If you thought RAF jets were owned by the RAF, think again.

The RAF squadron targeted for a repaint by Palestine Action due to its involvement in supplying Israel’s genocide, does not in fact belong to the RAF at all. It belongs ultimately to Polygon Global Partners LLP, a Hedge Fund.

Through a chain of seven cutout companies, which I will take you through, the direct ownership is with Airtanker Ltd, which gives its address as RAF Brize Norton. It owns, maintains and operates the RAF’s Voyager refuelling aircraft, which have been providing mid-air refuelling to the Israeli Defence Forces as well as carrying, in their cargo role, munitions to the IDF.

Note that Airtanker Ltd states that five of the Voyager aircraft while available to the RAF: “can also be made available to other parties. This can include providing military capability to other nations…”.

Whether the aircraft have been operated by the RAF on behalf of the Israelis, or whether they have been “provided to” the IDF direct, is an interesting question. Is this designed to build in plausible deniability for the UK government?

Eight of the Voyager Aircraft though fully painted in RAF livery, actually are the property of Airtanker Ltd.

It is not plain whether the other six – also the property of Airtanker Ltd but only occasionally used by the RAF – are also in RAF livery. The company does not show any photographs of jets not in RAF livery.

So who owns Airtanker Ltd? Well, the “person with significant control” on the Companies House register is Airtanker Holdings Ltd. They own over 75% but less than 100%. It would be interesting to know who owns the rest.

So who owns Airtanker Holdings Ltd? Well, it is owned – more than 25% and less than 50% – by Airbus, which provides the actual aircraft, and more than 25% and less than 50% by Equitix Capital Eurobond 6 Ltd, which presumably provides finance. As both own under 50% it would be interesting to know who owns the rest, and why.

So who owns Equitix Capital Eurobond 6 Ltd? Well, Equitix Capital Eurobond 6 Ltd is owned by Equitix Holdings Ltd, a company at the same address in the City of London.

So who owns Equitix Holdings Ltd? Well, Equitix Holdings Ltd is owned by Pace Bidco Ltd, a company curiously enough also at the same address.

So who owns Pace Bidco Ltd? Well, Pace Bidco Ltd is owned by Pace Topco Ltd, a company which turns out to be also at the same address!

So who owns Pace Topco Ltd? Well, here, we finally get the name of a human being. It is a Mr Reade Griffith whose address is given as Polygon Global Partners LLP, 4 Sloane St, London.

On another page of the register a Mr Reade Eugene Griffith is given as a Director of Pace Topco Ltd, presumably the same person. This would also appear to be the same individual as the E Griffith Reade who is listed as – amongst other interests – the 10% owner of Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc.

Polygon is a hedge fund. It would appear likely from the register to be either Polygon or Griffith’s umbrella hedge fund Tetragon that owns these liveried RAF aircraft. We have therefore simply no idea who the investors are: it could be anyone from BlackRock to Kim Jong Un. The true ownership is deliberately shrouded in secrecy.

This spaghetti tangle of ownership of RAF aircraft is rather surprising to those of us who naively believed that RAF military aircraft belonged to the RAF, and that the hundreds of billions of pounds the state lavishes on “defence” was used to do things like buy military jets, rather than make rich financiers still richer.

The long tree of subsidiary companies is not only to disguise ownership. At every single stage it provides opportunity for tax avoidance and for other forms of corruption, like consultancy contracts or directorships handed out to the contacts or nominated go-betweens of the politicians and senior civil servants. If you saw a company called Pace Bidco Ltd were giving a remunerative consultancy to the son of an ex-government minister, or to a firm registered to his local landlord, why would that ring alarm bells or connect to the RAF?

To be plain those are entirely hypothetical examples. I am not accusing Pace Bidco Ltd of anything. I merely explain the system.

Defence spending is more prone to corruption than any other form of spending and that is why venal politicians are always extremely keen to boost it. No UK politician has ever proposed to increase defence spending by more than Keir Starmer, who wants to lift it by £120 billion a year.

The RAF’s Voyager aircraft are effectively being provided under the Private Finance Initiative. Exactly how much money the hedge fund managers and this string of companies are taking out of the defence budget is hard to know.

One particularly surprising fact is that it is plain that the private companies are also providing the RAF ground crew. Who employs the flight crews is not entirely clear.

That such an obviously rotten and corrupt arrangement exists in the RAF I had no idea. Some British military personnel are in fact contracted mercenaries. It gives new context to the active RAF involvement in the Genocide in Gaza.

Palestine Action’s excellent act of resistance in vandalising this Hedge Fund Air Force has brought all of this to our attention. Which is yet a further reason to be grateful to Palestine Action.

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The Phantom Ceasefire is simply Trump’s off ramp. He announces a ceasefire and bows out, having been advised that regime change would only be achievable with extreme military commitment and massive cost in lives and treasure.

You can never trust the Israelis – or indeed the Americans – with either a ceasefire or a negotiation. Reuters reported that a senior Iranian official had confirmed the ceasefire had been agreed. Israel then repeated precisely what I had seen in Beirut – massive carpet bombing of the city just before the 3.30am deadline for the Israel/Iran ceasefire.

That picture is Beirut literally minutes before the ceasefire came into effect. Israel then proceeded to violate the ceasefire anyway, and has done so virtually every single day in the past months of ceasefire, often several times a day, racking up over 1,000 violations.

The Iranians very sensibly responded to last night’s carpet bombing with a missile salvo. Israel has claimed a violation of the ceasefire (as ever the aggressor is the “victim”) and fighting has resumed.

I believe this may be for the best. Although it does benefit Netanyahu – who for domestic reasons is desperate to avoid peace – the Israelis would never have observed a ceasefire and would have used it to replenish their exhausted missile defence systems, with help from the USA, UK and the other genocide participants.

The Iranian “attack” on the US airbase in Qatar was purely performative. They used old, expendable, low-level missiles certain to be shot down and warned that they were coming. It was part of the structure of Trump’s off ramp.

So the question now is whether Netanyahu can drag Trump back into the war. I am hopeful he will not. Trump will be able to say that he has, with his strikes on Iran, redeemed the hundreds of millions of Zionist dollars that got him elected. I guess we will discover in the next week or two whether that money really is all that was motivating him, or whether Musk was right about Trump’s appearance in the Epstein files. For what it is worth, I think that Trump’s street cunning and independent access to East European models were probably enough to keep him out of that trap. But we will see,

Without the USA, Netanyahu has opened a war that will not remain popular very long. Keeping Israel’s settler colonists – who are hilariously cowardly when faced with anybody who can actually fight back – locked in as human shields is going to have interesting social consequences for the terrorist entity.

Meanwhile the shooting of Palestinians in the Gaza food queues and the dispossessions and killings in the West Bank continue apace.

The UK government is sending planes to bring back dual UK/Israeli nationals. That includes active IDF participants in genocide.

FCDO official guidance reads:

Lammy has made a decision to airlift back those Israeli passport-carrying colonists who are also British nationals. This directly contradicts British government longstanding policy of not assisting dual nationals in their country of second nationality. This policy is normally rigorously enforced, even (and perhaps especially) in times of war. There is a huge contrast between the red carpet for Israeli war criminals returning to the UK and the appalling treatment of thousands of British Sudanese families in the 2023 evacuation from Khartoum.

The Iranians have already done a great service to humanity by puncturing the facade of Israeli invincibility. They have also laid bare the appalling Zionism of Arab ruling elites and their sectarian propagandists, in a way which they believe the Arab populations understand. The ramifications of the last two weeks following Israel’s attack on Iran will play out over years. But this is part of the process of the disintegration of the colonial settler state.

———————————

My reporting and advocacy work has no source of finance at all other than your contributions to keep us going. We get nothing from any state nor any billionaire.

Anybody is welcome to republish and reuse, including in translation.

Because some people wish an alternative to PayPal, I have set up new methods of payment including a Patreon account and a Substack account if you wish to subscribe that way. The content will be the same as you get on this blog. Substack has the advantage of overcoming social media suppression by emailing you direct every time I post. You can if you wish subscribe free to Substack and use the email notifications as a trigger to come for this blog and read the articles for free. I am determined to maintain free access for those who cannot afford a subscription.

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Israel and the USA have each attacked Iran in the middle of negotiations. Iran must not fall for it a third time. Negotiation is dead.

Israel attacked Iran during negotiations between Iran and the US, with the next scheduled meeting just three days away – including assassinating the lead negotiator.

Trump then gave Iran a two-week ultimatum to agree a peace deal. Iran held one foreign-minister-level meeting with the UK, Germany and France and scheduled a second meeting. Trump then attacked Iran with 11 days of the ultimatum still to run.

Plainly the Zionist West not only has zero interest in peace, it is engaging in morally abhorrent levels of dishonesty and deception, attacking under a false flag of truce. The idea that Iran should now return to “negotiation” with such appallingly deceitful interlocutors is risible.

It is also plain that the USA has no intention of stopping the attacks. Trump’s statement said that further attacks will follow unless Iran stops fighting. Plainly the objectives of the USA are not in truth merely the destruction of Iran’s nuclear programme, but total victory for Israel in the war it has started with Iran. Trump’s demand of “unconditional surrender” still stands and the aim remains, as I have stated, regime change to install the “Shah” with a Sunni Prime Minister.

Zionist regimes have been installed in Lebanon and Syria in the last six months. They already existed in the Gulf states and Jordan. The aim to install a Zionist regime in Tehran is overreach by Netanyahu and Trump. You cannot bomb the Iranian people into Zionism.

The extent of bombing, and the extent of death, that would be required for regime change in Iran is astonishing. Contrary to neoliberal expectation but obvious to anyone with a brain, the attacks on Iran have rallied support for its government. I find nothing more nauseating than the Western “feminists” who are campaigning for war against Iran to bring about regime change.

Not only would regime change involve the deaths of hundreds of thousands of women in war, there is no doubt whatsoever that Western destruction of Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and Iraq made the lives of women in those countries much worse, both in terms of infrastructure and conditions of life and also in terms of women’s position in society.

The attempt to gaslight the public with abject lies about Iran’s nuclear weapon capability is so blatant a repeat of the Iraqi WMD scam that I am astonished they dare to try it. The attacks on Iran are completely illegal – and I am quite sure will in fact lead to Iran changing its mind and deciding to possess a nuclear weapon, which will be achieved within five years.

You can have watched or listened to hundreds of hours of BBC broadcasting on the current war on Iran, and never have heard once that Israel possesses nuclear weapons. The levels of propaganda are truly extreme.

The attacks on Iran are illegal. There is no doubt of that. Iran faces a monumental struggle, but has no choice but to fight.

In the meantime not a single day has passed when Israel has not shot and killed Palestinians in Gaza in the queues for food. The Genocide goes on, and the US and Israel have succeeded in turning the world’s attention and bringing their Western satraps back into line, just when the Gaza Genocide was alarming politicians internationally by its blatancy.

I see much futile discussion as to whether Israel is controlling the US or the US controlling Israel. Plainly the answer is both; there is a deep symbiotic relationship of the political classes in both places. The key point is that the Israel settler colony carries an insupportable weight in the policy decisions of Western politicians. Like all colonialism – and as outlined by Lenin and Hobson – this is because colonialism benefits the personal interests of the wealthy and military classes but is a burden on working people.

I find Hobson offers an invaluable perspective to look at the Israel settler colony. Long-term readers will know that I have stated that J A Hobson’s Imperialism: A Study had more effect on my understanding of the world than any other book. I strongly recommend it (there is a new edition with a foreword by Jeremy Corbyn).

I am a thinker and writer who tries to use my experience to explain and analyse what is happening. I am also a campaigner and activist. What I am not is a political organiser. Those who put together the March to Gaza or the Freedom Flotilla have my admiration, and have skills which I do not possess.

I therefore put forward this idea with no apology that I am not the man to organise it. The British sovereign base at RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus is fundamental to the logistics of the attacks on Iran for the UK, USA and Israel. A gathering of thousands of activists in Cyprus to close down the base appears to me the most viable and useful option to cause real problems for the neoliberal genociders.

The Akrotiri base has a very large perimeter and far too few RAF Regiment troops to guard it against thousands of determined activists. The government of Cyprus is unlikely to defend the British sovereign base from peaceful activists. Cyprus is a very easy place to reach.

As our panicked rulers seek to ban Palestine Action as a “terrorist group” – despite the fact they have never injured anybody – it seems to me essential we continue and indeed increase the resistance. The very notion of “terrorism” has been debased to include journalism and peaceful protest. We must not be terrified into allowing fascism to prevail.

———————————

My reporting and advocacy work has no source of finance at all other than your contributions to keep us going. We get nothing from any state nor any billionaire.

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Because some people wish an alternative to PayPal, I have set up new methods of payment including a Patreon account and a Substack account if you wish to subscribe that way. The content will be the same as you get on this blog. Substack has the advantage of overcoming social media suppression by emailing you direct every time I post. You can if you wish subscribe free to Substack and use the email notifications as a trigger to come for this blog and read the articles for free. I am determined to maintain free access for those who cannot afford a subscription.

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Western governments’ abandonment of the very system of international law which they created was embodied in a tweet from the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which sought to justify the illegal Israeli attack on Iran as “Targeted strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities”.

The former Director General of the International Atomic Energy Authority, Mohamed ElBaradei, was left to point out that far from a justification, it is specifically against international law to target nuclear facilities.

He refers to Article 56 of the Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions. While we are on the subject, you might also wish to see article 54:

It is worth noting that the exception on destruction of foodstuffs at Article 5 refers to the right of a country which is defending against invasion, not which is invading another country. It means that it is not illegal for a country to destroy crops and stocks of its own, on its own territory. Which is to say a scorched-earth policy against an invader is legal. It does not give the right to refuse supplies to a population under occupation.

The German justification was of course just part of a chorus of Western support for the Israeli attack on Iran, in which numerous Western leaders all parroted a co-ordinated line about “Israel’s right of self-defence”, even as Israel conducted an entirely illegal and unprovoked attack on Iran during peace talks.

There are dozens of examples, but I give you the openly genocidal von der Leyen as one:

Spoke with President @Isaac_Herzog concerning the escalating situation in the Middle East.

I reiterated Israel’s right to defend itself and protect its people. At the same time, preserving regional stability is vital.

I urge all parties to act with maximum restraint and work…

— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) June 13, 2025

On Thursday, before Israel attacked Iran, I attended the UN General Assembly debate on Palestine. This had limited utility as it mandated no specific measures and did not suspend Israel from the United Nations, the one truly useful action the General Assembly has the power to implement.

The motion called for an immediate ceasefire and for states to take “all necessary measures”, but that is the last we shall hear of it. It passed by 150 votes to 12, with opposition from the United States, its de facto colonies and the small far-right collection of Argentina, Paraguay etc.

But there was one interesting point in the Statements, known as Explanations of Vote, of the national delegations. These too were very routine, with Arab states that have not the slightest intention of actually doing anything, condemning Israel and western nations all launching blood-curdling condemnations of Hamas (yes, really, that was still their priority, 60,000 dead Palestinian civilians later).

But the UK explanation of vote made one point that absolutely nobody else made. It stuck out like a sore thumb. The British Ambassador to the UN stated that

“While the UK voted in favour of this resolution, we wish to clarify that our long-standing position remains that there is no legal obligation on states to ensure respect for international law by third parties.”

When the EOV was published, this part of the statement was bolstered by a reference to Common Article 1 of the Geneva Convention. I do not recall her actually saying this and it is not in my notes.

Common Article 1 (so called because it is present in every one of the Geneva Conventions) reads:

Article 1
The High Contracting Parties undertake to respect and to ensure respect for the present Convention in all circumstances.

So why did the UK, and the UK alone, say that it is not responsible for ensuring that other parties comply with international law, adding later a specific reference to the Geneva Conventions?

It is perfectly simple. Starmer and Lammy are terrified about future charges of complicity in Israeli war crimes. So the UK, only, feels it necessary to emphasise that they do not bear legal responsibility for Israel’s actions.

They claim they are not responsible for what Israel did with the supplies of UK munitions, which the UK increased to fuel the genocide.

They claim they are not responsible for what Israel did with the targeting information they gave Israel on a daily basis from RAF Akrotiri flights over Gaza.

They claim they are not responsible for the Israeli use of weapons flown in through the UK and Akrotiri.

They claim they are not responsible for use of the F-35 jets attacking Iran now, which they continue to supply with UK-manufactured spare parts.

We simply do not yet know what else they have done to support Israel based on the secret UK-Israeli defence treaty, but whatever it is, Starmer and Lammy want to make absolutely plain that the UK had no responsibility to prevent Israel from committing war crimes.

The claim that this is longstanding British policy is of course a rather frivolous bit of gaslighting. Indeed given that this argument runs completely counter to the doctrine of “the responsibility to protect” – of which the UK was the leading international proponent – it is simple nonsense.

[As it happens I always opposed the “responsibility to protect” argument because it is used as an excuse for Imperialism, cf. the destruction of Libya.]

The Genocide Convention in fact explicitly does create a duty on states to prevent genocide by third parties.

Article I of the Genocide Convention reads:

The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish.

So the declaration by Starmer and Lammy of not bearing responsibility really does not wash. The interesting thing is that they felt compelled to make it.

The evening after the debate I attended receptions hosted by both the British Ambassador and then by the Russian Ambassador, and I spoke to a large number of Ambassadors to the UN. Of course we discussed the debate, and everybody had noticed both the extraordinary and unusual addition to the UK statement and its motive.

They all specifically realised it was an effort to back away from responsibility for complicity in Israeli crimes.

I understand and share your disappointment at the collapse of international law. But I can tell you that the prospect of eventual retribution at the Hague still terrifies Starmer and Lammy.

Netanyahu’s desperate gamble in attacking Iran is an attempt to force the USA to join the war on Israel’s behalf, and to prevent peace talks.

It is of course simply untrue that Iran was about to produce a nuclear weapon. Every Spring a CIA-led US intelligence exercise formally reviews the situation, and the firm position of Five Eyes intelligence remains that Iran genuinely was not seeking to make a nuclear weapon.

I hope that Iran learns the lesson of Southern Lebanon. There, over many months, Israeli air superiority enabled them to substantially degrade missile systems of various resistance factions. Israel does – not least because of the traitors ruling Jordan and Syria – have air superiority over Iran. In a long war of attrition, Israeli bombing raids could do real damage to Iranian capabilities.

Iran’s best strategy would be to view this as the existential crisis, and seriously unload its missile capacity on Israel without restraint. The period of measured tit-for-tat reprisals is at an end. The decision of nuclear-armed Pakistan to stand behind Iran was extremely helpful. These are early days in the Israeli-Iranian war. I do not sense any popular enthusiasm in the USA to be involved. Even the mainstream American media is characterising Iranian attacks as “retaliation” and the Israeli victim card is no longer as Platinum as it used to be here in the USA.

Germany has been refuelling Israeli jets en route to attack Iran, and the UK may also have been doing so. Starmer and Macron have both expressed determination to defend Israel with their own military but both would face massive popular resistance.

We wait to see what happens next. But having lived through vicious Israeli bombardment of Beirut, having been menaced by drones in the Bekaa Valley, having stood on the line at Kfar Kila while a twelve-year-old boy was shot standing next to my producer, having witnessed 100,000 Lebanese homes destroyed, I have no sympathy left for Tel Aviv.

———————————

My reporting and advocacy work has no source of finance at all other than your contributions to keep us going. We get nothing from any state nor any billionaire.

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Because some people wish an alternative to PayPal, I have set up new methods of payment including a Patreon account and a Substack account if you wish to subscribe that way. The content will be the same as you get on this blog. Substack has the advantage of overcoming social media suppression by emailing you direct every time I post. You can if you wish subscribe free to Substack and use the email notifications as a trigger to come for this blog and read the articles for free. I am determined to maintain free access for those who cannot afford a subscription.

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