump […]

NATO partisans in both Europe and the United States are perpetual optimists about Ukraine’s prospective fortunes in its war against Russia.  Lately, there has been yet another inundation of such accounts in Western news media outlets.  Many of them emphasize that Moscow’s latest military offensive against Ukrainian ground forces has come to a halt with […]

Jan Marco Müller, the European Commission official who drafted the EU’s new science diplomacy framework, just said the quiet part out loud: “Science diplomacy is not about being nice to each other.” Yes, it is, dumbass. That was the whole point. For centuries, science diplomacy worked precisely because it allowed ordinary human beings to humanize […]

The Donald seems to think he has all the time in the world to end the conflagration he and Bibi started in the Persian Gulf. Today he even told the mullahs to take a hike when they suspended any further negotiations owing to Bibi’s brutal strikes on civilian targets in southern Lebanon and continued violations […]

Reprinted from The Realist Review. Over the course of his three presidential campaigns (2016, 2020, 2024), President Donald J. Trump promised an America First foreign policy – one that would see America pull back from postwar European security commitments, end the war in Ukraine, and keep the country out of the Middle East “forever wars” […]