Economically and financially, Portugal lives under the colonial tutelage of the EU, submitting its state budget year after year for final approval in Brussels. Militarily, it obeys every NATO command.

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The handing over of the Azorean military base at Lajes to the deranged Trump and the killer Netanyahu is yet another step towards the extinction of Portugal as a sovereign nation.

For 50 years, since 1976, successive Portuguese governments of the so-called “Central Bloc” – PS, PSD and CDS, now joined by the Salazarist Chega – have devoted themselves to dismantling the popular achievements won during the 500 days of revolutionary momentum unleashed on 25 April 1974.

The foundation of this process has been the abolition of national sovereignty through European integration and the return to a relationship of vassalage towards the United States, inherited from the Salazar dictatorship.

Portugal’s accession to the EEC/European Union, total subservience to NATO, the abolition of the national currency and the slavish alignment with American imperial expansionism have broken the backbone of the old Lusitanian nation, with its 883 years of independence.

Mário Soares kicked off the surrender of independence, blinded by obsessive anti-communism and determined to turn Portugal into the “model pupil”, the obedient child of European integration. Every head of government since then has delivered further blows to national sovereignty.

Economically and financially, Portugal now lives under the colonial tutelage of the European Union, submitting its state budget year after year for final approval in Brussels. Militarily, it obeys every NATO command.

One of the most severe limitations on national sovereignty is the use by the United States of the Lajes air base, on Terceira Island in the Azores archipelago.

The “Lajes Agreement” was established in 1951 between Salazar’s fascist government and the administration of Harry Truman and reinforced in 1955 under the presidency of Dwight Eisenhower.

Broadly speaking, the 1955 version belonged to the Cold War framework and granted Portugal little more than formal sovereignty while allowing extensive operational autonomy for the United States.

In 1995, the agreement was revised and signed on the Portuguese side by foreign minister Durão Barroso – whose later career needs little introduction – and on the American side by Warren Christopher, secretary of state in the Clinton administration.

A few years later, in 2003, Lajes air base became the chosen stage for George W Bush’s summit with his willing partners José María Aznar and Tony Blair, where the decision was taken to attack Iraq on the false pretext that the country possessed weapons of mass destruction. Durão Barroso, by then prime minister, acted as host and made Portugal complicit in the deception.

The 1995 “agreement” formally guarantees Portugal’s “full sovereignty” over Lajes, but the devil lies in the detail. The text is deliberately ambiguous, more “flexible”. It allows automatic authorisations for undefined military operations and extensive use of the base by the US Department of War, with only minimal political oversight from Portugal.

For example, in the imperial-Zionist war launched against Iran, there may have been a request for authorisation for the use of Lajes by the United States, but there is no public information regarding specific missions – targets, objectives or attacks.

Portugal’s foreign minister, Paulo Rangel, stated that Lisbon’s authorisation had been granted on condition that international law be respected and only in the event that the United States had first come under attack.

Another condition was that American forces should act according to the principles of “necessity and proportionality” and in ways that would avoid civilian casualties. None of these conditions was respected by Trump and his partners; nor is there any indication that Portugal expressed the slightest dissatisfaction.

In this context, the Portuguese authorities neither verify the nature of military operations nor exercise public oversight over the activities of a criminally reckless figure such as Donald Trump. The Portuguese government allows, for example, the refuelling at Lajes of MQ-9 Reaper killer drones on their routes to attack Iran

Portugal has therefore entered the war against Iran by becoming part of the operational military chain. In doing so, it has turned itself into a legitimate strategic target for Iranian forces.

These circumstances reveal that, in the hands of successive governments of the “Central Bloc”, submissive and loyal interpreters of neoliberal brutality, Portugal is becoming an ever more agonising country – one increasingly threatened with extinction.