Late Sunday afternoon the United States attacked and seized an Iranian cargo ship in the narrow waterway called the Strait of Hormuz. It did so while a ceasefire had paused the fighting between the two countries, and while the United States was maintaining – despite the ceasefire – a blockade on all shipping going to or from Iranian ports. All of this happened while President Trump was announcing that an American negotiating team, headed by Vice President Vance, was departing to Pakistan for a second round of peace talks. Reasonable people as well as Deep Thinkers struggle to understand by what logic the USA believes that peace talks can proceed while it escalates military operations against Iran.
During the past 24 hours anyone watching news from the Middle East saw a flow of optimistic tweets and death threats streaming from the White House, while Iranian analysts and spokespeople reiterated that no meeting had been agreed to, none of the Iranian “concessions” announced by Trump had been made, and that Iran regarded the continued imposition of a blockade on Iranian ports to be incompatible with the meaning of a ceasefire.
I’ve been wrong more than a few times before in anticipating where this war may be going, but it is hard to shake the fear that negotiations will not take place, that the cease fire will end, and that both the USA and Iran will renew military operations. Also, I fear that Trump is so unhinged by his inability to force Iran to acknowledge that the USA has lost the war that he may make good his threat to “destroy a civilization.” Many thousands may be killed. The world’s economies may plunge into Depression. Chaos may escalate at home. Now is the time when all who value peace must find ways to take effective action to oppose this war.
THE WAR THIS WEEK
Trump’s Erratic Behavior May Tank Negotiations, Iran Says, Warning of “Significantly Greater Costs” to the U.S. if War Resumes
By Jeremy Scahill and Murtaza Hussain, Drop Site News [April 19, 2026]
---- Ahead of a potential new round of negotiations in Islamabad, Iran believes there is a significant chance that President Donald Trump—urged on by Israel—will resume military attacks if a deal is not reached soon, a senior Iranian official told Drop Site. Tehran, the official said, is preparing for a prolonged war during which Iran would cut off all talks with the U.S. While the official said Iran prefers to make a comprehensive deal with the U.S. that would address nuclear enrichment, offer sanctions relief, and establish a long-term non-aggression framework, Tehran believes the window for an agreement is rapidly closing as a result of maximalist U.S. demands and Trump’s erratic behavior. [Read More]
(Video) Former U.S. Envoy & Iranian Nuclear Negotiator Discuss Ceasefire Talks, How War Could End
From Democracy Now! [April 14, 2026]
---- After the first round of ceasefire negotiations in Pakistan collapsed over the weekend, we speak to two former nuclear negotiators about prospects for ending the ongoing U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, including what another nuclear deal might look like. Robert Malley, a U.S. negotiator for the 2015 nuclear deal (which President Trump withdrew from in his first term), says Trump’s “mercurial” behavior makes it difficult to predict his objectives and the course of any future talks. “Iran was in full compliance with the JCPOA” and was blindsided by the U.S.’s decision to pull out of the deal, says Seyed Hossein Mousavian, who served as spokesperson for Iran’s nuclear negotiation team from 2003 to 2005. Now its leaders “don’t know whether the U.S. is really for diplomacy or not.” [See the Program]
(Video) Hormuz Crisis “Only Going to Get More Horrific Before It Gets Any Better”
From Democracy Now! [April 16, 2026]
---- Amid the ongoing crisis in the Strait of Hormuz, we speak with Laleh Khalili, a professor of Gulf studies who researches the shipping and logistics industry and its impact on the global economy. The U.S. implemented a naval blockade on Iran earlier this week, which Khalili says could lead to its military “firing on ships that it assumes are Iranian or carrying oil from Iran or other cargo to Iran.” Iran, in response, could “interpret this as a belligerent action,” ending the fragile ceasefire agreed to by both parties. “Iran is going to defend itself against this imperial imposition, and how it’s going to do that remains to be seen.” Meanwhile, explains Khalili, shipping disruptions in the Gulf have affected the supply chains of key resources including oil, aluminum, helium and fertilizer. “Transportation costs are going to be higher, so food prices are going to be higher; people’s MRIs are going to be scheduled out by six months … semiconductor manufacturing is going to be affected,” Khalili says. “The crisis is only going to get more horrific before it gets any better. ” [See the Program]
NEWS NOTES
On Saturday CFOW held a protest in Hastings against the US-Israel war on Iran. We had a good turnout with lots of enthusiasm. You can see some pictures and video on Facebook. No demo in Hastings, but please join us on May Day, from 2 to 4 pm, as we join the national May Day protests with another shout-out against the war against Iran. To learn more and (please) sign up to join us on May Day, go here.
Veterans for Peace is expanding its expanding its billboard campaign to 13 cities, urging active duty and National Guard troops to “follow the law and their conscience” and refuse illegal orders. Veterans For Peace is doubling the number of billboards since its campaign began in late January. To learn more and see some of the powerful billboards go here.
Happy birthday American Revolution! Today, April 19th, is the anniversary of the battles (in 1775) of Lexington (my home town) and Concord. On that day, a routine search & destroy mission by the British troops occupying Boston was turned back at “the rude bridge that spanned the flood,” and retreated ignominiously to Boston, a military disaster. It is striking that the French mark their revolution from the “storming of the Bastille” prison in 1789, and the Cuban’s do so from Castro’s attack on the Moncada army barracks in 1953, but the Americans omit as the founding of its revolution the victories in 1775, instead turning to the signing of a document in July 1776 by slaveholders, prosperous merchants, and lawyers. Just sayin’.
MAMDANI AND NEW YORK
(Video) Zohran Mamdani on Using Government to Fight for the Many
---- In a speech marking his first 100 days as New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani describes his administration’s accomplishments so far and champions “pothole politics,” a 21st-century version of Milwaukee’s proud tradition of sewer socialism. [See the Program]
CFOW NUTS & BOLTS
Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. Weather permitting we meet for a protest/rally each Saturday in Hastings, at 12 noon at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.) The Northwest Yonkers Neighbors for Black Lives Matter holds a Monday afternoon vigil at 5:30 pm at the corner of Warburton Ave and Odell. The CFOW newsletter can be read on Substack, and is archived at https://cfow.blogspot.com; and news of interest and coming events is posted on our CFOW Facebook group. Another Facebook group focuses on the climate crisis. If you would like to join one of our Zoom meetings, each Tuesday and Thursday at noon, please send a return email for the link. If you would like to support our work by making a CONTRIBUTION, please make out your check to “Frank Brodhead,” write “CFOW” on the memo line, and send your check to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706. Thanks.
REWARDS!
Stalwart newsletter readers already know my admiration for the musical work of Mavis Staples. I have often linked, for example, her rendering of Stephen Foster’s poignant “Hard Times Come Again No More.” This week the The New York Review of Books published an in-depth essay about Staples’ (and her family’s) musical evolution, “She Knows Her Place.” So our Rewards this week start off with a short video, “We’ll Never Turn Back,” in which she describes the family’s engagement with MLKing, Jr. and the civil rights movement. You can hear all the music from that album here, starting with “Down in Mississippi.” Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW WEEKLY READER
FEATURED ARTICLES & ESSAYS
How Many People Have the US and Israel Killed in Iran?
By Medea Benjamin and Nicholas J.S. Davies, Code Pink [April 14,2026]
---- After the breakdown of talks in Pakistan, the ceasefire between the US and Iran is more fragile than ever, and now seems likely to give way to a new phase of the war. The ceasefire and talks have failed to end Israel’s devastating attacks on Lebanon or to negotiate international access to the Strait of Hormuz, now under Iran’s control. The world must use this pause in the war to push for a permanent ceasefire and peace agreement, but we must also start to assess the true human cost of the war–something the US is always reluctant to do in its wars, from Vietnam to Iraq to Afghanistan. While we always know the exact number of Americans killed in these wars, we never have an accurate tally of how many people we have killed–not only because it is often hard to get the data, but also because the US systematically downplays civilian casualties and treats their lives as less valuable. [Read More]
Will Blockade of Hormuz Reshape Global Energy?
By Sidra Shaukat, Middle East Monitor [April l17, 2026]
---- The Strait of Hormuz is a single waterway that at its narrowest point is barely 33 kilometers, but its significance is understated as it can disrupt global energy flow and halt economies. After the United States and Israel launched joint strikes against Iran on 28th February 2026, to effect a regime change, Iran took retaliatory action by effectively blockading the Strait of Hormuz in March. This move resulted in a nightmare for states depending heavily on the Gulf States’ oil and gas. Now, after its closure, the Strait of Hormuz stands between the world and an energy catastrophe of historic proportions. What began as a targeted military campaign to change the Iranian regime and neutralize its nuclear and missile program has turned into one of the most severe energy security crisis in the world. The crisis of Hormuz also uncovered two uncomfortable truths about energy politics. The first is that the global energy structure is vulnerable because it is based on the routes that pass through a handful of geographical chokepoints. The second point is that during such a geopolitical catastrophe, some suffer while others profit from the chaos. Understanding both is essential to making sense of the world after Hormuz. [Read More]
United States Nuclear Weapons, 2026
By Hans M. Kristensen, et al.,The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists [March 12, 2026]
---- The United States has embarked on a wide-ranging nuclear modernization program that will ultimately see every nuclear delivery system replaced with newer versions over the coming decades. In this issue of the Nuclear Notebook, we estimate that the United States maintains a stockpile of approximately 3700 warheads—an unchanged estimate from the previous year. Of these, only about 1770 warheads are deployed, while approximately 1930 are held in reserve. Additionally, approximately 1342 retired warheads are awaiting dismantlement, giving a total inventory of approximately 5042 nuclear warheads. Of the approximately 1770 warheads that are deployed, 400 are on land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, roughly 970 are on submarine-launched ballistic missiles, 300 are at bomber bases in the United States, and approximately 100 tactical bombs are at European bases. [Read More]
THE WAR ON PALESTINE
‘I Felt I Was a Monster’: IDF Soldiers Talk About the ‘Moral Injury’ – and the Silence
By Tom Levinson, Ha’aretz [Israel] [April 17, 2026]
---- “When we got to our destination, I realized that these weren’t terrorists. It was an old guy and three boys, maybe teenagers. Not one of them was armed. But their bodies were riddled with bullets; their organs were pouring out. I had never seen anything like that so close up. I remember there was silence; nobody uttered a word. Then the battalion commander came over with his people and one spat on the bodies and yelled, ‘This is what happens to anybody who messes with Israel, you sons of bitches.’ I was in shock, but I kept quiet because I’m a loser, just a gutless coward.” Yuval was discharged about three months later. He took two weeks off and went back to his job. “They threw a party for me when I was discharged, applauded me and called me a hero,” he says. “But I felt I was a monster. I couldn’t bear the things they said to me. I felt they didn’t realize that I wasn’t a good person; just the opposite.”
[Read More]
(Podcast) A Genocide Scholar Asks “What Went Wrong” in Israel
The New Yorker Radio Hour (h/t AC)
---- Omer Bartov is an Israeli professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University. He grew up in a Zionist home and served as an officer in the Israel Defense Forces, but he has long been concerned about Israel’s use of military power. In a new book called “Israel: What Went Wrong?,” Bartov argues that Zionism has morphed into an ideology of extremism that led to genocide in Gaza following the Hamas attacks of October 7th. “There is growing criticism of American support for these kinds of Israeli policies, both on the American left and on the American right,” Bartov tells David Remnick. Bartov believes that Israel requires “shock therapy” because “it has not still come to identify the limits of its own power, because those limits are in Washington, DC and it’s there that those limits have to be set.” “For Israel, that would be good, because I think Israel needs to be liberated from that kind of dependence on American power. I think, for American society and for American Jewry, that’s a very bad thing because there is a rise of . . . antisemitism from the Tucker Carlsons of the world, who are a rising force right now.” [Listen to the Program]
THE WAR IN LEBANON
(Video) “Scorched-Earth Campaign”: Israel Uses “Gaza Playbook” to Turn Southern Lebanon into Rubble
From Democracy Now! [April 15, 2026]
---- Israeli forces continue to bombard towns in southern Lebanon today, according to Lebanese state media. Several people were killed in a strike on the coastal town of Ansariya. According to Lebanon’s Health Ministry, Israeli attacks have killed over 2,100 people, wounding nearly 7,000. Over 1 million Lebanese have been displaced, and 40,000 homes have been destroyed or heavily damaged. We go to Beirut, where we’re joined by investigative journalist Lylla Younes. Her family’s village in the southern border municipality of Bint Jbeil was bombed yesterday. “It’s not just real estate that is lost when these homes are destroyed. It’s not just a house. Our grandparents built these structures,” says Younes. “What the world should know is that we will return to these villages, and when we do, we’ll return to rubble, and it will be an immense process of rebuilding.” She notes the Israeli military is using the same tactics in Lebanon as in Gaza, having flattened not only homes, but “vast swaths of Gaza’s cultural heritage, universities, mosques, archives.” [See the Program
WAR ON CUBA?
A Plea to Save Cuba
By Phil Wilson, Znet [April 13, 2026]
---- As Cuba teeters on the brink of an escalating US assault, my thoughts drift back to a trip my wife and I took to Havana and Trinidad (the Cuban city) in 2017. Shelly and I fell madly in love with a place so strangely unique that it wrestles with your intuitive sense of possibility. Everything in Havana screams of paradox, of things that cannot possibly coexist anywhere else. If Trump and his goons destroy Cuba the loss will be immeasurable. At the risk of seeming hyperbolic – when the Cuban revolution dies, the planet will be a shell of itself. For Cuba may be the global leader in the three most precious resources on earth – music, imagination and resilience. [Read More]
THE CLIMATE CRISIS
Big Oil Breaks Everything
By Bill McKibben [April 19, 2026]
---- When I started writing about the climate crisis in the 1980s I was in my twenties, and I didn’t fully comprehend that there could be a force on this planet so steeped in greed and power that it would sacrifice the earth and its inhabitants for its own narrow interests. But there is, and it’s Big Oil. Over time their evil came into ever-sharper focus. During the 1990s it was clear they were organizing opposition to action on global warming—the CEO of Exxon famously insisted that the planet was cooling. Right after the 2000 election the heads of the oil companies held secret meetings with new vice-president Dick Cheney and soon thereafter George W. Bush reneged on his promise to treat carbon dioxide as a pollutant. And Big Oil mobilized to defeat the cap-and-trade proposals at the end of that decade and to scuttle the Copenhagen climate talks. What we didn’t know then was just exactly how vile all this greedy maneuvering really was: it wasn’t until 2015 that reporters delving into archives and interviewing whistleblowers proved that the Exxons of the world had known everything there was to know about climate change back in the ‘80s and simply chosen to lie about it. It’s never far from my mind what a different planet we’d live on had they simply fessed up at the start and gotten to work on the problem. [Read More]
THE STATE OF THE UNION
Democrats Are Split Over What It Means to Block Israel Weapons Deals
By Jonah Valdez, The Intercept [April 19 2026]
---- Ending U.S. military aid to Israel is now the mainstream position among Democratic leaders. In a historic Senate vote on Wednesday, all but seven members of the Democratic caucus voted for at least one of two resolutions to block the sale of bombs and bulldozers to Israel’s military. Other prominent Democrats and potential 2028 presidential candidates, including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.; Ro Khanna, D-Calif.; and former Obama aide Rahm Emanuel have recently said the U.S. should halt all military aid to Israel for offensive and so-called defensive weapons. The idea of steering public funding to those responsible for the genocide in Gaza has plummeted in popularity, with polls consistently show a majority of Americans now oppose sending weapons to Israel. As Americans struggle with affordability amid the joint U.S.–Israel war on Iran, skepticism about military aid for Israel has only grown. Yet amid this shift, a quieter debate is stirring in the American left over how far Democrats should go in blocking weapons to Israel. [Read More]
OUR HISTORY
Young Communists Grow Older
By Paul Buhle, Counterpunch [April 13, 2026]
[FB – This is a review of Red Lives: Our Years in the US Communist Party Volume One, Coming of Age in the Communist and Labor Movements. The book can be downloaded for free.]
---- If the Popular Front of the 1930s Wartime and the alliance of the US with Russia marked the high point of Communist activity and influence in the US and in much of the rest of the world, the Cold War and the revelations of Russia under Stalin’s rule seemed likely to finish off the comparatively weak CPUSA. But not quite. Pockets of highly skilled veterans and determined loyalists remained, even when alienated by a split in 1957 that left hard-liner Gus Hall in charge on his return from prison two years later. These hardy survivors would be found, especially, in support movements for peace and racial equity. They were admired locally in many places. for their expertise and determination. They continued to play a valuable leadership role in a handful of unions, more quietly. From at least the early 1960s onward, as the Cold War eased and the Cuban Revolution triumphed, scatterings of young people on campuses and elsewhere found themselves close to the CP and the happier parts of its complicated history. Who were they, these several thousand who mostly did not join the New Left? Many carried on the work of the parents, even when dad, mom or grandparents had been forced into silence by the persecution of the FBI. More than a few set themselves to blue-collar life around workplaces and remained there, something unusual for a generation that, by the thousands, left the campus determined to organize, but found themselves unable to sustain the effort. [Read More]
Breaking the Hard Ground: Class Confidence From the Flint Sit-Downs to Today
By Garrett Shishido Strain, Damage Magazine [December 22, 2025]
---- On February 11, 1937—44 days after their occupations of the Fisher Body No. 1 and No. 2 plants began in Flint, Michigan—General Motors workers won a landmark agreement. The one-page document included commitments to union recognition and collective bargaining over wages, seniority, work-life balance, and other working conditions, and a prohibition on discrimination or retaliation against union members. In a supplementary letter sent to Michigan Governor Murphy, GM also agreed, for a six-month period, not to support or bargain with company unions, or any organization of GM workers other than the United Auto Workers. … What enabled a relatively small group of workers to engage in such dramatic action, and more importantly, what made them correct to assume that they had a majority of coworkers on their side? What made Flint workers believe that a successful sit-down was possible—especially when there was real potential for supervisors, police, and anti-union workers to violently suppress their occupation? As the UAW celebrates its ninetieth anniversary this year amidst an all-out assault by the billionaire class, returning to these questions of organization is more important than ever for charting labor’s future. [Read More]
