The United States and Israel are both revelling in inflicting the maximum possible death and suffering on Iran. After the genocide in Gaza, on a far larger field in Iran, those in power in Israel and the USA have a lust to kill and they revel in impunity.
The Epstein files reveal the same dynamic. We live in a society where those who obtain power wish to exercise it in the cruellest possible ways against the most defenceless. It appears to be a feature of late Western capitalist society, where sociopathic tendencies are essential to obtaining power, in a society which rejects altruism and cooperation as concepts and promotes competition, self-love and ruthlessness.
Iran is showing commendable fighting spirit, but as my last article stated, American military power should not be underestimated. They have the ability to destroy Iran from the air, to obliterate the institutions of the state and all of the key civilian infrastructure. Electricity, water, healthcare, education, administration, policing all can be knocked out just as they were systematically in Gaza and – on a scale insufficiently recalled – in Iraq.
Trump is already asking Congress for $50 billion to fund the operation and replenish stocks. The scale of destruction Netanyahu envisages will cost at least half a trillion dollars from the US Treasury. But there is nothing that can stop them.
I witnessed close up over five months the 80 to 100,000 homes destroyed in Lebanon by Israel in the last three years. We have all seen what they did to Gaza. The notion they cannot do this to Iran is simply wrong. It requires a colossal effort of will, a mania for killing, a vast amount of money and the depletion of the US arsenal. But they can do it.
Only political action by the peoples of the West against their leaders can stop it.
Iran and its allies have been the only physical opposition to the creation of Greater Israel. If the physical destruction of Iran is achieved, Greater Israel will be established at pace. One of the world’s greatest civilisations will lie in ashes, covering millions of corpses, but none of that will prevent the extraction of oil.
Pete Hegseth, American Secretary for War, simply comes over as a Nazi thug. He plainly is enjoying this as much as Netanyahu, Ben Gvir or Smotrich. He has gloatingly promised “Death and destruction from the sky, all day long”. He repeatedly signals ever-escalating bombing.
The Iranian Red Crescent has listed the bombing destruction so far. It includes:
- 5,535 civilian residential units
- 1,041 commercial units
- 65 schools
- 14 hospitals and medical centres
- 13 Red Crescent Society bases
By contrast, there has been no credible claim that Iran has inflicted widespread civilian damage. It has very tightly targeted specific facilities – collateral damage seems almost entirely confined to debris from intercepted drones and missiles.
But we know the US/Israel axis targets hospitals and medical facilities. It is proven beyond doubt in Gaza, and I witnessed it in Beirut.
In gloating about US military superiority, Trump advised Iranian civilians:
“Don’t leave your home. It’s very dangerous outside. Bombs will be dropping everywhere.”
Yet they are deliberately bombing residential buildings, exactly as in both Lebanon and Gaza. Trump is attempting to terrorise Iran into “unconditional surrender”.
At the Battle of Waterloo – an epic, large-scale and unmissable event – approximately 15,000 people died on the field of battle (more died later of wounds in an age before antibiotics). You are supposed to believe that the Iranian government in January killed twice as many demonstrators as died at Waterloo. This using only small arms and despite the complete lack of visual evidence of killing on anything like that scale.
At the same time you are supposed to believe that tens of thousands of tonnes of the highest explosives have been dropped into the centre of cities all across Iran but that these are “precision attacks” killing very few civilians.
It is obvious nonsense.
AI targeting only adds a new layer of dystopia to an entirely vicious and unnecessary war. The indifference of the Western media to the slaughter of 160 Iranian schoolgirls leads to really difficult questions about the type of society the West has become. Racism is just the beginning of the problems.
The effort to coerce the Kurds into yet again fighting for the USA, only to be abandoned when no longer deemed helpful, is reckless in the extreme. It is bound to lead to further war and fragmentation in Iraq. The repercussions in Turkey are potentially extreme – and possibly may jolt Erdoğan from his complacent furthering of the US/Israeli agenda.
Civil war is close in Lebanon. The traitorous Zionist regime of General Aoun has no forces capable of taking on Hezbollah; but the other Zionist puppet al-Jolani has concentrated forces on the border with the Bekaa Valley ready to attack Hezbollah from the East while they fight Israeli invading forces in the South. Macron has indicated he may send troops and armour to assist Aoun.
This entire conflict sounds like a dreadful regional disaster in which millions could die – and it is. But to the US and Israeli Zionists, the prospect of a devastated region is precisely what they wish to achieve to facilitate Israeli expansion and American seizure of resources.
There is an urgent need for regime change – in the West. The only way for this carnage to stop is for the people of the West to remove their Zionist-controlled ruling classes.
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“The only way for this carnage to stop is the people of the West to remove their Zionist-controlled ruling classes.”
Suggestions on a postcard as to how this can be achieved.
‘They’ control the government, the military, the Judiciary, the media, all political parties. What’s a decent person to do ?
Exactly. If only those levers of society were rather all controlled by a wise and gentle, avuncular and magnanimous supreme spiritual leader, then the people might be really empowered as a force to reckon with.
Make Britain Iran Again!
Funnily enough the masses of Immigrants and Muslim communities may end up being the force that eventually dezogifies the UK.
I am pretty sure that Shia Muslims across the world are waiting for the ayatollahs to declare jihad (i.e. holy war) against the West.
The Ayatollah hasn’t done it, but according to Alistair Crooke, other Shia mullahs in Bahrain and Oman have, and presumably this will spread. Who on earth could have predicted that?
Quite funny, indeed.
The only way to do this is to switch to direct democracy, Swiss style. Otherwise, money talk, not people.
Look at the graph here https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/06/03/most-people-across-24-surveyed-countries-have-negative-views-of-israel-and-netanyahu/
The only countries with positive views of Israel are India, Kenya and Nigeria. So let them support the Jewish state if they wish so.
Agreed, but how does one enact such a change when the government itself is corrupt.
Start with getting rid of your royalty, they only discredit UK in the eyes of the world. Then get rid of the House of Lords…
The impossible we can do at once, miracles take a little longer.
Or election by lot, as in ancient Greece. Where’s the objection? That we might be governed by untrained, poorly educated, prejudiced people?
Looking around me at the people I meet every day, I don’t see a single one whom I would trust less than the present UK government.
Yes, government service run as per Jury Service. Random selection of candidates to serve for a period of four years. With a suitable government salary and contribution to a pension scheme for the period.
Of course, this doesn’t solve the problem of the civil service.
The zionists control nothing, they are American Caesar’s proxies, the British boss class’s peckers are in his pocket.
Kier Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Yvette Cooper; All explicitely declared zionists. Trevor Chinn and Morgan McSweeney; both avowed zionists and narrative controllers and funders for Israel. Just a few examples.
The reality is that zionists control virtually everything. And they freely admit it !
Calling yourself a zionist doesn’t make it so, especially from professional liars. It’s the entry ticket to the escalator of privilege that’s controlled by American Caesar. It avoids messy questions of free speech, freedom of conscience and the rule of law. Being called an antisemite (by tame zionist antisemites) is nearly as economically and politically bad as failing a Voight-Kampff test. Do I really have to describe this for you?
You have a very perverse outlook on Jews and Zionists which doesn’t match with the reality. Discombobulation !
“The reality is that zionists control virtually everything. And they freely admit it !”
But how? That is the important question. Can it be that all our rulers and corporate moguls are perverts susceptible to blackmail?
Which leaves the question: why do we consider sexual misbehaviour – or even the odd case or murder, torture, or cannibalism – worse than the industrial-scale mass murder in which Western “leaders” have engaged for decades?
What can anyone have on Mr Trump that would make him appear a worse person than, say, Tony Blair – whose crimes have been rewarded with money, fame, adulation, and honours?
Remember: Blair and his accomplices are responsible for literally millions of deaths. About comparable with the alleged deaths in the “Holocaust”.
But how?
Religion – Those in power tend to be the types that believe in sky faeries.
Manufactured Guilt – Holocaust (TM), Blood Libel, Six Million.
Money – Rothschilds, Diamonds, Gold.
Blackmail – Epstein.
SB, there’s also the pleasure of being in an in-group, especially an in-group of influential people: https://www.lewissociety.org/innerring/
Unite with other decent minded people and collapse the system anyway possible. They may have all those things but they do not even come close to having the numbers. We outnumber them by a significant margin, even factoring in the usual 15 to 20% of fascistic bootlickers populations tend to accrue.
Revolution, armed if necessary… NOW… before it’s too late!
Remember that the delusional people in power in US and Israel combine Christian Zionism with apocalyptic messianic view with the geopolitical aim to subdue Russia and China (read this: https://geopolitiq.substack.com/p/what-they-dont-tell-you-the-real and the article from Unz Review linked therein)… plus they both have nuclear weapons!
“Suggestions on a postcard as to how this can be achieved.” Alternative responses:
1. Wait till the American midterms in November, then things may begin to change.
2. Observe the signs of Zionism collapsing from within eg see the Youtube video Breaking from Zionism
3. Write to your MP or elsewhere against apartheid, genocide and war crimes, and even speak if you are given a voice, but I would avoid expressions that might be denounced as anti-semitic.
Just heard that my future in-laws city of Sanandaj was severely bombed overnight and they have taken refuge in the countryside. I wonder if I will ever get to meet them. How absolutely sick these Americans and Israelis are. Monster all of them.
Maybe there will be another perceived global ‘split’ to come, in addition to;
The West v. rest of the world
Developed countries v. The Global South.
…The civilized world v. USA & israel…?
With the greatest respect Craig, I believe that your last post on Iran and this one demonstrate a certain ignorance of Iran, and a misplaced pessimism in Iran’s defensive capabilities and resolve. I look forward to awaiting the answer as to whether your or the more optimistic crowd’s predictions shall prove correct, and of course pray, as I’m sure you do, that it is those of the latter that receive vindication.
Most frightening of all is the reformist clown of a President in this regard.
Oddly, this is juxtaposed against a contrarian, minority-held optimism that you hold with respect to Venezuela. You have made compelling arguments on behalf of your hope in Venezuela’s continuing revolutionary integrity.
Occasionally I see images on social media of reports of large sums of Venezuelan gold being transferred to the U.S., admittedly without credible citations, and I wonder to myself if these reports are true, and if so, then what possible explanation they could have and how they are to be reconciled with the strong insights of your analysis.
On the other hand, the American pro-Russian expert geopolitical analyst Andrew Korybko, while sharing your pessimism as to Lebanon and Gaza, is also adamant that Trump has been successful in Venezuela, and that it has been effectively undermined through what he has termed “regime tweaking”.
In any event, I don’t appreciate your patronising and condescending denigration of Iran’s political system and highly competent and noble religious leadership.
I would tend to view their facilitation of sex change surgeries as an unfortunate error, and prop-sexual-deviancy figures would meanwhile view it not as a feature of liberalism or tolerance but rather of religious theocratic anti gay rigidity, as it is due to a fatwa by Khomeini against homosexuality and as a form of “conversion therapy”. In my view it is not an effective therapy and in sterilising the patient cannot achieve the goals or principles of any religious tradition’s sanctioning of homosexuality.
That you view it as a good thing betrays to me a lack of perspective (concerning theocracy in Iran).
In general, it is presumptuous and paternalistic to reflexively remark as though secular socialist democracy is necessarily superior and more desirable than the ostensibly comparably lamentable Islamic system which the Iranian Pele have freely chosen. If the sanctions have the effect of strengthening the Islamic republic’s grip on power then this, even if not the associated economic deprivation of the people, is in my view hardly a sad thing.
The Iranian people could have just as easily chosen a secular system of government in 1979, but they did not: instead they freely chose what seems to me to be one of the best and noblest systems of society that has ever existed, rivalling perhaps only the DPRK. As time goes on, it has made me drift to be more and more sceptical of secular Marxism including the historic Soviet Union and Marxist People’s Republics.
The Iranian people did not need (ideologically speaking) western establishment liberals’ permission to choose the system of government that reflects their own values, and they do not need your approval to continue standing by and supporting their government, as they still overwhelmingly do, now.
Pointing out that for around 2 years there was Mossadegh as if to imply that he was somehow legitimate, while the people’s subsequent choice of the past nearly half century is, for whatever unexplained reason, not, is to reveal your foundational, yet un-deprogrammed ideological conditioning as a western paternalistic liberal.
I say this with the greatest respect and in the spirit of comradely criticism: the path of de programming is inevitably a lifelong journey, and you have needless to say travelled courageous and formidable distances in it.
There is invariably always more for every one of us to unlearn. I just hope to be of some assistance in asking you to think about some of these points as potential next candidates.
Hope everything is going great for you in Venezuela.
Why introduce the issue of “sex change surgeries”? It’s completely irrelevant (But I know many men, western men, are obsessed about it).
Many people are indeed obsessed with trans issues – weird, aren’t they? They also seem to spend large parts of their day contemplating gay sex. Most odd. Personally, it’s rare for me to give it a passing thought – and that only when one of these weird people bring the subject up.
“The Iranian people could have just as easily chosen a secular system of government in 1979, but they did not: instead they freely chose what seems to me to be one of the best and noblest systems of society that has ever existed, rivalling perhaps only the DPRK. As time goes on, it has made me drift to be more and more sceptical of secular Marxism including the historic Soviet Union and Marxist People’s Republics.”
@Yankee Jack – Why do you write like an AI program?
You praise the DPRK but you think other people need de-programming? Okayyy…
Noble? I think you might need to recalibrate your morals here. The US and Israel are atrocious. Iran too.
Iran hasn’t even got started yet. They’ve knocked out the West’s eyes and ears in the region and are systematically using old munitions to deplete Israel’s interceptor systems. Within the next two or three weeks many analysts are saying Iran could start using its modern weapons to fully penetrate Israel while their defences are down. I wouldn’t underestimate them. I wish them all the luck in the world – for humanity’s sake.
You’ll get great odds from the bookies then.
Back your hunch with £100. Come back here in a few weeks time and tell us how much profit you’ve raked in. As well as how happy you are.
“You’ll get great odds from the bookies then.”
What are the odds then? I might even have a flutter.
Aware you have spent time in these places. No doubt America and Israel will bomb Iran and kill many people. Iranian military are fighting back, taking out radar across West Asia. Closing of the Straight of Hormuz will have global repercussions for all of humanity. It appears to me at least the Iranian military (as opposed to the civilian population ) are fighting back and with devastating effect.
One of the reasons I obtain information from here is because the MSM are promoting a narrative that suits as you admirably showed with your recent trip to Venezuela. This is not a one sided conflict and the consequences if the energy disruption continues will be global in nature. Time will tell…….
If Ansarullah in Yemen can close off the Bab el Mandeb Strait that connects the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean, that could also affect or at the very least delay US naval and aerial reinforcements to Its carrier groups already present in the Arabian Sea. (Though such an action could invite attacks from US and French military stationed at Lemonnier base in Djibouti.)
You say that “Only political action by the peoples of the West against their leaders can stop it.”
Eveni if it was possible for wars to be stopped by jobless westerners spending their weekends shouting themselves hoarse at empty buildings, do you envision this having the same efficacy as for the last 8 decades it has on the genocide in Palestine?
Sadly, the westerners (jobless and otherwise alike) are too obedient and afraid, of being arrested or breaking the saw so as to receive criminal records (though this has recently with the rise of the bratty teenager Greta Thunberg and the naan of Palestine Action become somewhat of a fad as the symbolic zenith of martyrdom), let alone of being actually martyred, to undertake any actual armed struggle.
Unfortunately they are spiritually starving for want of quality ideological and spiritual upbringing, education and guidance. If only they had a grand ayatollah or other patriarch or figure head who (wasn’t a paedophile and) exuded moral enlightenment to look up to, but alas they are drowning in a semi deliberate sea of temptation, debauchery and vice. If only their women were not permitted to dress as prostitutes as the ostensible epitome of freedom and a substitute for cultivating moral and political development and personal depth, but alas…
So no, even if it was possible in theory for mere shouting at empty buildings and writing polite letters to MPs, if only enough people did it, to stop the destruction of Iran, the western people are far too indulged and deficient in spiritual and ideological development to mobilise in remotely sufficient numbers, if there were any, as the last decades of inability to stop the destruction of Gaza has shown.
And no, I say that rather only military action by the people of Iran can stop the destruction of their great country. This confrontation, in contrast, has actually never played out before, and so we have no past yardstick against which to measure its prospects.
However, while they may have endless money and political capital for approving budgets, weaponry and replacement production capacity requires more than this, it requires expertise and manufacturing infrastructure, as well as time, logistical factors which your analysis seems not to have accounted for.
Many military and strategic watcher-analysts have assessed severe, specific bottlenecks and constraints of the U.S. military capacity.
Even American military establishment functionaries have sounded the alarm on dwindling munition stocks and other capacities.
Everyone but (I admit, curiously) you appears to think that trump has not thought this stunt through, and that it will most likely fail disastrously.
Unlike on Venezuela, I don’t think that you’ve actually given any compelling reasoning to support your analysis.
However, regarding Venezuela, I would really like to see you and Andrew Korybko engage directly with some of each other’s arguments.
https://korybko.substack.com/p/the-us-is-moving-to-regime-tweaking
Best wishes
That link doesn’t work and never seems to have existed. Are you AI?
My own take on the above posts under the moniker Yankee Jack are suffused with the flippant irony of one who wholeheartedly supports the late and thoroughly despicable attack on Iran. Either that or he is in urgent need of psychiatric evaluation
1. No, I’m not AI.
2. The above comments were entirely handwritten without any use of AI and were by and large quite sincere. The only use of AI was at the end, to fetch a link to Korybko’s “regime tweaking” piece which I read when it had come into my mailbox, but which I couldn’t be asked on my phone to go and search for it on google, partially for fear of losing everything I had written etc on my very feeble device. He makes a good case for his analysis (as does Craig for his own), but Andrew’s has the opposite conclusion of Craig’s.
3. The remark on jobless westerners is partly tongue in cheek, partly a critique on the state of the western economy, and indeed partly a dig, in frustration by being surrounded by a certain lack of imagination and inspiration in the west as far as tactics for resisting evil, at those who surround me.
Realistically, it cannot be that the tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands who now sometimes march for the Arab world at the weekends are all jobless. Though, I used in such a sad state in my life that I used to regularly go out to group protests, and I got to know some of the scene of the regulars fairly well. Many of them were, indeed, certainly jobless (as was I). Many of them were very decent, pleasant, and lovely, while some of them were also quite petty and insufferable.
Objectively however, I can these days rarely justify spending my time by partaking in mass protests for a variety of reasons, one of the smaller-medium ones being that the regular protests have grown to such a size that they are just so loud and chaotic that I find it a bit unpleasant and overwhelming, while the main one is simply that I have better uses for my time. To be out at massive protests weekend after weekend, I think must indeed be a proclivity of the jobless. It consumes a lot of energy and for a return of which I think may be overrated and anyway have some doubts.
This is of course nothing against the rightness of the causes being protested for, and on the contrary, I sincerely very much lament the wanton destruction of Iran by the evil forces of the world. There is nothing tongue in cheek about that.
Apart from all of this, it was meant most of all as a critique of typical peaceful protest. I’ve grown a bit bored of that and just think that there must be better more effective ways to make a difference in the world through pursuits that are actually productive, including simply by staying fit.
Flippant? Sure, probably at least a little bit.
In need of psychiatric evaluation? Perhaps, but this is the most petty and narrow minded of ad hominems.
I might be a bit more robotic and rambly and more flippant than usual today because I’ve just spent about 5 straight days indoors without sunlight or exercise working on urgent productive things from which I’m a bit burnt out and exhausted. Perhaps I’m somehow unconsciously taking this out on the jobless protestors through being more flippant than is strictly appropriate, but my point still remains, as a response to Craig’s, that I wholeheartedly reject that “only the people of western countries can stop the destruction of Iran by applying political pressure on their governments [presumably, featuring prominently among the tactics that this covers, by spending one’s time shouting at empty streets and buildings on weekends regularly]”.
There are nuances here that could be explored.
On the one hand, even the section of the protest scene whose sole outlet of political engagement is to go on marches on a weekly basis, I get the helplessness. There are really difficult questions begotten by the desperate feeling that one has to do SOMETHING. Just because the question of what is difficult, however, does not make shouting at empty concrete buildings and occasionally police a good use of one’s time.
On the other hand, some people are engaged in such activities as a part of a wider, more comprehensive and organised movement. For example, George’s workers’ party engages in actual political action, and of course also holds rallies as well as marches as a mere part of this, while Craig’s outlet of choice seems to be legal action, which is likewise sometimes powerfully complemented by street rallies.
Folks like Norman Finkelstein’s time is primarily devoted to productivity in academia, and likewise usually too busy to go protesting on the street, certainly on a weekly basis.
These figures do all occasionally partake in street protests as well, just for the heck of it and to make a clear and visible show of support for the cause but are usually too busy to indulge in them on a weekly basis, simply because they are doing more important and inspired things.
I just think that if all the people who go out protesting because it’s something to do while they have none else to spend their time on (not unlike a perhaps slightly more meaningfully channeled form of those who regularly go to watch and support this or that football club) were to find more productive and meaningful forms of action like these initiatives but of their own, then everyone could actually be more effective and multi dimensional.
And none of these forms of action ultimately rival the most important one, which is armed struggle. If you want to understand its ultimate necessity, read the book by American anarchist Pete Gelderloos (widely available free online) “How non-violence protects the state”.
Not only this but norm finkelstein is certainly a step up in effectiveness and admireability than the jobless, even he himself admits that he is, compared with the Islamic resisters who regularly put their lives on the line and indeed pay the ultimate price, a coward.
But sorry if it hurt your feelings.
My accusation was that Yankee Jack displays the flippant irony of one who wholeheartedly supports the despicable attack on Iran. The charge is indivisible. The response above, in its rambling and evasive way, only serves to corroborate the charge.
And no,nobody will ever hurt my feelings by behaving like an imbecile
“jobless westerners” … dearie me, Yankee Jack, now who’s being patronising? And you’ve been out and spoken with them all, have you?
On being patronising, perhaps you have a point, but the main point of critique, flippant rhetoric aside, still stands: there is no substitute for armed struggle, and other forms of action are variously more cowardly by comparison, and I stand by that.
It is also different than Craig’s denigration of the IRI in that I have substantiated and elaborated on it at length while Craig seems rather relatively to just expect that everyone already agrees with the preferability of Mossadegh to Khomeini et al, simply because he was secular and democratic, as a matter of axiomatic dogma. Everyone, of course, but the Iranian people who got the imam into power and continue to revere both the revolutionary pioneer, and his successor, posthumously, whose views apparently don’t need addressing or accounting for.
To point out facts and substantiate one’s interpretation of them isn’t patronising in the same way as denigrating a people’s choice of government based on a double standard.
That is to say, all here would surely agree that both Mossadegh and the IRI are preferable to the intervening shah years, on the basis that the Shah was installed through western intervention and for western benefit.
I personally don’t know nearly as much about the Mossadegh years, being well before my lifetime, as I do about the Islamic Republic, but I expect it might even have been before Craig was born as well. The trouble that I have though, is the way that he seems to presume, a priori, that because it is was a parliamentary, “Western-style” state, it must necessarily have been preferable to the Islamic Republic, without any substantiation.
We may intelligently imagine how he would substantiate this, and I expect that it would go along the lines of typical western, bourgeois, enlightenment era political ideology, from Rousseau, Bacon, Locke, the Americans, and so on. Julian Assange was guilty of the same worship of these “enlightenment values,” where the right to protest injustices is for some inexplicable reason held to be more important than the absence of them.
In the words of the late, (compared to his children, only very) mildly narcissistic, yet highly intelligent Harpal Brar, why do people criticise the DPRK for not upholding the right to protest against the government’s policies? Why would one need to protest policies that yield zero crime, unemployment, illiteracy, homelessness, etc, unless the object and substance of one’s protest was “what do we want? 25% unemployment! When do we want it? Now!”
I must say that I’ve always thought it was quite convoluted, roundabout, idealist, and honestly, downright silly, this ideal that for whatever unexplained reason all of humanity must strive, above all, and even where they have already achieved sovereignty, security, and a so called iron rice bowl, guaranteed, employment, medicine, housing and education, for this certain fetishised array of bourgeois-Democratic rights: the right (or “freedom”) to march around on empty streets being herded by police while vainly shouting oneself hoarse at empty concrete buildings; the idealised right (or “freedom”) to vote in elections that somehow resemble a western parliamentary system (like the pre-1953 Majlis); the abstract right (or “freedom”) to express and organise in opposition to the leaders if you want to; the right to live under the rule of law, etc.
The trouble is that even after you “purchase” these rights/freedoms with bitter struggle, you are still left paying rent in the form of eternal vigilance when the elected leadership inevitably abuses your trust.
The preoccupation with constraining state power through enduring checks and balances I cannot understand. Inevitably, some leader or other will still come along and trample over or roll back all of them, however firmly or absolutely they may have ever been enacted. So they never solved any problem that they were intended to. (Meanwhile, it leaves room for opposition to organise as fifth columns against good leaders, as the CIA ultimately did against JFK, as one sort of example.)
When a bad leader comes along, ultimately it still comes down to might makes right, what intrinsic and inalienable power do the people actually have in a direct, practical sense, to overcome and remove that of the bad leader?
None of the hypothetical checks and balances on paper in the world can change this equation.
So I never understood why, instead of pointlessly wasting one’s energy on this fetishised ideal of western bourgeois parliamentary style political pluralist checks and balances and power sharing, people don’t simply invest their striving rather towards simply installing good leaders (such as the late Ayatollah), and without tying up his hands by limiting his power?
Why are we unable to entertain the idea, in the twenty first century, that bourgeois democracy is by and large a conclusively proven, failed experiment, and move on???
There are alternatives, like the Iranian Islamic system, and the DPRK, but alas, we seemingly reflexively must dismiss them like so:
“It is worth recalling that Iran used to be a Western-style state with a reasonable democracy. It was the election of the Socialist Mosaddegh in 1951, and his nationalisation of British Petroleum, which was met by the MI6- and CIA- sponsored coup of 1953. The vicious and vainglorious rule of their puppet Shah was the cause of the theocratic revolution.”
Again, sorry if my thoughts hurt any of your feelings.
Totally AI – GIGO.
No substitute, Jack?
Then accept no substitute.
You’ve more than adequately shown you can talk the talk (and how).
Now walk the walk.
4 fully armed Stealth bombers have arrived at RAF Fairford, each carrying 24 cruise missiles.
Now would be a good time for Irans defence capabilities to be ramped up a notch to use the supersonic variety and ensure that they engage when overflying Usraels occupied territories.
How dare Starmer allows the use of this country for the chaotic/psychotic murderers and their christian indoctrinated forces in a blood rush.
Westminster is now a legitimate target, I for one would lose no sleep if it was reduced to a smouldering hole in the ground. The biggest enemy of this country is its government, and all its supporters.
The US is firing missiles (CENTCOM) from missile launchers (M142 – ATACM’s) in Bahrain into Iran.
Also.
” Israeli media: Netanyahu is in a state of immense shock following the reports of the capture of Israeli commandos being taken hostage by Hezbollah in Bekka valley.”
Plus a third US aircraft carrier (G W.Bush ) and strike group is on its way to Red sea.
Meanwhile, Halliburton’s offices and warehouses in Basra Iraq – have been blown up.
The plan, do a Dresden on Tehran, then send this lot in.
“Washingron Post reports, The Pentagon maybe preparing for a ground operation in Iran, after the sudden cancellation of exercises by the elite 82nd Airborne Division, stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
The brigade combat group has around 4-5 thousand soldiers, ready for deployment within 18 hours.”
More dead Yankees, that’s really going to improve Trump’s popularity.
Stevie Boy
When you think about it – 5,000 US troops in a city of Tehran with a population of around 9 million is nothing, in hindsight I’d imagine the US forces (the 5,000) job would be to secure the oil production facilities – afterall I presume that’s the main goal.
Didn’t they do that in Iraq, when they sent in boot on the ground.?
It’s one of the goals, however the primary goal is to create chaos so that Israel can maintain its ME hegemony – Greater Israel !
Not my formulation – but whose to say this isn’t the plan – the Kavir desert is around 800km long and around 320-600km across.
“Are we about to see the largest coalition airdrop in world history into the heart of Iran?
You don’t need to cross the Zagros mountains, you airdrop into the Kavir Desert & move on Tehran.
If I’m right the speed of deployment will shock the world.”
“The U.S. has begun deploying paratroopers and army to the Middle East.
The deployment will take 3 weeks, with initial airdrop around 100,000 troops into the heart of Iran.”
Logistics would be key in any invasion, and let’s not forget USreal does not control the skies over Iran, Iran does.
Take the Ukraine example. Can the USA do in Iran what Russia didn’t do in Ukraine ? I personally doubt it.
That’s for sure. Iranians will have no mercy for them!
How can the Septics and their zionazi proxies destroy Iran from the air when they are running out of long-range missiles? The Iranians are doing rather better than recent victims in blowing the terrorflieger out of the sky.
The US might have more bombs than we think.
“US sells Israel 27,000 bombs made by Turkish-owned firm as Trump administration bypasses Congress
A $660 million US arms deal will supply Israel with more than 20,000 MK-80 bombs produced at a Texas plant owned by a Turkish defense…”
ynetnews.com/article/bkmojpt
““US sells Israel 27,000 bombs made by Turkish-owned firm as Trump administration bypasses Congress”
Bombs or missiles? Sure, the US has more than enough bombs, but bombs need to be dropped from a bomber and a bomber is an easy target for a missile.
Gravity bombs require the aircraft to fly close to the target. Why would the septics and zionazis start with missiles and drones if they aren’t trying to avoid losses?
Israeli authorities are evacuating Jews who live near the Al-Asqa mosque – is there going to be a false flag attack on the mosque, and will it be blamed on Iran?
The zionist antisemites keep Palestine Judenfrei, perhaps you mean zionazis?
Oh yes I agree, but here’s an interesting take on it – is Netanyahu Jewish, he certainly identifies as Jewish, but we know he’s a Zionist, so can a Jewish person also be a Zionist? afterall like the other Abrahamic religions Judaism is also a ideology, I say they can be both, though not all identify as a Zionist – and not all identify as a Jew.
Let’s not quibble about what flavour of homicidal maniac these animals are. They are not hiding, the Epstein Class.
Where is your confusion between Zionism and Judeism coming from? Jewish simply means people who believe in a particular fairy, there are European Jews, Ethiopian Jews, a random village of Indian Jews who recently moved to Israel claiming it was there ancestral homeland. Zionist is the strange belief that anyone who believes in that particular fairy gets to go colonise someone else’s country, as long as they are happy being ruled by the European Jews, the ones putting the Nazi into Ashkenazi. So yes, Jews can be Zionists but its pretty much only the Arab Jews that aren’t Zionists because they actually come from the area instead of colonising it.
Arab Jews, which is a term the Zionists have tried to get rid of, are indeed Arabs but most of the Arab Jews who live in Palestine are descended from people from other parts of the Arab world, notably from Iraq, Morocco, and Yemen. Many of them in Palestine are very strongly Zionist. Like the very large majority of Jews in the world, they consider themselves to be Jews first and whatever other ethnic identities they may hold a very distant second.
(Those who reject this way of thinking of themselves tend to reject the Jewish identity altogether – Gilad Atzmon being an example – which tells you a lot about it. You talk about the fairy, but the fairy is only a manifestation or crystallisation of the idea of “what’s good for the Jews”.)
Dunno whether you are aware of this, but the post-naqba Zionist immigration in 1949-53 that turned the Jews from a minority in the Jewish-occupied part of Palestine to a majority were mostly Arab Jews. This is a fact despite Zionism of course being an Ashkenazi project as you say.
Zionists don’t believe in fairies and they murder jews.
No, you can’t be a secular, racist, fascist, genocidist criminal and follow the religion, they’re opposites.
Source?
Or a red heifer event could be imminent.
That’s certainly the building that’s most useful to strike at if one wants to trigger a region-wide conflagration.
If they want to rebuild the Jewish Temple, it’s not the Al-Aqsa mosque they will have to demolish, but the Dome of the Rock. I don’t think the Sunnis would be too happy about that.
Point taken, but the idea is to take over the whole complex.
For the record, I don’t believe the “first Temple” under Solomon – the one the freemasons so revere – ever physically existed.
It’s in the Bible, so it must be true!
It seems to me that Iran is not in so weak a position as our host is telling us. Closure of the Straits of Hormuz, and the disruption of the economy of the Gulf states by the bombardment of the US bases there, could well have a catastrophic effect on the world economy very rapidly. And Trump could then be forced to change course. He will resist, of course, aided by those millions from Madame Adelman, and those little photos tucked away in the Epstein archive, but the economic forces will be stronger even than that.
PS. I do think the Iranians have prepared remarkably well for this war (in as far as was possible). They have thought out a strategy that may well work. I didn’t expect at all the bombardments of the Gulf States, and clearly the US didn’t expect them either. The bombardments of Israel seem to be working too. Netanyahu is remarkably afraid if he has to circle in his plane over the Mediterranean, or fly to Germany, whichever is correct. The Iranians are far more successful than he is willing to admit.
They have been warning for months that they would attack all bases in the region if they were attacked so it can’t have come as that much of a surprise to the US.
Why not? I expect the US thought it was all bluff. The US are master bluffers, it would be natural for them to expect it in others. Also they seem to think they are invulnerable and invincible.
“Only political action by the peoples of the West against their leaders can stop it.”…That is patently false as has been adequately demonstrated over the past 30 years. We have a political system that is at best “corrupted” and at worst, functioning “as designed”. There comes a time when something is so broken that you need to give up on it and move on and that time has long since past. It’s time people move past the naïve notion that only the state has a monopoly on violence, that is the only way these parasites will be removed.
@Dean – Your sentences aren’t hanging together. You think the quoted sentence is patently false, but you’re all over the place when you try to support that claim.
Where the hell are Russia and China?! Are they really just gonna stand by and do fuck-all, and watch these mega sadistic nutters murder and maim millions and destroy yet another country.
“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake”
“Where the hell are Russia and China?! ”
Probably providing all assistance so far requested and waiting until they are asked to help more before they do anything else, also preparing for that eventuality, instead of rushing in half-cocked like the US has.
Both have said they are involved, though I assume it’s indirectly by selling hypersonic missiles and satellite imagery. For them to get directly involved will almost certainly be WW3 whereas if the Epstein Army are seen to be defeated by Iran, a country that’s been sanctioned for decades and has a fairly outdated arsenal, then we might all get a break from team America for a while whilst they turn on themselves.
This brutal, criminal assault on Iran may have produced the most glaring disconnect yet between the ZOG and the British public. That’s despite uniform pro-war messaging by the political-media class.
It simply isn’t working on normal people. Even some members of the ZOG itself like Ed Miliband understand that and opposed British participation. (Not Sir Keir of course or his Reform and Tory ‘enemies’).
It is difficult to see an overthrow of the imperialist/ zionist ruling class in the near future but it is only going to get tougher for them. The brutality and lies of the past two years have been just too naked, exposing them like never before. Support for their anti-human neocon/ liberal-imperialist/ zio adventures is now largely confined to the most sub-educated and racist OAPs. There is next to no support for it among anyone under 50.
There may well be big political changes coming even in the very worst imperialist nations.
Unfortunately, a great many of the voting masses still get their ‘news’ from the corrupt MSM: BBC, Sky, Mail, Sun, Guardian, Telegrath, Times, etc. As such, I’m not confident we’ll see any changes through voting.
They do, but polling on this war already shows half the public support Iranian retaliation despite its demonisation by ruling-class media. Less than 1 in 5 support the air strikes on Iran being proposed by Starmer, Lammy and co.
Polling, ha ! I’ve never met anyone who’s taken part in these polls. I wonder how representative they really are.
You too, zoot.
You can take the bookies to the cleaners, simply by putting £100 where your mouth is.
Make it £200 and clear your student debt in one go.
Polling has the greens tied with Reform I believe, with Labour a distant third. I’ve zero faith in the UK political system but I would be quite interested to see what a green win would bring. Aside from the usual run of anti-Semitism smears, sex scandals etc. The greens are too small (seat wise) a party to have been co-opted or infiltrated yet so it would have to be empire unmasked mode.
“The greens are too small (seat wise) a party to have been co-opted or infiltrated yet” – Rubbish. You don’t need any seats at all to be owned.
Indeed, look at Farage’s party in the past.
There’s a lot of hype about greens, your party, reform. I’m not convinced that when it comes to a GE we’ll see the masses voting for these nutters !
Not much, I fear, they’re still the bourgeois liberals that ratted on Assange and Corbyn. (I add that no-one ratted on Corbyn more than he did, the craven poltroon.)
Of course, one should not underestimate the military potential of the united states, but that does not seem to be the problem at the moment. On the contrary, many assume an invincibility that does not objectively exist. Iran is the first adversary to strike back and also has the offensive means to do so. Even if it is weak defensively, one should not compare it to Gaza; Iran is huge and has a topography that is difficult for any attacker from a military point of view. Israel’s dreams will not come true; rather, little Israel is suffering more and more every day from the incoming rockets. The death toll is high, but censorship is keeping it under wraps. When the interceptors run out, it will become dangerous – for Israel itself and then for the entire globe. Because the extreme right-wing Israeli government could respond with nuclear weapons. That would open the gates of hell for all of us. I don’t even want to imagine what would happen then.
Just over a year ago, the US were holding emergency congressional hearings because they no longer had the armaments to fight a war on two fronts (which is their psycho doctorine), this was due to the amount they had sold to Ukraine for the proxy war. Despite drastically cutting back direct shipments, they have continued selling to Europe for supply to Ukraine (approx 95bn worth I think was the touted figure). There is no way the US has the armaments for a sustained attack like they are suggesting which is why they are pulling NATO into it (wonder if they will refund the money?). Reports also suggest they are pulling Thad systems from S.Korea. The biggest problem for Iran is resupply depending on their stockpile size, the biggest problem for the US is neoliberalism since any new weapons program will need to pass through 40 consultancy stages to get the “skim” off.
Tehran is not Iran as Baghdad is not Iraq Kabul is not Afghanistan Tripoli is not Libya Hanoi was not Vietnam
They do not have enough bombs to bomb the whole country as they found in Vietnam and the other wars.
They are already using B2 dumb bombs to few smart bombs . Then there is the cost in many billions The USA tax payers wont be to happy come the mid terms. A short term victory is not a long term win as Napoleon and Hitler found in Russia and America has found to many times with out learning the lessons of history
Just came across this i newspaper article, posted today. I’ve heard the 60% (59%) figure before, but NOT how many approve this totally illegal and monstrous attack on Iran (and sending ground troops), but according to a CNN poll it’s just 12 percent:
Some 59 per cent of Americans disapprove of the decision to strike Iran and 60 per cent oppose sending US ground troops – compared with just 12 per cent who approve, according to a CNN poll.
Iran’s plot to turn Trump’s glory war into his worst nightmare
Iran knows exactly how to make Trump’s war the worst decision of his presidency
https://inews.co.uk/news/world/iran-plot-turn-trumps-glory-war-worst-nightmare-4273449?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-gb
Trump and his nazi buddies MUST be aware of the polling figures, but it obviously hasn’t deterred them (we’re yet to see if he/they send in ground troops). But what occured to me is that this carnage and devastation being inflicted on the Iranian people could be brought to an end by the American public – AND future wars of aggresion as well – and done so by opposing and dissaproving of such attacks when polled. If Trump and Co and the Republicans were regularly seeing poll results in which only one or two percent of those polled approved, I’m sure it would make them seriously think again.
It can also be brought to an end by the European public. Collapse NATO and the US is dead as a superpower.
The US government wants to do stuff that has the support of a large part of the US population and opposition from another large part. Whether it’s 40-60 or 60-40 isn’t important.
It is neither, 60% are against it but only 20% are for. Presumably the other 20% couldn’t understand the question
“It appears to be a feature of late Western capitalist society”
Aye but Stalin killed 50 million so the capitalists are rank amateurs. Socialism is the thing!
FFS, no he didn’t, the number was a complete fabrication that included NAZIs killed in the war, natural deaths and basically anything that could be added to get to the figure. Even the co-authors of the book said they started with the number and worked backwards. Propaganda isn’t new
Probably closer to six million, that’s always a popular number.
ISTR, when I was younger, many years ago, the figure was three million. Perhaps I shall live to see it reach nine.
I think it would be more accurate to say our elites are ‘American-controlled not ‘Zionist-controlled’ – Israel is surely only a puppet regime bankrolled and propped up by the United States, presumably to cause disruption in the Middle East. The far-right, and racist-inclined US leadership know they couldn’t credibly cavort with swastikas on their sleeves so instead they hide behind a nation that was created in response to the Nazi era, and then feign outrage when anyone calls out the actions of their crony Israeli government as ‘antisemitic’, to hide their join evil. There is a slight equivalent, unfortunately, in the UK vis a vis Europe – hence Nigel Farage and nearly all the prominent anti-EU brigade had American backers. The ‘free and fearless’ British media never seem to want to investigate or debate that obvious fact, so gently put about CIA fairy stories about Putin and Russia being behind Brexit, if any criticism at all is needed.
Time will tell with Iran, but without support from any other nations, and with the United States no longer the economic or political power it was, my guess is it will end in one of two ways: a) Either it will be the US ‘demanding’ peace talks before very long, as they realise they have bitten off more than they could chew; or b) the US will be plain defeated and humiliated as in Vietnam, but without any good recent track record to try to move on as a nation. The comparison with the Iraq war is a good one, but although Iraq was crushed, the American-led war still went badly wrong even 20 years ago, despite huge military and diplomatic support from the rest of the world. Iran is militarily in a much better situation, in my view.
It’s interesting to speculate but above all I hope that whoever ‘wins’ on paper, the war ends soon without much loss of life.
Spot on, though Israel isn’t needed for the (im) plausible deniability any more as the US are more than willing to don the swastika’s and rack up the war crimes. It infuriates me how many people think the tail is wagging the dog. There is a case to be made that the western intelligence (sharing) community functions out of Israel, as do an unlikely amount of the Oliogarghy which suggests to me it’s a Freeport colony, i.e lawless. Lapse legislation attracts the parasitic oliogarghy and the spooks.
Zionist ownership of the US Congress (and British Parliament) is too well documented to sustain claims that the Israelis are simply doing the west’s bidding. The Gaza Genocide hardly advanced America’s standing, and if this assault on Iran was vital to US interests it would have happened decades ago. Instead it had to wait until America elected a President who was best friends for 15 years with Mossad’s foremost blackmail operative. The idea Israel is puppeted by Washington was promoted for years by figures like Chomsky whose takes on the issue must now consider highly compromised, to say the very least.
The dog is not wagging the tail, nor the tail wagging the dog. Unsurprisingly, both the dog and its tail have the same owner(s).
Being who?
Very rich people
The zionists don’t own anything, they work for American Caesar, he’s the bloke that supplies the bribe and blackmail money. This is how the executive controls the legislature.
I won’t enquire what that’s all about. As long as it makes sense to you.
The incestous relationship between the USA and Israel is now too entwined to be fully understood, it’s a Gordian Knot that cannot be unravelled, it can only be cut, like cojoined twins.
Israel without a doubt could not do what it does without american money (>$10Bn annually). However, a large part of the american money is fed back to the USA in the form of arms sales, technology and Pharma sales and bribes.
@ Tom74
Yes
On the face of it, it appears Craig is right about the relative damage being done by both sides. However, both Alistair Crooke and Lawrence Wilkerson say the damage being inflicted by Iran’s missile strikes on Israel and US military bases in the Gulf is far greater than is being portrayed in the media, and , moreover, that it is depleting both Israel’s and America’s stock of (very expensive) interceptors faster than they can be replenished, leaving them wide open to attack. It is very hard to know.
Both Crooke and Wilkerson appear extremely knowledgeable and balanced, but who knows? There are so many wheels-within-wheels in this. However, while I think Craig’s position is absolutely plausible and realistic, I think he could be wrong. In a way, I hope he is. Part of me longs to see these arrogant, psychotic bastards get a bloody nose, but the consequences of that for the world could be even worse. When you score a real point against a psychopath, unless you eliminate them completely, you run the risk of serious retaliation. When those psychopaths are armed with nuclear weapons and a millenarian religious agenda, effective retaliation doesn’t bode well for the future.
It’s better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.
What would bode well for the future in your view?
@Brian Red:
To answer your question; very little!
Of course Iran has to fight and I hope they do some serious damage. Israel and the US have been getting away with this colonial brutality for decades without any consequences and it’s time someone stopped them. In their own ways, both regimes (US and Zionist) are genuinely psychopathic and function much like a cancer in the body-geo-politic. With cancer, you either poison it, irradiate it or cut it out, but that always comes at a cost.
If Iran’s missile attacks against Israel cause too much damage, I have no doubt that Netanyahu would use nuclear weapons on them without a second thought. Once that happens, you open a door that could be very difficult to close, particularly if Russia or China then get involved.
As to America, it’s a dying empire and when empires fall they tend to take a lot with them. When Egypt fell, it led to the Bronze Age Collapse; when Rome fell, you had the Dark Ages, both periods of about 500 years of chaos, misery and violence. The second fall of Constantinople (1453) that gave rise to the Ottoman Empire was less tumultuous, but arguably it began the path of continuous imperial domination that is now reaching its latest inflexion point which may see China take over the reins. What none of those previous falls had was a completely interwoven global economy based on credit and linked by instantaneous technology, and weaponry capable of destroying the entire human race.
“It’s better to die on your feet than to live on your knees,” sounds good on the page. The reality of it in the current context will have negative consequences which are impossible to predict, up to and including the destruction of most of humanity, leaving a world in which any survivors will wish, as someone once put it, that they had died along with everyone else. We are only a week into this and are already seeing the cost in lives lost and homes and infrastructure destroyed, to say nothing of the damage to the global economy which will last for at least a decade, probably longer.
So, I don’t see much that bodes well for the future. The great river of human history has swept our boat down into some very dangerous rapids. Whether it’s a calm stretch waiting round the next bend or Niagara Falls remains to be seen, but I very much fear the latter and I don’t think there’s much to be done about it.
Hope your footwear has laces, stout rubber soles, waterproofing, and good ankle support.
Or are you just starring in a docudrama you’re screening in your head?
Metaphors aside, I think if you don’t appreciate the enormity of the consequences facing the human race as a result of the attack on Iran, you are either ignorant of history or in denial of the present.
Why is the British regime readying an aircraft carrier [*] for sending to the far eastern part of the Mediterranean, when they already have a major airbase on Cyprus called Akrotiri?
It’s not to have somewhere to fly planes from.
Could it be
1) To justify military contracts?
2) To prepare for evacuating people from Beirut?
The Jewish terrorist army has already ordered the evacuation of 700,000 people from part of that city. What if they’re planning to go further than they went in 1982 and, this time, to conquer the city in its entirety?
If there’s a USS Liberty-style incident, we can be sure Keir Starmer will take the side of the Zionists. He didn’t raise a f***ing peep when the British-registered Madleen ship was seized by the Zionists either.
Note
*) The poshboy regime’s vessel is ludicrously called “His Majesty’s Ship The Prince of Wales”, it’s sailed by the “Royal Navy”, and it carries planes piloted by the “Royal Navy” and other planes piloted by the “Royal Air Force”. If it wasn’t for the “air force” bit, you could easily imagine you were living in the time of Kaiser Wilhelm and Emperor Franz Joseph.
“Why is the British regime readying an aircraft carrier [*] for sending to the far eastern part of the Mediterranean, when they already have a major airbase on Cyprus called Akrotiri?”
Probably because they want to be seen to be doing something and they know HMS Bigears won’t get anywhere near the Med without breaking down again.
Prince of Wales is nearing the end of a maintenance period that followed her return from the 8-month HIGHMAST deployment in December, but she remained the carrier at high readiness. (HMS Queen Elizabeth’s ongoing docking and certification period in Rosyth is now several months behind schedule, and it could be some time before she returns to service.)
Should it be decided to send the carrier to the eastern Med or beyond, the immediate problem would be finding escorts. Although HMS Duncan has been at sea recently, she needs a maintenance period before she goes anywhere; it would have been very high-risk to deploy her instead of HMS Dragon. Duncan’s maintenance period will likely be completed as fast as possible once Dragon sails next week. There is probably a single frigate available to deploy, assuming the TAPS tasking is the priority. As was the case during Operation HIGHMAST last year, there would be a need for European allies to provide additional escorts.
From https://www.navylookout.com/hms-prince-of-wales-placed-on-five-days-notice-to-sail-in-response-to-middle-east-crisis/
So if I’m reading that right, the Royal Navy can find one almost operational aircraft carrier but only one destroyer and one frigate to be her escort, out of the entire fleet. That’s not very impressive.
Maybe it’s to evacuate all the monied bastards in dubai. Funny how the tax payer has to cough up to save the asses of these tax avoiding oxygen thieves.
Notice that it isn’t the Royal Army? That’s because of the military putsch in 1688, that made England a republic for good.
For the Iranian government’s take on how the war is going, see
https://www.presstv.ir/
(The site at irna.ir is down).
https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2026/03/05/765006/US-aircraft-carrier-flees-after-precision-strike-by-IRGC-drones-in-Sea-of-Oman
Reportedly the US aircraft carrier the Abraham Lincoln retreated more than 1000 km from a location about 340 km from the Iranian coast, after it was hit by Iranian drones.
The USA could easily lose this war. They’ve lost other wars. In particular they lost in Vietnam and Afghanistan, but they also lost, although in somewhat different circumstances, in Iraq.
In Southeast Asia, it’s a cliché but we can say they won the battle but lost the war. What they may achieve in Iran is to do a Kampuchea on the country.
Nonetheless, it’s still better to die on your feet than live on your knees.
Militarily they may have lost all those wars (since WWII actually with the exception of Desert Storm, which is why they constantly are referring to it). But in geopolitical terms they did walk away with victories: 1) unharmed 2) with their policy goals achieved, which in essence meant the destruction of societies that would oppose empire. (Vietnam e.g. was bombed back decades, its civil society severly damaged, its potential to serve as an example for successful disobedience neutered.)
Times and circumstances have changed since. There is no reserve capacity left which could compensate for and simply absorb the financial and economic and social costs of those expeditions. Whatever blows they suffer now they hit and diminsh actual substance.
Forgive me for this trivializing image:
The US is like an aged boxer who has taken too many hits and every new fight damages his brain.
To stop the carnage it is necessary to stop Trump. To do that democratically will require that the Democrats win back both Houses of Congress in November. So effective action through the democratic process in America could take 8 months at least.
FFS. Really? The democrats who blocked last week’s vote on warpowers to ensure the war happened and then this week all done some virtue signalling token vote knowing they would lose? They aren’t even two sides of the same coin, they are the same side of the same coin. Assuming they win in the midterms, they will put up token opposition and claim that there is nothing they can do and if they win in 2028, none of this is getting rolled back, it’s normalised now, they won’t win in 2028 though, my money is on the MGT scam☺️. Only one thing is true in western politics, the next leader is always worse than the last leader.
Did you notice anything about the Democrats’ middle east policy the last time they were in power just over a year ago? I know you’re a great student of the Gaza Genocide.
Trump is not America, Netenyahu is not Israel, the sickness goes much deeper.
Come home, Craig. There’s an election coming up. We need decent people to vote for.
I think it is down to the American people to do something about megalomaniac Trump and his rabid bible thumping disciples who are behaving more Nazi – like than Hitler and his lot. I doubt that they will.
These US pastors laying hands on the chosen one in the oval office is most disturbing to me.
https://uk.video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-fc-5822_3&hsimp=yhs-5822_3&hspart=fc¶m1=7¶m2=eJwtjkFPhDAUhP9Kj5q05b3SFkpvK%2FIDjCdf3mFlWdK4UgMiG3%2B9gXiZTPLNZGZMF4r80iKAq2xJkieK7BwAkOSdkeSeIocQSHL6osi10ZU2ZdBoPUkeh0yRx3eSvJ4p8mf%2BTbfbuXAaxMOWpkveFjF9CwQNUWxp8jaK%2By7zT4O21vAoxqH%2FyIUBBEBAcU3zcM334qD77JL%2Br6zLMB%2Fe2KfO%2BhbUswudQuxAnSpbKtN53yJ0pT3tzbU%2FwmCcQqNKeEXfWN84o2tv3v4And1G9w%3D%3D&p=trump+being+blessed+by+laying+on+of+hands&type=fc_A76C76CD367_s58_g_e_d_n55000_c999#id=1&vid=ac861088799a3f95063c29b0f82c4756&action=view[ on Invidious: https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=qGPnh3u1vBs ]
I’m not going to click on that fearsome-looking URL, but does it by any chance showcase some of the same fruitcakes as this one?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48TB11rejyc
Why the Iran War Makes ZERO Sense (Unless You See This) – YouTube
(51-49 with James Li) [17m02s] [Sat 7 Mar 2026]
(The first 1m41s is quite enough!)
The US and ISR military are failing.
Neither Gaza, nor Lebanon or Iraq are comparable.
Those were not serious armed conflicts between powers on par.
While from the very little we know coming out of Israel (another sign of Israeli worries), Iran is not targetting civiians, they are hitting the country heavily taking out crucial infrastructure instead. And again, Israel is small and vulnerable.
The fact that Iran looks so battered by comparison is also due to opposing propaganda policy.
Israel has shut down any serious flow of info that would undermine their baseless image of invincibility.
Iran is the attacked underdog and can show victims in public anticipating much sympathy in the world.
I caution to not fall for the outdated US and ISR way of picturing the region as their unhinged stomping ground.
This era is over.
Araghchi articulated it leaving no doubt about the country´s resolve.
Yesterday Chris Hedges with Alastair Crooke (although Crooke is not a weapon´s expert and Israel e.g. never had the capability to shoot down missiles of Mach 4. Neither did the US.):
“Can Israel & the U.S. Sustain Iran’s Military Power? (w/ Alastair Crooke) | The Chris Hedges Report”
The Iran War has just begun — but already, Iran’s military prowess, and America’s and Israel’s impulsive imperial hubris, is on full display.”
61 min.
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/can-israel-and-the-us-sustain-irans
and here with Nima:
Larry C. Johnson & Col. Larry Wilkerson: Iran WIPES OUT Huge Targets, Explosions in Tehran
55 min.
https://rumble.com/v76qv64-larry-c.-johnson-and-col.-larry-wilkerson-iran-wipes-out-huge-targets-explo.html?e9s=src_v1_cbl%2Csrc_v1_ucp_v
SIMPLICIUS with a comprehensive take confirming the Iranian steady conduct:
“Iran Blinds US With Unprecedented Campaign of Strikes on Region’s Strategic Radars”
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/iran-blinds-us-with-unprecedented
As Jacques Baud stressed earlier this week with Nima: Iran has a plan and the means to pursue, the US/ISR do not.
Allegedly Daniel Davis has a new show with Ted Postol on the missile issue coming up.
And we haven´t even addressed the economic “war” which Iran coud waged.
This is not to mitigate the Iranians who were killed already so far and the destruction inflicted.
But from the cold strategic POV so far Iran is doing everything right to expose “the empire”.
And I assume China and Russia will help with reconstruction.
Again: Joint Chiefs of Staff opposed this attack with good reason.
That is a depressing read. But I’m not convinced that it takes the historical context into account.
It was never in question that US would have numerically more armament and the ability to carpet bomb. Iran prepared for this as best it could, but at some point Iranian civilisation will be reduced to rubble. The cost to the West will be extreme. This is not Iraq. An already weak US hegemony will be further reduced.
At that point things get interesting. US carpet bombing has never worked effectively. It failed in Vietnam, it failed in Afghanistan. The regime change playbook succeeds only against a deeply fractured society. A unified society will eventually win, if only by making every US victory Pyrrhic. Iran is a vast, mountainous country. Trump may announce “mission accomplished” anytime he likes, but the costs and body bags will continue to rack up. Meanwhile, Trump is hoping the Ukraine war will distract Russia until Iran is gone. Between that, the limited supply of arms and impending mid-terms that may be rather optimistic.
Livin’ it, lovin’ it!
Good for you!