Iran war closes Hormuz, Bab al-Mandeb simultaneously for first time ever

Oil holds above $100 a barrel as Washington's air campaign against Tehran grinds through a 13th night, Houthi attacks squeeze the last open route out of the Gulf, and the fallout spreads to piracy, insurance and Sudan's food supply. / bne IntelliNewsFacebook

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By Ben Aris in Berlin Ben Aris in Berlin July 24, 2026

For the first time since records began, both of the Middle East's great oil chokepoints are shut at once. The Strait of Hormuz has been effectively closed since February 28, when the US and Israel opened their war on Iran; the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, at the southern end of the Red Sea, has been under an Iran-backed Houthi blockade since July 20-21, after the militia fired on two Saudi-flagged tankers.

Together the two straits normally carry around a quarter of the world's seaborne oil and gas, according to a Red Sea Monitor analysis citing Kpler and others. As IntelliNews reported, the closing of two of the world’s major maritime transport chokepoints is policy makers’ worst nightmare.

It matters because there is no historical precedent for both chokepoints failing together: Saudi Arabia built its entire Hormuz workaround around shipping oil out via the Red Sea, and that workaround now runs straight through the new embargo.

It has created a multi-front headache: Washington has restarted its bombing campaign against Iran; a scramble by Saudi Arabia to reroute oil the long way around via Suez and Africa; a new and untested US legal manoeuvre to make Iran pay for the damage; and knock-on effects as far afield as Somali piracy and Sudan's food security.

The UN's International Maritime Organization has, for what it is worth, called for calm. “I unequivocally condemn the latest reported attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea area,” IMO Secretary-General Arsenio Dominguez said in a statement on July 24. “These attacks are indefensible... De-escalation is the only solution.” Nobody directly involved shows much sign of listening.

US strikes grind on

The US military struck Iranian targets across the south, southeast and west of the country on July 22-23, US Central Command said, describing it as the 12th consecutive night of strikes — hitting maritime capabilities, missile and drone storage facilities, coastal surveillance sites and air-defence assets as the 60 day Memorandum of Understanding ceasefire definitely collapses. The next day Iranian officials confirmed strikes in Khuzestan, Hormozgan, Bushehr, Sistan-Baluchistan, Kermanshah and Chaharmahal-Bakhtiari provinces; a strike on the Shalamcheh border crossing with Iraq killed two people, including an Artesh communications officer, according to a provincial deputy governor.

Iran's own parliament has tabled a "Hormuz security bill", and a senior Iranian official has already called the closure the central economic cost of the war. Only a single tanker crossed Hormuz on July 24, the lowest daily total since May 7, according to Kpler ship-tracking data cited by Iran International.

Two chokepoints, closed at once

According to the Red Sea Monitor analysis, Saudi Arabia had already rerouted around 70% of its oil exports through its Red Sea terminal at Yanbu to work around the Hormuz closure — and that bypass now runs directly through the new Houthi embargo. The same analysis puts 25% of world oil and gas supply at risk if both chokepoints stay closed, Saudi loadings already down 36% before the embargo even hit, and Bab al-Mandeb's Saudi-linked flow falling from a peak of 9.5mn barrels a day to 6.1mn. A weekly transit chart tracking Bab al-Mandeb traffic, compiled by analyst Anas Alhajji, shows volumes that had been climbing through 2026 dropping sharply in the most recent week.

Iran itself gave warning of wider export-route disruption back in mid-July, and shipping giant Maersk had just sent its first cargo back through the Suez Canal since the war began — a tentative normalisation that the new Houthi embargo now complicates. Yanbu itself was flagged as a potential target amid rising Houthi tensions weeks ago, a warning that reads differently now that the port sits at the centre of Saudi Arabia's only remaining workaround.

The knock-on effect reaches well beyond oil. Port Sudan, 180 miles north of the new embargo line, imports 80% of Sudan's wheat and serves as the sole functioning port for 33.7mn people, per the Red Sea Monitor breakdown — with no Atlantic access, no pipeline alternative and no strategic food reserve to fall back on. Re-routing around the Cape of Good Hope adds more than 30 days and 25%-plus in cost, up to $2.5mn per tanker, which the analysis argues is unaffordable for humanitarian supply chains specifically.

Saudi Arabia's costly detour

With both its main export routes disrupted, Saudi Arabia is falling back on the norther escape hatch of the Suez Canal — a route it has not used as a primary export outlet for decades.

The arithmetic is brutal: sailing from Saudi Arabia's Red Sea port of Yanbu to Taiwan takes 19 days via Bab al-Mandeb but 48 days via Suez, the Mediterranean and the Cape of Good Hope, according to Kpler shipping data, roughly doubling fuel costs to around $2.87mn from $1.26mn per voyage before Suez Canal fees — an extra $1mn — are even added. Big tankers will reportedly have to sail through Suez partly empty and top up in the Mediterranean, given the canal's size restrictions.

One workaround: partially unloading tankers into the Sumed pipeline, which runs 320 km (200 miles) from the Ain Sukhna terminal on the Red Sea to Sidi Kerir on the Mediterranean and can carry up to 2.5mn barrels a day, against Saudi Arabia's total exports of around 7mn b/d. State producer Aramco is already offering extra cargoes from Sidi Kerir to bypass Bab al-Mandeb entirely, according to a widely circulated trader note, in what one analyst called Riyadh "hedging the exact route in question" rather than treating the risk as theoretical.

Washington's to make Tehran pay for the damage

President Donald Trump said on July 23 that damage to ships and cargo hit in the conflict will be “paid for out of Iranian money” the US holds and controls, writing on Truth Social that "any and all damages done to Ships, Cargo, or anything related thereto, will be paid for by Iranian Money that the United States has in its possession, and controls." Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi called it "an incendiary precedent," warning that "once governments normalise confiscation, no one's assets are safe."

The legal mechanism has a precedent: in 2016 the US Supreme Court ruled in Peterson v. Islamic Republic of Iran (also known as Bank Markazi v. Peterson) that almost $2bn in Iranian central bank bonds held in New York had to be handed to American families of the 1983 Beirut Marine barracks bombing and other Iran-linked attacks — a ruling that took a law written for that single case plus a Supreme Court decision to enforce. Iran subsequently took the seizure to the International Court of Justice, which found in 2023 that the US had violated a bilateral treaty, though the ICJ ruling has not reversed the transfer. Whether — and how — the Trump administration intends to apply a similar mechanism to today's shipping damages remains legally untested and, per reporting so far, unclear even in its basic scope.

Ripple effects: piracy revives, Somalia in the mix

A merchant tanker, the Tanzanian-flagged MT Asana, hijacked in Yemeni waters in the Gulf of Aden last week, is now reportedly being held by Somali pirates rather than its original Houthi-linked hijackers, Reuters reported on July 23, citing residents of Somalia's Puntland region. It fits a broader resurgence of Gulf of Aden piracy since a lull that ran roughly 2018-2023 — a breakdown of the world's piracy hotspots earlier this year traced the rebound directly to the security vacuum left by Houthi attacks — the same dynamic now playing out again as naval and commercial attention is consumed by the wider war.

UNESCO places ancient Lebanese city of Tyre on heritage danger list

UNESCO on Wednesday added Tyre, an ancient coastal city in southern Lebanon founded by the Phoenicians, to its list of world heritage sites in danger following months of Israeli bombardment. Founded around 4,700 years ago, Tyre is home to archaeological treasures including two protected UNESCO areas.


Issued on: 22/07/2026
By:FRANCE 24

Inhabitants of Tyre, an ancient heritage site, fled en masse following an Israeli evacuation order. © Dimitar Dilkoff AFP (File)


Tyre, an ancient Phoenician city in southern Lebanon hit in recent months by Israeli bombardment, was on Wednesday added to the UNESCO list of world heritage sites in danger.

"The site has been directly hit and has sustained damage. Furthermore, its state of conservation is a cause for growing concern, particularly given the possibility of further impacts," the organisation said.

"Optimal conditions are no longer in place to ensure the conservation and protection of the property's outstanding universal value," said the UN body, adding that it was the Lebanese government that requested its inclusion on the list.


The ruins in Tyre, around 80 kilometres (50 miles) south of Beirut but barely 20 kilometres from the Israeli border, were placed on the UNESCO heritage list in 1984 and contain mainly Roman-era archaeological remains.

The coastal city was caught up in recent months in the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, and tens of thousands of its residents fled after the Israeli army issued evacuation orders covering districts including some archaeological areas, though most locals have have since returned.

Lebanese Culture Minister Ghassan Salame welcomed Wednesday's move and said the listing would "focus the attention and concern of UNESCO and member states on a site of great importance in the history of a region currently witnessing conflicts".

Hezbollah drew Lebanon into the Middle East conflict when it fired rockets at Israel to avenge the US-Israeli killing of Iran's supreme leader.

Israel responded with heavy strikes and a ground invasion, killing more than 4,300 people.

The ancient city, founded some 4,700 years ago, is home to two protected areas listed as UNESCO World Heritage Sites and which include a Roman triumphal arch and a hippodrome dating from the second century.

One of the sites suffered a direct hit from an Israeli strike in June.

A Lebanese culture ministry official told AFP at the time that an administrative office was struck and debris from nearby bombardment had impacted archaeological elements including columns, capitals and mosaics.

The city, one of the oldest in the Mediterranean, was variously Phoenician, Persian, Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine.

Earlier this year, Salame accused Israel of failing to comply with the Hague Convention, which since 1954 has required warring parties to protect cultural sites during armed conflict.

He had also accused Israel of disregarding "blue shields", an internationally-recognised symbolic emblem which a UNESCO-linked committee established to protect cultural sites during armed conflict.

UNESCO's decision to inscribe Tyre on its danger list comes as the organisation holds the 48th session of its World Heritage Committee in Busan, South Korea.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

Lebanese army deploys to three southern villages under US-backed security framework

The Lebanese army began assuming security responsibilities in three southern villages on Monday under a US-backed pilot initiative, the State Department said. Operations in Froun, Srifa and Zawtar al-Gharbiya mark the first implementation of a framework aimed at enabling a phased Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon and Hezbollah's disarmament.


Issued on:  21/07/2026
By: FRANCE 24

A yellow flag belonging to the Iran-backed Shia Muslim party Hezbollah flutters in Tyre, June 23, 2026 © Joseph Eid, AFP

The Lebanese army began taking charge of security in three southern villages Monday, the United States said, as a deal to secure an Israeli withdrawal from south Lebanon and the disarmament of Hezbollah faced its first test on the ground.

The US State Department said operations had started in "pilot zones" in Froun, Srifa and Zawtar al-Gharbiya "in accordance with the Trilateral Framework and under the auspices of the Military Coordination Group for Lebanon".

State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott described the step as a direct outcome of talks held between Israeli and Lebanese delegations in Rome last week.

The framework, signed by Lebanon, Israel and the United States on June 26, envisions a phased Israeli pullback from positions in south Lebanon.


In exchange, the Lebanese Armed Forces are to assume sole security control of vacated areas and certify that they have been cleared of Hezbollah weapons and infrastructure.
Israel attacks Lebanon despite truce

Cover image: © France 24
01:57

The pilot zones are intended to trial the approach in a handful of villages straddling the Litani River.

"It is an opportunity for the Lebanese state to begin to reassert real control in areas historically dominated by Hezbollah," a US official said.

"Any attempt by Hezbollah to derail, infiltrate, or re-arm in these zones would seriously harm the prospects for reconstruction and peace."

Hezbollah has rejected the framework, with the Iran-backed group insisting any arrangement in Lebanon be linked to wider negotiations between Washington and Tehran.

It has not said whether it will resist implementation in the designated areas.

The agreement does not set a timetable for Israel's withdrawal.

Israeli officials have also vowed that their forces will remain in a "security zone" 10 kilometres (six miles) deep along the frontier for as long as Hezbollah remains armed.

Lebanon and Israel, which have no formal relations, started negotiations after Hezbollah drew Lebanon into the broader Middle East war by attacking Israel in March.

Lebanon's military said last week that troops had begun intensifying patrols in several villages adjacent to areas occupied by Israeli forces in southern Lebanon, including Froun.

Israeli forces are however present on the outskirts of Zawtar al-Gharbiya.

The Lebanese military said Monday that troops "continue to carry out their missions in the southern regions, including the towns of Froun and Srifa".

"In parallel, coordination is underway with the Military Coordination Group for Lebanon (MCG4L) to begin deployment in the town of Zawtar al-Gharbiya," awaiting Israel's withdrawal from there, the army added.

The framework agreement was reached following a fragile ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah war.

Israel still launches occasional strikes in southern Lebanon and carries out detonations in villages it occupies near the border.

The talks in Rome came ahead of Lebanese President Joseph Aoun's planned meeting with President Donald Trump in Washington on Tuesday.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

Israel and Lebanon trial 'safe zones' in southern Lebanon as part of deal

FRANCE24
Issued on: 21/07/2026 - 

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun is in Washington to meet with US President Donald Trump in the first official visit by a Lebanese head of state since 2009. It comes at a moment of high stakes for the country. Israeli forces are now occupying a significant portion of southern Lebanon following rocket attacks by Hezbollah on northern Israel. Tel Aviv insists that the Iran-backed militia be disarmed before it withdraws, something the Lebanese army is likely unable to accomplish. As a result, Israel has launched a '"pilot programme'" for "safe zones", which effectively sees Israel hand control of three Lebanese villages to the Lebanese Army, as Beirut tries to assert its authority.

Video by: Bryan QUINN

'Mostly symbolic': Does Aoun's White House visit signal a 'new containment strategy towards Iran'?

FRANCE24
Issued on: 21/07/2026 

Eve Irvine is pleased to welcome Nadim Houry, Executive Director of the Arab Reform Initiative. He offers a nuanced assessment of Lebanon's diplomatic and long-term strategic challenges, arguing that President Joseph Aoun's visit to Washington is less about immediate policy breakthroughs than about repositioning Lebanon within an evolving regional order. Houry highlights the interconnected nature of Lebanese politics, Israeli security calculations, U.S. regional strategy, Iranian influence, and Hezbollah's evolving role, suggesting that none of these issues can be understood in isolation.

Video by: Eve IRVINE

Media Cheering a Deal That Puts Lebanon on the Chopping Block for Israel

By Belen Fernandez

July 18, 2026

Source: FAIR

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on June 26 triumphantly announced the “signing of the Trilateral Framework between Lebanon, Israel and the United States.” The document allegedly “builds a realistic path out of endless conflict” between Israel and Lebanon—“the inheritors of ancient civilizations that date back to the time of the Bible.”

According to Rubio:

This agreement establishes a clear and structured process to restore Lebanon’s sovereignty, disarm Hezbollah and dismantle its terrorist infrastructure, and enable Israel to return to its borders once that threat to its citizens is removed.

The framework also creates a cool-sounding “Military Coordination Group for Lebanon (MCG4L), facilitated by the United States.”

As should be immediately clear to anyone who has paid minimal attention to politics over the past 80 years, any US-brokered agreement between the two inheritors of ancient civilizations will automatically be designed to screw over Lebanon in favor of Israel—which has harbored designs on Lebanese territory from the get-go.

As Amnesty International noted, the agreement “betrays victims of war crimes in Lebanon” by essentially blocking their right to seek justice in international forums. It also signs off, Amnesty said, on the “prolonged and indefinite forced displacement of tens of thousands of residents of vast swathes of southern Lebanon occupied by Israeli forces.”

The ‘legitimacy’ of occupation

The Wall Street Journal (6/29/26) hopes an agreement will keep Israelis “in” Lebanon, and “the Iranians”—by which it means Lebanese Shia—”out.”

Since March, Israel has killed at least 4,321 people in Lebanon—despite a series of so-called “ceasefires”—and has issued “evacuation orders” (read: “ethnic cleansing directives”—FAIR.org, 6/11/26) covering no less than one-fifth of the country. One would thus be forgiven for feeling slightly less optimistic than Marco Rubio regarding the potential for a “realistic path out of endless conflict.”

US corporate media, however, have done their best to put a positive spin on things. The Wall Street Journal editorial board took the cake for demented delusion in its June 29 intervention, “Rubio Holds the Line on Hezbollah,” in which it argued that

the US/Israel/Lebanon Trilateral Framework signed Friday focuses on the only real way for Beirut to regain its sovereignty: disarming Hezbollah, Tehran’s Lebanese Shiite proxy.

It bears recalling that Hezbollah’s very existence is the result of Israel’s violent trampling of Lebanese sovereignty. The resistance group formed in the aftermath of the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, which killed tens of thousands of Lebanese and Palestinians and unequivocally placed the Israeli army in the “terrorist” category that Israel prefers to deploy against its victims.

But, as is par for the corporate media course, the Journal provided zero relevant historical context—and took things a step further by arguing that the agreement can somehow put a stamp of validation on Israel’s illegal occupation of Lebanese territory: “The framework also recognizes the legitimacy of the [Israeli] presence in southern Lebanon until Hezbollah is disarmed.”

A veneer of law and order

“The latest conflict began when Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel,” writes AP (via NBC, 6/26/26), “days after Israel and the US launched their war on Iran on February 28,” whereupon “Israel invaded Lebanon.” Israel has actually been occupying part of Lebanon since 1967, and grabbed another chunk of territory in 2024.

As for the eventual Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon that is proposed in the Trilateral Framework, this hinges on the concept of “pilot zones”—a new vocabulary word that has been lapped up by the media and that, like “buffer zone” and “yellow line,” ends up whitewashing Israeli atrocities, endowing mass killing and forced displacement with a veneer of law and order.

The Associated Press (via NBC, 6/26/26) explained that pilot zones are “where the Lebanese army is supposed to take exclusive control of the territory as Israeli troops will withdraw.” But these pilot zones will consist of only “two small areas,” as another AP piece (via Washington Post, 6/27/26) specified, and the framework agreement does “not say where they will be.” AP continued: “The countries will agree to future pilot zones for Israel’s withdrawal in the future, the agreement says.”

What this means—and what the media don’t care to dwell on—is that Israel will continue blowing up people and places in Lebanon while everyone waits to see if the Lebanese army is deemed worthy of handling two itsy-bitsy unidentified areas.

‘To defang Hezbollah’

The New York Times (6/26/26) makes the priorities clear: “The long-term goal… is a peace agreement with Israel in which Lebanon’s government fully disarms Hezbollah…. In return, Israel would end its attacks against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon…and ultimately withdraw entirely from the country.”

The corporate media outlets that do manage to hint at the fact that the occupation will proceed apace do so in as roundabout a fashion as possible—and without ever suggesting that a foreign occupying army is perhaps more of an infringement of “sovereignty” than a domestic resistance movement.

In its June 26 report on the framework agreement, for example, the New York Times went as far as to note that “the limits of the agreement were reflected by a statement” from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who “emphasized not the modest territory Israel says it will give up, but instead the much larger swath of Lebanon that it will continue to occupy.” The Times also mentioned Netanyahu’s refusal to “offer a timeline for the withdrawal, saying only that Israel would allow the Lebanese army to ‘begin organizing’ to take control of the areas.”

And yet, because Israel’s viewpoint is conveyed in an all-important light, the reader is left with the feeling that the real problem is not that a “large swath” of Lebanon remains under the control of a genocidal army that has been literally obliterating entire south Lebanese villages from the face of the earth.

Rather, the problem is that south Lebanon is “home to the Iran-backed proxy group Hezbollah”—and it turns out that Israel alone has the right to decide what should be done about that:

Israeli officials remain deeply skeptical about the prospect of expanding the pilot zones, arguing that the Lebanese army lacks the training, equipment and political will to defang Hezbollah.

The Times presented it as completely appropriate for Israel to be calling the shots—allowing “skeptical” Israeli officials to determine the conditions under which their own illegal occupation of another country might cease. But Israel’s blood-soaked regional track record should make it obvious that Israel itself is the one that needs to be defanged.

In its own writeup of the “pilot program,” headlined “Israel to Withdraw From Two Areas in Lebanon Under Newly Signed Agreement,” CNN (6/27/26) observed that Netanyahu had “described the agreement as a major win for Israel, allowing the Israeli military to remain in much of the territory it occupied in southern Lebanon.” Ongoing occupation notwithstanding, the article framed the deal in a resoundingly positive light—minus one complaint in the very final sentence from Hezbollah Secretary-General Naim Qassem, who criticized the “squandering of Lebanon’s sovereignty.”

‘The ultimate test’

Carine Hajjar (Washington Post, 6/29/26) insists that the point of the Iran War is to stop the “radical Shiite revolution” in Lebanon. She gives no hint that Shia Muslims are about a third of the population of Lebanon—making them the largest faith community there.

For its abominable part, the Wall Street Journal editorial board (6/29/26) proclaimed that “the pilot zones are Lebanon’s best chance to make progress,” by giving the Lebanese army the opportunity to try its hand at “dismantling terror infrastructure” belonging to a “terrorist group” that answers “only to Iran.”

To be sure, one effect of the relentless media portrayal of Hezbollah as a proxy of the ever-vilified Islamic Republic is that it reduces a whole chunk of Lebanon and its inhabitants to a dehumanized terrorist blob, thereby fueling Israeli impunity.

And, as in Palestine, it is always up to the Arabs to prove that they do not deserve to be slaughtered and occupied by Israel, and never up to Israel to simply refrain from slaughtering Arabs and occupying their land. Over at the Washington Post, opinion journalist Carine Hajjar (6/29/26) insisted that “the Lebanese must do more to demonstrate that they are credible partners.” The pilot zones, she maintained, are “the ultimate test: Can the [Lebanese army] keep Hezbollah from operating? Is the Lebanese state ready to prove it can defend its own sovereignty?”

At the end of the day, the “ultimate test” is an infantilizing Orientalist experiment in which a psychopathic occupying army agrees in theory to unoccupy a smidgen of Lebanese land in order to judge whether the Lebanese state is willing to oversee it in a manner compatible with Zionist objectives. And in the meantime, the occupation becomes an irreversible fact on the ground—aided and abetted by corporate media apologetics.

In a media lexicon where self-defense is “terrorism” and occupation is “sovereignty,” a US-backed pilot program in Lebanon fits in perfectly as “progress.” Here’s hoping that one of these days there’ll be a pilot program where the media can try telling the truth.

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This article was originally published by FAIR; please consider supporting the original publication, and read the original version at the link above.Email

Belen Fernandez

Belén Fernández is the author of The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work and Martyrs Never Die: Travels through South Lebanon.

Soon It Will Be Illegal To Oppose Imperialism

By Nate Bear

July 18, 2026

Source: ¡Do Not Panic!

The British government has announced it is going to ban Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, an idea which on the face of it sounds ridiculous.

The IRGC is the primary military branch of another country tasked with defending that country from hostile aggressors.

IRGC soldiers and commanders aren’t lurking in the shadows of Solihull plotting to blow up British politicians, they’re in Tehran, Mashhad, Isfahan and Karaj strategising, as we speak, to repel American and Israeli forces.

So what’s the point, you might ask, in “banning” a branch of another country’s military which is operating thousands of miles away?

The point, and the devil, is in the detail.

The UK government is going to ban the IRGC using the new National Security (State Threats) Act passed earlier this year.

This legislation is even wider than the Terrorism Act under which Palestine Action were banned. Like the Palestine Action ban, the IRGC ban will make it an offence to “express an opinion or belief that is supportive of (the) proscribed organisation,” but will also criminalise “working with, or accepting material benefits from the proscribed group, including….information.”

Both are egregious clauses intended to target anyone who dissents from the official line, but the second appears to be a clear attack on journalism and on journalists who don’t take the approved pro-imperialism, anti-Iran position.

Breaking the law comes with a possible 14-year prison sentence.

It will mean journalists stop quoting the IRGC in their stories or reproducing press releases they publish. The effect, however, will be broader than this. To avoid falling foul of the law and facing prosecution, over-compliance is likely. Journalists will simply stop reporting anything said by official Iranian government figures, for fear of falling foul of the clause prohibiting information from the IRGC being shared.

And the effect is likely to be felt even beyond the UK.

Any journalist in the world who plans on visiting the UK will likely avoid quoting Iranian government officials for the same reason, in case they get arrested on landing in the country.

In the future, there won’t even be a fig leaf of balance to mainstream articles about Iran. Every article about conflict between Iran and the west will be self-censored, and people’s understanding of events, let alone the imperial contours of the world, will erode further. Which is, of course, the point.

The Zionist lobby for years has demanded the British government proscribe the IRGC, but successive governments, including the Tories have refused, because it is nonsensical, reckless, a legal minefield and a clear threat to factual journalism and reporting.

It took the most authoritarian, pro-genocide, Israel-sympathising British government in history to finally do it, and it was celebrated by Zionist media and politicians, including the UK’s presumptive prime minister, Andy Burnham.

And it is no surprise that it has happened now, with Iran under sustained imperial assault, an assault launched, in significant part, from bases in the UK. It is no surprise that with the illegal war on Iran wildly unpopular, and western sympathy for Iran greater than it has ever been as a result, that the British government is looking for ways to criminalise support for those resisting imperialist mass murder.

It’s the Gaza, Israel and Palestine Action playbook all over again.

As soon as a group successfully imposes costs on the US and its sympathisers, as soon as public support switches from the imperial cause and its allies, to the imperial enemy, the British government cries terrorism and threatens to lock up anyone who shows support for the resistors.

The British government isn’t banning the IRGC, a group which has never threatened the UK let alone attacked the country, to make British people safer. It is banning the IRGC to criminalise solidarity with a country under assault by, and successfully resisting, US-led imperialism.

The IRGC is the last line of defence against western hegemony and a Zionist world order which murders whoever it wants, whenever it wants, to get whatever it wants. No other group has fought so successfully against the military forces of imperialism in the last fifty years. This is their only crime.

And very soon, expressing that opinion will be illegal under UK law.

You know what won’t be illegal in the UK? Joining a foreign military which has committed genocide, and helping commit genocide yourself.

It will remain perfectly legal, as a Brit, to join the IDF, go and kill children in Palestine, Lebanon, and wherever else the forces of Zionist expansionism desire, and then come home as if nothing has happened.

And if you don’t want to do the dirty work yourself, you can wave IDF flags, praise genocide and solicit as much financial support for a military committing genocide as you like.

But if you dare express support for the forces fighting that genocidal army, or for the activists disabling the machinery of genocide, or for the protestors spraying graffiti on the war machines, you could face up to 14 years in prison.

To reiterate: it will soon be British law that committing genocide is legal, but speaking supportively of any group fighting to stop genocide is illegal.

The west is monstrous. The loss of legitimacy is total. Free speech, such as it ever was, is dead. Liberalism, such as it ever was, is dead. It died in Gaza, in Tehran and Beirut. It died for Israel, for Netanyahu, for Trump, for Ben Gvir, and for Zionism.

And it won’t stop here. Because it didn’t start with the IRGC. Before them, of course, there was Hamas, and its armed wing Al Qassam, banned as an international terror group despite being entirely local to Palestine, and the only resistance to Israeli genocide. Domestically, before Palestine Action, there was Just Stop Oil, an eco-activist group policed to extinction by British authorities. The UK’s official advisor on terrorism is now suggesting Just Stop Oil along with scores of other left-wing groups be proscribed as terror organisations. The UK’s move follows the classification in the US of “antifa,” (a loose ideology, not an organised entity) as a terror group, which will enable US authorities to go after any and all left-wing causes. It follows the EU sanctioning European journalists for reporting critically on Israel and straying from the anti-Russia line on Ukraine.

The ultimate goal, it seems reasonable to suspect, is the suppression of all anti-imperial causes and opinions, and all left-wing groups which pose a threat to the corporate-capitalist, warmongering, genocidal extinction economy.

From state-sanctioned mass murder being undertaken with impunity, to the suppression of all dissent against that violence, and the building of a coercive technological architecture to enforce acceptable opinion, we’re faced with a set of circumstances which parallel the most frightening dystopias ever imagined.

It’s grim, but it’s not over.

As the world cooks and the imperialists advance, supporting anti-imperial, pro-social groups, causes, and people is becoming the best and last insurance policy against a fully-realised dystopia.

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This article was originally published by ¡Do Not Panic!; please consider supporting the original publication, and read the original version at the link above.