Trump and Israel have lost their war against Iran. Despite the terrible damage inflicted on Iran, Iran’s ability to control or restrict oil production, and its ability to hit US bases in the region, have forced Trump to agree to negotiations within the framework of Iran’s ceasefire proposal. Can this war be ended?
The breakdown of the US-Iran negotiations in Pakistan raises doubts that peace will come soon. The further escalation by the Trump people – sending navy ships into the Strait of Hormuz during the ceasefire – may also portend that the war fighting may escalate drastically, leading to (among other things) extensive damage to the world’s economies.
But it is also possible, as several essays linked below suggest, that the United States recognizes that it has essentially lost the war, painting itself into a corner from which there is no exit with a victory lap. This is presumably what the US military leaders, if allowed to speak, would tell Trump; but there is also strong evidence that Trump is getting his military “advice” from his “feelings” and his “bones.” Trump is making Nixon’s “Madman Theory” look like the height of reasonableness.
At the end of the day, Trump’s main problem may be how to control Israel: how to make Israel stop fighting when the US decides that this is what must be done. Iran is unlikely to allow the US to “negotiate” an ending to the war that does not also bind the US to forcing Israel to end its fighting as well.
The importance of the US-Israel linkage is illustrated by the refusal of the US to comply with what was apparently an earlier agreement that would have included Israel’s war against Lebanon as part of the ceasefire. Why did/does Israel refuse to halt its war on Lebanon? Israel is motivated to continue its war for (at least) two reasons. The first is that Israel wants the US to continue its war on Iran, and blocking ceasefire negotiations is a step towards this end. Since the 1990s, Israel has sought to drag the US into a war against Iran. Now it has its chance, and doesn’t want to lose it. The second reason why Israel wants to continue its war on Lebanon is that, for 75 years, Israel has wanted to annex southern Lebanon to Israel. They want to continue this war.
In the coming days, peace activists will have to endure a tsunami of lies from the Trump people about Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, and (very likely) will have to witness the doubling-down of military aggression on Iran, Lebanon, and the Palestinians. We will face challenges brought on by the “patriotic” news coverage of the corporate media. Under these circumstances, perhaps the best we can do is to work to gain clarity about what is happening in the Middle East, and to reiterate our message that a peaceful path is possible.
ILLUMINATING THE US-ISRAEL WAR ON IRAN
The War Is Turning Iran Into a Major World Power
By Robert A. Pape, New York Times [April 6,2026]
---- In recent years, the conventional geopolitical wisdom has been that the world order was moving toward three centers of power: the United States, China and Russia. That view assumed that power derived primarily from economic scale and military capability. That assumption no longer holds. A fourth center of global power is quickly emerging — Iran — that does not rival those three nations economically or militarily. Instead, its newfound power derives from its control over the most important energy choke point in the global economy, the Strait of Hormuz. … The Iran war is not a military conflict from which the United States can simply back out, with things reverting to how they were before. Iran would surely demand a heavy price in a new accommodation with the United States — but this price will surely be less costly than that of the alternative future. This is a transformational war, and if these changes continue for even a few years, the global order will change irrevocably. [Read More]
How Trump Took the U.S. to War With Iran
By Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman, New York Times [April 7, 2026]
---- This account of how Mr. Trump took the United States into war is drawn from reporting for a forthcoming book, “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump.” It reveals how the deliberations inside the administration highlighted the president’s instincts, his inner circle’s fractures and the way he runs the White House. It draws on extensive interviews conducted on the condition of anonymity to recount internal discussions and sensitive issues. The reporting underscores how closely Mr. Trump’s hawkish thinking aligned with Mr. Netanyahu’s over many months, more so than even some of the president’s key advisers recognized. … And it shows how, in the end, even the more skeptical members of Mr. Trump’s war cabinet — with the stark exception of Mr. Vance, the figure inside the White House most opposed to a full-scale war — deferred to the president’s instincts, including his abundant confidence that the war would be quick and decisive. [Read More]
ALSO OF INTEREST - “A brief history of the Israeli nuclear program, the open secret at the heart of the Iran war,” by Anna Illing, Mondoweiss [April 5, 2026] [Link]; and “The Bomb and the Ayatollah: Islamic Just War and the Nuclear Question in post-Khamenei Iran,” by Dr Sajid Farid Shapoo, Middle East Monitor [April 6, 2026] [Link].
IS PEACE POSSIBLE?
(Video) “The White House was in a Panic” – Trita Parsi
From Peter Beinart [April 12, 2026]
---- Our guest this week is Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and the author of three remarkable books on the relationship between the United States, Israel and Iran. For as long as I’ve followed Trita’s work, he’s been warning that if hawks in Washington got their way, we would end up with the kind of catastrophe we’re witnessing in the Middle East. I invited him to give us a sense of what the Middle East and the world will look like going forward. Topics include: the likelihood of peace talks failing; the importance of Lebanon; how this war has affected Iran’s internal trajectory; Iran’s nuclear capabilities; the war’s effect on the US and Israeli militaries; how Trump came to the decision to fight this war; and facing charges of self-hatred from the diaspora [See the Program] - ALSO VERY USEFUL is Parsi’s essay from a few days ago, “Is the US-Iran ceasefire already doomed?” [Link].
ALSO OF INTEREST – (Video) “Has Israeli society become conditioned to permanent war?” from Aljazeera [“Inside Story”] [April 11, 2026] [Link]; and (Video) “Who is running US foreign policy? Jeremy Scahill” from Aljazeera [“Reframe”] [April 12, 2026] [Link].
NEWS NOTES
Last week’s “No Kings” protest in Hastings and Yonkers is the subject of an excellent article by Amy Bochner in the Rivertowns Dispatch. Read it here. Thanks Amy!
A great disaster for Westchester was the Democratic 2024 primary election defeat of Rep. Jamal Bowman by George Latimer. Fueling Latimer’s victory was $19 million in donations from AIPAC, the American Israel Political Action Committee. Funding for Latimer was only a part of AIPAC’s efforts to sway the US Congress to support Israel and its genocidal war in Gaza. According to this article, AIPAC’s total spending for the 2024 elections was $126 million.
Also of interest is this report from Pew Research, whose research found that “Negative views of Israel, Netanyahu continue to rise among Americans – especially young people” [Link]. The poll found that 60% of American adults have an unfavorable view of Israel, up from 53% last year. For a deeper look at Israel and the Democratic Party, read “While Distancing from AIPAC, Most 2028 Democratic Hopefuls Are Still Embracing Israel,” by Norman Solomon, Znet [April 6, 2026] [Link].
Are we upset that the Pentagon budget for the next year is coming in at $1.5 trillion? Hang on to your hats! Military budget specialist Winslow Wheeler says the real umber is $2.5 trillion. For lots of detail, read his article “America’s $2.5 Trillion National Security Budget for FY 2027” in Counterpunch here.
MAMDANI AND NEW YORK
Zohran Mamdani’s 100 Days of 21st-Century Sewer Socialism
By Liza Featherstone, Jacobin Magazine [April 2026]
---- In his first one hundred days as mayor, Zohran Mamdani has realized that New Yorkers — and all Americans — need to see the government working for them. March Madness is over, spring is here, and Morrisania, a neighborhood in the Bronx, is getting a resurfaced basketball court. The Lower East Side in Manhattan is getting a water fountain repaired, Sunset Park in Brooklyn is getting dispensers for dog poop bags, playground fencing in Morris Park in the Bronx is being fixed, a handball wall is being painted in East Harlem, Staten Island tennis courts is getting windscreens, and the illegal dumping in Soundview in the Bronx is being cleaned up. … This is Mamdani’s version of “sewer socialism,” a phrase that comes from Milwaukee’s long reign of municipal socialist governance last century. Mamdani has cited Milwaukee as an inspiration, but the term is more than a metaphor: the city is making a $108 million investment in upgrading the city’s sewer infrastructure, to protect the city from flooding by modernizing more than 6,700 catch basins over the next decade. [Read More]
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!
Times are tough for peace activists, so this week’s Rewards for stalwart newsletter readers try to change the subject with some of Bessie Smith’s “R-rated” songs from back in the day. First up is “Slow and Easy Man”; next up is “Kitchen Man”; and we finish up with her classic “Need a Little Sugar in My Bowl.” Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW WEEKLY READER
FEATURED ARTICLES & ESSAYS
(Video) “Steal This Story, Please!”: Documentary on Amy Goodman & Democracy Now! in Theaters April 10
From Democracy Now! [April 8, 2026]
---- Amy Goodman, along with co-host Juan González and Pacifica Radio, launched Democracy Now! on WBAI 30 years ago as the only daily election show in public broadcasting. It grew from nine community radio stations to television, as well, the week of the 9/11 attacks in 2001. There’s a new documentary about Amy and Democracy Now! called Steal This Story, Please! We speak with the film’s Oscar-nominated directors Carl Deal and Tia Lessin. Their previous films include Citizen Koch and Trouble the Water. The film’s executive producers include Jane Fonda, Rosario Dawson and Tom Morello. The documentary has won over a dozen audience favorite and jury prizes at major film festivals around the country and will be screened in theaters nationwide. [See the Program]
The Leadership Team from Hell on a Hell of a Planet
By Michael Klare, Tom Dispatch [April 2026]
---- Forecasters now predict that the coming El Niño — a warming of the Pacific Ocean that deeply affects global weather patterns — is likely to be as severe as the one in 2023-2024, which triggered severe flooding and prolonged heatwaves around the world. As the article noted, however, average world temperatures are now actually higher than they were at the height of that previous El Niño, thanks to global warming, and so it’s likely that we will face even more intense heatwaves and flooding this time around. Consider that news alarming enough. Unfortunately, the bad news didn’t end there. The Times article went on to report that, since early last year, the Trump administration has laid off thousands of Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) workers, greatly diminishing the agency’s ability to respond to such impending weather disasters. And then there’s the dismal fact that Trump has overseen the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development, which once sent humanitarian aid to disaster-struck countries. And, sadly enough, it only gets worse from there. [Read More]
(Video) Israeli Peace Activist: Gaza, Iran & Lebanon Are All Part of “One Forever War” That Must End
From Democracy Now! [April 6, 2026]
---- At least 17 people were arrested Saturday as Israeli police violently cracked down on an antiwar protest in Tel Aviv, where hundreds had gathered condemning the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. Israeli peace activist Alon-Lee Green, who helped organize the protest and was among those arrested, says the Israeli public’s initial support for the war has rapidly declined in recent weeks, as the quick, decisive engagement that was promised has not come to fruition. “I think the Israeli public is waking up. A lot of people are angry. It’s been three years now of constant war. People are tired. People want different realities for their families.” Speaking from a courthouse where he is filing for a restraining order against right-wing extremists who have harassed him at his home, Green calls for an end to Israel’s “forever war” and says that both Israeli law enforcement and right-wing groups have violated peace activists’ constitutional right to protest. [See the Program]
Draft Registration Becomes ‘Automatic’ in December
by Edward Hasbrouck | April 9, 2026 at 12:28 pm ET
---- On March 30th, the Selective Service System (SSS) sent the White House its proposed regulations for “automatic” [sic] draft registration for review and approval before they are made public. This is the first visible step in the transition from trying to get young men to sign themselves up for a military draft, to trying to sign them up “automatically” by aggregating data requisitioned from other Federal agencies. This year-long process began with the enactment of the SSS proposal for “automatic” registration in December 2025. The new scheme is supposed to go into operation in December 2026. … “Automatic” registration was enacted with no public awareness, hearings, debate, or budget review. It’s a bad idea, and it won’t work. The chances for repeal of the Military Selective Service Act may depend on how soon and how widely “automatic” draft registration is recognized as not only bound to fail but a data grab for DOGE and an enabler of more aggressive war planning and policies. The task of anti-draft awareness-bulding, mobilization, and action is increasingly urgent and important in the face of new military escalations. Repeal of the MSSA should be on the agenda of all anti-war organizations and a demand raised at all anti-war actions. [Read More] – ALSO OF INTEREST - “There’s growing disquiet in the military. The Iran war made it worse,” by Kat Lonsforf and Tom Bowman, The Guardian [UK] [April 10, 2026] [Link].
THE WAR ON PALESTINE
Gaza’s Rubble Is the Grave of Our Future
By Ghada Abdulfattah, New York Times [April 10, 2026]
---- Rubble is everywhere. In Gaza, there’s more than one kind. Towers that once held dozens of families have been reduced to hills: broken slabs stacked in layers, steel bars twisted through them like exposed nerves, concrete pancaked over furniture. … War, in and of itself, has become indivisible from Gaza: It’s in the landscape, in the harsh conditions that make up our days, in our bodies. Outside the strip, people speak about the future: about reconstruction, about a “new Gaza.” I’ve seen renderings that imagine it as a city like Dubai, with glittering seaside skyscrapers. But from here, it’s hard to imagine the new Gaza. The war does not feel finished. It continues to live within us. We can’t escape it. … [Read More]
(Video) Live from Gaza — Six Months Since the Ceasefire
From Crisis Action & Refugees International [April 10, 2026]
---- Six months since signing the ceasefire plan, Palestinians are continuing to suffer extreme deprivation, hunger, injury, and death due to the Israeli government’s continued attacks, movement restrictions, and aid obstructions. Organisations such as Save the Children, Oxfam, and Refugees International have produced a scorecard, which assesses progress against the ceasefire plan’s own stated objectives related to civilian protection, humanitarian access, reconstruction and economic development, and freedom of movement and return. [See the Program]
ISRAEL’S WAR ON LEBANON
(Video) 10 Minutes, 100 Airstrikes: Israel Rejects Ceasefire for Lebanon, Kills 250+ in Massive Attack
From Democracy Now! [April 9, 2026]
---- On April 8, less than one day after the Trump administration agreed to a two-week ceasefire deal with Iran, Israel struck Lebanon in its heaviest and deadliest attack on the country since the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran began. At least 250 deaths have been reported. Israeli and U.S. authorities are insisting that the ceasefire proposal did not include Lebanon, where Israel says it is targeting Hezbollah. Iran and Pakistan, which brokered the deal, say the agreed-upon pause in hostilities applied to both countries. Since Israel’s genocide of Gaza, “the silence of states and the continued flow of weapons has only emboldened Israel,” says Beirut-based Human Rights Watch researcher Ramzi Kaiss. [See the Program]
“I Want to Occupy”: Inside the Israeli Movement Pushing to Raze and Settle Southern Lebanon
By Theia Chatelle, The Intercept [April 11 2026]
----We’re sitting in the command and control center in Moshav Netu’a, a village so close to the U.N.-brokered “Blue Line” separating Israel and Lebanon that one can see the physical barrier from the windows of many homes. Here, amid a temporary pause in fighting between the U.S.–Israeli alliance and Iran, there’s no sense of peace. Under muddied terms for the two-week ceasefire with Iran, Israel has kept fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon, launching an all-out war on the country’s armed elements and civilians alike. The Israeli military bombed villages and ordered more than 1 million Lebanese civilians to evacuate from the south, territory that is often viewed as Hezbollah’s stronghold due to its significant Shia Muslim population and weapons caches. Israel blew up bridges linking the north and the south of Lebanon. In defiance of previous ceasefire conditions set in November 2024, Hezbollah forces that were supposed to retreat north have remained in the south, and Israeli forces continued to hold five “strategic” hilltops in the north, accumulating more than 10,000 total ceasefire violations. For the residents of Netu’a, Hezbollah is a problem to be solved, and one to fix with military power. “The Arabs’ only motivation to stop fighting is if you take their land,” Adom said. “You kill them, it doesn’t matter. You hurt them, it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. Only taking territories. This is the only thing that matters to them.” [Read More]
ALSO OF INTEREST - “Israel Revives Plan to Occupy or Annex South Lebanon
By Mireille Rebeiz, The Conversation [April 9, 2026] [Link]; and (Video) “10 Minutes of Terror”: Lebanon Death Toll Tops 300 from Israel’s “Black Wednesday” Attack,” from Democracy Now! [April 10, 2026] [Link].
THE STATE OF THE UNION
(Video) “A Moral Obscenity”: White House Demands $1.5 Trillion Pentagon Budget, Largest Increase Since WWII
From Democracy Now! [April 7, 2026]
---- The White House is seeking a record-shattering Pentagon budget of $1.5 trillion for the next fiscal year, the largest year-over-year increase in a presidential military spending request since World War II. The United States already has the world’s largest military budget at roughly $1 trillion, more than the combined budgets of the next nine highest-spending countries. The Trump administration’s budget request includes funding for F-35 stealth fighter jets, new warships and President Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile defense shield, among other priorities. [See the Program]
Congress’s To-Do List As It Returns To Washington – End The War On Iran, Stop Weapons To Israel, Impeach The President
By Kevin Martin , Peace Action [April 11, 2026]
---- In the wake of President Trump’s monstrous nuclear threat to obliterate Iran’s civilization, calls for his removal from office are rising, understandably. Doing so via the 25th Amendment, which would require Vice President J.D. Vance and the spineless supine sycophants in the Cabinet to certify Trump unfit for office, is the longest of long shots, though U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), a former Constitutional law professor and ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, notes the amendment mentions the ability for Congress to establish its own mechanism to remove an incompetent chief executive. [Read More]
OUR HISTORY
‘For leftist Jews, the Bund is a model’: the radical history behind one of Europe’s biggest socialist movements
By Sam Adler-Bell, The Guardian [UK] [April 7, 2026]
[FB – This is a review of Here Where We Live is Our Country, by Molly Crabapple.]
---- The notion that Jews should have a special concern for the fate of all humanity, regardless of ethnicity or creed, lies dead beneath the rubble in Gaza. It had to be killed, however, because there was a time when it lived. Cosmopolitanism over nationalism, social democracy over rapacious capitalism, collective liberation over ethno-chauvinist fortress-building – these were the values that animated the Jewish Labour Bund, a revolutionary party founded in 1897 in the Tsarist empire. “For leftist Jews longing for resources within our own past for combating the Zionist death cult,” as author, activist and artist Molly Crabapple puts it, “the Bund is a model.” A model with an audience – Crabapple’s new history of the Bund was already in its second printing the week before it came out. [Read More]
As AI Breathes Down Our Necks, It’s Time for a Luddite Renaissance
By John Nichols, The Nation [April 7, 2026]
---- The bosses have done their best to portray the Luddites as ignorant and self-serving laborers who clung to a dying past—and much of the media still does. But that mischaracterization was always an example of the “enormous condescension of posterity” that the great historians of the English working class E.P. and Dorothy Thompson, who were partners in life and in scholarship, long ago upended. In the middle of the last century, the Thompsons shined a new light on the Luddite uprisings that swept Nottinghamshire, Lancashire, and the West Riding of Yorkshire from 1811 to 1816. As the Industrial Revolution gathered steam, textile workers who had used their own machines—working in their homes and in small shops—to clothe England and the world were suddenly confronted with a future in which they would be crowded into a new kind of workplace: the factory. Inside the new textile mills, they, and frequently their children, would toil long hours for reduced pay on the mechanized shearing machines and automated power looms that were their era’s technological wonders. [Read More]
