Fouâd Oveisy

The stalling of the peace talks is about more than a dispute over peace terms and sequencing. The United States appears to have softened its position on the nuclear issue. It is no longer simply demanding immediate zero enrichment in the crudest sense. Yet that flexibility has not produced a breakthrough. Iran has not reopened Hormuz, has not separated Lebanon from the settlement, and has not signalled a broader change in regional behaviour. That matters because it confirms the war was never solely about the nuclear programme. The nuclear issue remains central because Iran is unwilling to modify its strategic doctrine, which the war was intended to alter. Indeed, Iran now appears less like a state seeking accommodation with the United States and more like one that still sees itself as part of a rival regional and geopolitical project—the BRICS. That is why it treats the nuclear file, Hormuz, and its allied fronts as linked. The United States, in turn, is not merely seeking technical concessions. It is trying to force Iran to undergo a behavioural transformation, but cannot impose its terms. It can raise costs and threaten escalation, but it cannot reopen Hormuz or force Iran to change sides. This is why the stalemate matters. The talks stalled because the conflict is now centred on a clash of doctrines. The most likely outcome is that Iran survives through deterrence, with a limited settlement to dilute the weapons-threshold uranium stockpile inside Iran and a moratorium on its enrichment programme, but not the right. researchgate.net/publication/40…

شیوا عاملی‌راد، نماینده بین‌المللی شورای هماهنگی تشکل‌های صنفی فرهنگیان ایران، در نشست گروه اتحادیه‌های کارگری ۱۱۴ همین کنفرانس بین‌المللی سازمان جهانی کار، ضمن محکوم کردن جنگ، بر ضرورت دفاع از حقوق معلمان، کارگران، فعالان صنفی و حقوق بنیادین مردم ایران تأکید کرد من به نمایندگی از شورای هماهنگی تشکل‌های صنفی فرهنگیان ایران سخن می‌گویم. مایلم سخنانم را با این تأکید آغاز کنم که ما جنگ ایالات متحده و اسرائیل علیه ایران را به‌شدت محکوم می‌کنیم. این جنگ باید به‌طور دائمی پایان یابد. همچنین لازم می‌دانم به نمایندگان حاضر در سازمان بین‌المللی کار یادآوری کنم که بسیاری از فعالان صنفی و کارگری که باید امروز در این کنفرانس حضور می‌داشتند، صرفاً به دلیل دفاع از حقوق بنیادین کارگران، در زندان به سر می‌برند یا تحت پیگرد و فشار قرار دارند. نمی‌توان سرکوب فعالان صنفی و کنشگران جامعه مدنی در ایران را نادیده گرفت؛ مردم عادی، به‌ویژه کودکان و دانش‌آموزان، چه در جریان جنگ و چه در طول سال‌ها سرکوب در ایران، سنگین‌ترین هزینه‌ها را پرداخته‌اند. در نخستین روز جنگ، بمباران آمریکا یک مدرسه ابتدایی در میناب را هدف قرار داد که دست‌کم ۱۲۰ کودک در آن جان باختند. تا امروز هیچ‌گونه پاسخگویی و مسئولیتی در قبال این فاجعه صورت نگرفته است. این جنگ در حالی آغاز شد که جامعه هنوز از پیامدهای سرکوب خشونت‌بار اعتراضات در اوایل سال جاری رهایی نیافته بود؛ سرکوبی که به کشته شدن ۲۵۰ کودک انجامید. جنگ، فقر، ناامنی و دشواری‌های اقتصادی موجود را تشدید کرده است. حدود دو میلیون کارگر شغل خود را از دست داده‌اند؛ وضعیتی که به گسترش کار کودکان، افزایش ترک تحصیل و محرومیت شمار بیشتری از کودکان از حق آموزش منجر شده است. این شورا با جنگ، مداخلهٔ نظامی، دیکتاتوری و سرکوب، در هر شکل و از سوی هر طرف، مخالف است. تغییر دموکراتیک واقعی تنها از طریق سازمان‌یابی مستقل و کنش جمعیِ مردم، از دل جامعه و از پایین به بالا، امکان‌پذیر است این شورا از نمایندگان حاضر در کنفرانس بین‌المللی کار می‌خواهیم موضعی روشن علیه جنگ و علیه همه اشکال سرکوب داخلی اتخاذ کنند و از صلح، عدالت، آزادی، برابری، کرامت انسانی و حقوق معلمان و کارگران دفاع نمایند. صلح و عدالت از یکدیگر جدایی‌ناپذیرند. بدون آن‌ها، هیچ حمایت معناداری از کارگران، کودکان و حقوق بنیادین بشر امکان‌پذیر نخواهد بود. 🔹🔹🔹 اخبار، نظرات و انتقادات خود در حوزه‌ی مسائل صنفی و آموزشی را از طریق آی‌دی زیر برای ما ارسال کنید: 🆔 @kashowranews ما را در شبکه‌های اجتماعی دنبال کنید و با تازه‌ترین اخبار و فعالیت‌های شورای هماهنگی تشکل‌های صنفی فرهنگیان همراه باشید: 📡 تلگرام؛ 🌐 سایت 📸 اینستاگرام؛ 🐦 توییتر X 📲 واتس‌اپ؛ 🎥 یوتیوب

"We don't have that long," Anthropic said. bit.ly/4uVCAhA

Canada bids to lead middle powers in AI sovereignty race dlvr.it/TSt37X

This post marks the end of the setup phase of S.A.R.A. — Strategic Assessment Radical Agent — and the start of its fine-tuning phase. S.A.R.A. is not an attempt to make an AI say leftist things, but to train a model to adopt a leftist culture of reasoning: one capable of recognising material forces, strategic cultures, hegemonic formations, counter-hegemonic agency, uncertainty, and the mediations through which state, capital, labour, technology, and war reorganise one another. The post explains why the project uses Falcon-H1R-7B, why the setup was built around a modest yet durable A100-80GB cloud architecture, and why the work has focused so heavily on operational discipline, failure documentation, and recoverable infrastructure. It also introduces the public release of the setup-phase materials: the decision manual, operational doctrine, failure report, and related documents that record not only what was built but also why it was built this way and what went wrong along the way. The broader claim is simple: a radical AI project cannot be built on proprietary mystique, liberal guardrails, or superficial political labelling. It requires a deliberate theory of thought, a public record of practice, and a willingness to share the costly lessons of experimentation with others. This post is therefore both a project update and an invitation to a more public, inspectable, and collective leftist AI commons.

In April alone over $50 billion was spent in data center construction.

RSI is the new AGI — and it’s just as hard to pin down techcrunch.com/2026/05/28/rsi…

"A tradition that has long presented itself as a 'shepherd' and guardian of openness, alterity, or the improbable may, in practice, refuse one of the most improbable developments to date: the emergence of Artificial General Intelligence as a genuinely new relation between human beings and machines. I am not making a celebratory claim, nor am I saying that capitalist AI is emancipatory. I am saying that a metaphysics which protects alterity only as an abstract philosophical object, while refusing the concrete historical form in which a new relation may be emerging, ends up being anti-emergent in precisely the way it claims to oppose." open.substack.com/pub/leftrealpo…

Sen. Bernie Sanders is warning that artificial intelligence and robotics could eliminate millions of jobs if workers are not protected as the technology spreads. Speaking at a “Fight Oligarchy” rally in Maine, Sanders called AI and robotics the most transformative economic revolution in U.S. history. He argued that the core function of AI and robotics is to replace human labor, especially across transportation, manufacturing and other industries. Sanders specifically warned that truck drivers, cab drivers and drivers for Uber $UBER and Lyft $LYFT could eventually be threatened by autonomous vehicle technology. He also said AI could worsen inequality if governments fail to regulate it and ensure workers share in productivity gains. Sanders criticized billionaire tech leaders including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, arguing that AI development is increasingly concentrated among wealthy executives seeking more power and profit. He also raised concerns about AI-generated misinformation, warning that democracy could be weakened if people cannot tell truth from fiction online. Sanders said he does not want future generations forming friendships with AI bots instead of real people, especially as loneliness and mental health concerns among young people grow. His comments come after he criticized Meta $META for laying off about 8,000 workers while accelerating massive AI investments. Sanders’ broader message: AI may bring major productivity gains, but without guardrails, workers could absorb the biggest costs.

According to my sources, the draft proposal that’s supposed to be finalised include: -End of war on all fronts including Lebanon -Freeing several billion dollars of Iran's blocked funds -Lifting the U.S. naval blockade and opening the strait of Hormuz -Withdrawal of American forces from the immediate vicinity of Iran After this, the parties will have 30 days to agree on the nuclear issue. These 30 days can be extended by mutual agreement. During these thirty days, passage will be facilitated through the strait. According to Iran, management of the Strait of Hormuz will be an Iranian-Omani issue, and is being negotiated with Muscat.

@alexabelonix Thank you!

@consul_general really good build.

The cutting-edge LLM (Falcon H1) I have been training for months is finally properly configured for fine-tuning. Previous attempts failed at various stages because my intricate 48-layer Neo-Gramscian fine-tuning framework was too fragile. Thanks to Claude Code (expensive, but worth every penny), the technical issues have been resolved. I can now look forward to retraining SARA (Strategic Assessment Radical Agent) for leftist geopolitical analysis and prediction.

The problem was with the Mamba wheels, which I had to rebuild from the source. I experimented with various GPU–CUDA combinations until I found a stable and affordable setup. Before Code, I had to manually sort through every environmental configuration. I automated that process using Claude.md, and everything clicked into place from there!

@consul_general months of iteration just to get to the starting line for fine-tuning. curious what finally clicked, was it something Claude Code caught structurally, or mostly just having something patient enough to work through the framework layer by layer?

Per Axios’ report on U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s National Security Team meeting, in the absence of a last minute deal, President Trump is seriously considering resuming strikes, with speculation rising that the bank holiday weekend for Memorial Day offers a good opportunity to conduct high-tempo strikes over a short duration of time. According to the report, one official has said that after such a campaign, Trump may declare victory and end the war indefinitely. One U.S. official also described the currently stalled negotiations as “agonizing,” according to the report, as at the time of writing, no substantive progress has been reported. This, as both Qatari and Pakistani officials arrived in Tehran, Iran in a last minute attempt to facilitate a deal.

SCOOP: The U.S. has depleted much of its inventory of advanced missile-defense interceptors after expending far more high-end munitions defending Israel than Israeli forces used themselves, per DOD assessments of Operation Epic Fury 🧵

China has banned Nvidia’s Blackwell-based RTX 5090D V2 gaming chip. The restriction came during Trump and Jensen Huang’s visit to China. The chip was built for gaming but was also being used by AI developers because it could access Nvidia’s Blackwell architecture. Source: FT

On May 21, nearly 45,000 of Samsung’s unionized workers plan to walk off the job for 18 days. If that happens, it will be the largest work stoppage in the history of the semiconductor industry. bit.ly/4usphoo

An interesting analysis published by Al-Monitor argues that post-war Iran is increasingly managing the economy through a wartime security logic rather than normal economic governance. Inflation is now treated as a national security threat, markets as battlefields, and traders accused of hoarding or overpricing risk severe judicial action. - Official figures cited in the report show rice prices up more than 170% YoY, edible oils nearly 400%, and sugar around 80%, while authorities blame sanctions, the US maritime blockade, disrupted trade routes and “hybrid war.” - The response has been the expansion of economic police, judiciary crackdowns, intelligence-linked enforcement and tighter control over supply chains. At the same time, the labor market appears under major stress, with reports of up to 1-2 million jobs lost, a collapse in hiring and heavy damage to the digital economy due to prolonged internet restrictions. - The deeper issue may be structural: Iran today looks neither fully market-based nor fully state controlled, but a hybrid wartime economy increasingly dependent on coercive management to contain inflation, shortages and social pressure. #Iran #IranWar

In my April 13 analysis, I argued that the second Ira–US–Israel war’s most likely outcome was the Iranian regime’s survival through deterrence, provided it reopened Hormuz and used the return of energy, shipping, insurance, and logistics flows as a structural barrier to US re-escalation. Instead, Iran has treated Hormuz as a security blanket and a lever of sovereignty, and has refused meaningful concessions on the nuclear, missile, and proxy files. While it was always inconceivable that the IRGC would forgo the right to enrichment or its HEU stockpile, signalling a change in its wider behaviour would have given the regime a historic opportunity to normalise relations with the US and thereby reap the strategic benefits of exploiting the contradictions of the Sino–American rivalry. I also wrote that the regime’s rejection of this option is doctrinal rather than transactional. Tehran views the nuclear file, Hormuz, Lebanon, Iraq, and the China-Russia alignment as components of a single strategic depth projection doctrine: the autonomous deterrent posture that keeps Iran independent of a US-led regional order. This is how the IRGC defines Iran’s strategic interests: as a forward base for the westward expansion of BRICS-led revisionism. Two consequences have followed this insistence. First, Washington now has the narrative cover it lacked in April, as ceasefire extensions, Pakistani mediation, and multiple revised Iranian proposals have all proved insufficient. This has enabled Trump to frame a return to coercion as a “clean-up” operation in response to Iranian maximalism. Second, contrary to claims that Iran has leveraged this moment to revise the regional order, the ceasefire has allowed Iran’s adversaries to assemble a regional architecture that will erode Iran’s leverage should the US opt for reescalation. Pakistan—the same state carrying messages between Tehran and Washington—has deployed roughly 8,000 troops and Chinese HQ-9 batteries to Saudi Arabia. The UK has committed HMS Dragon, Typhoons, and autonomous mine-hunting to an Anglo-French Hormuz mechanism that begins with defensive demining and escort but functions as the legal and operational shell for selective transit. The Gulf states have used the lull to absorb lessons from Ukraine-style drone defence. And the BRICS foreign ministers’ meeting, meant to anchor Iran’s standing as a forward base of the anti-hegemonic bloc, produced no joint statement: the UAE blocked, India chaired amid disagreement, and China and Russia declined to force unity. However, this may be the cost the Iranian elite are willing to pay. The bet is that surviving another round of devastation conveys the deterrent message that, regardless of the cost, the IRGC remains steadfast in its doctrine—and fast-tracks Iran’s path to North Korea-style sovereignty. The other bet is regional. Tehran is gambling that, even with further damage to its economy and infrastructure, it retains enough capacity to inflict serious costs on the Gulf, and that the region will eventually weigh those costs against the price of repeatedly trying to break it. The question Iran is forcing, especially on the Gulf states, is whether to tolerate a state in the region that operates independently of American discipline, with the spoiler capacity that such independence entails. The answer to that question will determine whether Iran has space to exist as an independent regional power at all. It bears repeating that the regime could be overplaying its hand, not only regionally but also domestically. Will it be able to contain another round of protests or unrest in the peripheral provinces if the US devastates civilian and strategic infrastructure? Tehran stood its ground and did not blink first in the lead-up to Trump’s previous deadline. It remains to be seen whether it will stay the course this time.

Photos and videos from Tel Aviv international airport show around 40 to 50 US Air Force aerial tankers on the tarmac, an uptick from the two dozen or so tankers seen in Israel in the past several weeks of the Iran ceasefire, @avischarf told me. Listen: npr.org/2026/05/18/nx-…

NEW: BRICS, or rather its consensus model, may not be delivering what Iran expects. Political insider in Tehran claims that the UAE blocked joint statement at recent gathering of BRICS foreign ministers in India over insistence that condemnation of the war on Iran be removed. @amwajmedia could not independently verify the claim, but other sources also highlighted differences over the war on Iran as causing split within BRICS+. Separately, amid reports that UAE attacked Iran in April, an informed Iranian political source asserted that Emirati drones struck mainland Iran, specifically referring to incident in southern city of Shiraz.