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At least 20 killed in latest Israeli attacks on Lebanon

At least 20 killed in latest Israeli attacks on Lebanon Twenty people have been killed and 57 wounded in Israeli attacks on Lebanon, the Lebanese Disaster Risk Management Unit says. The deaths on Friday bring the total number killed by Israeli attacks since 2 March to 1,021, according to figures published by the official National News Agency. The total number of wounded rose to 2,641 while 134,616 displaced people were registered in shelters.

American crusade: Domination is the only language for Trump's team

American crusade: Domination is the only language for Trump's team Submitted by Soumaya Ghannoushi on Fri, 03/20/2026 - 17:41 What once lingered at the margins - militarism, civilisational arrogance, crusading fantasy - now sits at the centre of state power US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth is pictured in Florida in February 2026 (Miguel Rodriguez/AFP) Off Sitting behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, US President Donald Trump lifts a model of a B-2 bomber into his hands and turns it with obvious delight. “Let me just hug that little sucker,” he says. He admires it, praises its size, marvels at its destructive capacity, and boasts that when he sent its real counterpart into the night, “every single bomb was dropped right down the chute that it was supposed to hit”. He speaks not with the burdened gravity of a man leading a war, but with the glee of someone handling a prized toy. It is less the posture of a statesman than of a child savouring a game. And that is precisely what is so chilling. Trump does not describe war as a tragedy or a necessity. He describes it as spectacle, as mastery, as pleasure. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); Over and over again, he boasts that the US has “the strongest military by far in the world”, that “no other country has our military or even close”, that it is more “fearsome” than other national armies “and it’s not even close”. He lingers over the image of bombs falling perfectly, “right down the chute”, and revels in “the biggest explosions that anybody’s ever heard”. Days earlier, speaking to NBC about Kharg Island, he boasted that it had been devastated and added that the US may strike it again “just for fun”. Just for fun. Violence is not reluctant, but indulgent. Not a burden, but an appetite. Not necessity, but play. 'New western century' From the Oval Office to the Pentagon, the language hardly changes. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth declared, with chilling exhilaration: “B-2s, B-52s, B-1s, Predator drones … death and destruction from the sky all day long.” He added that the rules of engagement were designed “to unleash American power, not shackle it”. This is not a lapse in tone. It is doctrine, expressed not only in the language of force, but in the ideas that justify it. At the recent Munich Security Conference, Secretary of State Marco Rubio cast the moment as one requiring the West to regroup and reassert its dominance, urging Europe to rally around a shared “western civilisation” and to help rebuild a “new western century”, while dismissing anti-colonial sentiments as weakness. These are not men on the fringes. They command fleets and bombs, and speak like a gang: boastful, taunting, intoxicated by force Taken together, these voices reveal an administration that recognises only one organising principle: force. It is unrestrained by international law, uninterested in treaties, and dismissive of institutions - even those built by the US itself after the Second World War. Consider the men entrusted with the machinery of war, including a defence secretary shadowed by allegations of sexual misconduct, whose colleagues recall drunken nights in which he shouted “kill all Muslims”, and whose own mother condemned his long record of being “an abuser of women”. Even the symbols he inscribes on his body point in the same direction, including the Jerusalem cross and the words “Deus Vult”. Also inked on his body is the word “kafir”, Arabic for “infidel”, a term that reduces a faith to an enemy and illustrates Hegseth’s fixation on provoking and defining himself against Muslims. These are not random markings, but fragments of a worldview upon which he elaborates in his book American Crusade, where politics becomes a civilisational and religious conflict, and the modern world is recast as a battlefield between the West and its enemies - Islam foremost among them. The personal and the political collapse into one pattern: grievance, aggression, and theatrical cruelty elevated into policy. Nepotism over statecraft And then there are those who do not merely surround power, but steer it: Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and the president’s real-estate magnate friend, Steve Witkoff. Neither is trained in diplomacy, nor equipped for the complexity of nuclear negotiations. Yet both were placed at the centre of one of the most dangerous files in modern geopolitics. This is not unconventional. It is structural: a system in which proximity replaces competence, loyalty replaces expertise, nepotism replaces statecraft. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); But the problem runs deeper still. One diplomat said the envoys handling negotiations with Iran were effectively operating like Israeli assets - an extraordinary assessment, and a revealing one. Reports from the Quincy Institute go further, suggesting that the president was not merely advised but misled, presented with a distorted picture of the negotiations that helped pave the way to war. Claims used to justify escalation were also contested. One such assertion - that Iran had boasted of possessing material for multiple nuclear weapons - was later disputed by diplomats familiar with the negotiations, who said the statement had been misrepresented. And the concern was not limited to outside observers. In his resignation letter, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Centre stated that he could not in good conscience support a war launched without necessity, pointing explicitly to the role of pressure from Israel and its American lobby in driving the US into conflict. In service of Israel Witkoff and Kushner are not merely aligned with Israel; they are embedded within networks tied to its most hardline political currents. Witkoff has spoken openly of his closeness to pro-Israel mega-donor Miriam Adelson. He has even described carrying a pager gifted to him by Mossad officials, celebrating an operation in which thousands of pagers exploded across Lebanon, indiscriminately killing civilians, including children, and injuring thousands. Kushner’s ties are even more entrenched. His long-standing financial, political and personal relationships with the Israeli leadership place him at the heart of Middle East policy - without distance, detachment or neutrality. By serving Israel's agenda, Trump betrayed Gulf allies Read More » And these men - ill-equipped, inexperienced, ideologically aligned - were the ones entrusted with diplomacy, despite being more attuned to the priorities of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government than to preventing war, or to safeguarding American interests and those of regional allies. The record has started closing in. The Omani foreign minister, who mediated the Iran talks, revealed that a deal had been imminent - one that met Trump’s own demands. It was not rejected. It was abandoned. Britain’s national security adviser, who was also present during the talks, reached the same conclusion: there was no imminent Iranian threat, and a surprisingly favourable agreement was within reach, had diplomacy been allowed to continue. Instead, it was cut short. The most damning judgment came from within those same diplomatic circles, with the Guardian quoting one unnamed Gulf source with knowledge of the talks as saying: “We regarded Witkoff and Kushner as Israeli assets that dragged a president into a war he wants to get out of.” The pattern thus becomes unmistakable. Power, under Trump, has ceased to function as a public trust.  It is treated instead as personal property, distributed among family, friends and loyalists: a son-in-law handed diplomacy, a confidant entrusted with nuclear negotiations - not because of competence, but because of proximity. This is nepotism, not as an aberration, but as an operating system. Intoxicated by force And into that hollowed-out structure flows alignment, ever more explicit, with the agenda of a far-right Israeli government whose priorities increasingly shape the trajectory of American power. Through figures like Kushner and Witkoff, diplomacy ceases to mediate and begins to transmit. Policy is not formed, but channelled. The machinery of the US - its fleets, its bombers, its sanctions, its global leverage - is bent towards the service of another state’s aims. This is not alliance. It is entanglement, power bent without restraint. And as the Omani foreign minister warned in The Economist: “There are two parties to this war who have nothing to gain from it … This is an uncomfortable truth to tell, because it involves indicating the extent to which America has lost control of its own foreign policy. But it must be told.” Trump is a modern Nero, with flames rising behind him and spectacle before him. And a world watching in horror American foreign policy now operates through something more visceral: a thuggish, power-drunk culture in which domination is the only language. What once lingered at the margins - militarism, civilisational arrogance, crusading fantasy - now sits at the centre of state power. These are not men on the fringes. They command fleets and bombs, and speak like a gang: boastful, taunting, intoxicated by force. And even now, the language does not change. “I wonder what would happen if we ‘finished off’ what’s left of the Iranian Terror State,” Trump wrote on social media, musing on escalation as though it were an option, while making clear that allies who refused to join the war would pay a price. This is not strategy. It is reprisal - not only against Iran, but against any who refuse to fall in line. Trump is a modern Nero, with flames rising behind him and spectacle before him. And a world watching in horror. The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye. War on Iran Opinion Post Date Override 0 Update Date Mon, 05/04/2020 - 21:29 Update Date Override 0