Matthew Alford digs out the PhD thesis, on Lord Byron's poetry, from Birmingham University of Prof Mohammad Marandi. In it, he finds insights into the mind of the man who's become "the most well-known Iranian spokesperson in the Western world". More here: drmattalford.substack.com/p/the-forgot...

The West's current crime spree in the Middle East: A genocidal campaign of carpet-bombing and starvation in Gaza. A war of aggression on Iran wrecking the global economy. The ethnic cleansing of South Lebanon. It's so overwhelming it's impossible to absorb the scale of it.

Granny holding a cardboard sign = terrorist. Former al-Qaeda leader wearing a suit = honoured guest of the British government.

Israel committed genocide in Gaza, mostly likely killing 100,000s of Palestinians. Now the UK and European foreign ministers worry that Israel passing an apartheid death penalty law for Palestinians might "undermine Israel’s commitments with regards to democratic principles".

Israel is making sure Trump can't find an off-ramp in Iran. Read my latest here: www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/isra...

Binary thinking over whether the US or Israel is driving the illegal war on Iran obscures far more than it illuminates. The truth is the dog and the tail are wagging each other. Matthew Alford reads my latest: jonathancook.substack.com/p/listen-doe...

Binary thinking in the argument over whether the US or Israel is driving the illegal war on Iran obscures far more than it illuminates. The truth is the dog and the tail are wagging each other. Read my latest here: jonathancook.substack.com/p/does-the-t...

Westerners are softened up for aggressive, global US militarism – of the kind all too evident in the war on Iran – through the Pentagon’s control over thousands of blockbuster films and TV shows. Matthew Alford reads a 2022 article with renewed relevance: jonathancook.substack.com/p/replay-how...

All day the BBC has aired an Israeli military lie that the UK is not involved in the war on Iran – even as British bases host US bombers attacking Tehran. A patent Israeli falsehood being amplified by the BBC without a trace of pushback.

The BBC's Lucy Williamson says Israel is destroying south Lebanon "using Gaza as a model – a blueprint for destruction used again as a path to peace". That's right: genocide as "a path to peace". Orwell would be proud.

The US empire's footprint on a map: Source: davidvine.net/maps.html

Trump isn't the first US president tempted by an Israeli plan to destroy Iran and thereby "remake the Middle East", as this extract from my book Israel and the Clash of Civilisations sets out: jonathancook.substack.com/p/how-the-us...

More than half the population in northern Israel belong to Israel's much-discriminated Palestinian minority. It doesn't occur to the racist Guardian to ask them what they think of Israel's latest illegal war.

Two interviews by the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg – one of an Iranian leader, the other of an Israeli leader – reveal the starkly different standards the two states are held to by the British media. As Media Lens show, this isn't journalism, it's propaganda: medialens.substack.com/p/how-on-ear...

Raffi Berg may be fighting in the courts for damages from Owen Jones, but it's really the BBC in the dock – for being utterly wedded to an editor whose objectivity on Israel is so clearly in question. Matthew Alford reads my latest: jonathancook.substack.com/p/listen-bbc...

BBC executives seem willing to back their Middle East editor Raffi Berg in his libel case against Owen Jones however damaging the resulting revelations about the corporation’s profoundly skewed coverage of Israel. Read my latest article here: www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2026-03...

Journalist Raffi Berg may be fighting in the courts for damages, but it's really the BBC in the dock – for being utterly wedded to an editor whose objectivity on Israel is so clearly in question. Read my latest here: jonathancook.substack.com/p/bbc-editor...

This Guardian story amplifies anger at Russia's return to the Venice Biennale. You'd never know from reading it that Israel and the US are currently engaged in an illegal war of aggression on Iran. Isn't that "whitewashing war crimes" too, Guardian?

The team that has been carrying out a genocide in Gaza is issuing barely veiled threats to nuke Iran. Psychopaths are running "western civilisation".

They brought you a genocide to turn Gaza into a beachfront playground for the rich. They launched a war of choice on Iran that's shaken the global economy to its foundations. Now they're rolling out AI that will make the world perfect by making us redundant. Trust them!

In this catastrophic war of choice, it is Tehran fighting a rearguard action to restore geopolitical sanity. If Iran loses, god only knows where Israel and the US will drag the world next. Matthew Alford reads my latest: jonathancook.substack.com/p/listen-in-...

Media Lens unravel the tapestry of lies the media have helped weave over decades to justify the illegal US-Israeli war on Iran: www.medialens.org/2026/operati...

Israel planned this war on Iran for 40 years. Everything else is a smoke screen. Read my latest here: www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/isra...

In Iran, Israel’s morbid military cult now has the US fully in its grip. Read my latest here: www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2026-03...

In this catastrophic war of choice, it is Tehran fighting a rearguard action to restore geopolitical sanity. If Iran loses, god only knows where Israel and the US will drag the world next. Read my latest here: jonathancook.substack.com/p/in-iran-is...

The US attacks an Iranian ship off Sri Lanka, in international waters, making good on its plans to turn this into a world war. Alongside all his other criminal precedents, Trump has now set one for Iran targeting US, Israeli and UK assets around the world.

Remember how we once assumed state-corporate media reported the truth rather twisted our minds with fake news to fit with their state-corporate interests. How's that going after Iraq, Libya, Corbyn/Starmer, Ukraine, Gaza and now Iran? Is the picture not clear yet?

Two senior Iranian officials say Iran refuses to engage in talks with the US because it has repeatedly used negotiations as cover for attacks. Iran has concluded the US cannot be trusted – and every other country will have concluded exactly the same. The US has killed diplomacy.

Remember the western media's constant refrain that Russia's invasion of Ukraine was "unprovoked" – despite years of documented western provocations. Iran did nothing to provoke the Israeli-US attack. Yet notice this: not one media outlet has described the attack as "unprovoked".

Who's going to explain to Keir Starmer that you can't join "defensively" a war of aggression? That makes you an aggressor too. More war crimes to add to Starmer's tally from providing material aid to Israel's genocide in Gaza.

No mention from the BBC that Israel and the US committed the supreme crime in launching a war of aggression on Iran. Instead Clive Myrie tells us only that they "seek to transform Iran". I guess that means Putin's 2022 invasion was just his way of "seeking to transform Ukraine".

Congratulations to the US for killing Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader and a steadfast opponent of Iran developing nuclear weapons. Doubtless Iran's new leader will learn from Khamenei's mistake and expedite an Iranian nuclear bomb as quickly as possible.

Keir Starmer says "British planes are in the sky" but played no active part in the strikes on Iran. Does he mean it in the same sense as our planes being in the skies above Gaza? Because those planes provided Israel with the data to help it murder Palestinians en masse.

It's time to understand – and if the attack on Iran doesn't prove it to you, I don't know what will – that the US is an oil-guzzling, planet-crunching, war juggernaut. It's doing exactly what it is designed to do. And unless it's stopped, it'll keep doing it till we're all dead.

Despite critical acclaim, an Oscar-nominated director and industry heavyweights like Brad Pitt and Joaquin Phoenix behind it, it's almost impossible to find a screen showing the Voice of Hind Rajab – the story of how Israel slowly killed a 6-year-old in Gaza. chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-voice-...

Rubio declared a return to brutal western colonialism - and Europe applauded. Read my latest here: www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/us-r...

It's not only last week's acquittal by a jury of six Palestine Action defendants. Now a panel of three deeply establishment judges agree that the Starmer government was utterly bonkers to declare Palestine Action a terrorist organisation.

The political and media classes that once venerated Mandelson and are now cutting him adrift are the same ones that spent five years destroying Corbyn. Read my latest here: www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/star...

Starmer is toast. But the dark forces that brought him to power are as strong as ever. Read my latest here: www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/star...

Channel 4 documentary shows Starmer's reasons for banning Palestine Action were a lie. It was really about protecting the profits of the arms industry. Matthew Alford reads my latest: jonathancook.substack.com/p/listen-ch4...

Channel 4 documentary shows Palestine Action wasn’t banned because it’s a terrorist organisation. It was banned because large corporations, like the Elbit weapons firm, have captured the UK government. Read my latest here: jonathancook.substack.com/p/ch4-doc-sh...

Lots of people on social media suggesting that the 12 randomly selected jurors must have been biased because they all agreed to acquit the six activists accused of smashing up Israeli drones used to kill children in Gaza. That argument really isn't the win they seem to think it is.

It took considerable courage for the jury in the Palestine Action trial to ignore the demands to convict from the judge, government, police and media and instead to weigh the actual evidence. My latest sets out why jurors were right to reject all the bullying: www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2026-02...

The jury were right to acquit the Palestine Action defendants. Read my latest article to learn why: jonathancook.substack.com/p/the-jury-w...

Ex-ambassador Craig Murray explains how the Palestine Action trial was rigged by the government, police and judge to secure convictions – and yet still the jury refused to do as they were told. They had good reason, as Murray explains: www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/202...

Entirely reasonable that there's so much fury that a jury of 12 ordinary people, having heard all the evidence, has reached a verdict that does not accord with the directions of the judge, Starmer's government and the billionaire-owned media. Who do these people think they are?

A handful of figures will be sacrificed - but only to protect a wider culture that believes rules don't apply to the ruling elite. Read my latest on the Epstein Files here: www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/crim...

What Israel's idea of "ceasefire" looks like.

If you are baffled by why the jury refused to convict the Palestine Action defendants, it's because – unlike them – you didn't hear the actual evidence. You heard what the media wanted you to know. Here, I explain what the jury learnt from the trial: jonathancook.substack.com/p/barristers...

The UK government pinned its case for declaring Palestine Action a terrorist organisation largely on the trial of the so-called Filton Six, claiming they had proved the group to be violent. A jury today found none of them guilty of any of the charges.