The Phantom Ceasefire

Former Ambassador, Human Rights Activist

The Phantom Ceasefire is simply Trump’s off ramp. He announces a ceasefire and bows out, having been advised that regime change would only be achievable with extreme military commitment and massive cost in lives and treasure.

You can never trust the Israelis – or indeed the Americans – with either a ceasefire or a negotiation. Reuters reported that a senior Iranian official had confirmed the ceasefire had been agreed. Israel then repeated precisely what I had seen in Beirut – massive carpet bombing of the city just before the 3.30am deadline for the Israel/Iran ceasefire.

That picture is Beirut literally minutes before the ceasefire came into effect. Israel then proceeded to violate the ceasefire anyway, and has done so virtually every single day in the past months of ceasefire, often several times a day, racking up over 1,000 violations.

The Iranians very sensibly responded to last night’s carpet bombing with a missile salvo. Israel has claimed a violation of the ceasefire (as ever the aggressor is the “victim”) and fighting has resumed.

I believe this may be for the best. Although it does benefit Netanyahu – who for domestic reasons is desperate to avoid peace – the Israelis would never have observed a ceasefire and would have used it to replenish their exhausted missile defence systems, with help from the USA, UK and the other genocide participants.

The Iranian “attack” on the US airbase in Qatar was purely performative. They used old, expendable, low level missiles certain to be shot down and warned that they were coming. It was part of the structure of Trump’s off ramp.

So the question now is whether Netanyahu can drag Trump back into the war. I am hopeful he will not. Trump will be able to say that he has, with his strikes on Iran, redeemed the hundreds of millions of zionist money that got him elected. I guess we will discover in the next week or two whether that money really is all that was motivating him, or whether Musk was right about Trump’s appearance in the Epstein files. For what it is worth, I think that Trump’s street cunning and independent access to East European models were probably enough to keep him out of that trap.  But we will see,

Without the USA, Netanyahu has opened a war that will not remain popular very long.  Keeping Israel’s settler colonists – who are hilariously cowardly when faced with anybody who can actually fight back – locked in as human shields is going to have interesting social consequences for the terrorist entity.

Meanwhile the shooting of Palestinians in the Gaza food queues and the dispossessions and killings in the West Bank continue apace.

The UK government is sending planes to bring back dual UK/Israeli nationals. That includes active IDF participants in genocide.

FCDO official guidance reads:

Lammy has made a decision to airlift back those Israeli passport carrying colonists who are also British nationals. This directly contradicts British government longstanding policy of not assisting dual nationals in their country of second nationality. This policy is normally rigorously enforced, even (and perhaps especially) in times of war. There is a huge contrast between the red carpet for Israeli war criminals returning to the UK and the appalling treatment of thousands of British Sudanese families in the 2023 evacuation from Khartoum.

The Iranians have already done a great service to humanity by puncturing the facade of Israeli invincibility. They have also laid bare the appalling zionism of Arab ruling elites and thier sectarian propagandists, in a way which believe the Arab populations understand. The ramifications of the last two weeks following Israel’s attack on Iran will play out over years. But this is part of the process of the disintegration of the colonial settler state.

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Source: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2025/06/the-phantom-ceasefire/