What prompted US to abort Iran strikes?

By ANWAR IQBAL

• US, Israel, Gulf allies all were underprepared for retaliation
• Regime remained resilient as security forces stay loyal
• Backchannel pledged to ‘stop the killing’ offered exit ramp

WASHINGTON: The crisis in Iran, driven by economic collapse, soaring inflation and deep public anger, has underscored both the limits of external military intervention and the resilience of Tehran’s clerical regime, analysts and former officials said.

US President Donald Trump publicly encouraged Iranian protesters, warning Tehran that it would face consequences if it “violently kills peaceful protesters”.

But behind the scenes, Washington came close to — and then stepped back from — military action, exposing the operational, political and strategic constraints shaping US policy.

According to a detailed Axios investigation, senior military, political and diplomatic officials across Washington and the Middle East believed US strikes on Iran were imminent.

Preparations were real, officials stressed. US troops began evacuating from Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar and from the Navy’s Fifth Fleet base in Bahrain, while Iran closed its airspace.

“It wasn’t fake or a ruse,” one US official told Axios. Yet by that afternoon, the moment passed. “It was really close,” another official said. “The military was in a position to do something really fast,but the order didn’t come.”

A central factor for the stand-down was force posture. Axios reported that since the last clash with Iran in June, many US military assets had been redeployed to the Caribbean and East Asia.

“The theatre was not ready,” one source said bluntly. Another added: “We sort of missed the window.”

Limits of military leverage

The lack of readiness shaped not only strike options but also contingency planning for Iranian retaliation, which US officials warned could endanger American forces and allies across the region.

Regional leaders reinforced those concerns. In a call with Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that Israel was not prepared to defend itself against Iran’s likely missile and drone retaliation.

He also believed the US plan “was not strong enough and wouldn’t be effective”, according to one of his advisers. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman similarly expressed deep concern about regional destabilisation.

A diplomatic backchannel also provided an exit ramp. Axios reported that Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi sent messages to Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, committing to halt planned executions of detained protesters and “stop the killing”.

Trump later acknowledged the messages had an impact, though a White House official insisted they were “not the only reason”.

For now, US officials say military action remains “on the table.” However, the near-miss suggests Washington’s restraint reflected not just caution or diplomacy, but the hard limits of military leverage over Iran’s internal struggle and the high costs of getting it wrong.

Even if strikes had been launched, analysts say they would have done little to protect protesters on the ground.

Andrew P. Miller said foreign military intervention is unlikely to create a stable democracy, especially one that benefits the intervening power.

Any action would probably have been restricted to “a single or brief set of strikes”, avoiding ground troops yet risking Iranian retaliation and escalation, Miller added.

Sanam Vakil, of Chatham House, said Trump’s approach relied more on coercive signalling than intervention. The deployment of the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group, she said, was designed to pressure Iran’s leadership rather than shield civilians.

“His references to wanting an agreement and to ‘making Iran great again’ are transactional signals aimed at the leadership rather than Iranian society,” Vakil said. “The strategy is less about engineering internal change in Iran than about forcing its leadership to confront the limits of resistance.”

Regime resilience

Vali Nasr, a prominent Iranian-American scholar in Washington, emphasised the durability of Iran’s security apparatus. For protests to seriously threaten the regime, he said, parts of the state — especially the security forces — would need to defect.

“There is no sign of any defections … or that it has in any way fractured,” Nasr said. “I am not certain the balance of forces necessarily lies with the protesters.”

Dawn for more

Trump balked but war is inevitable: Will Iran attack first?

by SHIVAN MAHENDRARAJAH

Tel Aviv and Washington are sharpening their knives – but military doctrine favors the first mover, and Tehran may be running out of time.

“When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck before you crush him.”— former US president Franklin D. Roosevelt

Rumors swirl around US President Donald Trump’s abrupt cancellation of new air strikes on Iran. What is undeniable is that the US military has few assets in the Persian Gulf. Trump has since ordered reinforcements. 

Israel’s attempt to destabilize Iran from within has failed, but new pretexts for war are emerging. Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff recently communicated with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi during which he is said to have issued outrageous demands – terminate enrichment, handover enriched uranium, and reduce missile ranges and stockpiles – effectively, a demand for capitulation, which Washington knows Tehran will reject. The US will claim “Iran refuses to negotiate in good faith” as casus belli. 

Pre-empt, or be punished

Iran’s military doctrine is fundamentally defensive; Israel’s is not. But that posture may be changing. In August 2025, retired Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) General Yahya Safavi, senior advisor to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, declared: “We must adopt an offensive strategy.” In a January statement, Iran’s Defense Council said, “within the framework of legitimate defense, the Islamic Republic of Iran does not limit itself to reacting after action and considers objective signs of threat as part of the security equation.”

“Pre-emptive War” is to strike first to seize the initiative when confronting an imminent threat. The textbook study is Israel’s Six-Day War (1967), following the blockade of the Tiran Straits, the mobilization of Arab armies, and the hostile rhetoric. 

“Preventive War,” however, is to counter a hazy threat: former US president George W. Bush’s 2003 Iraq War and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s 2025 Iran War are cases in point. 

British strategist B.H. Liddell Hart said: “Strategy has not to overcome resistance [opponent’s tactics], except from nature. Its purpose is to diminish the possibility of resistance, and it seeks to fulfill this purpose by exploiting the elements of movement and surprise.”

In 1967, Tel Aviv did just that – obliterating air defenses before they launched and claiming vast swaths of land.

War has already begun

Iran faces an imminent threat. The 12-Day War in June made clear that the US and Israel are acting in tandem. Trump’s own admission confirmed that the Oman “negotiations” were a ruse to sedate Tehran.

The riots were not spontaneous. Israeli and western handlers coordinated operations across provinces, funneling cash, weapons, explosives, and Starlink terminals to operatives. Global media and online platforms amplified fabricated death tolls – 12,000 to 20,000 – to manufacture consent for foreign intervention. 

The 12-Day War never ended, as Safavi shrewdly noted. The “riot phase” of the campaign is over, but a new phase is underway. The dilemma for Tehran is binary: should Iran absorb the first blow or strike the first blow?

A bid for survival

The threat is existential. The US and Israel do not seek only regime change, but the dismemberment of Iran along ethno-linguistic lines. Riots were intended to ignite civil war – like Syria and Libya – with Kurdish and Baluch separatists offered autonomous regions. If the Islamic Republic falls, the US will plunder the Iranian people’s oil and gas heritage, like with Venezuela.

For 47 years, Iran has endured sanctions, threats, saboteurs, agitators, and the western-backed Iran–Iraq War. In the past seven months, Iranians experienced war and riots instigated by the west. The anti-Iran media campaign grossly misrepresented the horrific crimes perpetrated against innocent Iranians, while portraying savage mobs as “peaceful protestors.” 

The Islamic Republic is called “repressive,” “brutal theocracy,” “illegitimate,” “dictatorship,” and “rogue state.” It has never been treated the way despotic Persian Gulf monarchies, Egypt, and Jordan are treated. 

The Iranian nation has never been allowed to function and develop like other nations. Negotiations are pointless. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was sabotaged by Tel Aviv – with help from former US president Barack Obama, who enticed Iran to sign the nuclear deal. “This nearly five-decades-long ‘horror film’ ends in one of two ways: Iran collapses, or the US-led bloc is defeated.” 

Tehran’s turn to move

Israel never negotiates. It demands. It steals. It kills. Iran has negotiated endlessly – and received nothing. Perhaps it is time to act as Tel Aviv would.

Tehran may want to consider what Liddell Hart termed a “strategy of limited aim.” Here, the objective is not the defeat of the enemy – “unconditional surrender” – or capture of territory (Israel in 1967); but a war that coerces the enemy to sit at the negotiating table with Iran and treat the ancient Iranian nation as an equal. 

Iran is disrespected by the US and its allies, just as Russia is disdained as a “gas station masquerading as a country.” Russia, despite its formidable military and nuclear arsenal, was never treated as a peer despite President Vladimir Putin’s good faith efforts to integrate with the US and EU economies. 

Iran is experiencing the same contempt. Moreover, while Putin was negotiating on Ukraine and acceding to the Minsk Accords, NATO built Ukraine’s war machine. When Putin was asked if he had regrets about the Ukraine War, he replied, “[t]he only thing we can regret is that we did not take intense action earlier.”

After Russia’s Oreshnik retaliation, the same EU/NATO bloc that demanded Moscow’s defeat came crawling for negotiations. Power won them respect. Iran must do the same – humiliate its enemies, force negotiations, and dictate terms.

The Cradle for more

AFRIQUE XXI EDITORIAL

At 56, Tchang, as he is affectionately known in Niger, arrested at his home a year ago, has been involved in every struggle. His friends remember the activist he was even in high school and later as a philosophy student in the early 1990s, caught up in the wave of the student movement that would overthrow, not without the loss of life, the heirs of General Seyni Kountché and his regime of exception. A revolutionary, a Marxist, deeply attached to the Kanuri community in the far east of Niger, where he was born, Moussa Tchangari participated in the National Conference that shattered the one-party system, giving birth to multiparty politics and democracy. Students were present in large numbers. But very quickly, Tchangari devoted himself to human rights, founding in 1991, with others, the Nigerien Association for the Defense of Human Rights (ANDDH) which played a decisive role in the fight for public freedoms until the end of the 2000s.

After a career as a journalist marked by a brilliant and erudite writing style, he created his own organization in 1994, a hybrid of popular education and activist training: Alternative Espace Citoyens. Several figures in the media, civil society, and even politics emerged from this melting pot, where community radio stations, films, newspapers, and tireless civic education programs flourished.

This persistent and uncompromising work earned Tchangari several arrests and prison sentences under various regimes and throughout his various activism: against the high cost of living in 2005, against arbitrary arrests in villages in the east of the country plagued by Boko Haram in 2015, against the 2018 budget law, and, after the coup that overthrew Mohamed Bazoum on July 26, 2023, against the new military leaders and the threat they posed to the country. This episode marked a break with some of his former comrades-in-arms who, for their part, applauded the fall of the socialist regime that had been in power since 2011.

Alternative International for more

by ANTON JAGER

Who killed Patrice Lumumba? More than six decades after the first prime minister of an independent Congolese state was put to death by a nocturnal firing squad, his ghost continues to haunt Belgian politics. Officially, of course, a concise answer has long been available: Lumumba was put to death in January 1961 by a platoon of colonial soldiers and police officers, under the watchful eye of Katangese secessionist Moïse Tshombe, after which a member of the squadron dissolved his body in an acid bath, unveiling his teeth to a Belgian television journalist decades later. The question of who supplied the platoon with its instructions and weaponry, however, cannot be answered with the same concision.   

From the outset, fingers in Kinshasa and Brussels were pointed at major players: the Belgian royal family; the upper strata of Belgium’s capitalist class, particularly the Union Minière du Haut-Katanga – a subsidiary of the infamous Socièté Générale, an emblem of European finance capital and predecessor of Umicore mining company – who were anxious to secure their property holdings in the post-colonial age; as well as American security services, concerned about stability in the African mineral belt between the Cold War nodes of Angola and Rhodesia, and then communist infiltration of the new Congolese government. The matter is far from settled. All too often, however, it seems of merely historical interest – another cold case from the tumult of the decolonial era. In recent decades, the residual links maintained between the DRC and Belgium in the Mobutu era have been severed, with both countries increasingly alienated from each other, economically and politically. The disconnect is only increased by the small size of Belgium’s post-colonial diaspora, hardly comparable to that of other ex-empires such as France or the United Kingdom.

NLR for more

by MARCO CRISCIOTTI

Japan celebrates New Year with a unique spiritual tradition: 108 bell tolls purifying earthly desires that hinder happiness, marking the passage to a new year.

December 31st is a universal date of transition. Around the world, people gather to take stock of the year ending and look toward the future with new goals. This day is experienced by many with a mixture of nostalgia and hope. It’s a moment of reflection on successes and failures, difficulties and achievements, but also an opportunity to set aside the past and embark on a new beginning.

The evening unfolds in different ways: some celebrate with friends and family, others participate in parties and dinners, while some prefer a quiet evening at home, perhaps with a solitary toast. No matter how it’s experienced, midnight represents the magical moment of farewell to the old year and welcome to the new one, often accompanied by fireworks and promises of change.

In Japan, however, December 31st is a deeply spiritual moment, far from the frenetic approach that characterizes Western celebrations. The country follows a series of ancient rituals that not only mark the passage of the year, but do so with a sense of purification and spiritual preparation for the future.

The spiritual preparation of December 31st

The day of December 31st in Japan begins with the so-called “osoji,” a tradition of deep cleaning that involves all homes. This ritual aims to rid oneself of impurities accumulated throughout the year. Cleaning the house thus becomes a symbolic act of purification, to prepare it to welcome the kami, the deity that will protect the house in the new year. After cleaning, decorations are put up: “shimekazari” are hung, straw rope wreaths that mark the entrance to the house, indicating that it is ready to welcome the deity of the new year. Additionally, “kadomatsu” are positioned, symbols of longevity and strength, made with pine, bamboo and plum.

In the afternoon, families go to temples or shrines for a first purification ceremony. Here they clap their hands twice before the altar to invoke the gods, pray and offer a gift. The evening is then spent in a traditional way: kimono is worn and people return to temples to pray, express wishes and participate in the “Joya no Kane” ceremony, which marks the culmination of the evening.

GreenMe for more

by BELEN FERNANDEZ

The US has waged its ‘war on terror’ for 25 years now, sowing death and destruction across the world.

The year 2025 has come to an end, and along with it, the first quarter of the 21st century. Reflecting on the course of the past 25 years, it is hard to understate the extent to which global events have been shaped by the military excesses of the United States – not that the same cannot be said for the 20th century, too.

Shortly after the new century kicked off, the US launched the so-called “global war on terror” under the enlightened guidance of President George W Bush, who offered the professional call to arms following the 9/11 attacks of 2001: “We have our marching orders. My fellow Americans, let’s roll.”

According to Bush, the US had undertaken to “wage a war to save civilisation itself”, which ultimately entailed pulverising various parts of the world and killing millions of people.

On September 11, 2001, I was enrolled as a junior at Columbia University in New York City, the site of the World Trade Center attacks. However, as I was scheduled to study in Italy that fall, I was not in New York at the time but rather in Austin, Texas, where my family then resided.

I spent the day at the office where I had been employed for the summer, watching apocalyptic replays of the incoming planes on a large projector screen set up by my colleagues specifically for that purpose.

Outside, American flags began to proliferate across every available surface, as the country went about appointing itself the number one victim of terrorism in the history of the world – and never mind the quite literal terror the US had been inflicting on other nations for decades, from Vietnam and Laos to Nicaragua and Panama.

Al Jazeera for more

by MICHAEL K. SMITH

He had a disarming frankness, a toothy grin, a dazzling mind that never rested.

He always felt completely out of tune with the world. At ten, he published his first article (in the school paper) – a lament on the fall of Barcelona to Franco. At thirteen, he was haunting anarchist bookstores in New York City and working a newsstand with his uncle, eagerly soaking up everything a brilliant mix of immigrant minds had to offer, by far the richest intellectual environment he was ever to encounter. At sixteen, he went off by himself at the news of Hiroshima, unable to comprehend anyone else’s reaction to the horror. At twenty-four, he abandoned a Harvard fellowship to live on a kibbutz, returning only by chance to fulfill an academic career. At twenty-eight, he revolutionized the field of linguistics with his book, Syntactic Structures. At twenty-nine, he became associate professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (and full professor three years later), though his competence with technology was limited to the tape recorder. At thirty-five, he threw himself into anti-war protest, giving talks, writing letters and articles, promoting teach-ins, and helping to organize student demonstrations and draft resistance against the Vietnam War. At thirty-eight, he risked a five-year jail term protesting at the Pentagon, spending the night in jail alongside Norman Mailer, who described him in Armies of the Night as “a slim sharp-featured man with an ascetic expression, and an air of gentle but absolute moral integrity.”^[1]At forty, he was the only white face in the crowd at Fred Hampton’s funeral, after the young Black Panther leader was gunned down by the FBI in a Gestapo-style raid.^[2]

Such was the early life of America’s greatest dissident intellectual, raised in a deeply anti-Semitic German-Irish neighborhood in Quaker Philadelphia, later awarded an elite linguistics professorship at the center of the Pentagon system at MIT.

ZNetwork for more

by FAROOQ BABRAKZAI

In a mystery, the sleuth must be believably involved and emotionally invested in solving the crime. — Diane Mott Davidson

On Tuesday, 16 October, 1951, around 4 pm, the first prime minister of Pakistan, Liaquat Ali Khan, was going to address a public meeting in Company Garden in Rawalpindi. As he walked to the microphone and uttered the words“Baraadaraan-i-Millat” [Brothers of the Nation], a man named Said Akbar, sitting on the ground near the dais, fired two bullets at him in rapid succession with a 9mm semi-automatic pistol.

Chaos and mayhem suddenly erupted in the meeting. Khan Najaf Khan, the Deputy Superintendent of Police who had personally supervised the security arrangements, yelled in Pashto, “Who fired the shots? Shoot!”. Within seconds, a police inspector, Mohammad Shah, came running with his service revolver drawn and shot Said Akbar five times at close range, in such a haphazard manner that he missed one shot altogether.

As Said Akbar was lying on the ground dying, he was also stabbed more than 26 times with spears by Muslim League volunteers. The recording equipment of Radio Pakistan was on and captured the sounds of the firing and the chaos for one minute and 13 seconds, and then fell silent. The entire shooting episode ended within 48 seconds. The recording is available online. Liaquat Ali Khan was taken to the Combined Military Hospital, where he succumbed to his injuries.

The assassin, Said Akbar, was my father, who had come to Rawalpindi from Abbottabad on 14 October.

One of Pakistan’s founding fathers and the country’s first prime minister was assassinated at a public gathering 74 years ago. Despite the formation of an Inquiry Commission and two other police investigations — one by Scotland Yard — until today, there has been no satisfactory closure regarding those tragic events. Now, the son of the assassin has penned his own investigation into the events in the shape of a book, which provides, for the first time ever, his family’s perspective as well as delves into the weaknesses of the official accounts and spans Pakistan’s tumultuous history — from the first war over Kashmir, the Rawalpindi Conspiracy and internal friction within the new state’s functionaries. Eos presents, with permission, excerpts from The Assassination of Liaquat Ali Khan: 1947-1952 by Farooq Babrakzai, published by Vanguard Books…

Intelligence failures

Neither the CID (Criminal Investigation Department) nor the police personnel had any prior knowledge of Said Akbar’s presence in Rawalpindi, let alone at the public meeting. All police and CID claims about keeping Said Akbar under surveillance in Rawalpindi for three days prior to the murder, upon close examination, turned out to be false; stories that were fabricated after the tragedy. No CID or police official was able to establish Said Akbar’s identity in the public meeting

Dawn for more

by DAVID HEARST

A tectonic shift is taking place in the Arab world. It has nothing to do with the temporary and patchable squabbles of princes, imperial spoils, or jostling alliances of proxies. 

Nor has it any relevance to the two traditional bugbears of the Sunni Arab ruler: Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood.

It has not been triggered by a trader immolating himself after having his food carts confiscated by officials in Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia. No mass demonstrations have taken place in Cairo calling for the downfall of a dictator. 

And yet, this shift could have as wide repercussions as the Arab Spring once had, 15 years ago.

What is commonly referred to in the Middle East as the “real” nations of the Arab world – meaning those countries with significant populations – have woken up to what has been happening all around them.

Saudi Arabia and Algeria, principally, and Egypt potentially have realised that a plan to dominate and control the key chokepoints of the region by Israel (explicitly) and the United Arab Emirates (implicitly) is a threat to their national interests.

The Israeli-Emirati plan is simple: fragment once-formidable Arab states, control key trade routes like the Bab al-Mandeb Strait between Yemen and the Horn of Africa, plant military bases all around the region, and you will ensure lucrative military and financial control for the rest of the century.

Policy of fragmentation 

In Israel, this plan was explicit. It’s the formula Tel Aviv is trying in Syria, with their creation of a protectorate of the Druze in southern Syria, and attempts to do the same to Kurdish areas in the north. This strategy is open and declared. 

Israel doesn’t want a united Syria. But fragmentation is also the policy inherent in Tel Aviv’s recognition of Somaliland, which offers the Israeli military a foothold in the Horn of Africa. 

For Abu Dhabi, fragmentation had long been been set in motion all over the Arab world.

It had other targets, principally political Islam. But fragmentation was its policy in Libya, where the UAE supported General Khalifa Haftar against the Government of National Accord in Tripoli.

The blinkers had fallen from Saudi eyes. They felt that they were being surrounded, and if they did not act now, the kingdom itself could be the next target 

It was the same policy in Sudan, where the Emiratis funded and armed the Rapid Support Forces and their commander, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (Hemedti), who is under US Treasury sanctions. Of course they deny it, but the Sudanese civil war would not be happening without massive Emirati involvement.

MEE for more

DAWN

From humanoid assistants and service robots to machines designed for healthcare, logistics and everyday tasks, CES offers a glimpse into a future where robots are no longer experimental curiosities but working companions.

Robots took centre stage at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2026 in Las Vegas, Nevada, on January 6, as the annual technology show opened to the public. CES is being held in Las Vegas from January 6 to 9.

The bots roamed the exhibition floors as symbols of how artificial intelligence is moving from screens into physical space. From humanoid assistants and service robots to machines designed for healthcare, logistics and everyday tasks, CES offers a glimpse into a future where robots are no longer experimental curiosities but working companions.

This photo essay documents the machines, their makers and the moments of interaction that reveal how near that future may be.

Dawn for more

by HARSH MANDER

As always, Harsh Mander lists his favourite Indian films of the year and discovers gems not just in Hindi but in other languages too.

In our land – still swept constantly by the poisonous hot winds of  hate and grievance – 2025 was one more broken year.

Hateful speeches exhorting the cleansing of the country of its Muslim populace continued to thunder. Bulldozers continued to rumble razing Muslim homes and shrines. Temples continued to be discovered or imagined under medieval mosques. Churches and chapels continued to be vandalised by raging mobs. Crowds continued to thrash and stone men to death claiming they had slaughtered a cow or romanced a Hindu girl. Security forces continued to muzzle dissent and rebellion with bullets. Some of our finest hearts and minds continued to be locked away in prison barracks. 

Piercing through the toxic haze of loathing, iniquity and fear that enveloped us all in 2025 were a handful of films of exceptional humanism. Films rose daring to voice difficult and dangerous truths about injustice and suffering and resistance. Films lit up with the audacity to imagine kindness. Films tender with the fortitude of hope.

Heading my list of the most consequential films of the year is a film that most Indians have not been given the chance to watch. This is Panjab 95. Intensely troubling and profoundly stirring, Honey Trehan’s film is a tribute to one of free India’s great heroes Jaswant Singh Khalra, a man sadly little known outside Punjab. 

Trehan’s film hurtles us back to one of the darkest, most traumatic chapters in the journey of our republic, but one that most have completely forgotten. This was the decade from the mid-1980s of militancy in Punjab. The film recalls for us a regime in which the police was not just given a free hand but actively incentivised to murder innocent people. Policemen who killed enough numbers of unarmed men and women in cold blood were rewarded with out-of-turn promotions. It was a time of terror, in which no family in Punjab was safe. Young men were disappearing in droves, and their bodies burnt in covert mass cremations or thrown into the canals that dissect the state. Policemen would extort fortunes from parents threatening that their sons would otherwise be murdered. No one knew whose turn was next.

The Wire for more