People gathered at power plants and bridges after Iran’s government called for human chains to protect potential U.S.-Israeli airstrike targets. April 7, 2026. NBC News
The ceasefire brings a sense of relief but not safety. Iran showed that the empire is not invincible, but the US commitment to the doctrine of hegemony has not changed.
“This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both.” - Frederick Douglass
Yesterday evening, the world collectively breathed a sigh of relief as it was reported that the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States reached a deal for a two-week cessation of hostilities to allow for negotiations that will ultimately lead to a longer peace deal between the two nations and the zionist ethnostate of Israel. Yet Iranians and the entire world are not breathing easy as it’s understood that the U.S. and Israel have lost credibility as it pertains to keeping their word and adhering to parameters of a ceasefire agreement. This is especially true for Israel, which has broken the Gaza ceasefire agreement - an estimated 2,073 times between October 10, 2025, and March 18, 2026 - and stipulated that the current deal with Iran and the U.S. does not include a cessation of hostilities against Lebanon. Furthermore, the credibility of the U.S. is in a state of atrophy - a sentiment accentuated by President Trump’s unprecedented and deranged public admonishment to the Iranian people, “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” adding, “I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.”
According to Sayed Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, "If attacks against Iran are halted our Powerful Armed Forces will cease their defensive operations,” and added, “"For a period of two weeks, safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz will be possible via coordination with Iran's Armed Forces and with due consideration of technical limitations." The issue of Iran’s continued discretion over which cargo ships can pass through Hormuz is part of Iran’s larger 10-point plan that includes:
- The lifting of all primary and secondary sanctions on Iran;
- US military withdrawal from the Middle East;
- An end to attacks on Iran and its allies;
- The release of frozen Iranian assets; and
- A UN Security Council resolution making any deal binding.
While it’s unclear if the U.S. will agree to these points, what is absolutely lucid is what the Iranian people and their government have just demonstrated to the world. The U.S. and zionist ethnostate’s reasoning for launching an unprovoked aggression against Iran is built on a foundation of mendacity and megalomania. As Michael Merryman Lotze wrote in a piece published by the American Friends Service Committee, “The Trump administration’s justifications for this war are based on lies.” He continues, “Counter to what President Trump has said, Iran did not pose an imminent threat to the U.S. Iran has no long-range missiles that can reach the U.S. It is at least a decade away from being able to produce such missiles, according to a 2025 assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency,” and adds, “Iran also has no program to produce nuclear weapons and no capacity to do so soon. The U.S. bombing of nuclear weapons facilities in 2025 destroyed most of Iran’s nuclear capacity and buried its enriched uranium supplies in locations that cannot be reached.” To this end, it’s clear that the perpetual pursuit of pan-European and zionist hegemony over the Middle East and Western Asia was the driving force of war against Iran, there is something that Iran, perhaps, made more clear in ways that should be instructive for all oppressed and colonized people - the lies of white “supremacy” ideology, the lies of U.S. exceptionalism, and the lie that U.S. empire (vis a vis the zionist ethnostate) is inevitable and indomitable.
In 1857, from a stage in Canandaigua, New York, abolitionist Frederick Douglass delivered one of his most epochal speeches that is forever ensconced in the larger legacy of U.S. settler colonialism. Among the most powerful elements of his remarks was when he proclaimed, “The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” These words may best describe what the Iranians have shown and continue to exhibit to the entire global community and the U.S. empire specifically. The word “endurance” holds numerous definitions and interpretations, including “the ability to withstand hardship or adversity, especially: the ability to sustain a prolonged stressful effort or activity.” In this respect, Iran’s confrontation with the U.S. empire did/does not only qualify as endurance. It can also be argued that it will be connoted with endurance for the foreseeable future.
Facing uncertain death under a veneer of threats to have its entire civilization wiped out by nation-states containing two of the most powerful and profligate military forces in the world, the Iranian people demonstrated the perpetual veracity of Fredrick Douglass’s prescription for resistance by forming human chains on and near their nation’s critical infrastructure, including bridges and power plants. Couple this with Iran’s willingness to disrupt the global economy in defense of its sovereignty and self-determination against Western imperialism writ large, and it could be argued that Iran embraced and implemented Douglass’s prescription in ways not seen since the mid-20th-century revolutions of the Global South, including, but not limited to, Cuba and throughout the African continent. Iran’s closure of Hormuz, and apparent continued control of it, represent a direct confrontation with global capitalism and may very well demonstrate that Western monopoly capitalism is not inevitable.
It may be argued that Iran has not only defanged the paper tiger of Western imperialism, but has also offered lessons to those who purport to act in “resistance” to derelict levers of power, and in doing so may have exposed the relative anemia of the U.S. “left” in ways that showcase Douglass’s castigation of the controlled opposition we continue to observe through milquetoast and vacuous activities of petit bourgeois the like the No Kings demonstrations a few weeks ago, “Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.”
This forces us to ask some serious questions about both the fitness and the scale of resistance in the U.S. that has not shown a willingness to embrace Douglass when it comes to salient issues that shape and influence the material conditions of the masses, including, but not limited to, democracy, white “supremacy” ideology, climate change and unequal exchange/wealth inequality. Many of these questions will likely be answered during the next two weeks of the ceasefire, should it last, by the actions taken and not taken in the U.S. and Iran. Because the collective breaths we take after this acute sigh of relief will not be easy ones - and they never will be without committing to the hard but necessary work of confronting and usurping the U.S. empire and the larger dictatorship of global, racial capitalism.
We, the masses, must be cognizant of the fact that after what Iran just showed the world, our solidarity with oppressed and colonized people risks being viewed as null and void if it does not go beyond existing as a solely rhetorical exercise demonstrated with vacuous ephemera as Douglass warned. For if we allow genocide and the threat of genocide to be normalized, then these actions will, indeed, become normal.
No Compromise
No Retreat
Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright is an international climate and environmental liberation advocate, a racial justice practitioner, and a writer and policy expert residing in the United States with his family and their mischievous cat, “Evil” Ernie. He is a proud and active member of the Black Alliance for Peace and the Movement for Black Lives. His radio program, “Full Spectrum with Anthony Rogers-Wright,” airs on the Mighty WPFW network every Tuesday at 6:00 PM EST.
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