With the death toll reportedly surging in the thousands as Iran continues to brutally suppress the nationwide demonstrations over the country’s economic collapse, President Donald Trump on Tuesday urged Iranians to keep protesting the regime. “Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING,” he posted on social media. “TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!! Save the names of the killers and abusers. They will pay a big price.” In perhaps the strongest signal yet that the US could be planning to intervene, Trump added, “HELP IS ON ITS WAY. MIGA!!!” The president’s message came as the number of dead is estimated to be as many as 2,000 to 3,000. According to a report by the Associated Press, Iranian state TV first recognized the devastating death toll on Tuesday. Reports from inside the brutal crackdown have been limited after Iran shut down internet service last Thursday and blocked calls from outside the country. The unrest, which started in December after the country’s currency collapsed, has prompted the Trump administration to threaten military strikes against Iran if it continues to kill protesters. “Diplomacy is always the first option for the president,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Monday. “However, with that said, the president has shown he is not afraid to use military options if he deems it necessary.” On Monday, Trump imposed a 25 percent tariff on any country that does business with Iran, potentially leading to further economic turmoil for Iran. Iran’s head of the country’s Supreme National Security Council also shot back at Trump’s message on Tuesday with the following: > We declare the names of the main killers of the people of Iran: > 1- Trump > 2- Netanyahu pic.twitter.com/CqcQYKHbDJ > > — Ali Larijani | علی لاریجانی (@alilarijani_ir) January 13, 2026 Trump’s encouraging words for protesters in Iran come as his administration cracks down on protesters at home after the killing of Renée Good, the 37-year-old woman who was shot multiple times and killed by an ICE officer in Minneapolis last week. The glaring dissonance has been especially evident in the administration’s accusation that Good was guilty of “domestic terrorism,” as well as its apparent approval of federal agents continuing to brutalize, and sometimes shoot, at protesters.  > You don't get to change the facts because you don't like them. What happened > in Minneapolis was an act of domestic terrorism. >   > Acts of domestic terrorism like this should be condemned by every politician > and elected official. It shouldn’t be hard or remotely controversial. > pic.twitter.com/AmZLCyRiMo > > — Secretary Kristi Noem (@Sec_Noem) January 11, 2026 As my colleague Jeremy Schulman wrote on Sunday, Trump’s second-term crackdown on dissent started with pro-Palestinian activists, and never stopped. > Early last year, ICE began arresting and attempting to deport people with > legal immigration status—such as Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk—who had > engaged in pro-Palestinian activism or expressed pro-Palestinian views. The > administration was explicit about the new policy. Troy Edgar, Trump’s deputy > secretary of Homeland Security, made clear that the government was seeking to > remove Khalil in large part because he’d chosen to “protest” against Israel.

JAMES BIRMINGHAM JOINS SIMON AND JON FOR A TRANSATLANTIC SHOW TO KICK OFF 2026 ~ US bellicosity in Venezuela and Greenland has shocked the world with what has been a naked display of gangster tactics in the first instance, and a seeming disdain for Nato in the second – and just today it has announced withdrawal from 66 international organisations. The shooting in Minneapolis of Renee Good meanwhile has been kicking off protests nationwide. Back in Blighty, the Filton Palestine solidarity hunger strike has seen one of the hunger strikers, Teuta Hoxha, forced to stop amid fears she has suffered irreversible damage to her body, while Kamran Ahmed was admitted to hospital for the sixth time yesterday and his immediate family notified. The hunger strikers are between 50 and 70 days in, which is the same range that killed Bobby Sands. In London, a recent FT story has gone into a bit of detail over a proposed data centre at the Truman Brewery on Brick Lane. And last but not least, Freedom has published an exclusive interview with Iranian group the Anarchist Front about the uprising which is taking place there  The post Anarchist News Review: The US gets aggressive while the UK sits around appeared first on Freedom News.

INTERVIEW WITH MEMBERS OF ANARCHIST FRONT, A COLLECTIVE SPREADING INFORMATION ABOUT EVENTS IN IRAN, AFGHANISTAN, AND TAJIKISTAN ~ Gabriel Fonten ~ The uprising in Iran has been ongoing for over a week. It is not only an economic protest, but also a practical revolt against the entire logic of state power. People have disrupted control of the streets, destroyed the symbols of repression, and stood against bullets. This is precisely anarchy in action: paralysis of the government machine from below, without the need for immediate replacement with new power. The regime responded with direct shooting, raids on hospitals and mass arrests, but the crackdown has failed so far. Sporadic and floating tactics (burning cars, breaking cameras and blocking dispatch routes) have moved power from the centre to the sidelines and created a space for real self-management: mass donation, hospital defense, and direct display of information without intermediaries. To find out more, we sent some questions to the Anarchist Front, a collective spreading information about events in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan. How widespread is support for the strikes among the general population? Support for radical strikes and protests in Iran is extremely widespread. Out of Iran’s thirty-two provinces, only two or three have not participated in these strikes and protests. How would you characterise the current general strike in Iran? What caused the strike? At present, strikes and protests are unfolding simultaneously, and the situation is escalating rapidly. What began as a peaceful shutdown of Tehran’s Grand Bazaar by shopkeepers turned violent after security forces intervened. From there, protests quickly spread to cities across the country. At the heart of this unrest lies unbearable economic pressure and rampant inflation that has made everyday life impossible for large segments of society. The first strikes emerged among mobile phone sellers, driven by the chaos of fluctuating exchange rates and the soaring cost of imported goods. These protests are entirely spontaneous and self-organized. There is no leadership, no political faction directing them, and no central command issuing orders. This is anger rising directly from the ground. At the same time, the son of Iran’s former king is once again attempting to capitalize on the situation. Whenever protests erupt in Iran, he rushes to claim them as his own. While it is true that he has some supporters inside the country, the vast majority of his base resides abroad. Beyond royalists, decades of repression by the Islamic Republic have effectively destroyed the possibility of other organized opposition forces emerging inside the country. How are protests being organised and what groups are looking to benefit from them? This wave began with the closure of markets in response to the catastrophic collapse of the rial, extreme inflation, rising taxes, and the regime’s complete inability to manage the economic crisis. It rapidly transformed into accumulated rage against the entire structure of power. Slogans such as “Death to Khamenei” and “Basij, Sepah, ISIS — you are all the same” reflect the depth of this anger. The root causes are the total economic collapse of the regime, stemming from systemic corruption, massive military expenditures, and foreign sanctions. However, sanctions are merely an excuse the regime uses to justify repression. https://cdn.freedomnews.org.uk/news/2026/01/video_2026-01-03_18-52-56.mp4 Naziabad Organization is largely horizontal and decentralised: through social media networks, local calls by bazaar merchants, and the organic spread of street-level rage—without a central leader or guiding party. This is precisely its strength: genuine self-organisation by ordinary people against domination. However, this is where the danger lies. Exiled opposition groups—particularly royalists aligned with Reza Pahlavi—have entered the scene and are attempting to hijack this popular uprising. Through calls issued from abroad, they inject slogans like “Long Live the Shah” in an effort to steer protests toward the restoration of another hereditary dictatorship—one that previously crushed people through SAVAK and bloody repression, and now seeks to reclaim power through diplomatic smiles and empty promises. Beyond these groups, anarchists, segments of communists, parts of liberals, and republicans also support this movement and stand to benefit from the fall of the Islamic Republic. Meanwhile, sections of the Islamic Republic itself are attempting to portray this uprising as an internal reformist movement, in order to preserve the regime in a modified form. Could you introduce yourselves as a collective: where did you emerge from, what is your purpose, how are you organised? The Anarchist Front is the newest form of a path that began in 2009—a path marked by many rises and falls, from The Voice of Anarchism to the Federation of the Era of Anarchism. Today, with a renewed structure that brings together experienced comrades and new forces, we once again place emphasis on self-organisation and radical struggle—both in raising political awareness and in actively encouraging and supporting struggles on the ground. The Anarchist Front is founded on the principles of solidarity, anti-authoritarianism, and relentless resistance against all forms of domination. We do not seek to reform the existing order; we seek to destroy it—so that no power, no class, and no borders remain. Our struggle is rooted in the historical protests and resistance of people in the geographies of Iran and Afghanistan, while at the same time remaining deeply connected to the global anarchist movement. While our primary focus is on Iran and Afghanistan, our horizon goes far beyond borders. We strive for a world where freedom, equality, solidarity, and genuine mutual aid are realised—without any form of rule or exploitation. For us, anarchism is not merely a theory; it is a way of life, a mode of action, and the process of building a world free from power, repression, and lies. A lot of your coverage focuses on violence against women. Do you see this as part of the current strike? Today, women, students, and youth are actively present in the streets. They formed the core social body of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement. Therefore, yes—the current strikes are aligned with the demands of the Mahsa movement and with women’s rights struggles. We believe this movement, while preserving the spirit of Woman, Life, Freedom, has also created an opportunity for more passive and conservative segments of society to enter collective struggle against the Islamic Republic and unite with others. https://cdn.freedomnews.org.uk/news/2026/01/video_2026-01-03_18-45-51.mp4 Mourning procession for protester Ismail Qureshindi Our primary concern—beyond confronting the criminal Islamic Republic, which killed more than seven people in our geography just last night—is confronting royalist currents that have infiltrated the movement and are exploiting the situation. Their misogynistic tendencies are clearly visible in both their discourse and political practice. What is the state of anarchism in Iran and Afghanistan, and what challenges do activists face? Threats, summons, beatings, death threats, imprisonment, and sexual violence are realities anarchists have faced over the past two years and even before that. In the past five months alone, two of our comrades have been arrested and four others summoned. Conditions inside Iran are extremely dangerous for us. At present, one of our direct comrades from the Anarchist Front, Afshin Heyratian, is imprisoned in Evin Prison. Other anarchist comrades are imprisoned in prisons in Yazd Province. We hope that through struggle we can free our comrades and create conditions of safety for ourselves. Do you see a risk of foreign intervention in Iran? What would be the result? As mentioned earlier, royalists and supporters of Reza Pahlavi are deeply dependent on Western powers. Along with other sections of the opposition, they have created conditions in which Western governments—under the guise of helping the Iranian people—openly discuss military attacks or media intervention in Iran. Trump and Netanyahu have repeatedly threatened Iran with military action, particularly during moments of active protest. We take this opportunity to state our absolute and unconditional opposition to any military occupation or foreign intervention by Western states in Iran—at any level and in any form. Just as we were present during the twelve-day Iran–Israel conflict in the fields of reporting, mutual aid, and resistance inside Iran, we insist that if foreign intervention occurs, we have both the will and readiness to confront it. We are a local force, composed of horizontal and diverse networks of anarchist activists who previously organized together within the Federation of the Era of Anarchism. We are not primarily a militarist group. However, depending on future developments, we may adopt new positions and prepare ourselves accordingly. We do not view Iranian society as a whole as eager for foreign intervention. Finally, how can people overseas keep up to date with events in Iran and Afghanistan? We provide real-time reporting and organising in Persian. Our reporters are in direct contact and physically present in major Iranian cities. At the end of each day, the Anarchist Front’s news and journalism platform publishes a comprehensive daily report in Persian. In addition, we publish daily news in Italian, Spanish (Argentina), Arabic, English, and occasionally in German and Swedish. A platform also exists for comrades from non–Persian-speaking countries, including an international coordination group. We receive reports from around the world and act as an anarchist political force offering solidarity and support during ongoing crises. Regarding Afghanistan and Tajikistan: our comrades are present inside Afghanistan, and we also have comrades in Tajikistan. Similar to Iran, we engage in both news work and practical action in these regions. Our final demand is the continued awareness of free people of all tendencies across the world. We ask them not to turn their eyes away from the specific conditions of the Middle East and North Africa—especially Iran and Afghanistan—and to resist false information, misleading narratives, and grand narratives that erase society, its dynamics, and its demands from political analysis. We also call for solidarity and mutual cooperation. The post Iranian anarchists: Uprising is “genuine self-organisation by ordinary people” appeared first on Freedom News.

Citizen Lab has uncovered a coordinated AI-enabled influence operation against the Iranian government, probably conducted by Israel. > Key Findings > > * A coordinated network of more than 50 inauthentic X profiles is conducting > an AI-enabled influence operation. The network, which we refer to as > “PRISONBREAK,” is spreading narratives inciting Iranian audiences to revolt > against the Islamic Republic of Iran. > * While the network was created in 2023, almost all of its activity was > conducted starting in January 2025, and continues to the present day. > * The profiles’ activity appears to have been synchronized, at least in part, > with the military campaign that the Israel Defense Forces conducted against > Iranian targets in June 2025. ...

Dozens of accounts on X that promoted Scottish independence went dark during an internet blackout in Iran. Well, that’s one way to identify fake accounts and misinformation campaigns.

Che sia un solo verso, a volte, a colpirci, lo sappiamo. La potenza di alcune parole irretisce retina e cuore. L’intelletto gode, l’emozione si fa scossa. Brivido è la colonna vertebrale. Così è quando leggo: Dovrò prepararmi a fiorire, e subito la fantasia immagina poesie che si estendono da questa gemma primordiale. Ho con me in mano un libro, che di quel verso ne ha fatto il titolo. Si tratta di un’antologia, curata e tradotta da Faezeh Mardani e Francesco Occhetto, che dà voce a Forugh Farrokhzād, Bitā Malakuti, Leila Kordbacheh, Parvin Salājeghe, Fereshteh Sāri e Grānāz Moussavi. È la prima rassegna italiana della poesia femminile di un Paese quale l’Iran da sempre abituato ad affidare al canto poetico tutte le componenti della propria vitalità esistenziale e spirituale. > Ardue prove mi offrì il giardiniere del firmamento > ma che si può dire al predatore dei tempi? > Che si può fare se il destino è morire? > Sei giunto al giardino e noi ce ne andammo, > colui che qui ti condusse ci prese e ci portò via. > In questo libro di vittoria il cielo > conteggiò per noi l’incalcolabile. > Il fiore, appena vide acqua e aria, > ignaro di dover presto appassire sbocciò. > Il coppiere della taverna del mondo è Destino, > tutti beviamo il vino dalla sua coppa. > > Parvin Eʻtesāmi (1907-1941) Che sia la poesia a farsi bandiera universale è bene ricordarlo sempre. Poesia che si dimentica ai più, ma che ci costituisce. Poesia cellula, atomo, big-bang del mondo. Poesia che garrisce. Poesia che sta nel vento, fa frusciare l’erba, inventa rivoluzioni. Poesia che è voce e protesta ‒ bellezza incontinente. Fruscia essa stessa nell’esondazione del peccato. È bene ricordare, quindi, come ci ricorda il libro stesso, che in Iran è ancora centrale la figura del poeta quale profetico testimone della storia di un intero popolo cui è stata privata la libertà ma non il sentimento di profonda appartenenza a una millenaria tradizione artistica e letteraria. Perché in occidente ‒ forse, maldestramente ‒ ce lo siamo dimenticato? La poesia è del popolo, e sta tra il popolo, ne dà voce. Senza poesia, il terrore prevarica su tutto. E anche un giardino ‒ che sia pieno di rose, o di parole, o di pesci e sorgenti ‒ come ci insegna Forugh Farrokhzād nella prossima poesia, va coltivato e curato finché si è in vita, prima che esso diventi immortale o moribondo, e ci abbandoni al nostro, forse vuoto, forse triste, destino. E anche un cortile va curato, affinché la memoria si perpetui, e la parola continui a raccontare e a raccontarsi nel cuore dell’uomo attraverso la tradizione. Mi fa pena il giardino Nessuno pensa ai fiori, nessuno pensa ai pesci, nessuno vuole credere che il giardino sta morendo, che il suo cuore si gonfia sotto il sole e la sua memoria si svuota lentamente del ricordo del verde e il suo sentire astratto si consuma in solitudine. Il cortile di casa nostra è solo, il cortile di casa nostra sbadiglia in attesa di una pioggia sconosciuta. Vuota la vasca nel cortile, dagli alberi cadono per terra piccole ingenue stelle. La notte dalle pallide finestre si sentono colpi di tosse nella casa dei pesci. Il cortile di casa nostra è solo. Dice mio padre: «È troppo tardi, è troppo tardi per me. Ho portato il mio peso e ho fatto tutto quel che potevo». Da mattina a sera, nella sua stanza legge il Libro dei re o il Compendio delle storie. Mio padre dice a mia madre: «Al diavolo i pesci e gli uccelli. Quando sarò morto, che differenza farà se ancora ci sarà il giardino oppure no. Mi basta la pensione». L’intera vita di mia madre è un tappeto da preghiera steso sulla spaventosa soglia dell’inferno. Mia madre in fondo a ogni cosa cerca le orme del peccato, e pensa che la bestemmia di una pianta abbia contaminato il giardino. Mia madre prega tutto il giorno. Mia madre è peccatrice per natura e per esorcizzare ogni peccato soffia sui fiori e sui pesci, soffia su sé stessa. Mia madre aspetta la venuta del Promesso e le grazie che ne discenderanno. Mio fratello chiama il giardino cimitero. Conta i cadaveri dei pesci imputriditi sotto l’acqua infetta e si beffa dei confusi grovigli dell’erba. Mio fratello è malato di filosofia. Per lui la cura del giardino consiste nella sua distruzione. Si ubriaca. Dà pugni sui muri, sulle porte e prova a mostrare quanto è triste, stanco e disperato. Porta in strada e al bazar la sua disperazione come se fosse una carta d’identità, un’agenda, un fazzoletto, un accendino, una penna. Ma la sua disperazione è così piccola che svanisce nella calca dell’osteria tutte le sere. Mia sorella, che era amica dei fiori e quando mia madre la picchiava raccontava le pene del cuore a quei fiori gentili e silenziosi e invitava ogni tanto la famiglia dei pesci a una festa di dolcetti e sole, ora abita dall’altra parte della città. Lei, nella sua casa finta,  con pesciolini rossi finti, protetta da un marito finto, sotto i rami di un melo finto, canta canzoni finte ma partorisce figli veri. Mia sorella, ogni volta che viene a trovarci e si sporca l’orlo della gonna con la miseria del giardino, fa un bagno nell’acqua di colonia. Lei, ogni volta che viene a trovarci, è incinta. Il cortile di casa nostra è solo, il cortile di casa nostra è solo. Tutto il giorno, dietro la porta, si sente il frastuono di scoppi e crolli. I nostri vicini nei loro giardini al posto dei fiori piantano granate e mitragliatrici. I nostri vicini ricoprono le vasche di maiolica del cortile che controvoglia diventano depositi di polvere da sparo e i ragazzi del nostro quartiere riempiono le borse di piccole bombe. Il cortile di casa nostra è stordito. Ho paura di questo tempo che ha perduto il suo cuore ho paura dell’immagine di queste mani vuote di questi volti sconosciuti. Io, come una scolaretta che ama follemente le lezioni di geometria, sono sola e penso che si possa portare il giardino all’ospedale penso… penso… penso… e il cuore del giardino si gonfia sotto il sole e la sua memoria si svuota lentamente del ricordo del verde. (Giorgio Anelli) *In copertina: Forough Farrokhzad (1934-1967) L'articolo “Che si può fare se il destino è morire?” Qualcosa sulla poesia iraniana contemporanea proviene da Pangea.

At nearly 8 p.m ET Saturday, President Donald Trump delivered shocking news that would quickly rouse global angst about the threat of nuclear war. He did so on social media. “A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow,” he thumbed out on Truth Social about three Iranian nuclear enrichment sites that U.S. military had, apparently, just attacked. “NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE! Thank you for your attention to this matter.” Us lowly civilians across the country weren’t the only ones to learn of the military strike that evening; members of Congress were notified around the same time. In theory, that isn’t how it’s supposed to work: Presidents are expected to consult Congress before deploying armed forces, and—at least in the past—that was Trump’s position too. In March 2015, when Trump was merely flirting with the idea of launching an aspirational bid for president, he told the New Hampshire Union Leader that presidents should “always” get Congressional approval to launch military action. > Reporter: “Under what circumstances would you think the president should be > able to use military force without authorization from Congress?” > > > Trump: “I think we should always get authorization, and if something is right, > you can get authorization and quickly. Whether you’re a Republican or > Democrat, they want to see this country survive and do well. And I think you > should get authorization.” His answer at the time reflected Article 1 of the Constitution, which says that Congress—and Congress alone—has the authority to declare war. But the 1973 War Powers Resolution gives presidents some temporary wiggle room: It stipulates that, in situations where war hasn’t been declared, presidents must still notify Congress within 48 hours of military action, and provide rationale for why, and under which authority, the decision was made. (The resolution also says that military action not pre-authorized by Congress must end within 60 days.) Many Democrats have expressed concern over Trump bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites without consulting—or even properly notifying—Congress. According to the Associated Press, lawmakers hadn’t received any new intelligence about Iran’s nuclear program since March, when Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said the administration did not believe the country was building a nuclear weapon. After canceling an earlier briefing, the Trump administration says CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio will hold a closed-door session with senators on Thursday; House members are slated to receive a similar briefing on Friday. Like Trump, Rubio has previously boasted about the importance of Congress’ role in decisions on the use of military force. “You can’t put strategy in legislation, that’s up to the commander-in-chief working with military officials,” Rubio told a journalist in 2015. “We can certainly have oversight over the strategy, criticize it and not fund it if we think it’s wrong and so forth—but the most important role we play is whether or not to authorize it.”

Since March, the Trump administration has dismantled a leading office at the Department of Homeland Security whose mission was averting terrorism and targeted violence. The Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships, known as CP3, has been stripped of funding, and most of its 40-plus personnel have been fired, reassigned, or otherwise pushed out. Amid this process, the White House temporarily put in charge a 22-year-old Trump superfan who arched an eyebrow for his agency portrait and has zero leadership experience in government, let alone in national security. The demise of CP3 comes as the White House has diverted major law enforcement and security resources toward deporting undocumented immigrants. It also comes as high-profile acts of political violence have surged in the United States. The list of recent devastation includes an ISIS-inspired truck massacre in New Orleans, the bombing of a fertility clinic in Palm Springs, and a spate of antisemitic attacks—including the murder of a young couple working for Israel in Washington, DC; an arson attack against the governor of Pennsylvania; and a fiery assault on peaceful marchers in Boulder, Colorado. Last year, a healthcare CEO was gunned down point-blank in Manhattan, and President Trump barely avoided death from an assassin’s bullet on the campaign trail. Twelve days ago, a right-wing extremist in Minnesota targeted Democratic state lawmakers in a deadly gun rampage, killing former house speaker Melissa Hortman and her spouse, and gravely wounding two others. The nation is now also on heightened alert after Trump ordered the bombing of Iran, a major state sponsor of terrorism. Though political extremism has been rising, it is almost never the only factor in targeted violence, including with most, if not all, of the above cases. Most perpetrators are also driven by a mix of rage and despair over acute personal problems, such as financial or health crises—and many are suicidal. This complexity was a focus of CP3’s $18 million in annual grants to state and local partners. Drawing on long-established public health research, the office worked with law enforcement, educators, faith leaders, and others to use “upstream” interventions with troubled individuals who may be planning and moving toward violence. The work gained traction over the past couple of years, according to William Braniff, a military veteran and national security expert who was director of CP3 until March. He said that many states were working with the office to build this kind of strategy and that CP3 was flooded with $99 million in eligible grant applications—exceeding its funds by more than fivefold. He resigned when eight of his colleagues were fired without cause. “I think that CP3 has been dismantled out of ignorance,” Braniff told me. “A lot of the headquarters-based offices within DHS are being drastically reduced in size or shuttered, and CP3 was among them. This is incredibly short-sighted.” As the wave of recent attacks shows, a variety of extremism is fueling the danger. Researchers have tracked growing acceptance and endorsement of political violence in America in recent years, particularly among people who identify as MAGA Republicans, a finding reaffirmed in a new national study from the Centers for Violence Prevention at University of California, Davis. > “We’re at real risk of normalizing political violence as a part of our > democracy.” In response to my email asking for an explanation of the shutdown, DHS assistant secretary of public affairs Tricia McLaughlin said CP3 “plays an insignificant and ineffective role” in DHS counterterrorism efforts, and further claimed, without providing any evidence, that CP3 was “weaponized” under the Biden administration for partisan purposes. Braniff, who is now executive director of the Polarization & Extremism Research & Innovation Lab at American University, explained in our recent interview (lightly edited below for clarity) how CP3 built out its national model for violence prevention. He also spoke about what citizens and communities can do to counter the danger of political violence—and the disturbing normalization of it. First, can you talk a little bit about the CP3 strategy and how the programs worked? From school shootings and grievance-based workplace violence, to hate-fueled violence, to terrorism, we needed an approach out of the federal government that would address all of those. And so we looked to the public health community, and specifically the decades of work on violence prevention from places like the Centers for Disease Control—evidence-based programs for prevention of suicide, intimate-partner violence, violence against children, and community-based violence. And we said, well, what if we could apply those tested approaches to some of these more “exotic” forms of violence? For too long, and especially after 9/11, we exoticized terrorism as this foreign kind of violence, when in reality, underneath the manifestation, you have these very human things happening: individuals who have unaddressed risk factors in their lives. That might be an adverse childhood experience, trauma, or financial hardship. That might be social isolation. And these risk factors, when left unaddressed, might spur the individual to go seeking answers down dark rabbit holes that preach hate, that preach violence for the sake of it. And regardless of the way that violence might manifest later, there are these upstream preventative programs that we can put in place. So CP3 was the primary entity in the US government for creating these upstream programs, informed by public health. Social isolation is a massive risk factor for all kinds of negative health outcomes, including self harm and perpetration of violence. And so you look at these underlying risk factors and you say, well, we can actually mitigate against them. Very rarely in the national security realm do we get to talk about building positive programs that make us all happier and healthier and less susceptible to violence as a solution. Sometimes people still might gravitate towards violence. And in those instances, we invested in secondary prevention. These are multidisciplinary interventions, so that if someone makes an offhand comment about starting a racial holy war, accelerating the downfall of the government, or being an infamous school shooter, these ideations of violence are not dismissed. We created these programs so that bystanders had a place to refer someone they cared about. And the purpose wasn’t criminal justice, it was to get them access to help. > “You have law enforcement officers around the country begging to get help from > more mental health professionals and social workers. We were bringing these > folks together and blending their assets.” Out of the 1,172 interventions that we funded through our grant program, 93.5 percent of the individuals who were exhibiting threatening behavior got help. They got access to a clinician or a caring professional. In 6.5 percent of the incidents, the persons had already broken the law or were an imminent threat to public safety, and they were referred to law enforcement. And that wasn’t the point of the intervention, but there was that safety net there for when that person really was an imminent risk to their community. We could balance public health and public safety through these multidisciplinary, evidence-based programs. There’s a lot of research on their efficacy, including to make sure that persons of color are getting equitable treatment and programs are not succumbing to implicit bias in schools and workplaces. And so there’s all sorts of value to these programs socially as well as economically. They’re much cheaper than criminal justice or the cost of violence. Given that we’re in this heightened environment of political extremism and attacks, why shut down CP3? What is your view of that? I don’t think that CP3 was targeted by the Trump administration specifically. I think that CP3 has been dismantled out of ignorance. A lot of the headquarters-based offices within the Department of Homeland Security are being drastically reduced in size or shuttered, and CP3 was among them. This is incredibly short-sighted. Ignorance is not an excuse for what’s happening. The primary mission of DHS, as enshrined in the Homeland Security Act of 2002, is to prevent terrorism. And CP3 was the latest manifestation of an office within DHS that was trying to find a way to get traction in this prevention space. And we got it in the last couple of years. Eight states worked with CP3 to publish a state strategy, and when I left in March, another eight states were drafting their strategy with CP3’s help. Twenty-seven states had agreed to work with CP3 and were in the queue. So we were normalizing this at the state and local level. Why? Because it’s pragmatic. It’s cost-effective. It works. You have law enforcement officers around the country begging to get help from more mental health professionals and social workers, because law enforcement officers are not equipped to do this kind of upstream intervention. We had $99 million of eligible grant applications for our $18 million grant pool, which means we were wildly oversubscribed. We were bringing these folks together and blending their assets. A whole range of political ideology and extremism feeds into targeted violence, but we also know there’s been a steady rise in far-right domestic terrorism in recent years. I’m curious how you view the long-term impact of losing this type of work in the federal government, particularly as it relates to things like Trump’s clemency for January 6 insurrectionists, including a lot of violent offenders who attacked police. Some groups associated with that event are again instigating on social media for potentially violent behavior. What message is this all sending, and what does it do in terms of the political environment that we’re in? It’s such a good set of questions. We’re at real risk of normalizing political violence as a part of our democracy. And that is a potential death blow to a free and open society. It’s not to say that these things can’t gravitate back towards a norm of nonviolence. But right now we are creating permission structures for individuals to dehumanize the transgender community, to dehumanize Jews or equate their individual actions with that of the Israeli government, half a world away. We’re at risk of normalizing school shootings among youth who don’t imagine a healthy future for themselves and are succumbing to this kind of nihilistic manipulation that we’re seeing in [online extremist] movements like “764.” And when these norms are accepted at a societal level and encouraged at a political level, they become entrenched and really difficult to reverse. And so what we were doing at CP3 and what we’re doing now at my current organization at American University is trying to normalize prevention, the idea that we can and should build thriving communities where individuals don’t need to buy the violent empowerment that either a politician or an online groomer is selling that leads to violence. The things you’ve listed are incredibly concerning, and frankly, we all have to decide that we care about this issue. If we don’t, if we decide we’re going to be apathetic about it, the violence is going to win the day because it’s going to capture the news headlines, and the algorithms, and the path of least resistance is to surrender to violence as a norm in our current information environment. And so it’s going to take intentional decision making by all of us as individuals to decide that’s not the country or the community that we want to live in. So there are some real problems in our political system right now with a permission structure, as you describe it, for violence. Isn’t rejecting that part of not normalizing it? Yeah, absolutely. One of the techniques that we study and work with at PERIL is called video-based inoculation. It’s the idea that you can give individuals a microdose of some sort of manipulative tactic that they might come across on social media or cable news. And you give them this microdose of this manipulation so that they develop “antibodies” to it. They realize that they’re being manipulated. That is really important, for us to sort of throw sand in the gears of what otherwise spreads like wildfire when we’re passive consumers of information. And so with the last antisemitism video that we tested, individuals were 24 percent more likely to openly challenge manipulative material online if they saw the inoculating video first. So we think there’s a lot of promise there to engage all of us as stewards of our information environment. Is it your hope or expectation that this kind of prevention work will come back more strongly in the federal government in the future? Yes, it has to. The threat is growing and manifesting in more and different ways. There’s been nearly a 2,000-percent increase in mass casualty attacks in the United States since the early 1990s. There are approximately three violent attacks per day that either are plotted or carried out in the United States. School shootings are up linearly since the Columbine attack of 1999. Political assassinations are being normalized. We have to marshal resources to push back on this. I do believe it’ll come back—I think Americans will demand it, but only if they know that violence is preventable, which it is. If, instead, they’re told by their government or anyone else that this is just inevitable and we should be resigned to it, they may believe that. Instead of recognizing that the overwhelming majority of school shooters tell someone in advance they’re going to do it, and that nearly 50 percent of mass-casualty attackers tell someone in advance they’re going to do it, we’ll ignore that reality and just accept the violence. And so it’s really important that we continue to push on this now, but ultimately demand it of our federal government.

IT COMES TO SOMETHING WHEN EVEN VOICING SUPPORT FOR A NON-VIOLENT DIRECT ACTION GROUP RISKS BEING DESIGNATED AS CROSSING THE LINE, BUT LABOUR IS NO DEFENDER OF FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND PROTEST. Tabitha and Andy join us to discuss the decision of former defender of principled dissent Keir Starmer to ban an organisation that he might once have protected, that same MP’s determination to rob billions off the poorest to spend on pointless nuclear bomber aircraft, and self-titled “real opposition” leader Nigel Farage’s bung to rich foreigners. The post Anarchist News Review: Palestine Action Ban, Welfare Rebellion and Israel-Iran-US appeared first on Freedom News.

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In October 1978, two leaders of the Iranian opposition to the British-backed shah of Iran met in the Paris suburbs of Neauphle-le-Château to plan for the final stages of the revolution, a revolution that after 46 momentous and often brutal years may now be close to expiring. The two men had little in common but their nationality, age, and determination to remove the shah from power. Karim Sanjabi, the leader of the secular liberal National Front, was a former Sorbonne-educated professor of law. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was the leading Shia opponent of the Iranian monarchy since the 1960s. Both were in their 70s at the time. Sanjabi had arrived in Paris with the draft declaration of goals of the coming revolution the two men were to lead. The document stated that the revolution would be grounded on two principles: that it be democratic and Islamic. Yet Sanjabi later recalled to historians that at the Paris meeting Khomeini in his own handwriting added a third principle to the declaration—independence. > Iran’s politics as a result for the past decade has been shaped by the sense > that it was the wronged partner. That third principle, the primacy of independence, born of Iran’s history of exploitation by colonial powers, helps to explain what may seem otherwise mysterious in the current dispute between Iran and the US: Iran’s dogmatic insistence that it must have the right to enrich uranium. It has been the issue that dogged the talks between Iran and the west over Tehran’s nuclear program since the turn of the century and was the sticking point in the two years of discussions that were eventually settled in Iran’s favor when the joint comprehensive plan of action (JCPOA) was agreed under the Obama administration in 2015. It is the reason why Iran is being bombed now by Israel and, over the weekend, by the US. Yet to many American eyes, this obsession with enrichment inside Iran, instead of importing, for instance, from Russia, is only explicable if it is accepted that Iran covertly wants to build a nuclear bomb. The fatwa against “un-Islamic” nuclear weapons twice issued by the supreme leader has to be a smokescreen, this US perspective goes. On social media last week, Vice-President JD Vance largely took that view. He wrote: “It’s one thing to want civilian nuclear energy. It’s another thing to demand sophisticated enrichment capacity. And it’s still another to cling to enrichment while simultaneously violating basic non-proliferation obligations and enriching right to the point of weapons-grade uranium. “I have yet to see a single good argument for why Iran needed to enrich uranium well above the threshold for civilian use. I’ve yet to see a single good argument for why Iran was justified in violating its nonproliferation obligations.” The process for enriching uranium to make civil nuclear energy and a nuclear bomb is broadly the same. It is generally accepted that uranium enriched to 3.67 percent is sufficient for civil nuclear energy, while purity levels of 90 percent are required for a nuclear weapon. Once purity levels reach 60 percent, as in the case of Iran, it is not a lengthy process to proceed to 90 percent. Iran, of course, argues there is no mystery why it has enriched to these high levels of purity. It was part of a clearly signalled staged escalatory response to Donald Trump unilaterally pulling the US out of the JCPOA in 2018—an act that that had deprived Iran of the sanctions relief it had negotiated. Moreover, Trump, by imposing secondary sanctions, made it impossible for Europe to trade with Iran, the second planned benefit of the JCPOA. Iran’s politics as a result for the past decade has been shaped by the sense that it was the wronged partner, and the US confirmed as inherently untrustworthy. Centrist figures such as the former president Hassan Rouhani and the foreign minister Javad Zarif expended huge internal political capital to sign a deal with the west, and the west promptly reneged on it. Meanwhile, Israel, a country that is not a member of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty—unlike Iran—and which has a totally unmonitored and undeclared nuclear weapon, receives largesse and support from the west. Nevertheless, Vance may have a point. As a casus belli, the right to enrich uranium to purity levels of 3.67 percent, the level permitted under the JCPOA, seems on the surface an implausible issue for the current supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, to risk martyrdom. Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (pointing) during a visit to the Natanz uranium enrichment facility in 2008. Associated Press Why did a country with large oil reserves feel such a need to have homegrown civil nuclear energy? A persuasive new account by Vali Nasr, entitled Iran’s Grand Strategy, helps unlock the key to that question by placing the answer in Iran’s colonial exploitation and its search for independence. He wrote: “Before the revolution itself, before the hostage crisis or US sanctions, before the Iran-Iraq war or efforts to export the revolution, as well as the sordid legacy of Iran’s confrontations with the west, the future supreme religious guide and leader of Iran valued independence from foreign influence as equal to the enshrining principles of Islam in the state.” Khamenei was indeed asked once what was the benefit of the revolution, and he replied “now all decisions are made in Tehran.” > It was the British and the Americans who introduced nuclear power to Iran. Nasr argues that as many of the lofty ideals of the revolution such as democracy and Islam have been eroded or distorted, the principle of Iranian independence has endured. The quest for sovereignty, he argues, arose from Iran’s benighted history. In the 19th century, Iran was squeezed between the British and Russian imperial powers. In the 20th century its oil resources were exploited by British oil companies. Twice its leaders—in 1941 and 1953—were removed from office by the British and Americans. The popular prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh was removed in a CIA-engineered coup in 1953 due to his demand to control Iran’s oil resources. No event in contemporary Iranian history is more scarring than Mosaddegh’s toppling. For Khomeini it confirmed Iran still did not control its destiny, or its energy resources. Although civil nuclear power and the right to enrich became a symbol of independence and sovereignty after the revolution, Ellie Geranmayeh from the European Council on Foreign Relations points out it was the British and the Americans that introduced nuclear power to Iran in what was named an “atoms for peace” program. The shah of Iran, with US approval, embarked on a plan to build 23 civil nuclear power stations, making it possible for Iran to export electricity to neighboring countries and achieve the status of a modern state. Michael Axworthy, the pre-eminent British historian of contemporary Iran, said: “Using oil profits in this way seemed a then sensible way of investing a finite resource in order to create an infinite one.” In an interview with the Washington Post, Henry Kissinger later admitted that as US secretary of state he raised no objections to the plants being built. “I don’t think the issue of proliferation came up,” he said. Work started on two nuclear reactors including one at the port city of Bushehr with the help of the German firm Kraftwerk Union a subdivision of Siemens and AEG. The shah recognized the dual use for nuclear power, and in June 1974 even told an American journalist that “Iran would have nuclear weapons without a doubt sooner than you think,” a remark he rapidly denied. Gradually the US became more nervous that the shah’s obsession with weaponry might mean Iran’s civil program turning nuclear. > “In my view, Iran’s nuclear program is a means to an end: it wants to be > recognized as a regional power.” After the Iranian revolution in 1979, progress on the near-complete two stations ground to a halt. Khomeini regarded nuclear power as a symbol of western decadence arguing bloated infrastructure projects would make Iran more dependent on western imperialist technology. He said he wanted no “westoxificiation,” or gharbzadegi in Farsi. The program was largely ended, to the disappointment of some nuclear scientists. But within a year or two electricity shortages and the population boom put pressure on Tehran’s policy elite to start a discreet reversal of the shutdown. Iraq’s use of chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq war, Tehran’s sense of diplomatic isolation in seeking international condemnation of Iraq’s repeated attacks on the incomplete Bushehr nuclear station, and finally multibillion-dollar legal wrangles with European firms over the incomplete nuclear program of the shah, together spawned a nuclear nationalism. By 1990, Iran’s Atomic Energy Authority declared that by 2005, 20 percent of the country’s energy could be produced by nuclear electric power and 10 power vaults would be built over the next decade. Hashemi Rafsanjani, Iran’s speaker of the parliament during the 1980-88 war and then president from 1989 to 1997, made numerous appeals to Iran’s nuclear scientists to return home and build the program. In 1988 he said: “If you do not serve Iran, whom will you serve?” Suddenly Iran’s nuclear program had shifted from a symbol of western modernism to a source of patriotic pride. By the turn of the century, the Iranian nuclear program was erroneously thought to consist primarily of several small research reactors and the nuclear light water reactor being constructed by Iran and now Russia at Bushehr. Rafsanjani later admitted Iran first considered a deterrent capability during the Iran-Iraq war, when the nuclear program first resumed. He said: “When we first began, we were at war and we sought to have that possibility for the day that the enemy might use a nuclear weapon. That was the thinking. But it never became real.” Rafsanjani travelled to Pakistan to try to meet Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program who later helped North Korea to develop an atomic bomb. In mid 2002, a leak from a dissident group, possibly via the Mossad, revealed that Iran had two secret nuclear installations designed for enriching uranium at Natanz near Isfahan and Kashan in central Iran. Iran said it was under no obligation to notify the International Atomic Energy Agency UN nuclear inspectorate of the existence of the plants because they were not operational. Iran added the nonproliferation treaty declared it was the “inalienable right” of all states to develop nuclear programs for peaceful purposes under IAEA safeguards. In itself, uranium enrichment is not a sign of seeking to make a nuclear weapon, but critics said it was hard to explain why Iran needed to make nuclear fuel at a stage in which it had no functioning nuclear reactor. From then on, the diplomatic dance started and has continued at various levels of intensity ever since. In October 2003 via the Tehran declaration, Iran under huge international pressure due to the leak, agreed to sign the additional protocol, which authorized the the IAEA to make short-notice inspections. In November 2004, under the Paris agreement, Iran agreed to suspend uranium enrichment temporarily pending proposals from the E3 (France, Germany and the UK) on how to handle the issue on a more long-term basis. But in deference to Iran’s sovereignty, the E3 recognized that this suspension was a voluntary confidence-building measure and not a legal obligation. But Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s populist president elected in June 2005, became more assertive, insisting Iran’s technology was the peaceful outcome of the scientific achievements of the country’s youth. “We need the peaceful nuclear technology for energy, medical and agricultural purposes, and our scientific progress,” he said. Gradually the case for negotiation increased. With the US demanding an end to enrichment and Iran insisting on its legal right to enrich, the E3 were caught in the middle. All kinds of compromises were floated, including by Brazil and India. But western opinion was shaped by the then head of the UN nuclear inspectorate, Mohamed ElBaradei, who said: “In my view Iran’s nuclear program is a means to an end: it wants to be recognized as a regional power, they believe that the nuclear knowhow brings prestige, brings power, and they would like to see the US engaging them.” Rouhani made a similar point in an article in the Washington Post. He said: “To us, mastering the atomic fuel cycle and generating nuclear power is as much about diversifying our energy resources as it is about who Iranians are as a nation, our demand for dignity and respect and our consequent place in the world. Without comprehending the role of identity, many issues we all face will remain unresolved.” Nevertheless, if Iran’s goal with its nuclear program was security and independence, and not something more sinister, the leadership has paid a huge and probably self-defeating price.