Stephen Miller, White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, was interviewed on CNN’s The Lead on 5 January. Asked if the US was really serious about running Venezuela, he replied:
‘What the President said is true. The United States of America is running Venezuela. By definition that’s true. We live in the real world, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.
‘What I’m saying is that by definition we are in charge because we have the United States military stationed outside the country. We set the terms and conditions. We have a complete embargo on all of their oil and their ability to do commerce. So for them to do commerce, they need our permission. For them to be able to run the economy, they need our permission.’
Transcribed from Novara Media Live podcast, 6 January, with Steven Methan and Kieran Andreu.
American economist and UN adviser Jeffrey Sachs delivered a scorching attack on US actions at the emergency UNSC meeting on Venezuela on 5 January, urging the Security Council to defend international law. The issue,’ he said, is not the character of the government of Venezuela’.
The issue is whether any UN member state has the right to determine Venezuela’s political future or to exercise control over its affairs. Sachs urged the UNSC to uphold, not abandon, the foundational principles of territorial integrity and political independence enshrined in the Charter.
The world’s leading nations had failed to defend international law in the 1930s, Sachs said, leading to renewed global war. The United Nations emerged from that catastrophe as the second attempt to put international law above international anarchy.
‘Given that we are in the nuclear age, failure cannot be repeated. Humanity would perish. There would be no third chance.’
Quoting the introduction to the Charter – the UN was created ‘to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind – Sachs argued: ‘Given that we are in the nuclear age, failure cannot be repeated. Humanity would perish. There would be no third chance.’
All member states should refrain from unilateral threats, coercive measures, or armed actions undertaken outside the authority of the UN Security Council. Sachs concluded that to fulfil its responsibilities under the Charter, the Security Council should immediately affirm the following actions:
The United States shall:
immediately cease and desist from all explicit and implicit threats or use of force against Venezuela
terminate its naval quarantine and all related coercive military measures undertaken in the absence of authorization by the UN Security Council
immediately withdraw its military forces from within and along the perimeter of Venezuela, including intelligence, naval, air, and other forward-deployed assets positioned for coercive purposes.
Venezuela shall adhere to the UN Charter and to the human rights protected in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Sach’s recommend, the UN Secretary General should appoint a special envoy to engage relevant Venezuelan and international stakeholders, who would report back to the Security Council making recommendations consistent with the Charter.
All member states should refrain from unilateral threats, coercive measures, or armed actions undertaken outside the authority of the UN Security Council.
Peace and the survival of humanity depend on whether the UN Charter remains a living instrument of international law or is allowed to wither into irrelevance, he concluded. That is the choice before this Council today.
Watch Jeffrey Sachs full speech below, courtesy of DMR News
New York City Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani will take office on 1 January, after a win that only the bookies and his enthusiastic campaign coalition anticipated. He will be the youngest mayor of the NY City in more than 100 years, and the first Muslim and first South Asian mayor. His election campaign was energetic and vibrant, his promise ‘to build a new kind of politics’.
Mamdani describes himself as a democratic socialist. He is variously tagged as a progressive or a left-wing populist. On the eve of voting, President Donald Trump threatened to withdraw federal funding for New York City if Mamdani was elected.
Trump failed to influence the result Turn out was up by 16.5 points. Mamdani won with an overall majority of 50.39%, almost 10% ahead of his nearest rival.
Mamdani campaigned on a platform of social equity and environmental justice, including:
universal childcare
free bus travel
rent controls and the construction of social housing, and
a $30 minimum wage by 2030.
He also spoke out against Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and called for tax increases on corporations and dollar millionaires.
The UK Labour Party would benefit from a serious study of Zohran Mamdani’s victory which has been described as ‘one of the great political upsets in modern American history’.
This Democracy Now! video considers Mamdani in his own words and through the lens of the grassroots coalition that helped bring him to office. It begins in 2021 when he appeared on Democracy Now! for the first time in the autumn of 2021, taking part in a hunger strike to demand debt relief for New York taxi drivers.
This video, The Historic Rise of Zohran Mamdani: Democracy Now! Coverage from 2021 Hunger Strike to Election Night, first appeared on Democracy Now! Daily Show of 28 November 2025, and is licensed for use under a Creative Commons.
In Labour CND’s latest podcast, Francisco Dominguez talks to Carol Turner about Trump’s military encirclement of Venezuela, and the Treaty of Tlatelolco, the Latin America-Caribbean nuclear free zone agreement of 1967 promoted by Mexico in response to the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Our podcasts are available on Spotify, YouTube, and FB. Give us a listen, and if you like what you hear, give us a follow and please tell you friends. Back episodes include:
Andrew Murray on the TUC 2025 agenda
Sam Mason on the military bootprint astride the climate crisis
Alex Gordon on the defence jobs myth, and
Defence Economist Ron Smith on military spending and the Chancellor’s spring statement.
In Labour CND’s latest podcast, Andrew Murray discusses the wages not weapons and Gaza motions on the Congres agenda, as well as the lack of action on defence diversification and the state of the TUC.
Labour CND podcasts are published on Spotify, YouTube and FB. Give us a listen, give us a like, give us a follow – and please tell you friends about Labour CND’s new venture into podcasting!
If this is the first time you’ve come across Labour CND podcasts, Alex Gordon on the defence jobs myth, and Samantha Mason on the military bootprint astride the climate crisis are also worth a listen. And what Defence Economist Ron Smith had to say about military spending at the time of the Chancellor’s spring statement is just as relevant as the autumn budget approaches.
We reproduce below a speech by Maryam Eslamdoust, General Secretary of the TSSA transport union. Speaking in a personal capacity, she describes the impact of the US-Israel ‘shadow war’ on her father and the Iranian people. An update on the situation in Iran is available on our website here.
Hello everyone and thank you so much for being here today to discuss Israel’s attack on Iran. I am the General Secretary of TSSA. But today I’m not here in my official capacity. I’m speaking as a British Iranian woman and a daughter.
I haven’t heard from my father who’s in Iran for over 48 hours. The last time we spoke, he told me the roads out of Tehran were gridlocked. Millions of people were trying to flee the city. Petrol was gone; he couldn’t fill his car to leave the city. Millions were trying to escape Tehran. It was near midnight and I haven’t been able to get hold of him since.
That’s because Iran’s telecommunications infrastructure have been attacked by Israel. People can’t make phone calls. They can’t connect to the internet. They’re being cut off from the world. All the while missiles continue to fall, cars are being blown up in daylight and civilian neighbourhoods are attacked.
I’m hearing now that the Iranian banking system has been hacked. So overnight people’s savings have disappeared.
This is not just a military strategy by Israel or Donald Trump. It’s a strategy of collapse – to paralyse Iran, its infrastructure, and the morale of its people. And it’s not just physical, it’s psychological.
Yesterday Iran state TV was hacked live on air. Viewers across the country saw their screens cut to unfamiliar visuals and messages delivered in Farsi encouraging Iranians to rise up to revolt, misusing ‘women, live, freedom’ slogans. The day before that, at the state TV News building in Tehran, the same network was bombed while a woman presenter was live on air.
This is not just an air strike, it’s a message ‘we can get inside your buildings, your screens, your minds’. It’s an attempt to intimidate and destabilise – not just with force, but with fear.
Israel’s illegal attack on Iran is not about self-defence or security. This is about making Iran collapse as a state politically, economically, and socially. We have seen this before in Iraq, Libya, Syria. It’s the same script: isolate, destabilise, dehumanise, destroy.
And what is more alarming, it is unfolding on today’s media without any challenge. Twenty years ago, some journalists and some editors still had the courage to question war narratives. Today, far too many are simply repeating the government’s briefings and anonymous intelligence sources. This is no critical interrogation of the story. Sadly, the press is not holding power to account, it is echoing it.
There is a propaganda war, an information war. In recent days, I’ve seen social media flooded with posts in Farsi from IDF accounts using the Iranian language and the language of Iranian protest movements from two years ago, especially the slogan ‘woman, life, freedom’ to call for regime change. Those slogans were never meant to justify bombs. They were meant to highlight the suffering of civilians, Iranian women. Those who shouted them wanted dignity and justice, not war.
What I’ve seen from Iranians – both inside the country, and the diaspora – is a remarkable unity. This isn’t political unity, there are still very real debates about Iran’s future, its leadership, its systems. But right now, across the political spectrum, Iranians are united on one fundamental idea: foreign bombs won’t liberate us. Iranians don’t want their futures dictated by missiles, invasions, or destabilisation campaigns disguised as solidarity.
Let me speak about the issue that’s constantly weaponised by the western media, Iran’s nuclear programme. We’re being told once again that Iran is on the verge of developing a nuclear weapons programme, but the International Atomic Energy Agency, the IAEA, has been clear there are no credible indications that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. That was their official assessment before these escalations even began.
What has Iran done in response? It’s reduced, not stopped, voluntary cooperation with the IAEA. That was originally agreed as part of the JCPoA, the nuclear deal that Donald Trump tore up in 2018. For years after that, Iran continued to comply with the deal’s core provisions. But eventually Iran said if the deal’s dead, then why should we keep making concessions? Even so, Iran remains signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the IAEA still monitors its nuclear sites. There is no legal evidence of weaponisation.
There is one country in the Middle East known to have a nuclear arsenal, and that’s Israel. It has hundreds of warheads. It has never joined the NPT. It allows no international inspection and yet it is presented in the west as a responsible actor. That is double standards of the highest order.
The demands being made of Iran right now are surrender to compliance, to regime change. These are unrealistic and dangerous. There is no military solution to this crisis. Iran will not, and cannot, surrender to conditions it knows will only bring more pain.
So what’s the path forward? Diplomacy, but real diplomacy. Iran has repeatedly said it’s willing to accept limits on its uranium enrichment programme, allow extensive international monitoring, engage in regional security talks. That has to be mutual. It means an end to the sanctions the US has imposed that are strangling the economy and civilian living standards. and restoring Iran’s full participation in global, political, and economic life – ending the policy of permanent isolation.
If the West is serious about peace in the region, it must also hold all states accountable, including its allies, and that means finally addressing Israel’s illegal wars, its undeclared nuclear weapons, and its current actions in Gaza which the UN’s own experts have said may amount to genocide.
So what do we do now. We keep speaking up. We’re not just neutral, if we stay silent we are complicit. I’m asking you – whether you’re trade unionists, policy makers, academics, journalists, or just someone who believes in justice, please do three things.
Speak up. Say clearly that bombing Iran into collapse is not a path to peace.
Demand diplomacy. Press your government to stop fuelling war and start pursuing a deal, and challenge the narrative. Don’t let our slogans be co-opted; don’t let another war be justified on false pretences.
The Iranian people want peace, they want dignity, and they want the right to shape their own future. Free from bombs, free from fear, and free from foreign coercion. Thank you.
* CND’s webinar, No War on Iran, is available in full here * Maryam’s speech was first reproduced on London CND website
Labour CND launched our first podcast, an interview with defence economist Prof Ron Smith on the day of Chancellor Rachel Reeve’s spring statement to parliament. Take a listen, you’ll find Ron has some surprising things to say about the economy, jobs, and Trident.
Introducing podcasts is just part of an overhaul of our all our digital comms. Take a look at our eye-catching social media posts like the ones above, you’ll find us @LabourCND. Watch out for a new improved and regular newsletter next month too; and come back to our re-vamped website which will be up and running in the next couple of months – with more news, views, and analysis from a range of guest contributors .
We’re now on Spotify too. You can also pick our podcasts there if you prefer.. If you do, please remember do give us a like and a follow to help spread the word.
On that point, a big thanks from Labour CND go to Bryn Griffiths, who coordinates Labour Left Podcast, for his support for our new venture. As Bryn put it, we’re the new kids on the podcast block. We’re hoping to get on board with more partner organisations who are podcasting in future.
Labour CND recently launched into a new venture for us: podcasting. Our first was released the day after the Chancellor’s spring statement: a conversation with Ron Smith that produced some interesting responses.
We asked Ron if a bigger MoD budget would benefit the British economy, and if more military spending meant more jobs. His responses were revealing. But when we asked about Trident, the answer was franker than any you might expect from an economist:
‘Trident, I feel, is a complete waste of money – and when I say that to military audiences two thirds of them applaud’
Ron is Emeritus Professor of Applied Economics at Birkbeck, University of London, where he’s researched on the economics of arms trading and defence policy for many years and published a long list of articles and books. He’s advised the Treasury and been a consultant to the National Audit Office, so we reckon he knows a thing or two.
Our conversation with Ron is well worth a half-hour listen. If you do, and if you like what Labour CND’s doing – please give us a like, give us a follow, and come back for more.
With media attention focused on GE 2024, you’d be forgiven for having overlooked news that the Labour Party has finally abandoned its longstanding legal action against five former members of Jeremy Corbyn’s office team during his leadership, including his Director of Communications Seumas Milne. The five were accused of ‘conspiring’ against Keir Starmer’s leadership by leaking a controversial report soon after he was elected leader in 2020. They ‘strenuously deny’ any involvement or complicity in the leak.
The 860-page leaked document which ostensibly examined the handling of antisemitism complaints during the Corbyn period, included unredacted emails and WhatsApp messages from critics of his leadership, which exposed factionalism and derogatory comments about Corbyn, his staff and MPs who supported him. The Forde report found, for example: ‘the criticisms of Diane Abbott are not simply a harsh response to perceived poor performance – they are expressions of visceral disgust.’
The legal suit is estimated to have cost the Labour Party millions of pounds. Documents presented in open court in late 2023 showed Labour had spent £1.5m on its action at that time, and estimated it would spend nearly £900,000 more. The figures do not reflect the full cost of the litigation. It remains unclear whether or not the party will meet the costs of the five.
A BBC report includes the view of one unnamed former shadow cabinet member that ‘this is a huge embarrassment for the party, which has wasted eye-watering sums which could have made the difference in key seats in this election’. Martin Forde KC, the lawyer who carried out the wide-ranging report into Labour Party culture told the BBC: ‘It is a great shame that money has been spent on legal fees that could have been spent on the general election.’
