On June 17, a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was signed by Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Donald Trump. It extends the April ceasefire for at least sixty days — with the possibility of extension — and provides a framework for negotiations to end the U.S.-Israel war on Iran. Though this is not a peace treaty, it represents a big retreat from Trump’s demand that Iran surrender unconditionally when he began the war on February 28. He started the war with the murder of Iran’s supreme leader, Seyyed Ali Khamenei, and other leaders. If Iran had knuckled under, it would have fallen under U.S. government control.
Category: Credit Money
War on Iran Developments and a New Federal Reserve Chief
On May 22, 2026, Kevin Warsh (b. 1970) became chair of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, replacing Jerome Powell. Donald Trump nominated both Warsh and Powell, and both are Republicans. Trump often attacked Powell for not lowering interest rates, threatened to fire him and threatened him with criminal prosecution ostensibly for improper use of funds to modernize the Federal Reserve building located in Washington, D.C.
Whether Trump’s relationship with Warsh will be any smoother than with Powell, and to what extent Warsh will serve Trump and the Republicans’ partisan interests as opposed to doing what he thinks will be in the best interests of U.S. capitalism, remains to be seen. Trump, who celebrates his 80th birthday June 14, 2026, will likely not run for office again. This November will see midterm elections, when seats in one-third of the Senate and the entire House of Representatives will be at stake.
Republicans fear, with good reason, that they’ll lose control of the House, perhaps by a big margin, and possibly the Senate as well, though this is less likely. If this happens, Trump could face a third impeachment by the House and, depending on circumstances, conviction by the Senate, resulting in his ouster before the end of his second term. I’ll examine this more closely as the November elections approach.
Unraveling of the Post-1945 Order
As May winds down, the Gaza genocide continues, as do negotiations to end the Russo-Ukraine war, with no clear end in sight as of this writing. The Republican House of Representatives passed a bill now being considered by the Senate aimed at big cuts in government-supported Medicaid and possible cuts in Medicare and Social Security. The bill also features making earlier Trump-Republican tax cuts permanent, as well as adding more.
Liberals and progressives claim Republicans want to cut Medicaid to finance the tax cuts (capitalists don’t like to pay taxes) — but this is not their main motive.
Cutting Medicaid forces more of the poor onto the labor market by making them financially desperate to find a job or go without medical insurance. Nothing is being done to make more jobs available, nor are there plans to force bosses to provide medical insurance or wages sufficient to afford private insurance. They are intended to force people to work for wages that do not even pay the value of their labor power.
Liberation Day
On April 2, President Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs. As this blog concentrates on economic questions, this was the biggest event of the last month. But before I get to the tariff, I’ll look at other developments.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia lived and worked legally in Maryland since 2019. The Trump administration accused him of belonging to a gang, arrested and put him on a plane heading for a notoriously brutal El Salvadoran prison. He had not been convicted of any crime. They then claimed they’d committed an administrative mistake.
On April 10, the Supreme Court unanimously ordered the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. As of this writing (April 28), he remains imprisoned, and Trump has refused to follow the court’s order. [I wonder whether the high court regrets last year’s decision that even after leaving office, a president cannot be criminally prosecuted for any action taken while in office in pursuit of their duties? I don’t know the answer, but it seems the court is like a man sawing off the branch he is sitting on. -SW]
The Decline of Imperialist Democracy
As explained last month, Donald Trump kept his promise to end the genocidal military assault by the Zionist entity against Gaza. I will not call this a war. He then unveiled his own plan for “post-war” Gaza. Trump plans the permanent removal of 100% of the Palestinians from Gaza.
Who will replace them? Trump indicates that the U.S. itself would own Gaza, not Israel. Trump did not explain what this ownership means. Does it mean that U.S. businesses (including Trump’s family businesses) would build hotels and casinos to take advantage of Gaza’s beautiful Mediterranean climate? Or would Gaza become some sort of U.S. territory? He also implied that U.S. forces would replace Israeli forces, though he later walked that back claiming U.S. forces wouldn’t be needed in a Palestinian-free Gaza. (1)
Trump claimed Gaza Palestinians would be resettled at some beautiful place nearby, such as in Jordan or Egypt, though there were some stories it might be distant Indonesia. The governments of Jordan and Egypt expressed strong opposition to any forcible resettlement in their countries. His plan also raises questions about the future of West Bank Palestinians. Many of them, as in Gaza, are refugees from other parts of Palestine. Even before Israel began its genocide in October 2023, the Zionist entity was putting pressure on the West Bank — will the next step be to drive Palestinians out of there as well? Will the U.S. own the West Bank as well as Gaza?
Genocide Joe
On Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2025, five days before Donald Trump took office, an agreement was announced for a ceasefire to take effect the following Sunday, Jan. 19. President-elect Trump sent Steve Witoff, like Trump a New York City real estate magnate, to negotiate — or rather, lay down the law — to the Netanyahu regime.
When Israeli leaders protested that it was Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, Witoff, who is Jewish, swept these pious objections aside. He said that the Netanyahu regime would have to agree to terms established the previous May.
None of the tricks that worked under Trump’s predecessor to stop a ceasefire worked this time. It was an offer the Zionist entity could not refuse.
Syria Falls to Pro-Imperialist Forces
On December 8, 2024, Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad’s government collapsed before an offensive of U.S.-backed HTS rebels. The rebels call themselves Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham [HTS, in English: Organization for the Liberation of the Levant].
Assad was forced to flee the country after the Syrian Arab army put up little resistance to the pro-U.S.-NATO rebel offensive, ultimately finding refuge in Russia. HTS’s central leader is Ahmed al Sharaa, also known as Abu Mohammad al Julani. HTS consider themselves Sunni Muslims strongly opposed to other Islamic sects, such as the Shia and Alawites, as well as to other religions, including Christians and Druze. According to the HTS, all these religions and sects worship the “one true God,” in the wrong way.
Previously, al Sharaa was a member of al-Qaeda, the group founded by Osama bin Laden — the same group credited with the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon building on 9/11/2001. The attacks killed thousands of people in the United States and were the declared target of George W. Bush’s “war on terror.” But times have changed, and today, HTS and al Sharaa are pictured by the imperialists and their media as moderates who can bring Western-style democracy and religious tolerance to the Syrian people.
When the media describes a group as moderate, it means they are doing what the U.S. imperialist world empire wants them to do. During the final days of the HTS advance to Damascus, the Israeli air force provided them with air support. U.S.-supplied Israeli forces bombed military bases and the headquarters of Syrian intelligence in the center of Damascus. The Israelis struck bases that housed Syrian troops and stockpiles of weapons that the Syrian army might have used to defend Damascus (this included the Mezzah Air Base).
Missiles, Minerals, and Money
There have been a series of dramatic developments over the last several weeks. The most dangerous being the collapse of Syria’s Baath Party government and its replacement by imperialist-backed rebels who emerged out of Al Qaeda and ISIS. This removes Syria from the axis of resistance that supported the Palestinian resistance.
We have also seen an imperialist-backed attempt to overthrow the government of the country of Georgia, and in Romania, a right-wing, anti-NATO candidate won. The U.S.-NATO-backed Romanian regime solved this problem by having the constitutional court throw out the election.
There has also been an attempted coup by South Korea’s president to restore the dictatorship that dominated the country before 1987.
Presidential Election Goes From Bad to Worse
Note
Since this was written, the U.S. presidential election has gone from worse to far worse due to Joseph Biden’s disastrous performance in the June 27 debate with Donald Trump. Though I am no expert on these matters, Biden seemed to show signs of dementia. Dementia is not at all unusual for a man of his age.
All types of dementia are progressive, which means they get steadily worse over time. It’s hard to see how Biden will be able to serve as president until January 20, 2029.
The Democrats are discussing whether they should dump Biden—which would seem to be a no–brainer—and how to do that. As things stand, there appears to be almost nothing between Donald Trump and the White House. The truth is that the U.S. political system is ill-designed to handle this type of situation. I will have more to say on this next month.
The Genocide Continues
Israel’s relentless genocide against the people of Gaza continues without letup as I write these lines. In recent weeks, U.S. imperialism has tried to create the impression they’re putting some distance between themselves and the Israeli regime. For example, the Democratic Senate majority leader Charles Schumer said, “As a lifelong supporter of Israel, it has become clear to me: The Netanyahu coalition no longer fits the needs of Israel after October 7. The world has changed, radically, since then, and the Israeli people are being stifled right now by a governing vision that is stuck in the past”.
Schumer is right about one thing: The world changed after October 7 as massive protests broke out across the globe, including within the United States. It isn’t only Schumer. Genocide Joe’s administration, after vetoing every ceasefire proposed in the UN Security Council, introduced a resolution of its own, the nature of which was summarized by Russian representative Vassily Nebenzia.
“Nebenzia further described the vote as a ploy to throw [U.S. voters in support of a ceasefire] a bone’ with a false ceasefire call,” the web publication Truthout reported.