Kernow Damo

Right, so Donald Trump has rewarded the UAE for helping America’s war against Iran.

Not with a medal. Not with a little certificate in a gold frame. Not even with one of those ghastly commemorative plates nobody wants but everybody pretends is tasteful.

No, the UAE gets easier access to advanced AI chips now, servers, military equipment, satellites, drones, sensitive dual-use technology, a great big techy thank-you hamper.

Help us with the war and we’ll chuck in the computing power.

Lovely.

But while Washington is busy handing over this shiny high-tech goodie bag, China has started blocking helium exports to protect its own chipmakers because the same war has already helped make the global shortage of helium worse. Helium is used in advanced semiconductor manufacturing to control heat during the incredibly precise process of etching microscopic circuits onto silicon. No helium, no easy substitute for it either, and suddenly Trump’s lovely AI reward starts looking like a brand-new kitchen with the gas supply cut off.

Trump rewards the UAE with chips, while helping wreck the supply chain needed to actually make those chips.

Right, so Volkswagen had a problem.

Its Osnabrück plant was running out of road, car production was winding down, thousands of jobs were hanging in the balance, and somebody somewhere clearly thought: well, if we can’t sell enough cars, perhaps we can start building bits for Israel’s missile systems instead.

Enter Rafael.

Israeli government-owned. Iron Dome manufacturer. Very keen on a German factory, German machinery and a ready-made workforce.

Cars out. Launchers, transporters and power equipment in.

A wonderfully neat little arrangement, provided you don’t look at it for more than six seconds.

Germany gets another chunk of industry pushed towards weapons for an Israeli state owned arms manufacturer. Volkswagen gets to call it a rescue plan. Rafael gets a foothold inside one of Europe’s biggest manufacturing names.

But then Qatar enters the story. Gulf state, Iran facing, not exactly on the best of terms with Israel right now all things considered.

You see Qatar Holding, the state-backed investment arm, is one of Volkswagen’s largest shareholder blocs. It owns roughly 10.4% of the company’s shares, but because of Volkswagen’s voting structure, that translates into about 17% of the shareholder voting rights.

Seventeen percent of the votes inside Volkswagen.

So Qatar has real corporate weight. Boardroom weight. Enough influence, according to the reporting, to obstruct the Rafael arrangement and later have its intervention described as a veto.

And we should also remember that Qatar, unusually among the Gulf states seemingly edging ever closer to Israel, has never formally normalised relations with it.

So it appears to have looked at Volkswagen’s proposed partnership with an Israeli state-owned arms company and said: absolutely not.

Actual shareholder power.

Right, so ABC Australia’s flagship current-affairs programme, 7.30, invited Professor Mohammad Marandi on to discuss Iran, apparently under the impression he had never done a television interview before.

Because this was either a spectacular insult to his intelligence or to ours. Possibly both.

The woman interviewing him was Sarah Ferguson, the long-serving host of 7.30, with a reputation for combative interviews. She has built a career on pressing difficult guests, so this was not some nervous junior presenter accidentally getting out of their depth.

And yet Ferguson opened as though Marandi would simply accept every Western premise placed in front of him, nod politely, and begin answering from inside their framing. Oh dear!

Now, Marandi is hardly famous for sitting there quietly while presenters load the questions against him. ABC knew exactly who they had booked. They knew he challenges wording, rejects premises and turns questions back on the people asking them, especially if they are dishonest in their framing.

So when Ferguson did what establishment media figures always do, he did exactly what anybody who had watched him before should have expected.

Only this time he did it and then some.

Right, so Donald Trump has turned up in Ankara, Turkey and casually reopened a question Israel desperately wanted kept shut: Turkey getting back into the F-35 programme.

At the same time, Turkey has helped Syria install a new radar at Damascus airport, which means the skies Israel has spent years treating like its own private bypass might not be quite so empty anymore, so perhaps those settlers who have been getting comfy on the wrong side of Israel’s undefined border might like to get back on the right side of it.

And then Mark Rutte the apparent Secretary General of NATO, but better known right now as an echo for whatever dross seems to fall out of Little Donnie’s puckered punim ends up getting asked the fairly obvious question. If this growing clash between Israel and Turkey turns into an actual confrontation, what does NATO actually do?

Now, you’d think that would be the easy bit. Turkey is in NATO. Article 5 is the famous one. Attack one, attack all. It’s practically printed on the mugs.

Except Rutte doesn’t go there.

Right, so Trump says America hit Iran “very hard”. NATO’s Mark Rutte, a man who sold out his last ounce of dignity along with his spine for a seat right next to Little Donnie says it was “absolutely necessary,” because of course of he did. US Central Command, CENTCOM, says it was all about protecting commercial shipping and innocent civilian mariners.

And then because they tempted fate too much, the inevitable balls up happened.

A fishing pier on fire. Fishermen reported dead. A railway bridge hit miles inland. American bases coming under fire in return, because Iran was never going to let that go. And then Iran releasing footage of one of now precious few American Reaper drones dropping out of the sky in bits.

Safe. Controlled. Necessary.

You can pick whichever US backed claim you like. The pictures don’t seem especially interested in playing ball.

Now, before anybody tries to turn this into “Iran attacked shipping, so America had to respond”, let’s put the order of events back where it belongs.

Washington started this war. The disruption in the Strait followed from that. Iran has struck vessels that deviated from the routes and instructions it had laid down – the Strait is their sovereign waters, they control the traffic - but that is not some clean, standalone justification America can point to while pretending everything began there. Every road leads back to the same place: the United States opened the conflict, widened it, all for Israel lest we forget, and is now using the consequences of its own escalation as permission for even more escalation.

They started the confrontation, created the conditions, and now want credit for responding to them. That is not defence. It is an alibi written after the fact.

Right, so Donald Trump has managed to restart his Iran war using a photograph from the last one. He’s posted this to Truth Social

That fire allegedly showing the latest attacks on the Iran’s coastal city of Chabahar? It’s from June of last year.

Not this attack. Not this week. Not even this year.

And while Trump was busy passing off last year’s flames as proof of this year’s brilliance, these were the actual images coming out of Chabahar. Fresh attacks. Fresh damage. Fresh consequences, because Iran have no more taken it on the chin this time around as they did the times before.

Because then the tankers started turning around.

Then Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar were dragged into the response.

So, in the space of a few hours, Trump’s claims were caught out, shipping started going the wrong way, and his great display of restored control began spreading across the Gulf like somebody had kicked over a petrol can.

The picture wasn’t fake, but the pitch was.

And it only got worse from there.

Right, so Ireland has pushed a total ban on goods from Israel’s illegal settlements through the Dáil and on into the Seanad.

And the amount of trade involved is about €200,000 a year.

Two hundred grand.

Now, to most normal people, that is still a lot of money. You’d notice if somebody removed €200,000 from your bank account. I certainly would if I had it to begin with. But in terms of international trade, this is loose change. It’s a couple of crates, some produce, a few bits and pieces from settlements in the occupied West Bank.

And yet getting even this tiny measure through has taken eight years, multiple governments, legal warnings, American pressure and enough political shuffling to wear a groove in the floor of Leinster House.

Which rather gives the game away.

Because Israel’s problem here is not the €200,000.

It is the fact that Ireland has built a barrier at all.

Now, before anybody runs off with the wrong version of this, Ireland has not banned every Israeli product.

This is not Irish customs charging through Tesco with a clipboard, hurling Israeli hummus into evidence bags and demanding to know where the avocados were on the night in question.

There is therefore still work to do for those of us of a BDS persuasion, but bear in mind it has taken 8 years to get this far, at least they are moving in the right direction.

This is a ban aimed at goods made in designated Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem.

It is not operating at customs yet. The bill still has to finish its legislative journey through that upper house now and be formally brought into force, so a bit of awareness being raised about this still seems appropriate and yet it’s worth bearing in mind that this bill passed in the Dáil without ever needing a vote. Think about that.

Right, so Israel said full operational control of Bint Jbeil district in southern Lebanon was only days away.

Days.

That was back in April.

Well now we’re in July aren’t we and an Israeli reservist has just been seriously wounded inside the town, nothing unusual perhaps there, but it came in the wake of some stellar level of incompetence. You see the building he was shot from had been already been hit with tank fire, it’s a wonder the building was frankly still standing therefore. The man inside? Well, the army thought the man inside was dead, must be dead surely? Except he wasn’t. Instead they then had to send troops back because apparently “we think we got him” isn’t quite the same thing as actually having done so.

He was still alive.

And while Israel was busy revisiting buildings it thought it had dealt with and completely undermining any semblance of actually having control of the place, a little flag appeared on a ridge above the town of Ali al-Taher, fluttering away on the hillside like it had personally conquered southern Lebanon before lunch. Except there were no IDF soldiers there at all, so how did it get there then?

Well stick around and find out.

Right, so that was that then. Donald Trump’s latest triumph in world peace. Twenty-one days old, the deal that wasn’t quite a deal, just a Memorandum of Understanding and it’s already lying face-down in the gutter.

Three weeks ago, this was a win. A breakthrough. Proof of the great dealmaker at work again. Sixty days of negotiations, an end to military operations, shipping through Hormuz, Iranian oil moving again. Trump had done it. Of course he had. Everybody clap.

Then it all went to bits last night, it seems Trump couldn’t let the opportunity of Iranians in mourning over the funeral arrangements of the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei pass him by. The Treasury pulled the oil authorisation for Iran. Then CENTCOM hit more than 80 targets across Iran, but if he thought Iran wasn’t ready for him he was soon proven sorely wrong. Iran launched missiles and drones towards American facilities in Bahrain and Kuwait, and Trump turned up at NATO saying the whole thing was over and dealing with Iran was a waste of time.

His deal.

His government.

His military.

His waste of time.

And Iran, rather inconveniently for the victory parade, was still capable of answering back, as if that was ever in doubt. You’re already running out of missiles Donnie, it’s already going to take years to replace what you’ve already spent for the sake of Israel, what are you doing you deranged orange madman?

So no, this is not a peace process that quietly ran out of road. It did not reach the end of its 60 days. It did not naturally expire. Nobody forgot to renew the subscription here.

Trump got to day 21 got bored apparently, or needed a distraction from the hole he’s in with Israel over Gaza and Turkiye right now and drove it into a wall.

Right, so Benjamin Netanyahu may finally have managed to drive this one right to the edge.

Trump’s Board of Peace was already floundering. Israel was still blocking aid, Gaza was still being starved and bombed, and this grand new institution with its flags, crest and very important-looking blue backdrop was producing about as much peace as a parking enforcement notice.

Then the civilian government Israel had spent years blaming for everything when it comes to Gaza went and dissolved itself.

The guns might not have vanished. But the government did. And with it went that broad Israeli claim that Hamas still controls every part of Gaza’s civilian administration and that no replacement exists.

Netanyahu can still argue about disarmament. What he cannot keep doing is using Hamas’s civilian government as the reason the civilian transition cannot begin, because that government has stepped aside and Israel is still blocking the body meant to replace it. So what is your reasoning going to be now then?

The replacement built into Trump’s own framework is still outside Gaza. Israel is still stopping the next move. And while Netanyahu treats Trump’s Gaza plan like junk mail, he’s demanding Washington step in and protect Israel’s military advantage over Türkiye at the same time.

So yes, he may be out of road, but what Trump does next, with both his Board of Peace and with regards to this F-35 deal with Türkiye might finally prove whether the boss lives in Washington or Tel Aviv.