The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on June 22 vowed retaliation against US and Israeli targets following American strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities. "Operation True Promise 3 continues, and the aggressors must await responses that will make them regret and [will] go beyond their calculations," the IRGC said in a statement, adding that "American bases in the region are not points of strength but rather factors of their greater vulnerability."

New York City's mayoral race has become embroiled in the national and global dilemmas, with progressive candidate Brad Lander getting arrested by ICE and progressive frontrunner Zohran Mamdani being aggressively baited as an anti-Semite by the campaign of the overall frontrunner, disgraced former governor Andrew Cuomo. Joining Cuomo in this propaganda offensive, not surprisingly, is the pro-Israel doxxing operation Canary Mission. In the current fraught atmosphere, this is a serious matter; Mamdani has received death threats and his campaign is boosting security measures. In Episode 283 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg examines the accusations against Mamdani that have been hyped by the New York Post and even the supposedly more objective Politico, and weighs them against Mamdani's own responses.

Prominent Iranian opposition activists and cultural figures have issued a joint statement calling for both Iran and Israel to instate a ceasefire, for cessation of Iran's nuclear program, and for the "authoritarian regime" to step down. The statement, published in the French daily Le Monde June 16, was also released on the X (Twitter) account of its lead signatory, imprisoned human rights advocate and Nobel Laureate Narges Mohammadi. It is also signed by Nobel Laureate dissident Shirin Ebadi, filmmakers Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rasoulof, and attorneys Sadiqeh Vasmaghi and Abdolfattah Soltani. The statement calls for an "end to the devastating war between the Islamic Republic and the ruling regime in Israel—a war that not only destroys infrastructure and the lives of civilians in both territories but also poses a clear threat to the foundations of human civilization."

With Israel's criminal air-strikes on Iran's nuclear sites releasing radioactive contamination, Bibi Netanyahu cynically invokes the "Woman, Life, Freedom" protest movement that shook Iran for months from September 2022. Of course nothing is less conducive to pro-democracy civil resistance in Iran than to have this cause associated with the foreign power that is bombing the country's territory—and is itself oppressing the Palestinians with biblical justifications. In Episode 282 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg again advocates a neither/nor position that rejects the militaristic and reactionary regimes of both Zionism and political Islam, and looks to a secular order in the Middle East.

The United Nations is demanding an urgent investigation after several mass graves were discovered at detention sites in Libya. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said June 4: "Our worst held fears are being confirmed: dozens of bodies have been discovered at these sites, along with the discovery of suspected instruments of torture and abuse, and potential evidence of extrajudicial killings."

Presumed ISIS militants attacked a police station of the Kurdish autonomous administration at al-Sabha in Syria's eastern Deir ez-Zor province June 8. The attack with grenades and small arms was repulsed by the local Asayish police force without loss of life. But this was only the latest in a spate of new ISIS attacks in Syria. In a first attack on central government forces since the ouster the Assad dictatorship last December, ISIS boasted in a communique May 31 that its fighters had killed several soldiers of the "the apostate Syrian regime" at a road checkpoint in Talul al-Safa, in southern Suwayda province. That same day, one member of the Free Syrian Army was killed in an ambush by ISIS militants on an FSA patrol in al-Tanf Deconfliction Zone, a US military outpost near the Jordan border. (Rudaw, Kurdistan4, CNN)

Amid the massive war crimes committed by Russia in Ukraine and Israel in Gaza, there are dissident Russians and dissident Israelis who are courageously protesting, and resisting the consolidation of a pro-genocide consensus. Recent violent and deadly attacks on perceived Israeli or pro-Israel human targets in the US meanwhile point to the dangers of the notion of collective guilt. In Episode 281 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg urges that dissident minorities must not be dismissed as irrelevant, but encouraged and offered solidarity.

In a June 1 covert operation dubbed "Spiderweb," the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) destroyed or damaged 41 Russian warplanes at four air-bases across the Russian Federation—Belaya (Irkutsk oblast, Siberia), Olenya (Murmansk oblast, in the Arctic), Dyagilevo (Ryazan oblast, near Moscow) and Ivanovo (in the eponymous oblast, also near Moscow). Kyiv claims it has disabled 34% of Russia's strategic bomber fleet in the operation, carried out with over 100 drones launched from trucks hidden across Russian territory. While the Kremlin's top officials, including President Vladimir Putin, have not commented on the Ukrainian operation at all, Russian pro-war propagandists are calling it "Russia's Pearl Harbor," and demanding vengeance. Prominent state TV personality Vladimir Solovyov said on his program that the Ukrainian operation is "grounds for a nuclear attack," and called for retaliatory strikes on the Ukrainian president's office in Kyiv and airfields in NATO members Poland and Romania allegedly used by Ukrainian aircraft. (Kyiv Independent)