As I have already noted this morning, Donald Trump appears to have conceded that the USA has suffered a major military defeat in its war, in collaboration with Israel, against Iran, which has dominated the world for more than five weeks.
After spending what US sources estimate to be more than $30 billion on the war, with more costs still to come, the 10-point plan that he has agreed appears to cede regional power in the Gulf to Iran, committing the USA to pay for reparations and granting control of the Strait of Hormuz to the government in Tehran.
As I have stressed in another post this morning, it would be naive at this moment to think that this is the last word on this war. The supposed ceasefire plan requires that Israel cease its hostilities, including in Lebanon, and it has already indicated that it has no intention of doing so. In that case, this ceasefire might be decidedly temporary and might, in retrospect, look like an exercise designed to provide Donald Trump with the opportunity to back down from his threats. In that case, the relief currently being witnessed on the world's financial markets, where share prices are up, and oil prices are markedly down (although by no means at their pre-war level), may be decidedly premature. In my opinion, the likelihood that this war is really over does not seem very high this morning.
Nonetheless, some conclusions can be drawn, and there are observations that must be made.
Firstly, as has been widely recognised, Trump threatened genocide yesterday. The fact that he did not deliver it makes no difference. The threat was made by a US president and appears to have been real. It seems likely that Iran took it seriously. That such a thing could happen, and that the words that he used, suggesting that he would annihilate a civilisation, means that Trump should now be treated as the pariah that he is by all other states around the world. He threatened one of the most serious crimes known to humanity with the apparent intention of undertaking it. That was, in the terms of politics and international relations, unforgivable.
No nation should ever go where Trump took the USA yesterday. In a reasonable world, the USA would now be suspended from the United Nations, be subject to sanctions, and Trump would be ostracised by all nations around the world. Instead, King Charles is still scheduled to make a state visit to the USA later this month, raising new concerns and causing justified anxiety for all those in this country who believe in the importance of human rights, equality, respect, and mutual cooperation as the basis for human life. Even if some politicians, like Keir Starmer, continue to conform to Trump, no one should be under any illusion. Trump's status has been irreparably, and rightly, damaged both by what he said before this supposed ceasefire and, in geopolitical terms, by the terms of his surrender.
Secondly, and again, whatever happens, the consequence of this ceasefire is profound. There is no hint of US victory contained within it. It would appear, so far, that it has surrendered on all fronts whilst establishing Iran as the de facto regional power in the Gulf. A military defeat on this scale will have profound consequences for the US role in the world. It might have been damaged by the war in Vietnam, but this defeat feels more significant. It demonstrates the limitations of the US military threat. It makes clear that superior firepower cannot guarantee military victory. It makes clear that modern warfare is fundamentally different from that in the past because simple technologies are now undermining sophisticated weaponry, whilst economic factors count more than ever. World power will change as a result. That is an inevitable consequence of what has happened.
Thirdly, as it is apparent that Israel is continuing its assault in Lebanon this morning, ignoring the apparent conditions of the ceasefire, it is clear that Israel is both a rogue state and beyond the control of the USA, meaning that the need for action to constrain its aggression is more important than ever. Sanctions, bans on weapon exports, the ending of diplomatic relations, expulsion from the United Nations, and more are the least we should now expect. The biggest threat to world peace can now be fairly described as Israel, as this current war has demonstrated.
Fourthly, NATO is finished. It will take decades for the USA to restore its international credibility following Trump's actions, none of which can be ignored because they were taken as the US president. In the meantime, Europe and Canada need to reappraise their defence needs anew, to think about the world as it now is, and to work together to put in place measures that deliver freedom from fear for the people who live within them.
Fifthly, the need to remove fossil fuels from our economies is ever more pressing. This war proves that. Climate change demands that this take place. Investment in renewable energy and all associated technologies is now vital to our future, whilst working out how we can live in a world with substantially lower oil consumption is the greatest economic imperative of the present.
Sixthly, we cannot be sure that we have avoided the threat of famine that could arise as a consequence of disruption to fertiliser supplies. That may not happen, but we do not know, and should not rely upon it. Appreciation of the vulnerability of so many populations around the world, dependent as they are on immensely fragile economic environments, including desalination plants, should be a wake-up call to the need to build economic resilience for the people of this planet so that they might have a chance of survival. At the risk of being repetitious, I suggest that my theme of freedom from fear is particularly relevant here.
Seventh, in all this, we have to realise that toxic, fascist politics driven by anti-Muslim sentiment represents a political agenda that is still threatening world peace. It would appear that this sentiment is what drove Trump and his regime to their extreme positions. The same sentiment is driving the Tory, Reform, and Restore parties in the UK to similarly extreme positions, based on the politics of hate. Unless we wake up and understand the toxicity of these positions and the hate that they deliberately inspire, we will not deal with the political threats that we now face.
There will be more ramifications of this war. The likelihood that our economy will avoid depression as a consequence of what has happened, particularly given the fact that Rachel Reeves appears determined to still work within wholly inappropriate, made-up fiscal constraints, is very low. At a time when we need political certainty and courage, the chance that Labour will supply it is incredibly low. The ramifications of that are themselves severe and can only exacerbate the threat we face from the far right, whom Labour appears determined to enable at the cost of undermining its own political future.
The one thing we can say for certain is that the consequences of this war are a long way from over as yet, even if the war itself does end, which is itself unknown.
I said in a video yesterday that everything will change as a result of this war. I continue to think that I was right. We may not have had World War III, but the ramifications of this war will make it feel as though we have, so significant in scale will they be. If, by chance, we have peace this morning, the challenge that it represents is enormous. Whether we can address the questions it poses is unknown. If ever there was a day when we are required to live in hope, this is it.
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Sadly I do not expect Trump, the US and Israel to honour any ceasefire and cement anything concrete in a enforceable peace treaty.
Iran is now a world power. The Gulf ruling families face extinction. The world is a very different place than it was in February.
Will the UK government wake up to the reality? There no signs that they even begin to understand the massive changes that have taken place in world politics.
The UK needs to pivot to the EU for a stable market, joint defence, with the rapid reduction in fossil fuels with a full subsidy programme for all homes. Yes we can afford.
Neoliberalism is shown as failing. Will the UK population be given the chance for change?
Regrettably not by the current UK elites. But there is a golden opportunity for pushing for change.
Trump has achieved Made America Weak. China now controls US production of chips, military hardware etc through its licencing of rare earth metals.
Israel has been, again, the main initiator of this war/non-war. Via its agent Kushner, Trump was told there was no deal to be had with Iran & yet various diplomats (including the brits) thought a deal was on the table. The Kushner family (pere & fils) have close personal ties to Net&yahoo. Thus does the Israeli tail wag the US dog.
DDN had a ghastly video profiling the attitude of Israeli jews: https://www.patreon.com/posts/israel-footage-154995866?post_id=154995866
Israel is fascist, apartheid and imperial state (the invasion of Lebanon is aimed at seizing permanently much of Southern lebanon). The reasons why the current UK gov’ says nothing is clear (it is mostly zionist). The silence from the EU, is puzzling. Israel has been the instigator of all the violence in the middle east for 70+ years. Until Israel is dealt with, there will never be peace in the Middle East & there are plenty of 100% peacful options t0 deal with Israel: diplomatic/commercial isolation & sealed borders being easy to implement. Not UK party will get my vote unless they commit to the immediate closure of the Israeli embassy and the explusion of all Israeli diplomats and Israeli citizens from the country, plus the prescution of the circa 2000 UK dual passport holders that took part in the recent Gaza genocide (if found guilty they should be stripped of Uk citizenship and expelled from the country – love Israel? go live there).
Gianluca Vialli said wisely ‘You either win or you learn’.
His was a very positive spin on losing – in fact not spin really – losing but learning something from the loss. Some of the greatest human learning is in mistakes and loss.
Rather than pointing out a loss, maybe we should encourage Donald to LEARN the limits of his power and help some of his countrymen do that as well.
I say this in all seriousness; to truly win, Trump would have to wipe Iran off the face of the earth. We did not wake up to that this morning and that is a good thing. Let us encourage his learning and not celebrate his losing – don’t even mention it.
Calmness and care with language now please is very, very important.
” The biggest threat to world peace can now be fairly described as Israel, as this current war has demonstrated.” Exactly. Surely the time has come for the tide to turn, and the rest of the world condemn and isolate them. Starmer will of course resist that, but the wrong side of history is his default setting.
From Bill Blain this morning.
“It looks like the beneficiaries are China and Pakistan. Pakistan’s last-hour intervention to broker a ceasefire was brokered through World Liberty Financial founder Zac Witkoff, son of Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff, working with his crypto Bros in Islamabad. The Trump brothers are on the board of World Liberty.
Pakistan is now American’s regional sounding board. Premier Shehbaz Shariff and Field Marshal Asim Munir are Trump’s closest friends in Asia – ever since Trump insulted Indian Premier Narendra Modi over the deal he claimed to have personally sorted-out during the last outbreak of fisticuffs between the two states. Trump believes he has a relationship with Pakistan. You see how this works: not state diplomacy, but crony capitalism.
That’s not a good look when trying to sell US Treasury Bonds… The surest way to bankrupt a nation is through debasement, corruption and the breakdown of the rule of law.
The reality is Pakistan is very close to China – it was Chinese stand off Anti-Air missiles that administered a slapping to the Indian Airforce last year. Yet again Trump is aligning the USA with the China/Russia axis.
Meanwhile… what will Europe do? Trust is finite thing.”
Interesting
Thank you
“Trump threatened genocide yesterday”
Trump is viewed ads mentally incapacitated. Everyone is just biding their time until he is out of office.
“The supposed ceasefire plan requires that Israel cease its hostilities, including in Lebanon, and it has already indicated that it has no intention of doing so.”
Israel, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, is a rouge state. The US voters have awaken from their sleep and now see this with eyes wide open regardless of their political party affiliation.
Everyone just biding their time is not good enough. Trump has the nuclear controls. Action has to be taken to remove him from power. Only the people of the US can do that.
How? There is no mechanism available to them.
Richard wrote “How? There is no mechanism available to them.”
I’m well aware of and not in disagreement with all the arguments against an hereditary monarchy, but it does provide an insurance policy of last resort against an elected leader who goes rouge. Both Trump and Putin became head of state through lawful elections but neither can be immediately removed from power by non-violent means.
Should an elected Prime Minister in the UK decide to go so far outside international law, use the armed forces against their own people or attempt to stay in power by force or by corrupting the legal process then the monarch can refuse to approve the relevant laws and dissolve parliament, instantly removing all authority from that individual. The ultimate commander of the armed forces and the police is the monarch, not the PM, so it does not ultimately require acts of mutiny from service personnel to undermine their misuse, the king can command a return to barracks.
The constitutional monarchy also helps prevent a personality cult developing round a political leader. No Wilson, Thatcher or Johnson could pull a crowd like Elizabeth II could.
These powers have never been used and we all hope the democratic process never collapses to the point that they have to be, but they are there as a last resort. There is no perfect way to govern a country, we can only struggle to work out the least-worst option and, as we are seeing now, the merit and effectiveness of any constitution or government mechanism depends on the individuals holding the various offices at the time.
Kit
You are deluding yourself.
In a constitutional monarchy the monarch must have and does not have any power or we have no democracy at all.
You are arguing against democracy.
Keep doing that and you have no space here. Yours is an argument from the far right.
Richard
Great troubles ensue when simple minds believe in simple solutions to complex problems, like MAGA,
(It turned out to be cant Make All billionaires Great Again)
Byline Times important expose of the depth and wealth of what is essentially MAGA in the UK. Shocking in its extent and financial power.
https://bylinetimes.com/2026/04/07/james-orr-and-the-messianic-transatlantic-maga-alliance-trying-to-save-britain/
“Why Nations Fail” is a good book on how those at the top don’t like progress. Even in the poorest countries, those at the top are quite happy with the way thing are. You will find they still live in luxury and leisure and everything is working fine for them. Progress is always a struggle between those below and those at the top. The Magna Carta represents the triumph of those below, the Barons, over those at the top, the Absolute Monarch, who was quite happy with the way things were. Royalty spent centuries trying to get back the power they had lost with the Magna Carta. Progress involves wealth and power becoming less concentrated. Those at the top like progress in the reverse direction back to when wealth and power were more concentrated. The progress of the Keynesian era was not liked by many at the top and they soon set to work. They formed the Mont Pelerin Society in 1947 to produce a new liberalism (neoliberalism) that learnt from past mistakes. As time moved on, they gradually forgot about the old problems and produced something that was just cosmetically different. As it was fundamentally the same, they could underpin it with the same economics, neoclassical economics, which had the same old problems it’s always had. Rolling neoclassical economics out globally has allowed it to reveal its flaws and we can now see what it always was. Neoclassical economics is a pseudo economics; it’s more about hiding the discoveries of the classical economists than telling you how an economy actually works. At the lowest level it confuses money and wealth. We thought small state, unregulated capitalism was something that it wasn’t as our ideas came from neoclassical economics which has little connection with classical economics.
It is not like this is the first time USA has attacked civilian infrastructure, in 1993 the USA destroyed 75% of Iraq’s electricity supply, they got away with it then and will do in the future!
My understanding is that this 10 point plan is what Iran has proposed. The US has a 15 point list. The discussions starting on Friday in Islamabad will be attempting to close the gap, although the 10 and 15 points respectively are complete opposites.
So, I don’t think we can say that Trump has surrendered or lost yet. I think Iran still holds the stronger hand, but perhaps recognised that the US does indeed have the ability to seriously destroy much of Iran’s key modern infrastructure if they chose to, and from what Trump was saying yesterday, perhaps gave Iran a reason to agree a ceasefire for the moment. After all, it is unlikely many US weapons will be newly manufactured in 2 weeks to replenish the massive amount they have already used, to make much of a difference if war restarts.
I wonder if it also gives Iran the opportunity to issue new orders to their various forces around the country, as I imagine at the moment that communications are extremely difficult, especially as they would not want to generate electronic signals that could be traced and loaded then into a targeting database for later use by the US and Israel. For example, 2 weeks should give time to move instructions by hand across the whole country. Even the constant survelliance they will be under from satellites, drones and spy planes will have trouble tracking ordinary looking people moving around carrying sealed envelopes or whatever.
Iran will also be able to build more munitions in that time frame than the US and Israel.
No one is saying Iran agreed to talk about Trump’s plan
Trump is reported to have agreeed to talk about Iran’s plan.
I don’t think Iran has agreed anything you suggest.
I think it offered Trump a way out and he grabbed it.
Well, I bloody well hope that that is what Trump has done and although I can’t stand him and his folly, we should congratulate him for that at least.
Has this generation lived through it’s own Cuban Missile crisis? I hope so.
Rosa Luxembourg, writing during WW1:
“The ultimate choice facing nations in today’s world is between socialism and barbarism.”
Michael Hudson quoted RL at the end of a very percepive speech about American exceptionalism and where it is leading the world. He was speaking in 2019.
https://michael-hudson.com/2019/07/u-s-economic-warfare-and-likely-foreign-defenses/
It isn’t beyond my pay grade to follow his argument – and those who *were* paid to follow such hegomonic movements from America obviously weren’t worth the cheque. Logical progressions take his audience from Clinton to Trump, from Venezuela (first time round) to Iran.
Hudson’s summary is that the growing group of nations opposing America’s blackmail need concerted action to isolate the country: close all the borders from the outside. And thus Luxenbourg’s dictum.
I agree with him