What a week. A war declared terminated that is not over. A ceasefire that nobody agreed on. A spy who betrayed America running for the parliament of the country he spied for. An aid ship boarded in international waters. A Pope asking for peace while bombs fell through the night. Five pieces. One thread running through all of them: the complete detachment of language from reality in the conduct of power.
For the past five days, I wrote every morning not knowing what the evening would bring. Here is what I was thinking.
Terminated: The War That Ended Without Ending
Trump invoked the War Powers Act to declare the Iran conflict terminated. I wrote this piece on Sunday because I needed to sit with what that actually means — using the legal mechanism designed to end wars as a tool to sustain one. The war is over on paper. The naval blockade continues. The nuclear question is unresolved. The War Powers Resolution was passed in 1973 to prevent presidents from conducting indefinite military operations without congressional authorisation. Trump has turned it into a filing. Read it here
European Waters, Israeli Rules
An Israeli naval vessel intercepted a European-flagged aid ship in international waters. No legal basis. Conducted anyway. I wrote this piece because the cost of this kind of violation has become entirely predictable — a diplomatic protest, a statement of concern, nothing more. The piece is short because the argument is simple: when the price of breaking the law is a letter of complaint, the law has already broken. Read it here
God Does Not Listen
Pope Leo called for peace on Tuesday. Trump announced a deal. Strikes on Iranian civilian infrastructure continued through the night. I have been thinking about moral vocabulary — about what it means when prayers and bombs arrive at the same moment and neither interrupts the other. There is a specific kind of exhaustion that comes from watching the powerful perform seriousness rather than embody it. This piece came from that exhaustion. Read it here
Operation Sindoor: Fifty-Nine Lawmakers. Zero Answers.
One year ago, India launched Operation Sindoor. I spent three days trying to write this piece correctly — getting the argument right, not just the facts. The anger I felt was simple: India sent 59 parliamentarians to 32 countries, mounted the most ambitious diplomatic outreach in a generation, and came home with nothing. Trump claimed credit for the ceasefire 80 times. Modi never contradicted him once. Pakistan’s army chief became the Gulf’s most indispensable diplomat. The military operation changed India’s doctrine. The year that followed did not. Read it here
Spy Who Came In From the Cold — and Ran for Parliament
Jonathan Pollard kissed the tarmac in Tel Aviv in 2020. Netanyahu was waiting. This week he announced he is running for the Knesset. He served 30 years in American prison for selling the United States’ most classified secrets to Israel. Israel gave him citizenship while he was still in prison, lobbied for his release for three decades and sent the prime minister to the airport when he landed. Nobody in Washington said a word then. Nobody is saying a word now. The Pollard story is the clearest illustration of what the special relationship actually is — and what it permits. Read it here
Five days. Five pieces. One world that keeps doing what it has always done and calling it something else.
Read. Think. React. No neutrality. No noise. Just argument. Until next Saturday.
Sunny Peter
Editor, DiploPolis.com