Antinuclear

A new nuclear arms race is accelerating. There’s only one way to stop it

A major failing of the last review conference in 2022 was that no measures were passed to protect nuclear facilities from attack.

April 27, 2026 , Tilman Ruff, Honorary Principal Fellow, School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne, https://theconversation.com/a-new-nuclear-arms-race-is-accelerating-theres-only-one-way-to-stop-it-281130?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20April%2027%202026%20-%203750638401&utm_content=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20April%2027%202026%20-%203750638401+CID_b464943fe1c89ff64a2ce9bfba273fa3&utm_source=campaign_monitor&utm_term=A%20new%20nuclear%20arms%20race%20is%20accelerating%20Theres%20only%20one%20way%20to%20stop%20it

This week in New York, diplomats from almost every nation will convene for a four-week review of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), the most comprehensive nuclear arms agreement in the world.

The stakes could hardly be higher.

Russia, Israel and the United States, all nuclear-armed, are conducting illegal wars of aggression against countries without nuclear weapons. Nuclear-armed India and Pakistan engaged in conflict last year across their disputed border, raising the spectre of nuclear escalation.

In February, the last remaining agreement constraining Russian and US nuclear weapons lapsed, with nothing to replace it. The two countries account for nearly 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons.

And all nine nuclear-armed states are investing vast sums in modernising their arsenals with more capable and dangerous weapons. Deployed nuclear weapons and those on high alert, ready to be launched within minutes, are also rising.

All these developments have brought the Doomsday Clock, which assesses how close the world is to existential catastrophe, closer to midnight than it has ever been since 1947.

What is the NPT?

The NPT is considered a cornerstone of international law in relation to nuclear weapons and disarmament. It has the widest membership of any arms control agreement, with 190 states. These include five countries that manufactured and exploded nuclear weapons before 1967 – China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. All other members do not have nuclear weapons.

North Korea is the only state to have joined the NPT and then renounced it. India, Israel and Pakistan, all nuclear-armed, along with South Sudan, are the only countries that have never joined.

The NPT is essentially a bargain struck in the late 1960s between the states that had nuclear weapons and those that did not. The first five nuclear-armed states – also permanent members of the UN Security Council with veto rights – committed to end the nuclear arms race and eliminate their arsenals.

In exchange, states without nuclear weapons agreed to forego acquiring them, with the sweetener of assistance in developing peaceful uses of nuclear technology.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was established to ensure non-nuclear states did not acquire weapons. However, the treaty did not establish any timeframes, defined processes, or verification or enforcement mechanisms for nuclear-armed nations to disarm.

The NPT entered into legal force in 1970, initially for 25 years. It was hoped the task of nuclear disarmament would be accomplished by then.

When this was clearly not the case in 1995, the treaty was indefinitely extended, thereby removing an important source of pressure on nuclear-armed states to fulfil their side of the bargain. Since then, there have been reviews every five years to debate implementation of the treaty.

Rarely consensus

These conferences, however, have been fraught.

In 2015, for example, Canada, the UK and US blocked adoption of a painstakingly negotiated text at the behest of Israel, a non-member of the treaty. And in 2022, Russia blocked adoption of the final text, mainly due to references to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine, which it attacked and occupied.

Since 1995, only two review conferences have produced an agreed outcome document.

In 2000, the members agreed to 13 practical steps to progress nuclear disarmament, but these remain almost completely unimplemented. And in 2010, the members agreed to a 64-point action plan, but implementation has been variable and weak, particularly for the 22 actions relating to disarmament.

The NPT has been moderately effective, though, in discouraging additional states from acquiring nuclear weapons. A number of countries, such as Canada, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, South Korea and Australia, gave up nuclear weapons programs or ambitions after joining.

But when it comes to disarmament, the treaty has failed dismally.

The head of this year’s conference, Do Hung Viet, has stressed the risk of failing to find consensus again at this year’s review.

It may not put an end to the NPT itself but […] it may hollow out the NPT. We may lose the credibility of the NPT itself

Two main challenges ahead

In the current dysfunctional international environment, expectations for this year’s conference are low.

Nuclear-armed states have not only failed to disarm, they are growing, modernising and threatening to use their arsenals in an accelerating arms race. And two recent developments are likely to cast further shadows over the debate.

The first is Russia’s unprecedented weaponisation of nuclear facilities in Ukraine, including operating nuclear power plants with huge quantities of radioactive materials in the reactor cores and in spent fuel ponds. Russian forces have engaged in a number of reckless actions, including:

• 
  attacking and damaging the facilities
• interfering with their operation and terrorising staff
• using some as military bases
• and jeopardising the power and water supplies critical to the essential cooling of reactors and spent fuel.

These actions risk a radiological disaster extending far beyond Ukraine’s borders.

A major failing of the last review conference in 2022 was that no measures were passed to protect nuclear facilities from attack.

The second major issue confronting this year’s review: the US–Israeli attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Both countries have cited Iran’s imminent acquisition of nuclear weapons as a pretext for their attacks, despite the fact US intelligence officials and the head of the IAEA said this wasn’t the case.

The might-is-right attacks by the US and Israel raise profound questions for the world’s non-nuclear nations in the value of adhering to the NPT. Why should they comply with the treaty’s stringent requirements when nuclear-armed states can use illegal force against them, at their will?

Non-proliferation cannot be secured by war. In fact, for the surviving members of Iran’s regime (and leaders of other nations), the war likely reinforces the opposite lesson: preventing military aggression is best assured by having nuclear weapons.

The risk of other states now following the North Korean model – leaving the NPT and developing an initially clandestine nuclear weapons program – is much higher.

In the nuclear age, security is either shared or non-existent. The only safe and sustainable future is predicated on eliminating nuclear weapons. This can only be achieved through cooperation, negotiation and international law, backed up by equitable verification.

April 30, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Who Decides What Is a Just War? Imperial Violence and the Lies We Tell About Peace

Anzac Day and the Forgotten Treaty of Lausanne

Moreover, a coincident anniversary—25 April, Anzac Day in Australia—made me think of some eerie similarity. This central day in Australian war memorial practice marks the defeat of British imperial forces, including over 8,000 Australian deaths, at Gallipoli in 1915. Churchill ordered the amphibious assault to secure control of the Dardanelles and Turkish Straits, and knock the Ottoman Empire, which controlled what Westerners think of now as the Middle East, out of the First World War. The grandiose, reckless plan failed; perhaps like the USA’s assault on the Hormuz Strait.

The conflict between the British, European and American empires and the Ottoman empire was central to the causes and course of World War One, if often forgotten in the West. Two lingering effects of this contention are widely known: the Balfour Declaration, which made a dishonest promise of states for Israel and Palestine, and the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which parcelled out the ‘Middle East’ between the British and the French to defeat Arab nationalism.

But less known is that this conflict did not end in 1918, nor by the Peace of Versailles. In the years 1919 to 1923, the British Empire punched on to secure what was denied Churchill at Gallipoli. They fought to expand their empire while “a general crisis of European control was well under way across much of Asia” (Darwin, After Tamerlane, p. 382). The extended “small wars” of World War One continued to the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. This “remarkable compromise” recognised Türkiye as an independent republic, defined the political geography of West Asia that is still with us, before oil was what mattered in the Middle East (the region produced 1 per cent of world output in 1920, and 5 per cent in 1939, principally from Iran)

Apr 25, 2026, Burning Archive, Jeff Rich,

Sooner or later, histories of colonisation, and decolonisation, must deal with the question of violence. So much depends, in history, on how the experience of violence is ordered collectively as war, empire, memory and resistance.

“Decolonisation is always a violent phenomenon,” declared Frantz Fanon. It may be right, from the beginning. As described in the climax of this month’s Book Club history, Magellan met a violent death at the hands of the resistance in the Philippines . . . and in revenge for his own unhinged violence and holy man madness.

But, on the other hand, Gandhi preached and practised non-violence, although there were fierce debates across the Indian independence movement about the question of when is violent rebellion justified. Still, more than any single individual, Gandhi has inspired people to believe that empires can be dismantled by peaceful means.

Violence and the “small wars” or “anticolonial uprisings” of the colonial frontier will be my theme for the next two weeks in this extended Season on Decolonisation.

I am spacing my reflections out over two weeks. Why? Three reasons.

Firstly, violence is challenging to write about in this time of war and unrestrained violence in many places. I am opening up a difficult conversation here, with no intent to close it after just one week.

Secondly, there is an important history book on imperial violence that I wanted to share, but it may best be done over a couple of weeks, including through sharing this week an interview with the author, conducted by Jeffrey Sachs.

Thirdly, I did two big interviews on these themes this week—with Jamarl Thomas and Pascal Lottaz— and wanted to share my reflections, beyond the recorded talk, on these topics of violence, our world crisis as a process of likely violent decolonisation, and lessons from history about how the USA empire is disintegrating.

Coincidentally, the Anzac Day memorial prefigures all three themes.

Anzac Day and the Forgotten Treaty of Lausanne

Moreover, a coincident anniversary—25 April, Anzac Day in Australia—made me think of some eerie similarity. This central day in Australian war memorial practice marks the defeat of British imperial forces, including over 8,000 Australian deaths, at Gallipoli in 1915. Churchill ordered the amphibious assault to secure control of the Dardanelles and Turkish Straits, and knock the Ottoman Empire, which controlled what Westerners think of now as the Middle East, out of the First World War. The grandiose, reckless plan failed; perhaps like the USA’s assault on the Hormuz Strait.

The conflict between the British, European and American empires and the Ottoman empire was central to the causes and course of World War One, if often forgotten in the West. Two lingering effects of this contention are widely known: the Balfour Declaration, which made a dishonest promise of states for Israel and Palestine, and the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which parcelled out the ‘Middle East’ between the British and the French to defeat Arab nationalism.

But less known is that this conflict did not end in 1918, nor by the Peace of Versailles. In the years 1919 to 1923, the British Empire punched on to secure what was denied Churchill at Gallipoli. They fought to expand their empire while “a general crisis of European control was well under way across much of Asia” (Darwin, After Tamerlane, p. 382). The extended “small wars” of World War One continued to the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. This “remarkable compromise” recognised Türkiye as an independent republic, defined the political geography of West Asia that is still with us, before oil was what mattered in the Middle East (the region produced 1 per cent of world output in 1920, and 5 per cent in 1939, principally from Iran). It demilitarised the Straits, which became the foundation of the 1936 Montreux Convention, which some commentators have proposed as a model to resolve the disputes over the Hormuz Strait (as I discussed in my interview with Pascal Lottaz). It set the course for the modern history of Türkiye, and new forms of imperial colonialism in Egypt, the Levant, Iraq and Iran.

This forgotten, crucial treaty came to mind this week because of those connections with the small forgotten wars of colonialism, the resolution of our contemporary wars in West Asia, and a paradox that is often overlooked when commentators make cartoon comparisons of British and US American hegemony. 1923 was the high noon of British empire, when it controlled more territory than at any other time. The British made their empire great again by making the Middle East, but before the oil wells provided much return on investment. It was a paradoxical success, an imperial Pyrrhic victory. As John Darwin wrote,

Once the brief excitement of war imperialism had passed, there was little enthusiasm for an Arab empire in either Britain or France – especially one that was going to cost money. If the Middle East’s partition was the high tide of empire, it was the tide that turned soonest, the imperial moment that was shortest.

Darwin, After Tamerlane, p. 387

It was for this reason that, in my interview with Jamarl Thomas, I compared the USA’s current dark time of brutalist expansionism to this brief high tide of the British Empire.

Violence, Empire and Decolonisation

“Decolonisation is always a violent phenomenon,” declared Frantz Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth after years of the Algerian War of Independence. He did not live to see an alternative, but his tract still inspires believers in armed resistance to settler colonialism worldwide.

But was Fanon’s decree a rationalisation of bitter revenge? Was it a militant’s rallying cry for others to sacrifice their lives for a national cause? Was it another poet-psychiatrist’s elaborate projection of shadows, not more defensible than the ethnic cleansing of Radovan Karadzic? Did Fanon succumb to mimicry of imperial Manichean violence, as Nietzsche warned?

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (1886)

Reading The Wretched of the Earth inspires many who identify as belonging to an ‘axis of resistance’ or anti-imperial struggle. But it does chill my blood. The text is haunted by the violence of Fanon’s colonial oppressors………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. https://jeffrich.substack.com/p/who-decides-what-is-a-just-war-imperial?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=247469&post_id=195185147&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

April 28, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

20 May – Webinar – The dangerous world of AUKUS, US, military occupation and suppression of dissent

Confronting laws restricting/suppressing protest speech and action

20 May 6.30 pm AEST.

A new Federal Police unit has been created which will impact on protesting against AUKUS.

The AUKUS AFP Command has been established under the Australian Federal Police (AFP), in conjunction with the Department of Defence.  The AUKUS AFP Command’s powers cover the security of AUKUS operations, extending to wider US military activity elsewhere.  Its activities are of considerable concern since among its roles is “Public Order Management” listing of “munitions” which include tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets and real firearms.

Is this the Australia we want for ourselves, our children and the world?

Since 2003 and 9/11 a raft of laws have been passed by successive Australian governments attacking our civil and democratic rights, including freedom of speech and political protest.  Some of these laws have been used against the environment movement.

More laws have been passed recently aimed at suppressing the huge upsurge of outrage against Israel’s genocide in Gaza, including draconian anti-protest laws in several states, and “hate laws” by the Federal Government.

More widely, protests are arising from concern with the huge diversion of public money for the AUKUS war pact and its nuclear submarines away from urgent social needs including the climate crisis.  Communities and environmentalists are concerned with nuclear exposures.  There is growing opposition to AUKUS embedding Australia in another US-led war, possibly a nuclear war.

These public concerns extend to the increasing US military footprint across Australia, enabled by the 2014 Force Posture Agreement.

Australian people have a proud history spanning 170 years of collectively on mass opposing and defying oppressive anti-democratic laws.  From the 1854 Eureka rebellion, the countless strikes by workers and their unions, against conscription and unjust wars, against the Vietnam and Iraq wars, and defending the environment.

This is a webinar you cannot afford to miss. BOOK HERE  

The outstanding line up of speakers (below) will be supported by short contributions from anti-AUKUS activists on the ground where AUKUS submarine activities are taking place or proposed/expected to take place.

Facilitator: Kelli Tranter

Ex-Sen.Rex Patrick, Lawyer Nick Hanna, Arthur Rorris, Jorgen Doyle…………………………………………………………………… https://events.humanitix.com/the-dangerous-world-of-aukus-and-us-military-occupation

April 28, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Iran Survives Terrorist War and Emerges a Major Power Broker

From reports and observations we saw that many people, regardless of their political views, and including many who had returned home from other countries, were keen to defend their country from this foreign aggression. Not surprising, really.

Overall, many years of Iranian “strategic patience” came to an end with the direct attacks on Iran by Washington, and that, in turn, delivered a powerful new weapon to Tehran, control of the gateway to 20% of the world energy supply

The Western media reacted with chagrin. Australian state media, the ABC, seeing that there was a fellow Australian at Hormuz, contacted me, but not to ask any details of what I had seen. Rather, reporter Henry Zwartz asked me if I had been paid to appear in an “Iranian propaganda video”. That shows how little interest the Australian state media had in the details of any new war; they would prefer to smear anyone appearing to contradict their official story. 

Tim Anderson, Black Agenda Report, 22 Apr 2026 GOOD PHOTOS

Tim Anderson tours Iran during the US-Israeli war, showing different scenes from the terrorist targeting of civilians. He contends Iran has emerged with greater regional leverage, especially through its control over the Strait of Hormuz.

Originally published in Al Mayadeen English.

The unprovoked war against Iran by the USA and “Israel” has failed in spectacular fashion, with the Israeli colony in tatters, Washington looking for a way out while Iran holds the upper hand in peace “negotiations” proposed by Pakistan. Further, Tehran’s newly asserted control over shipping traffic passing into and out of the Persian Gulf (which neither the USA nor anyone else can shake) has given it tremendous new economic leverage.

Furthermore, the Iranian population has held together strongly under an extensive series of strikes on mainly civilian targets, which began with the assassination of the former Leader Sayyed Ali Khamenei and the murder of 168 people, mainly schoolgirls, at the primary school in Minab, in southern Iran. This coherence underwrites the stability and future of the Islamic Republic.

It is a strange war, as I was able to observe in its third and fourth weeks, with everyday life going on in most major cities, while terrorist atrocities take place in the background. As a bakery owner at Niloufar Square in Tehran told me, this is not a conventional war, like the US-backed Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, where militaries face each other across a frontline.

The bakery owner’s building had been demolished by an enemy missile which targeted the police station next door. The USraeli attack on the police station at Niloufar Square in Tehran also killed and wounded dozens at an adjacent café (see photo on original) and in surrounding residential apartments.

I was one of a group of four observers (a Turkish journalist, a Greek Lawyer and journalist and a North American videographer) hosted by the Iranian media, between 19 and 31 March. Our tour began in the northern city of Tabriz and wound its way down through Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz, Bushehr, Bandar Abbas and Minab, the site of the schoolgirl atrocity. Mostly, we were observing the aftermath of USraeli attacks and the patriotic mobilisation of people virtually every evening in the major cities.

In every Iranian city we visited, tens of thousands poured out each evening in support of their country. That included a huge gathering for Eid prayers after Ramadan, at the Imam Khomeini Mosalla Mosque of Tehran (see photos), the first such gathering in 35 years that had not been addressed by the murdered Iranian leader Sayyed Ali Khamenei

From reports and observations we saw that many people, regardless of their political views, and including many who had returned home from other countries, were keen to defend their country from this foreign aggression. Not surprising, really.

It seems that Trump’s attack on Iran was encouraged by the Israeli propaganda against the Islamic Republic: the repeated claims that “the regime” was highly unpopular and isolated, often making use of heavily biased surveys. Israeli propaganda suggested that the Iranian people would rise up again this “regime” if it were decapitated. That, of course, did not happen, even after many leaders were assassinated.

This is the problem with “believing one’s own nonsense”, most of it generated by Israeli ‘Hasbara’ campaigns, which suggested that the Islamic Republic was hated and insubstantial.

That campaign made use of a wave of violence instigated by Mossad and the CIA in January 2026, as Israeli media and former CIA boss Mike Pompeo admitted, which infiltrated economic protests (after a currency collapse) and killed over 3,000 people (officially 3,117), including hundreds of police and volunteers (Basij).

In Iran, our group saw people of all sorts, but mainly women, coming out to defend their nation and their military. The aim of the Trump-Israeli war was never clearly spelt out, though it is plain that the Israelis wanted to destroy or dismember Iran. The lack of any clear pretext for war led to many of the US allies distancing themselves, while less discriminate ‘allies’ instinctively went along with whatever the US said or did.

As it happened, Iran’s formidable deterrent force of missile and drones punished the Israelis for more than a month, while partially or totally destroying all 13 US bases in the Arab Monarchies of the Persian Gulf. US ships could not approach the Persian Gulf for fear of Iranian missile strikes. For similar reasons, there was no US ground invasion.

Yet we saw traumatised family after traumatised family as we passed through the cities………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Though our observations were anecdotal, the Iranian Red Crescent informed us in Tehran that there had been 81,000 strikes on civilian sites. By the time we reached Shiraz, this had risen to 85,000. By early April, the Red Crescent said over 2,100 people had been killed and 115,000 civilian facilities damaged.

We did see reports of USraeli attacks on military sites (such as the large but futile attacks on the missile mountain at Yazd), but a senior security official in Shiraz told me that, for that province and by late March, there had been 53 military and 72 civilians killed.

Neither the US nor the Israelis respect Iranian cultural heritage. We saw serious damage to the historic Golestan palace and the Pahlavi palace-museum complex in Tehran, from bunker buster bombs. There was similar shockwave damage to the Chehel Sotoun palace in Isfahan. The latter had been damaged by attacks on the nearby provincial governor’s offices. In each case sheets of plastic with UNESCO blue shield insignia had been laid out, to designate cultural property to be protected in the event of armed conflict; to no avail. Colonial aggressors have little regard for indigenous heritage.

Traveling down the Persian Gulf coast from Bushehr – where we saw destruction of the Meteorology station and the main hospital – we eventually arrived at Bandar Abbas and then Minab, site of the schoolgirl massacre. After visiting one bereaved family, we went to the graveyard, where mothers and fathers were still encamped, mourning their lost children. Some graves were being reinforced after the flooding rain of previous days.

Many held clothing and the shattered backpacks of children, which have become symbols of the massacre. Moving to the school, we examined the site to satisfy ourselves that there were no military facilities in the vicinity. In fact, the site had been a military compound, many years ago. It was handed over to the Health and then to the Education Ministry, and the primary school was constructed 13 years ago.  

Amidst the obfuscation over this massacre (Trump at first tried to falsely blame the Iranians) a blunt assessment fell to former U.S. Army Counterterrorism Intelligence Officer Josephine Guilbeau. She said the attack, involving multiple Tomahawk missiles, was a clear case of deliberate terrorism and that US intel would have known very well that the site was a school and, at that time of day, full of children. She named USS Spruance Commander Leigh R. Tate and Executive Officer Jeffrey E. York as the officers to be held accountable for this terrorist atrocity.

Returning to the port city of Bandar Abbas, our visit to Hormuz Island – facilitated by the governor of Hormuzgan Province – was interrupted by the drone bombing of the port at the island. As a result, we went out into the straits in a boat and observed the many ships sitting offshore.

From Iranian reports and interviews (of the Governor of Hormuzgan and s specialist energy sector journalist at Bandar Abbas) I gathered the following: the Straits of Hormuz were not “closed” but shipping linked to the enemy had been blocked by the IRGC, while shipping from some of the other Persian Gulf states was being taxed (with a toll), and ships from friendly states (e.g. Iraq and China) were passing freely. This was clarified repeatedly over the following weeks. At an early stage, the main shipping insurance companies recognised IRGC security clearance as a factor in reducing risk premiums and therefore the financial viability of passage.  

While the Straits had been open to all before the US-Israeli war, there was now security regulation, enforced by Iran. Washington has not even come close to seizing control of the Straits.

Overall, many years of Iranian “strategic patience” came to an end with the direct attacks on Iran by Washington, and that, in turn, delivered a powerful new weapon to Tehran, control of the gateway to 20% of the world energy su

The Western media reacted with chagrin. Australian state media, the ABC, seeing that there was a fellow Australian at Hormuz, contacted me, but not to ask any details of what I had seen. Rather, reporter Henry Zwartz asked me if I had been paid to appear in an “Iranian propaganda video”. That shows how little interest the Australian state media had in the details of any new war; they would prefer to smear anyone appearing to contradict their official story. 

As it happened, the USraeli war against Iran was failing badly and desperately trying to cover its tracks. The US military could neither invade Iran nor enter the Persian Gulf, for fear of Iranian missiles and drones. Trump ranted and raved about how he was winning and how Iran had been “crushed” and the Western media reported this credulously. Washington claimed virtually no casualties, after they had lost at least a dozen warplanes and a dozen military bases across the Persian Gulf. Those hidden casualties will emerge under some cover, down the track.

Importantly, Iran asserted sovereign control over passage through the Straits of Hormuz (regulating what is called “innocent passage” under the customary law of territorial seas – neither Iran nor the USA are parties to UNCLOS) and Washington was unable to undo this, resorting eventually to a secondary blockade of the Straits. Peace talks in Pakistan failed due to intransigence on the US side.

The better Anglo-American commentators have recognised not just the failure of this war but the fact that its failure signals an end to the era of US unilateralism. Professor John Mearsheimer said that Iran, had gained the lever of Hormuz, unregulated before the war, and oversaw the Israelis “poison[ing] their relations with the United States”. British analyst David Hearst said that Trump’s bile and stupidity had effectively enhanced Iran’s power in the Persian Gulf.

Researcher Ali Mamouri wrote “No matter how the blockade plays out, Iran will be in a far better position in the long term when it comes to maintaining control over the strait – not the US.”

The likely larger cost of US defeat will be withdrawal of all US bases from the Persian Gulf – now a key Iranian demand – and strategic retreat along the lines of that set out by Nixon after defeat of the US in Vietnam. In 1969, President Richard Nixon announced his ‘Guam Doctrine” from a Pacific island base. The claim will be – now as then – that Washington is “rebalancing” its commitments and leaving greater responsibility for its “allies”.

Some embedded journalists have already argued this was Trump’s approach in his first term, when he sought to make allies pay more for their own security. It might better be seen as a cover for a humiliating defeat and yet another step in the decline of the US global hegemony. Remember that China is also committed to Iranian (i.e. independent) control of Hormuz and thus of its key source of energy. That is, of course, why Beijing continues to support Iran in logistics, defence technology and intelligence. In any case, Trump will be looking for some face saving consolation prize to cover up this monumental failure.

Tim Anderson is the Director of the Sydney-based Centre for Counter Hegemonic Studies. https://blackagendareport.com/iran-survives-terrorist-war-and-emerges-major-power-broker

April 26, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Ode to a Compassionate Warrior

In his final year as a prisoner, when he was working underground in Japan as a coal miner, Tom gave some of the Japanese miners boxing lessons. He said some of the other Australian prisoners “didn’t like it”, but he saw the Japanese miners as being human like himself.

On Anzac Day, journalist Martin Flanagan reflects on Tom Uren’s life and legacy.

Apr 25, 2026, https://icanaustralia.substack.com/p/ode-to-a-compassionate-warrior?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=6291617&post_id=195319469&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Nowadays, Tom Uren’s politics would be dismissed as “woke”. The idea behind that insult is that to be “woke” is to be weakly sentimental, to be hopelessly idealistic in a way that is at odds with reality. Only those who are hard and mean are “real”. We hear this daily. Usually from people in the media acting on behalf of the mega-wealthy, and the current political order.

I think Tom Uren knew a lot about what is real and what is not.

In 1941, at the age of twenty, he fought for the Australian heavyweight title. That year also, he joined the Army and, as a committed Christian, knelt beside his bed in the barracks each evening and said his prayers.

He was born in working class Balmain in 1921 and never forgot seeing his mother, to whom he was devoted, humiliated by a committee dispensing charity during the Depression of the 1930s.

But his political crucible was the Burma railway, where prisoners of different nations, including Australia, were worked as slaves by the Imperial Japanese Army. Over 100,000 perished.

Uren’s commanding officer was Weary Dunlop. In terms of post-war politics, Uren and Weary were generally on opposite sides, but, in Thailand in 1943 with death and disease on all sides, Uren recognised Weary as a true leader. The stories about Weary Dunlop and what he did on behalf of his men are legend. Young Tom Uren saw them happen like miracles before his eyes. He saw a morality in the prison camp experience which shaped his life. He expressed it thus: “The big man takes the heavy end of the log”. Tom was the big man. He told me he stood between a prisoner and a guard who was bashing him, taking the blows himself, adding with a twinkle in his eye, “Of course, being an old boxer, I knew how to roll with the punches”.

The only money coming into the camp was the officers’ pay. Tom was profoundly impressed by the fact that Dunlop taxed his officers. With the money, he bought food and medicine for his sick and dying men. Dunlop created what Tom called “a collective spirit”. At the Hintok camp, a British unit camped on the opposite side of the river to the Australians. Uren said the British officers took the best of the tents and equipment provided them, the sergeants the next best – the privates got what was left.

“They died like flies,” Tom would say. “We used to walk out past the dead bodies each morning going to the line”.

Tom talked about this in his maiden speech to the House of Representatives in 1958. “On one side of the river there was a collective spirit, on the other it was the law of the jungle”.

In his final year as a prisoner, when he was working underground in Japan as a coal miner, Tom gave some of the Japanese miners boxing lessons. He said some of the other Australian prisoners “didn’t like it”, but he saw the Japanese miners as being human like himself.

“I realised it wasn’t the Japanese I hated. It was militarism”.


It was while still a prisoner of the Imperial Japanese Army that Tom saw the discoloured sky that followed the dropping of the atomic bomb on Nagasaki.

In 1960, he returned to Japan and declared that the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were crimes against humanity.

Tom’s enemies called him a communist but, as I learned writing a book with him, the document he cited most often was Pope John XXIII’s 1963 encyclical Pacem in Terris (Peace on Earth). He would finish his long public life calling himself a “non-believer”, but at the same time appealing “to men and women of goodwill”.

Tom’s enemies belittled him as an old boxer, but he had a deep aesthetic sense. Among his friends were the painter Lloyd Rees and writer Patrick White.

One of the biggest inspirations of his life was hearing black American civil rights champion Paul Robeson sing to the workers on the steps of the Opera House in 1971.

Uren campaigned against the Vietnam war, conscription and nuclear armament. He was briefly jailed in 1971 for protesting against Queensland Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s ban on street marches.

He feared no-one. He certainly wouldn’t have feared Donald Trump.

Tom told me the only thing that ever really scared him was the cholera virus in the prison camps.

He would’ve opposed AUKUS and resisted any Australian involvement in the current debacle in Iran initiated by Israel and the United States.

He would’ve spoken against the law of the jungle wherever he perceived it—Gaza, Lebanon, Bondi, Sudan….

He was a big man in every way, including his ego which could be child-like. He loved his government and parliamentary honours, he loved being recognised by members of the public on Sydney’s public transport system, which he considered a shining example of “collectivism”. He gloried traveling by ferry from Balmain to the centre of Sydney. Passing beneath the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The Opera House close by. The idea of that degree of beauty being available to the public thrilled him.

When I first met him and introduced myself as a journalist, he dismissed me. But the moment he heard my father was on the Burma Railway, it was like I became his son. And It continued that way for twenty-five years. (another to have a similar relationship with him was Anthony Albanese).

The first article I wrote about him, for the Good Weekend magazine, was butchered by the editors. When I rang Tom to say I was going to resign in protest, he thundered down the phone, “Don’t you resign! You stay in and maintain the struggle!”.

He fought for ex-POWs all his political life. Part of him never left the Burma railway. I believe the Burma Railway represented one of life’s ultimate realities since it asked an ultimate question: if I am to survive, what is my duty to my fellow human beings?

The great Gunditjmara warrior Reg Saunders once said to me, “People say my beliefs are soft, but I’ve measured them against every experience I’ve faced.” Tom did, too.

Tom died in 2015. I spoke at his funeral. I miss him. I miss his good advice. I have no doubt Tom Uren would be out on the street marching today.

Immediately after World War II, Tom worked a passage to England as a stoker. So that he could start his career as a professional fighter. But his body had been weakened by the recurrent bouts of malaria he suffered in the prison camps.

I read an account of his first fight. He kept getting knocked down. He kept getting up. The book I wrote with him in the final decade of his life was originally titled “Late In The Fight”. Tom never liked the title since it implied there was an end in sight. The book was published as “The Fight”.

The fight goes on, and I get strength from Tom Uren.

To quote from the song Paul Robeson sang on the Opera House step

I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night,

Alive as you or me

Says I, “But Joe, you’re ten years dead,”

“I never died,” says he.

April 25, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment