The provisional surrender document signed by Donald Trump appeared to represent a triumph for Iran and indeed for the world; but neither the USA nor Israel has the slightest sense of honour and they cannot be trusted to negotiate in good faith.

Iran knows this – after all, the USA twice attacked Iran actually during peace negotiations, on each occasion killing key Iranian negotiators.

To understand the American position, it is important to realise two key points:

• Greater Israel is an absolute priority
• Opening the Strait of Hormuz is not a US priority

While the US/Israeli alliance were defeated in their attempt to impose regime change on Iran, and indeed have consolidated the popular support of the Iranian government, they have succeeded in expanding Greater Israel. Israel has ethnically cleared and devastated a vast swathe of Southern Lebanon, expanding its military footprint, and notably attempting to repeat its ploy from November 2024 of pushing forward its armour under cover of ceasefire.

Israeli withdrawal from Southern Lebanon has been a major negotiating point for the Iranian government and is a key – indeed the very first – point of the Iran/USA MOU. But in an extraordinary coup aimed at negating that deal, the USA has signed a deal with Israel and its puppet Aoun regime in Lebanon which seeks to legitimise Israeli occupation of Southern Lebanon through the agreement of the “Lebanese government”.

This is an astonishing development. I did not think I could have a lower opinion of the appalling bloated traitor “General” “President” Aoun but not even I – nor I think any commentator – believed he would make such a deal with Israel. The plan is that the Americans, Israelis and Lebanese Army will act together to forcibly eliminate Hezbollah, and only after that is certified – by the Israelis – will the Israelis withdraw from Southern Lebanon.

Here are the operative paragraphs. Note that they carefully do not say in terms that Israel will actually leave Lebanon.

“3. …The Government of Israel and the Government of Lebanon commit to a reciprocal, sequenced process, with clear conditions, whereby the LAF will restore effective sovereign authority over all Lebanese territory, pending the verified disarmament of non-state armed groups and dismantlement of associated infrastructure, enabling the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to progressively redeploy out of the Lebanese territory.”

“5 . …The Government of Israel underscores that the termination of this threat, through the disarmament and dismantlement of such groups in all of Lebanon and additional security arrangements to be agreed upon between the two countries, will eliminate any future need for IDF military action or presence in Lebanon.”

This is plainly completely incompatible with the USA/Iran MOU, which states as Point 1:

“The United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran and their allies in the current war are signing this MOU to declare the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon, and undertake from now on not to initiate any war or any military operation against each other, and to refrain from the threat or use of force against each other, and ensuring the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Lebanon. The final deal will confirm the permanent termination of the war on all fronts, including in Lebanon and other provisions of this paragraph.”

Of course, everybody knows that Israel will never withdraw voluntarily, any more than they withdrew from the Golan Heights. Annexation is plainly the goal and expansion of Greater Israel at least to the Litani River and probably further.

It is important to realise that this is not only Aoun seeking the annihilation of the Shia population of Southern Lebanon; he is also betraying his own community. Aoun is himself a Southern Lebanese Christian, and Israel has been destroying the homes, churches, hospitals and families of Southern Lebanese Christians with as much glee as they attack Muslims.

The agreement names two “pilot zones” where the combined Israeli and Lebanese Army forces will eliminate Hezbollah, followed by Israeli withdrawal from those zones. But these are zones which Israel is not currently occupying – they are areas where Israel was defeated in fighting by Hezbollah and which have been since subject to relentless Israeli bombardment.

So Aoun has agreed to support militarily an IDF advance further into Lebanon, against an agreement that Israel will be able to withdraw once these key Hezbollah redoubts have been destroyed. Even if Aoun were stupid enough to believe the Israelis will withdraw after the operation, this is a level of treachery it is difficult to comprehend.

Greater Israel is not a concept. It is a reality being created before our very eyes.

Israel now occupies 70% of Gaza and plainly the entire “Board of Peace” mechanism is nothing but smoke and mirrors, pure fraud. It has zero effect on the continued tightening of the Gaza concentration camp into an ever-shrinking area. Israeli settlements in the West Bank expand daily and every night the skies are red with Palestinian homes and crops burning. In East Jerusalem Palestinians are continually evicted and replaced by fresh European or American arrivals. In Syria, Israel is building permanent fortifications and its armour creeps forward field by field, with the full cooperation of “President” al-Jolani.

Iran was able to resist the combined military might of the USA and Israel. That is cause for celebration. But do not allow it to blind your eyes to the continued hard reality of the expansion of Greater Israel.

There is no gain for the US in the US/Iran Memorandum of Understanding which the US did not already possess before starting the war. It is therefore very possible, and in many senses valid, to read it as the formalisation of US defeat: a surrender document. Which is why you should be sceptical about US commitment to the terms.

The Strait of Hormuz was fully open before the US started the war. Allowing the flow of oil to resume has become a short-term US priority due to high domestic retail prices and pending elections, but the MOU envisages more Iranian control – and potentially fees – in the Strait than existed before the war.

There is no indication of restrictions on the Iranian nuclear programme that were not already available in the peaceful negotiations. Crucially there are no limitations on Iran’s vital ballistic missile production. The proposed relaxation of sanctions and release of frozen assets is a triumph for Iran and long overdue, and the $300 billion in dollars in reparations, from unspecified sources, is stunning.

So stunning of course that anyone with their head screwed on will realise there is no long term American intention to keep faith with the deal.

Trump is not stupid. There are many ways of characterising his kind of cunning, but it is not stupidity. He was not, as the prevailing narrative seeks to state, the only person in the World who did not realise the Strait of Hormuz would be closed by the war. The USA is quite happy to see the Strait of Hormuz closed, or permanently made more difficult and expensive to transit.

The key to understanding Trump’s position is his famous love of tariffs. Trump is a mercantilist. For many years the world worked on the general basis of accepting the economics of Adam Smith – that freedom of trade promoted universal, reciprocal wealth creation. That was the founding basis of the World Trade organisation, and is the internal philosophy of big trading blocs like the EU.

Trump rejects this and returns to the philosophy that other nations are all competitors, not potential partners, and that success lies not only in increasing your own production, but in damaging your rivals’ production – which ultimately will increase domestic production further. Trump rejects the basic premise of free trade.

The long prevailing belief in the beneficial effects of free trade historically was, as logic demands, accompanied by the demand for freedom of navigation.

Sweeping away tariffs goes hand in hand with sweeping away the controls on shipping which carry the goods. Before the rise of liberal economics, almost all states had practised mercantilism, with controls on shipping being a major source of state revenue. The magnificence of Kronborg Castle in Helsingør, in which Hamlet is set, was constructed entirely from revenues from tolls on ships exiting the Baltic by passing the strait it overlooks, for example. Mercantilism not only sought to control passage but to dictate which country’s ships were allowed to trade.

Freedom of navigation was initially enforced ultimately by the British, and later the American, Navy. States attempting to enforce customary passage fees, for example in the Malaccan Strait, were classified as “pirates” and freedom of navigation became a routine justification for imperialist aggression and/or colonial occupation. Freedom of navigation eventually became customary international law, ultimately codified in the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea.

The simple truth is this: in openly abandoning the principle of free trade, the Trump regime has also abandoned the logically linked principle of freedom of navigation. This is evident not just in their indifference to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. It is evident in the naval blockades of Cuba and Venezuela and above all in the worldwide blockade of Russian hydrocarbon deliveries, including the effective end of free passage through the Strait of Dover, and a de facto naval blockade of the Arctic passages.

Following the shale boom, the United States is a net hydrocarbon exporter. The USA balance of trade benefits from high hydrocarbon prices. Trump is doing everything he can to increase US hydrocarbon production by slashing environmental and other controls. This is a core Trump policy.

The USA does not import hydrocarbons through the Strait of Hormuz. That fact is key to Trump’s thinking.

In this mercantilist view, closure of the Strait has two benefits for the USA.

• It disadvantages rival hydrocarbon suppliers
• It disadvantages rival industrial competitors in Europe and Asia who do get hydrocarbons through Hormuz.

This is exactly the same logic behind the destruction of Nord Stream 2. The same mercantilist system also explains the effective seizure through naval blockade and control of Venezuela’s oil production, and the blockade of Russian hydrocarbons through sanctions and the “shadow fleet” propaganda disguising another naval blockade.

The UK’s recent actions in the Dover strait indicate that the West, not just the United States has surrendered the principle of freedom of navigation in straits.

Trump believes, as he has repeatedly stated in public, that domestic fuel prices in the USA are a blip and will equalise as the USA increases its domestic fuel production and Venezuelan fuel production. However this was not happening in time for the mid-term elections which is why reopening the Strait of Hormuz became a temporary priority that occasioned the ceasefire and MOU with Iran.

None of this implies good faith negotiation or a real prospect for a lasting peace.

————————————————————————————-

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I was genuinely surprised by the Starmer regime’s refusal to state that the Israeli boarding of the Global Sumud flotilla on the High Seas was illegal. I did not realise it was because the UK was planning to undertake similar illegal seizure itself.

The Gaza Flotilla seizure was illegal: while for obvious reasons freedom of navigation had been the undisputed basis of UK maritime policy for centuries. The UK is a set of islands whose population is dependent on food imports to stay alive. Freedom of navigation is a core strategic interest of the UK. The relevant provisions of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea were very heavily UK driven, including on passage through straits.

Abandoning the primacy of freedom of navigation is absolutely a radical policy departure for the UK – driven, like so many other changes to traditional British legal positions, by the Starmer regime’s extreme support for Israel.

It is not generally understood how profound a change this is. Even the Tory government of David Cameron, with William Hague as Foreign Secretary, had opposed the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza and particularly Israeli seizure of vessels on the High Seas. William Hague stated in 2010 to the House of Commons of the boarding of the Mavi Marmara:

We are seriously concerned about the seizure of British nationals in international waters,

This is a long-term British legal position now directly repudiated by Starmer, Lammy and Cooper.

I had not realised that not only was the UK now supporting the campaigns of illegal blockade and seizure of vessels being openly pursued by Israel and by Trump, but Starmer was actually intending to abandon freedom of navigation and join the Trump/Netanyahu doctrine.

That is what the UK has now done by its seizure of the Smyrtos as it had passed through the Straits of Dover en route to Sikka in India.

The Dover Strait is a strait. The clue is in the name. The UK has absolutely no right to close it to Russian shipping. This is in Article 39 of the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea:

Transit of international straits “shall not be impeded” is pretty plain. This is the applicable legal regime for both the Strait of Dover and the Strait of Hormuz. Obviously in time of war different considerations apply, and commercial shipping of belligerent states – and to and from belligerent states – becomes a legitimate target. Iran is fully justified in also treating states permitting attacks launched from their territory as belligerent states.

If hostilities end, this Article 39 regime should apply again in the Strait of Hormuz.

It is worth a footnote to say that Iran had, until the recent illegal aggression by Israel and the United States, always strictly observed the international law on straits even though Iran did not sign the Convention and actually had entered a formal reservation on passage through straits. Even during the war, Iran had attempted, in extremely difficult circumstances, to establish a system for passage of genuinely neutral vessels.

It is astonishing that at this moment, when navigation of the Strait of Hormuz is arguably the single most live question in all of international politics, the UK has decided to abandon the principle of free transit through straits.

It takes hypocrisy to an entire new level – it truly beggars belief – that the day after closing the Dover Strait to Russian shipping, Starmer issued a joint statement with Germany, France and Italy insisting on “Freedom of Navigation” in the strait of Hormuz.

Even if you don’t care about international law and believe that Trumpian realpolitik is better, to act against freedom of navigation now would seem an unwise decision. The UK is now copying actions like the United States naval blockades of Cuba and Venezuela, and the Israeli genocidal blockade of Gaza. These are gross violations of the Law of the Sea.

UK Government minister Lisa Nandy was on television news last night as the government pumped out militaristic propaganda. The Royal Navy’s action in boarding and capturing an entirely unarmed and peaceful merchant vessel was portrayed as an act of Nelsonian brilliance. Nandy justified the seizure on the grounds that Russia’s oil sales pay for its war with Ukraine, and that the UK was enforcing sanctions against Russia.

Neither provides an atom of legal justification for seizing the vessel. The UK is not at war with Russia. Ukraine is, and the Ukrainian navy would have been entitled to seize the vessel. For reasons of cheap popularity and to increase the massive amounts of public money swirling around the corruption honeypot of military spending, UK ministers seem determined to move us to the brink of war with Russia. But we are still not at war, and the UK accordingly has no right to seize peaceful and innocent Russian bound, owned or flagged commercial vessels.

The UK is legally entitled to put whatever sanctions it wishes on Russia. But it can only enforce those within its legitimate jurisdiction. A foreign vessel, even when engaged in innocent passage or transit passage through a UK strait or other territorial waters, is not under UK jurisdiction. The Smyrtos was in fact in international waters south of the UK when seized.

In fact this attempt to enforce Western sanctions in areas where Western powers have no jurisdiction is a classic example of the current aggressive resurgence of imperialism, where the “rules-based order” – meaning rules imposed by the imperialists – replaces international law.

Nandy also stated that the Smyrtos was a member of the “Russian shadow fleet”. This is a term that the Starmer regime and their client mainstream and corporate media have relied upon repeatedly to demonise the Russian owned or directed merchant fleet.

Russia sells oil to countries like India and China perfectly lawfully. That this oil is carried in ships bearing flags other than Russian is perfectly normal.

Nil or close to nil of those ships carrying hydrocarbons to and from the UK are UK registered and flagged.

It has been a sad truth of international shipping for many decades that commercial vessels bear flags of convenience, and that jurisdictions compete to offer the very lowest standards of crew salary and welfare regulations, officer and crew training, vehicle condition, and maritime safety and inspection regimes.

Most of the registries of well-known international flag of convenience states such as Panama, Liberia and the Marshall Islands, do not really exist in the sense of being government departments of those countries, as they should be. They are private companies with almost no real-world footprint, which pay a fee to the government to operate the registry, and collect the fees from the shipowners registering. The register is just names in a laptop – and very often that laptop is in London.

UK colonies often have substantial such fake registries. The UK is a strong opponent of the International Transport Workers Federation, which has struggled against this system to improve mariners’ rights.

The system evolved for wealthy shipowners to avoid all maritime safety, environmental and welfare regulation, and the UK and other Western countries which pander to the needs of the ultra-wealthy have always been complicit. The incredible hypocrisy of Western states pointing fingers at Russia for running “Flags of convenience” is breathtaking.

The West has spent decades building and profiting from the global flags-of-convenience system. Russia is simply using the same system that Western companies created and still dominate.

Incidentally the MOD’s own propaganda footage, shown by all UK mainstream media yesterday, proves that the Smyrtos is a modern, clean, well-equipped and comfortable vessel and all the propaganda about an ancient rustbucket is completely untrue.

I have finally managed to pin down the alleged legal basis of the seizure of the Smyrtos, and it is that the vessel was stateless and thus subject to boarding under Article 110 of the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea.

The UK is claiming that the Smyrtos fell foul of Article 110.1 (d) that it was “without nationality”.

We will inspect that claim more closely in a moment. But, assuming it for a moment to be true, note that you only have a right to visit and inspect on the High Seas a ship that is without nationality. Article 110 absolutely does not confer any right to seize a ship on the High Seas not found on inspection to be in unlawful activity. The UK has seized the Smyrtos, brought it into UK territorial waters and then claimed it is under UK jurisdiction.

Nowhere is that allowed in the Convention.

Now let us look at the claim that the Smyrtos is without nationality. This is an astonishing story which the media will not tell you.

When the Smyrtos set sail from Russia it was flying the Cameroonian flag, and on the Cameroonian register. That is not in doubt.

While the ship was on its voyage, on 10 June Cameroon withdrew its registration. It did so because the EU and UK threatened to halt development aid to Cameroon unless they removed Russian vessels from their shipping register.

So the UK blackmailed Cameroon into deregistering the ship. Then, before the ship could reach a friendly port, the UK boarded it because it had been deregistered.

Now doubtless there are chortling people in the UK security and military industries self-congratulating themselves over how clever they are. But while this may be a clever ruse de guerre, it is hardly a ruse de paix. It is not going to survive scrutiny by an international court. An unexpected change of registration, forced upon the owners, is very difficult to complete instantly, but doubtless one was in train and perhaps finished. The UK actions are patently – and deliberately – unreasonable.

Politicians seek to drum up cheap popularity by stupid jingoism. Starmer has won a cheap headline. The world inches closer to the next world war. The UK loses yet more legitimacy in the eyes of the wider world.

Meantime Trump claims as a great victory a possible return of the Strait of Hormuz to the open status it enjoyed before he started an illegal war in the interests of Israel.

Freedom of navigation was a principle worth defending. It has been abandoned in favour of a return to the rule of the seas by those with the strongest navies. Fortunately Putin is neither as war hungry nor as politically desperate as Starmer. However Russia will now be obliged to send at least a frigate to keep the Strait of Dover open. The drums of war beat ever closer.

Craig Murray is a former Head of Maritime Section of the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office. He is a former Alternate Head of the UK Delegation at the UN Preparatory Commission for the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

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Venezuela GoFundMe

Just a quick note to say that I am very aware that lately I have been rather bitter, which is not good for anybody, especially me. The disappointments and state outrages have been no worse than usual; my frustration at my poor health, and the subsequent constraint of my ability to fight back, has rather soured my mood.

My twitter posts have been unpleasantly acerbic. Last Sunday on the Crispin Flintoff Show I gave a rant aimed at the soft zionist English Palestine Solidarity Committee, which I immediately regretted as over the top – not wrong in substance, but lacking kindness and tolerance.

The good news is I am aware of this and think I can overcome it.

It has been a very embittering time. The Genocide in Gaza is entering a new phase, and despite the radical shift in international public opinion, those in charge of states – and not only Western states – still show no genuine intention to stop it. The Palestinians have been written off already by those in power over us, erased as a factor. Israel is now simply repeating the Gaza playbook in South Lebanon. I know the villages and towns they are destroying and in many cases have been a guest of the people there. The killing and the destruction of a profound and ancient civilisation is heartbreaking.

I am deeply shocked by the cancellation of the Scottish judicial review of the proscription of Palestine Action. Until I entered the courtroom on Wednesday 27th, I was not worried.

Well, that is not quite true – I started to worry two days earlier when I found that although the permission hearing had been in Court No 1 and livestreamed, this much more substantive hearing would be tucked in Court No 6 and would not be livestreamed. Why was it being hidden?

I still find it hard to accept that the judge Lord Young who, in January, ruled in ringing terms that a Scot resident in Scotland, whose liberties were infringed in Scotland, was entitled to the jurisdiction of a Scottish court, has now ruled starkly that Scotland must accept the decision of the English Court of Appeal in the interests of “comity”.

It would be interesting if there were a clue somewhere that Scottish judges are subject to England. Here is a picture of Lord Young Scott (who is modelling the standard issue uniform):

Interestingly this costume is subject to one of those beloved British lies, which is a straightforward fabrication but which you will find in every publication on the subject.

The lie is that the St George’s crosses, adopted in these Scottish legal robes in Victorian times, were a stylised representation of previous fastenings or rosettes in those positions, and are not St George’s crosses at all.

The problem is there exist many dozens of portraits of Scottish judges in robes before this costume was adopted, and not one portrait, anywhere, shows anything that remotely could be fastenings or rosettes in these positions which later became stylised St George’s crosses.

The official explanation of why senior Scottish judges wear the English flag is simply and completely untrue.

A previous Lord Young in the 1890’s refused to wear the costume with St George’s crosses, which was a scandal at the time.

Let us return to our current Palestine Action case. In January Lord Young ruled this:

I am satisfied that it is appropriate to grant permission for this judicial review to proceed in Scotland notwithstanding the existence of English proceedings which are at a more advanced stage. As a matter of principle, a petitioner who has standing and whose petition sets out arguments of sufficient merit to satisfy s27B(2)(b) of the 1988 Act should not be refused permission because of the existence of parallel proceedings in another UK jurisdiction. The petitioner claims that his legal rights have been illegally circumscribed by the 2025 Order.
He is entitled to look to the courts of his place of residence for a determination of that complaint. The cases of Cherry v Advocate General 2020 SC 37 and R (Miller) v Prime Minister [2019] EWHC 2381 support the petitioner’s argument that there is nothing inherently objectionable with proceedings on the same issue progressing through different jurisdictions within the UK at the same time.

How can the same judge in the same case four months later then rule this, which is the precise opposite?:

In the current proceedings, the legal costs which will be incurred from now until the substantive hearing towards the end of June will increase exponentially. We know that a decision of the [English] Court of Appeal will have been issued prior to the substantive hearing. While that judgment may, or may not, be the final word on this issue, the judgments handed down by the Court of Appeal will be highly significant. It is
almost inevitable that the final decision on the legality of the 2025 Order will be made either by the English Court of Appeal, or by the Supreme Court on a further appeal in Ammori. The petitioner’s challenge to the 2025 Order in these proceedings is likely to be resolved, one way or the other, by the final decision in Ammori. It is said that a sist brings the petitioner’s right to have his claim determined to a practical end. But Ammori will resolve the issue he wants determined

The judge’s volte face was obvious in the courtroom literally in the first five minutes. His mind was not changed in the courtroom; it had been changed for him before we ever got to say a word.

His decision is to “sist” or postpone our case until after the English Court of Appeal case (and any appeal to the Supreme Court) – which means to close down our case permanently. I was informed by our advocates that because this is a “procedural” decision to kill our case administratively – thus avoiding an actual decision on whether the proscription of Palestine Action was legal – there is no chance of appeal.

I am really not happy to let the sleekit Lord Young get away with this and I have instructed the legal team to appeal against the sist. Even if leave to appeal is denied, I think we have to register protest and at least try to resist – the decision takes Scotland backward from the Cherry/Miller case where separate judicial reviews did proceed in Scotland and England over the prorogation of Parliament.

Cherry/Miller was a breakthrough against centuries of Scotland accepting the decision of English courts which have no jurisdiction here.

What is particularly unjust is that Lord Young stated that the reason for his ruling is that the Scottish judicial review had not started yet, whereas the decision of the English Court of Appeal is imminent.

This is infuriating because the Scottish judicial review was scheduled for March. It has been repeatedly – and deliberately – postponed by the Starmer regime by the repeated introduction of “secret intelligence” which has resulted in a number of “closed sessions” with the judge and the security services. We have no access to those sessions, we are never told what “intelligence” was given to the judge, and our interests are “represented” by government-approved barristers who are strictly banned from communicating with us.

It is this UK security service ploy which Lord Young allowed to delay the Scottish judicial review for months. Then something still more suspicious happened.

Last week’s hearing was originally scheduled for early May. It was then postponed for three weeks at the request of the Advocate General, a minister in the Starmer regime, who stated she wished to attend in person and that 27 May was her earliest available date. We protested, but Lord Young postponed the hearing to accommodate her.

During that postponement, the English Court of Appeal announced 15 June as the date they will give their decision in the Ammori case. The existence of that fixed date is now the peg on which Lord Young hung his ending of our case.

But here is the thing: it was really unusual of the Court of Appeal to announce a month in advance the date on which they will give their decision in Ammori. Why would they do that? If they have completed their work, why not give the judgement now? If they have not completed their work, why tie themselves to an entirely artificial deadline?

The English Court of Appeal actually asked the lawyers in Ammori about progress in the Scottish case during that appeal in England. They were very well aware of where we stood.

Was their date for judgement announced so far in advance in order to give Lord Young ammunition to torpedo the Scottish case? That seems to me extremely likely.

We need money to prepare an appeal, and in any event we need money because costs were awarded against us last week (pegged at 50% of the government’s costs). As lawfare is the government’s preferred method, I expect these costs will be substantial.

If we fail to appeal the sist, we may have a route to intervene when the English case gets to the Supreme Court. But unless that gives us a right to be heard (as opposed to just put in a written submission which will be ignored) I am not very attracted by this.

Given the major constitutional implications of Young’s rulings for the operation of the devolution settlement and the autonomy of Scottish legal system, the lack of any interest in the case by the Scottish government or by the SNP as a party – or the Greens or any other political party – has been a further deep disappointment to me.

The potential result of Lord Young’s ruling is that all the work we put into preparation for the Scottish judicial review which had been granted – hundreds of hours of work and tens of thousands of pounds of cost – is wasted. I am very conscious that this is your money from donations. It weighs on me.

One point we wished to raise at judicial review was the fact that the Home Office consulted nobody in Scotland about the proscription – they did not consult the Scottish Government, Police Scotland or the Scottish Counter Terrorism Strategy Board (CONTEST), let alone anybody in Scottish civil society. But they did consult the Israeli Embassy in London.

When I was taken so ill in Venezuela, family was of course uppermost in my mind, but something else was bothering me a great deal. If anything happened to me, the Scottish judicial review would fall. I am the petitioner and the legal team tell me I can neither be replaced nor can a judicial review case be run by my estate. No new petition can be raised by anyone else as it is now time-barred.

So I have to keep going.

Another thing that has greatly disappointed me at the moment is NHS Scotland. I did not have a routine pacemaker implant in Venezuela; it was undertaken as a part of an emergency procedure. I was kept in hospital for a week, and under close observation for another, before I was passed fit to fly. The Venezuelan cardiologist told me that it was essential I see a Scottish cardiologist immediately on return, and that my pacemaker be checked for attachment and function after six weeks.

Arriving home, my GP was excellent and saw me immediately. He sent an URGENT referral to cardiology at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.

For a fortnight I was in daily expectation of being called in. Nothing happened. On a Friday I then phoned the Royal Infirmary and was put through to “cardiology waiting list”. After listening to music for 25 minutes, someone answered the phone. He was in a different department, and said the phone had been diverted to his extension. The person who did cardiology appointments was off work till Tuesday. He could not help me.

I called on that Tuesday but nobody answered the extension at all. I tried again the following Friday. After one half-hour wait listening to music, I hung up, dialled the switchboard and said this was not acceptable. The lady told me that the person who did cardiology waiting lists was off work until 1 June.

I found and phoned an NHS Lothian complaints number, and explained the situation. They logged a complaint and said somebody would phone me within 24 hours.

Nobody did.

On 1 June I called again and listened to music. After 20 minutes I took a screenshot to start documenting this.

Then after 35 minutes somebody actually answered. They again stated the person who did cardiology appointments was still off work and the phone had been diverted to them. I said that it was crazy that the entire system was failing because one non-medical member of staff was off work.

They agreed with me but said it was not their fault and they had to handle hundreds of calls. I commiserated.

While I was having that conversation, a letter arrived digitally from NHS Lothian on my phone. It said my referral would be assessed by clinicians, and I would then be added to the waiting list (I already waited almost a month). The letter included a link to see the current waiting times. If it was deemed urgent, waiting time would be another eight weeks. If not urgent, it would be fifteen weeks.

After a month of trying I have not had so much as an ECG. I am getting odd pangs and twinges, sometimes in series, from the pacemaker but have no idea if this is normal or not. I am continually exhausted and find concentration very difficult. The function-and-attachment test after six weeks is now overdue.

I therefore felt obliged, against my principles, to book a private cardiologist appointment. This is deeply disappointing politically, and also very expensive. Seeing the consultant is £250 – an ECG, ultrasound, X Ray and pacemaker monitoring (all of which the Venezuelan cardiologist says should be done) is each charged as extra. So north of £1,000 in all.

I must confess, I had not understood how dysfunctional the NHS had become. I am told if you actually have a heart attack it is still good; but I would hope we could provide healthcare before the point of death. It is being hollowed out, piecemeal-privatised and viewed as an asset to be stripped for profit.

The frustration of ill health has only grown. My health issues are right now preventing me from attending the St Petersburg International Economic Forum, an event I had been looking forward to. I had also planned to visit Iran in July. I want to get to Cuba. And I long to get back to Lebanon. It is essential to see realities on the ground, speak directly with people shaping events, and report the truth to you in ways that I cannot do from a house in Edinburgh. My body is not currently up to supporting the intellectual fight, and that’s a real downer.

In going through all the things that are getting me down, I would add the Murrell/Sturgeon saga. When Murrell first went off to Saughton jail on remand, I was gleeful. Murrell was at the centre of Sturgeon’s plot to organise her close associates to make false complaints against Alex Salmond. Sturgeon and Murrell’s corrupt influence over the Lord Advocate and the Crown Office were central to having both Alex and me prosecuted and having me jailed.

Having tried at the time to warn everybody of Sturgeon and Murrell’s highly criminal machinations to have Alex Salmond framed, obviously I feel in part vindicated by the public acceptance that Murrell is indeed a criminal. But one of the ways I realised I had become unpleasantly embittered, is that I found I was posting tweets rejoicing at Murrell being sent to jail, and hoping he had my old cell in Saughton.

I don’t really think that.

Scotland’s antiquated jail system is a disgrace to any modern society. The conditions are inhumane and some aspects are positively Victorian – I still have backache from sleeping on a steel slab mitigated only by a slither of ancient foam rubber “mattress” which had completely lost all resistance. I don’t believe anyone should be subjected to deliberate physical suffering.

I should be better than crowing at Murrell’s imprisonment.

On the other hand, it is deeply frustrating to see Sturgeon getting away with it entirely and even playing the victim card, reaching effortlessly for the gender politics in which she has always wrapped her grasping psychopathy. It is precisely the same corrupt hold over the Crown Office, which got me jailed, that enabled Sturgeon to escape prosecution.

Still more troubling to me is the incredible cult following which still worships Sturgeon and refuses to believe she did anything wrong. I am not terribly worried that they cannot see she is implicated in embezzling funds to boost her lifestyle. I am worried they cannot acknowledge her systematically having blocked proper scrutiny of the SNP’s accounts.

But what really fills me with despair is that Sturgeon’s followers cannot acknowledge that she betrayed Scottish Independence; she never did anything to further it nor had the slightest intention of doing anything to further it.

The Union was close to toppling when Brexit was implemented against the wishes of a very large majority of Scots (my opinion on the EU is immaterial here). Sturgeon simply ignored that opportunity for action. She also went to the Supreme Court in London and argued a case on Scotland’s right to a referendum on Independence which was certain to fail, because it was grounded in UK constitutional law and not in international law. The UK Supreme Court would always rule in favour of the supremacy of the Westminster Parliament.

Sturgeon piled obstacles in the way of Independence and never once articulated a coherent plan to achieve it.

John Swinney adopts precisely the same stance. We now have sustained majorities in public opinion for Independence, but a Scottish government not prepared to take any risk to reach for it. Meanwhile, blind loyalty to the governing party in Scotland prevents any radical action. The frustration is that loyalty is caused by an urgent desire for Independence and the deluded belief that the SNP intends to achieve it.

The hero worship of Sturgeon that is so much in evidence is a large part of the problem: Scottish Independence has been driven into a cul de sac. The infuriating thing is that these cult members ought to be those with whom I am most politically aligned: but they hate me because I do not join in their idolisation of She Who Must Be Obeyed.

So this has been, and is, a difficult period for me personally. The political outlook is grim, and I am increasingly worried about my own condition. Also from the Crispin Flintoff Show, this extract of me talking about Sturgeon reinforces my concern. Something is wrong cognitively. My natural fluency is gone in this interview and I appear unable to finish a sentence or maintain a coherent line of thought.

This is all very depressing. The world is dominated by bad people who control advanced mechanisms of power. But there is no fulfilment in resignation, no honour in standing down in a battle against institutionalised evil. The only joy lies in resistance.

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