AFMN

AFMN is honored to share our newest podcast series, Mothers of Resistance. In the first episode, our new host, Fatima, joins Abdullah to talk about her experience as a Muslim Bangladeshi organizer living and working on Long Island—navigating motherhood and raising kids while staying rooted in the movement. open.spotify.com/episode/6Mm6C9…

No one is “dragging” Donald Trump into this. This is a dangerous misunderstanding of both his long‑standing rhetoric and the broader historical context. Well before he ever assumed the presidency, Trump repeatedly castigated diplomatic engagement with Tehran, denounced the 2015 nuclear deal as a disastrous capitulation, and made clear his willingness to use force against Iran’s strategic capabilities if elected. These patterns of antagonism have long been part of US political discourse toward Iran. Confering grace upon US policy by saying this administration is being "dragged" into killing us is to ignore decades of antagonistic strategy. This has long been the goal of the United States, period.

Israel has just bombed Iran's largest natural gas processing facility in Bushehr Province. Israel stated that it conducted this attack in full coordination with the United States. The attack is consistent with Israel's strategy of aiming to destroy not only Iran's military and military industries, but also its industrial base and its economy. Israel's objective is not regime change but state collapse. In this particular case there is I believe an additional motivation behind the Israeli attack. Iran has repeatedly indicated that if its energy infrastructure is attacked, this crosses a bright red line and that it will retaliate with attacks on energy infrastructure throughout the Persian Gulf. If Iran does indeed respond in this manner, the prospects of direct participation in this war by Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states increases significantly. This is exactly what Israel would like to see, and would also explain why the US, which previously counselled against such attacks, now supports them and participates in their execution. This attack is not only a demonstration of US-Israeli capabilities, but also of US-Israeli strategic failure and arguably of growing desperation as well.

Israel's reported preparations for a ground offensive in Lebanon potentially involving up to 450,000 troops--several times the roughly 100,000 it deployed in the 1982 invasion that reached Beirut--betray strategic frustration far more than confidence. Months of bombardment, decapitation strikes, and sustained attrition were designed to cripple Hizbullah and produce decisive results, but they clearly failed to do so. A ground offensive will be extraordinarily costly, and expose Israel to significant vulnerabilities while furnishing Hizbullah with the kind of larger and highly visible targets that years of standoff strikes could not, though it will not come without cost for the resistance either. What it does offer Hizbullah is something strategically valuable in its own right, namely predictability, though Israel appears willing to incur those risks precisely because the war has become existential for it as well. The assassination of Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah and decapitation of Hizbullah's senior military leadership were intended to cripple the organisation and considerably diminish its fighting capacity. But by eliminating the figures through whom Israel had long interpreted Hizbullah's behaviour, the decapitation campaign pushed Hizbullah toward deeper decentralisation and decision-making that is considerably harder to read. The events of March 1 illustrated this dynamic when Hizbullah launched a large preemptive salvo that surprised Israel and demonstrated an unexpected level of operational coordination and military effectiveness. Even more concerning for Israel, rather than paralyzing it, the assassinations appear to have accelerated an adaptation that left Hizbullah more strategically unknowable than it was before. This dynamic points toward what might be called regenerative deterrence, which differs from classical deterrence in a fundamental respect. Whereas classical deterrence seeks to prevent aggression altogether through the threat of retaliation or denial, regenerative deterrence operates at a different level and often becomes more apparent once war has already begun. Its logic lies not necessarily in convincing the adversary that attacking will fail — though it may produce that effect — but in demonstrating that even sustained and severe damage can't eliminate the threat. The signal it sends therefore is not simply, or only, “do not attack,” but rather that even if attacks continue and losses are inflicted, the demonstrated capacity to regenerate and sustain the fight ensures that a decisive or stratgeic defeat remains out of reach. Hizbullah officials themselves have made clear that they are prepared to fight “to the end”, which suggests that like Iran, they now believe in the need for a long war to end the US' and Israel's forever wars. The implication is not that Israeli escalation will cease in the immediate term, but that Israel could come to realise that even sustained and severe attrition can no longer deliver the decisive neutralization it desperately seeks.

When Israel dropped leaflets over Beirut last week, one was headlined: "The New Reality." Zionists, both foreign and local, alongside the so-called friendly Arab states, want us to believe the Greater Israel project is inevitable and that surrender is the only way. It's important to heed the call of the late Nizar Banat and ignore these voices.

"No words can adequately capture the evil I have witnessed or experienced at their hands. I do not have sufficient language to describe what they have done to us; what Gaza smells like, feels or looks like up close now. But it is the kind of knowledge that alters one's life and makes you understand that the very least one can do is to speak truth to power, to have the courage of one's convictions, to exercise the privilege of having a voice, however muted or shadow-banned it might be, to speak forcefully for those who are defenseless against hateful colonial state violence. That is all the power I have, and I will continue to use it so long as I breathe."

Check out AFMN contributor Samer Hassan’s new piece ‘Sumud’. The Palestinians showcased in this piece help to remind the world that Palestinians aren’t going anywhere. Colonialism will come and go but Palestine is everlasting. fidaimedia.org/story/sumud

Very Important!! Washington is pressuring Lebanese authorities to grant tla Mossad international criminal agent agent a laissez-passer so he can evacuate the country and evade justice! Khaled al-Aida, a Palestinian-Syrian with Ukrainian citizenship, has been implicated in bombings and assassinations across Lebanon between 2024 and 2025. Security investigations have proved his involvement in an assassination attempt at Beirut’s Rafiq Hariri International Airport, as well as the capital’s southern suburb. Aida was also on the ground during the assassination of former Hezbollah secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah. thecradle.co/articles-id/36…

Of course the war wasn’t launched because Trump advisors “didn’t understand” Iran’s technical offer. It was a war of strategic choice, planned quite publicly by elites in DC & Israel for decades. Do you honestly take us for fools?

The time has come to stop prioritizing Western approval, to stop promoting conciliatory frameworks, and to stop treating the strategy of resistance as obsolete. Instead, we must align with the masses in their steadfast fight for liberation. Translation of a statement by Palestinian and Arab thought leaders, including Saif Daana, Ghassan Abu Sittah, Sobhi Sobhi, Wissam Al-Faqaawi, and Salah Hammouri. Read full manifesto: en.al-akhbar.com/news/toward-a-…

Hasn’t Israel’s war with Hamas ended? Haven’t they taken back all the hostages, as they call them? So why does the blockade still remain? Why do they still control more than half of the Gaza Strip? Why are we still prevented from traveling? Why is there still such severe restriction on the entry of food and medical supplies? Why do the bombing and the killing continue? The answer is known to everyone.

All of that said, there is a healthy—accurate—realization that the Western left is marginal to the sites of struggle. That’s a call to rethink work, provide actually useful solidarity, not to abandon work or transform entirely into underground work.

📌Thread: Emboldened, the Trump administration aims to sign of on the war of al Aqsa Flood by forcing Iran to submit in the face of unmitigated devastation. But this comes with its own risks, which Iran is already taking advantage of.

Lebanese Marxist Leninist George Abdallah: "The one who resists is the one who has the final say...all spectators have no right to discuss any topic."