The ceasefire is not a gift from Donald Trump. It’s the result of a temporary exhaustion of the machinery of death. Killing costs money, after all, and even the West can only dress up its carnage as a fight against terror for so long before the façade starts to crack. There’s also the matter of balancing the books: war is expensive, and maintaining lucrative ties with Arab sheikhs—men who might not care for Palestine but can’t afford to ignore the slaughter of their neighbors—has its price.
The spark for this round of devastation was struck on October 7 by Hamas. Their decision to launch an attack wasn’t just reckless; it was cruel. Reckless because they had no plan for what came next. Cruel because their leadership, as Khaled Mashal admitted, did not care what Israel’s retaliation would mean for the people of Gaza. No amount of righteous anger excuses such thoughtlessness. In doing what they did, Hamas turned its back on decades of Palestinian resistance—resistance that, for all its suffering, carried the wisdom of survival.
This isn’t about terror, though terror is undeniably in the mix. It’s a power struggle, plain and simple. The so-called war on terror, launched in the shadow of 9/11, didn’t make anyone safer. It didn’t weaken the Islamist networks that supposedly threaten the West, nor did it bring security to Europe or America. Instead, it stoked sectarian flames across the Middle East, flames eagerly fed by factions claiming to resist imperialism even as they clawed for dominance.
Palestine, though, is where it all collides. The United States and the Islamic movements don’t meet in Afghanistan or Iraq; they meet in Gaza, in the West Bank, in every open wound carved by settler colonialism. But don’t be fooled: this isn’t about solving the Palestinian question or fighting Islamic terrorism. America’s agenda has always been hegemony. Its military campaigns, dressed in the language of liberation, have one goal: to secure its place as the world’s singular power, using crises like 9/11 as opportunities to tighten its grip.
And the Islamists? They’re playing the same game. Their terror campaigns aren’t born from the suffering of Palestinians or even the long history of Western oppression. No, they’re about survival, about holding onto relevance in a world where their grip is slipping. The Islamic Republic of Iran, for all its chest-thumping and anti-Western bravado, waves its white flag higher than ever. What they call resistance is nothing more than a desperate attempt to shore up political capital in societies that rightly see the United States and Israel as architects of their misery.
But make no mistake: peace in the Middle East—real peace, with a free Palestine and an end to the apartheid and occupation—would spell the end of the Islamic movements’ power. Their lifeblood is the chaos, the deepening of national, ethnic, and religious divides. Terrorism is their tool to keep these wounds festering, to ensure the struggle remains a source of political capital and not a pathway to justice.
For Western non-governmental and so-called progressive factions, the matter never moves beyond opposing authoritarian and colonial policies of the Western states. And in their fantasies, they go so far as to call fascism, resistance! These groups show no concern for the local realities or the essence of the struggles taking place. Solidarity, for them, becomes nothing more than an empty slogan—a tool in service of authoritarian states like the Islamic Republic, which claim to oppose the West while embodying everything oppressive and reactionary.
What’s needed isn’t just a rejection of the West’s lies or the Islamists’ cynicism. It’s a movement rooted in the people, independent of the forces that profit from this unending violence. The truth of these conflicts—buried beneath the propaganda of war and the rhetoric of both camps—must be unearthed and shared widely. Because what’s unfolding here, the policies of US and its military machine, has consequences that ripple far beyond Gaza’s borders. It reshapes the world, alters its very political and intellectual fabric.
Update:
The editor of Kayhan, a newspaper controlled by Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, in response to statements by Masoud Pezeshkian, the regime’s president, about the possibility of direct negotiations with the United States, he wrote in his editorial: “Trump can only come to Iran under one condition—if he is brought here—to face punishment for ordering the assassination of General Qassem Soleimani. If Trump comes to Tehran, we’ll deliver retribution.”
Let’s not sugarcoat it: when officials of the Islamic regime speak like this so publicly, it’s obvious that negotiations between the Islamic regime and the United States (likely under Russian mediation) are happening at a level far beyond what we can see or even imagine. The editor, a figure deeply tied to the regime’s conservative faction, wouldn’t frame Trump’s hypothetical visit to Tehran in such overtly threatening terms unless these talks were serious enough to provoke internal tensions.
If we connect the dots, broader changes in the Middle East are likely being mapped out in these shadowy negotiations. The end of Assad’s rule in Syria, a ceasefire in Gaza and perhaps even a comprehensive resolution to the Kurdish question in Turkey—these could all be pieces of a larger puzzle. What we’re seeing isn’t just diplomacy; it’s a recalibration of power in the region, where the Islamic regime is trying to navigate between survival and relevance.
It’s undeniable that Iranian society is grappling with two major crises. First, there’s the crisis of governance. The Islamic Republic, a regime both fascistic and totalitarian, is facing a legitimacy crisis among the Iranian people. For over four decades, the regime has managed to contain its cyclical crises through brutal and violent repression. But these crises haven’t gone away—in fact, they’ve grown more severe, each one deepening the fractures within the state.
This is precisely the key point that most Western analysts overlook. There’s a persistent, and frankly racist, tendency to erase the agency and social dynamics within Iran, reducing events to mere interactions between state actors. This approach not only dehumanizes the Iranian people but also perpetuates a dangerously narrow perspective on the region. The protests, strikes, and grassroots movements in Iran are not incidental—they are central to understanding the trajectory of the country.
Second, there’s the international crisis. The regime’s foreign policies have brought Iran to a point where, as Pezeshkian put it, negotiation has become the only option left. This predicament is not a new invention but a continuation of the Pahlavi regime’s legacy of expanding regional influence and power—now cloaked in the rhetoric of Islamism and anti-imperialism. The Islamic regime has simply added its own ideological branding to a strategy rooted in regional dominance.
After Raisi’s death, regime officials openly admitted to the existence of secret negotiations that reportedly date back to before October 7. Yet, the focus has been deliberately kept on Zionism and its impact on U.S. politics as the core of the problems. This selective narrative has diverted international attention and analysts from the broader secret negotiations and agreements being shaped between the three key regional players. Russia and the Islamic Republic both stand to benefit from Trump comeback, further underscoring the strategic calculations behind these covert discussions.
What’s particularly striking here is how the regime maneuvers between these two crises. On the one hand, it’s clinging to its fragile grip on power domestically, hoping repression will buy it more time. On the other, it’s trying to leverage its international position through diplomacy and secret deals to ensure its survival. These two fronts—internal and external—aren’t separate; they’re deeply interconnected. Every move the regime makes abroad has direct implications for its hold over Iranian society, and vice versa.
What you think?