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The oppression of women has been at the core of the CIA’s propaganda attacks against Iran since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. All the media outlets, think tanks, NGOs, parties, and personalities that make up the CIA’s extensive payroll accuse Iran of oppressing women. This campaign of demagoguery reached alarming levels when the U.S. government decided to attempt a coup through a failed color revolution and now bombards the Persian nation incessantly.

Daily events, however, invariably demolish this demagoguery and cruelly expose its hypocrisy.

This artificial feminist movement is even authorized by its sponsors to denounce Trump’s sexism or Netanyahu’s violence when such denunciations have no power to affect the general policy of imperialism and represent no serious confrontation with those governments. Or when Democrats and liberals want to undermine the power of the far right solely to reap electoral benefits. In any case, this phenomenon amounts to nothing more than an imperialist pawn.

The dominant slogans about the oppression of women follow to the letter the script of the great bankers and capitalists, especially the European and American ones. The same applies to the demagoguery surrounding the oppression of Black people, homosexuals, Indigenous peoples, immigrants, and the various “minorities.”

It is enough to see that this monstrous propaganda apparatus, which made such a spectacle against Trump’s sexism, fully supports the imperialist aggressions led by the president of the United States. Or did anyone see CNN, BBC, DW, and Rede Globo denouncing the kidnapping of the Venezuelan first lady and deputy Cilia Flores along with Nicolás Maduro? Is it possible to find a greater oppression against women than the massacre of at least 150 girls at the school in Minab, in southern Iran, carried out by a U.S. bombing launched from a base in the United Arab Emirates? And among the more than 1,300 people killed in U.S. and Israeli attacks against Iran, how many hundreds were women?

The imperialist aggression against Iran is being fully supported by the feminist demagoguery industry made in the USA. Part of it even criticized Israel’s genocide in Gaza, but only so as not to lose the little credibility it still manages to maintain, thanks to the blindness of the majority of the petty bourgeoisie. Yet from the moment the regime responsible for the extermination of around 15,000 Palestinian women—the terrorist regime of Israel—launched aggression together with the United States against Iran, Jeffrey Epstein’s colleagues suddenly turned into liberators of Iranian women.

Of course, all these immaculate fighters against fake news will not say that Iran is one of the most progressive countries in the Middle East, where women have achieved rights that they do not have in most neighboring countries, where they enjoy broad access to higher education, the labor market, leisure, and freedom to dress in ways found in no other country of the Gulf. Rights won by the Revolution of 1979.

What the imperialists have never accepted is precisely the fact that Iran carried out a revolution that freed it from the slavery imposed on the overwhelming majority of the world’s peoples by the very same forces that present themselves as liberators of women. And in the face of the constant aggressions of those slave masters, that revolution has only grown stronger—to the point that, at this moment, it is paying back with interest all the provocations, threats, and attacks it has suffered over decades.

The actions of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have no precedent in modern history. By destroying or severely damaging U.S. and NATO military bases, embassies, and other facilities—and by bombing the largest of them (the land stolen from Palestine called “Israel”)—Iran is striking a monumental blow against the imperialist presence in the Middle East.

“We have no choice but to put an end to the American presence in the Gulf,” said the Persian deputy foreign minister, Sayed Khatibzadeh. These words express Iran’s conviction that its war is not merely a war of definitive independence against aggressive powers—though that alone would already justify fighting it. It is an even more sacred war: a war to free the entire region from the colonial domination of the United States and other imperialist powers, which are there only to plunder its oil and natural wealth and to control one of the arteries of the global capitalist system.

Since the late nineteenth century, in order to guarantee the plunder of those peoples, the imperialist powers imposed puppet dictatorships that would control the populations with weapons, training, technology, and full political, diplomatic, and economic support from the United States and European imperialist nations. They even artificially created many of those countries.

The regimes of the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Yemen, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the Palestinian Authority, and of course Israel remain in power only because of the strong military presence of the United States and NATO. Without it, they would never exist. The governments of most of these countries are monarchies or military dictatorships where political rights and democratic freedoms do not exist and where, obviously, women live in the deepest darkness. At this stage, of course, “progressive” demagoguery will not utter a word, but it is difficult to believe that Iranian women are more oppressed than Saudi women.

By attacking imperialist installations in those countries, Iran is undermining the foundations of colonial domination over their peoples. It not only weakens the U.S. military presence but also, consequently, the very puppet regimes created to more conveniently exploit their wealth. These artificial and oppressive regimes become increasingly fragile as Iran expels imperialism. The weakening of these regimes means the weakening of exploitation over their peoples. Iran’s expulsion of imperialism opens the path for the fall of this entire system of oppression, especially the regimes themselves.

It will not be long before the peoples of the entire Middle East hail the Islamic Republic of Iran. And women will be freer than ever, following the example of Iranian women.

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After just a week into Donald Trump’s war, there is very little to report which should or could please the U.S. president. Much of America’s infrastructure in the Middle East has been destroyed with U.S. soldiers now housed by hotels in GCC countries as there is nothing left of their bases. The stocks that these countries have as part of their air defence systems is almost depleted as military chiefs argue about how quickly they can be replaced (some THAAD and Patriot systems are being shipped from Japan and South Korea) and Iran is hitting Israel harder and harder each day.

Of course, due to the new draconian rules which Israel has imposed — that no military strikes that Iran succeeds in carrying out can be ‘reported’ on by journalists or even citizens who wish to post it on social media — as well as the comically corrupt, partisan way U.S. news outlets are covering the war, very little bad news gets seen by the public, if any.

Under this set up, it is hardly surprising that Trump went to war, given that he must have factored in a great deal of support from U.S. media, whom he claims to despise. In this regard, we can conclude that media itself is complicit in war crimes, given that it has played a huge role in the decision to go to war and also the day to day reporting of events on the ground.

A good example of the few points of the war which are reported, but done in such a distorted way, is the news that Iran has stopped its bombing of GCC Gulf states. This has been presented as a victory by the U.S. and a climb down by Iran. The truth though is that it is a considerable victory for Tehran as what is not being reported or even examined is the deal that Iran has struck with those countries. None of those countries will allow any kind of military activity now by U.S. forces there, which means the thousands of U.S. soldiers in hotels in these GCC countries might as well head back home as their role there is redundant. Of course it’s unlikely that Trump will move them out as such an event will be captured by many on social media and will look like a great defeat. But some analysts are going further and speculating that there is more bad news for Israel and the U.S. with this latest move. Not only has Iran insisted on no activity at all in these countries by U.S. forces but they have also said that when the war is over, all the bases must be completely shut down.

Sadly, the gesture didn’t hold for long as it is rumoured that Iran’s elite guard was angered by Trump’s response and so the missile attack on the GCC countries continued.

Against a backdrop of rumours spreading throughout the middle east that Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar were considering jointly to completely pull out their investment in the U.S., this move, even as a gesture, couldn’t have come at a worse time for Trump.

His media machine is working over time in spewing out so many fake news reports, like the recent one that the U.S. has total air superiority over Iran, that it will be interesting to see how this is spun in the coming days. But there is nothing but lies from the Trump camp and as a complicit western media scrum is happy to pump out these lies, people are obviously turning to social media or international news channels in the global south, like CGTN and Russia Today. For many Americans, they are simply too dumb to know how to even question the narrative. Where is the video footage to support these preposterous claims that American has air superiority over Iran? Within 24 hours of Trumps B2 bombers hitting nuclear sites in Iran last year in June, media were given video clips of the satellite imagery. So far, the claims by Trump’s people about air superiority, have not been matched with any evidence. None the less U.S. media reports it more or less like it is fact.

It’s a similar story with the claims about the U.S. navy sinking 20 Iranian vessels. Where’s the evidence? If we are to take into account completely defenceless ships like the unarmed frigate that was sunk in international waters after it returned from a joint exercise with India, it would seem that America is on the losing side. Not even Japanese naval strikes in the WWII would blow up enemies’ ships and not then pick up survivors. The Americans left 80 sailors to drown, the same seaman who posed with photos days earlier with Prime Minister Modi, who, it should be pointed out often claims that India is the “guardian of the Indian ocean”, a patently absurd claim. Many believe Modi sold the Iranians out and disclosed its position to the Americans, leaving many to question just how much he can be trusted with his present allies. Will Russia still sell its oil to India after such a betrayal?

It’s clear that the Iran war is already WWIII in many respects. Certainly each side has its partners and media have made much of Russia’s intelligence support to Iran pointing out American positions, while China has given Iran considerable military support both in state of the art radar systems and ground to air missile systems. The sinking of the Iranian ship shows us all though the depth of the desperation of America, that it needs to go as far as hunting for Iranian ships thousands of miles away and sinking them, even if they are unarmed as this ship was. Does that look like the act of a confident aggressor on a victory role? Hardly.

It isn’t just that America can barely hold the high moral ground for even a brief, ephemeral media moment, but more that the number of shocking tactical errors by Trump are piling up and having an impact. The failure to see that killing the supreme leader, who has been replaced by his son, a hard liner who has always wanted Iran to have a nuclear deterrent, was a major act of stupidity. Nearly all U.S. wars follow the same pattern of America under estimating its enemy and over estimating its own capabilities and this one is no exception. The move to bring GCC states closer to Iran and turn them against the U.S. is smart and what we could expect from Iran who has had years to prepare for this attack and has been given so many free lessons by America’s blunders — the best one being the June attack which resulted in Iran upping its game and identifying all the weak spots which needed work. The biggest miscalculation probably of all is going to war in the first place believing that regime change would be inevitable in days and therefore no longer term plans, in terms of military stocks, need to be addressed. American is about to run out of ammo. For the GCC countries, it’s quite possible that the deal might be reinstated in the coming days as a new truth emerges from the war, to date laden with the most absurd lies ever pumped out to media. While Donald Trump tells reporters on Air Force one that Iran was responsible for bombing its own school, GCC leaders will have to wake up to a new reality which is summed up by Henry Kissinger. “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”

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The money-laundering Kiev regime has gone from cutting off oil supply for EU member states to now issuing death threats to heads of state – and all that the regime’s patrons in Brussels can do is squirm with embarrassment.

The latest twist in the corrupt regime of Vladimir Zelensky is his death threat to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

That was then followed by the Hungarian authorities impounding an armed convoy transporting $100 million in cash and gold bullion from Austria over Hungary’s borders to Kiev – no doubt as part of the war mafia operating under Zelensky.

You couldn’t make this up. A comedian actor who used to dress up in high heels and played a soap-opera hero president is now ruling by decree as a dictator propped up by EU taxpayers, and only because of Brussels indulging in the largesse of their Russophobic obsessions. And now this fictive creation is threatening the assassination of elected leaders.

Zelensky didn’t mention Orbán by name, but in a press briefing last Thursday, he said that “the address of the person” (Orbán) who has blocked a proposed €90 billion loan from the EU to Ukraine was being given to “our military guys” who would “speak in their own language.”

The Hungarian prime minister denounced Zelensky’s words as a “threat to my life”. The country’s foreign ministry condemned the Ukrainian leader for “crossing all limits.”

Yet the European Union has not condemned Zelensky. A junior spokesman for the European Commission merely released a perfunctory statement, saying “that type of language is not acceptable… There must be no threats against EU member states.”

Where is a full-throated denunciation from European leaders like Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, or Kaja Kallas, the Commissioner for Foreign Affairs?

Let’s get this straight. Ukraine’s nominal president tells a head of an EU state that his name is on a hit list, and the bloc’s highest officials say nothing about that. They leave it to some low-level press officer to make a bland statement about it “not being acceptable.”

This shows how deeply corrupted the EU leadership has become in the proxy war racket in Ukraine against Russia. Threats of assassination are being made and played down out of embarrassment, not because such threats are a grave violation of international law.

The background is even more damning. Hungary and Slovakia are being subjected to energy blackmail by the Ukrainian regime because the countries have refused to terminate buying their oil supplies from Russia, as demanded by Brussels and Zelensky.

On January 27, the oil supply to Hungary and Slovakia was cut off after the Kiev regime claimed that a Russian drone strike damaged the Drushba pipeline carrying the oil over Ukrainian territory from Russia. Budapest and Bratislava have accused the Kiev regime of “energy blackmail.”

A Russian air strike did not hit the pipeline. Why would Russia deprive its customers? It doesn’t make sense, and Moscow rejected the claim.

As always, the question is: Who gains?

The Kiev regime has unilaterally cut the supply as a way to pressure Hungary and Slovakia into lifting their opposition to the EU donating more loans and military aid to Ukraine.

Tellingly, Ukraine has delayed supposed “repairs” to the Drushba pipeline. Hungary and Slovakia are facing a critical shortage of oil supply, which is destabilizing their economies. Kiev is even refusing to allow independent inspectors to assess the alleged damage. It’s obvious this is a set-up. There’s probably not even any physical damage other than turning off the pumps.

Last month, Orbán’s government caused a major upset in the European Union when it vetoed a proposed €90 billion loan from Brussels to Ukraine. The loan is seen as a vital lifeline to prop up the Kiev regime and extend the war. Budapest’s refusal was partly in response to the “energy blackmail.”

The block on the money supply has put Kiev and its EU sponsors in a quandary. The regime will not be able to keep fighting the war against Russia without more purchases of military equipment from NATO. Just as important, the block on the loan by Hungary means an obstacle to the money racket that the West has been running under the Zelensky regime, whereby billions of taxpayer funds get laundered into profits for corporations with a hefty cut for the Kiev mafia.

This would explain the bizarre convoy of cash and gold bullion that Hungarian authorities busted and impounded last Thursday. Two armoured vehicles were apprehended carrying $80 million in cash and $20 million in gold bars on their way to Ukraine from Austria. Among those detained were former Ukrainian intelligence officials.

The physical transport of such large amounts of funds, rather than by electronic bank transfer, indicates that the funds were meant not to be traced. The finding exposes once again the illicit money laundering by Zelensky’s regime. This is not in the least bit surprising, given the repeated scandals of corruption and embezzlement in Kiev under Zelensky and his circle, who have acquired luxury portfolios of overseas properties over the last four years.

Hungary and Slovakia are the only EU members out of 27 nations that have shown any principles about stopping the proxy war in Ukraine and ending the racket of robbing European citizens and saddling future generations with astronomical debts.

For taking that stand, the Brussels leadership has turned a blind eye to the Kiev regime’s cutting off oil supplies and using energy blackmail. Now the regime has gone even further to issue death threats to a European head of state, and the Brussels elite has effectively said nothing.

What the EU’s proxy war sponsors seem more concerned about is that their overindulged, corrupt puppet in Kiev is a public relations embarrassment. The blatant criminality of terroristic blackmail and death threats betrays the complicity of the EU’s leadership.

Von der Leyen, Kajas and the Brussels elites are more worried that Zelensky’s mafia threats might rebound by galvanizing Hungarians to vote for Orbán’s party in parliamentary elections next month.

Their message is: you can launder millions, use blackmail and issue death threats. Just don’t make it obvious.

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From dream to nightmare, and all of it American

In the geopolitical system of the contemporary Middle East, the U.S. military presence is one of the most important structural elements of the regional security architecture. Since the 1990s, and with greater intensity after the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States has consolidated an extensive network of military installations in the Persian Gulf region. These bases—distributed across countries such as Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia—perform key operational functions: power projection, logistical support, control of energy routes, and deterrence against regional actors perceived as hostile.

An aspect often overlooked in public debate concerns the financial structure that has made the expansion of this military infrastructure possible. Numerous studies of the political economy of security highlight how a significant portion of the costs of building, maintaining, and expanding the bases has been borne by the Gulf monarchies themselves. In many cases, these countries have directly financed the construction of the facilities or have provided substantial contributions in the form of “host-nation support,” i.e., forms of economic participation in the operational and infrastructure costs of the U.S. armed forces stationed on their territory.

This funding model reflects a specific strategic logic. The Gulf monarchies, which have relatively limited military capabilities compared to the surrounding regional powers, have historically sought to compensate for this vulnerability through security agreements with an external power. Financial support for the U.S. military presence therefore represents, from an economic and political point of view, a form of strategic insurance: in exchange for investment in military infrastructure and territorial hospitality, host states obtain implicit or explicit guarantees of protection.

Nevertheless, this security architecture has significant geopolitical consequences. From the perspective of regional actors such as Iran, the network of U.S. bases in the Gulf is interpreted not only as a defensive system, but also as a means of strategic containment and potential offensive projection. U.S. military installations become an integral part of the threat structure perceived by Tehran.

Under international law on armed conflict, military infrastructure is a legitimate target when used for military operations or logistical support. Military and legal doctrine clearly distinguishes between civilian and military targets, and operational bases unambiguously fall into the latter category. In the context of the current New Gulf War, such installations can be considered strategic targets by the actors involved, in their own right and in accordance with the law.

However, the problem arises when these infrastructures are located near densely populated areas. Many bases in the Gulf are located near urban centers or economically vital areas, partly for logistical reasons and partly because urban development has gradually expanded around existing installations. This territorial configuration creates a structural risk for civilian populations living in neighboring areas.

In the event of missile attacks or military operations against such bases, the principle of distinction—a cornerstone of international humanitarian law—requires armed actors to avoid or minimize collateral damage as much as possible. However, in contemporary conflicts, the separation between military targets and civilian space is often extremely fragile. Even targeted operations can generate indirect effects, such as secondary explosions, fires, or damage to urban infrastructure.

As a result, the civilian population of host countries finds itself in a particularly vulnerable position. Paradoxically, the very states that have financed and hosted military infrastructure to strengthen their own security may find themselves exposed to additional risks in the event of regional escalation. Military bases, designed as instruments of deterrence, can become factors of strategic exposure.

From an economic and political point of view, this scenario raises questions about the distribution of responsibility for damage resulting from military operations against such installations. If the bases are used by an external power and play an operational role in its regional strategies, the question arises as to who should bear the economic and social costs of any collateral damage suffered by local communities.

In theory, international law provides mechanisms for state responsibility for unlawful acts and for damage resulting from military operations that do not comply with humanitarian norms, but in geopolitical practice such mechanisms are often difficult to apply, especially when conflicts involve major powers or complex military coalitions. International power dynamics tend to prevail over legal compensation procedures.

From the perspective of the political economy of war, the problem can also be analyzed in terms of externalities. The military presence of an external power generates strategic benefits for some actors—deterrence, protection of energy routes, stability of allied regimes—but at the same time can produce costs for others, particularly for civilian populations living in areas surrounding military infrastructure. When these costs are not internalized by strategic decision-makers, a form of asymmetry in the distribution of risks is created.

This leads to a broader political question: to what extent should host states and the military powers involved take economic responsibility for the damage suffered by local communities? No preventive compensation mechanisms, guarantee funds, or multilateral agreements providing for compensation in the event of attacks on military infrastructure have been developed. Strategic rivalries, military alliances, and proxy warfare contribute to an environment in which responsibilities are diffuse and difficult to attribute unequivocally. In this context, the perception of impunity or lack of attention to the civilian consequences of military operations can further fuel regional tensions and resentment.

The Gulf countries, monarchies that became such thanks to the dollar, are now victims of that same dollar, which became powerful thanks to them. A paradox that will go down in the history books.

The evolution of regional tensions suggests that these issues will become increasingly central to the debate on collective security in the Middle East and the sustainability of the region’s current military architecture. A broader reflection on the economic and political responsibility of the powers involved could be a necessary step in addressing the humanitarian and strategic consequences of a security system based on a permanent external military presence. And this choice is up to the Gulf countries alone, now that the ‘American dream’ of the petrodollar has turned out to be a bad nightmare.

And all this weighs on Europe

The failure of the Gulf project will have another consequence, the most impactful of all. It would not only be a regional geopolitical event, but would have systemic effects on the global economy and, particularly significantly, on European economies. Europe, in fact, is in a structurally vulnerable position with regard to international energy dynamics: its heavy dependence on hydrocarbon imports, combined with the progressive reduction of supplies from some traditional supply areas, makes the continent particularly sensitive to any geopolitical shock involving the Middle East and the Persian Gulf.

The Persian Gulf is one of the central hubs of the global energy system, with the Strait of Hormuz accounting for a significant share of world trade in oil and liquefied natural gas. Any increase in military tensions in the region—and in particular a direct confrontation with Iran, a regional power with missile capabilities and asymmetric deterrence tools—inevitably leads to an increase in the so-called energy risk premium. – inevitably leads to an increase in the so-called energy risk premium, a term used in commodity economics to indicate price increases due not so much to a real shortage of resources as to the perception of risk associated with the possibility of disruptions in supply chains.

For Europe, which has undergone a complex restructuring of its energy system in recent years, such dynamics could prove particularly burdensome. The energy crisis following the war in Ukraine has already highlighted the structural fragility of the European energy model. Rising gas and electricity prices have had a significant impact on industrial competitiveness, inflation, and the sustainability of public finances. A further shock from the Middle East would therefore risk amplifying existing economic tensions.

European industry, particularly energy-intensive industries such as chemicals, steel, and manufacturing, is directly dependent on stable energy prices. A prolonged increase in oil and gas costs inevitably leads to higher production costs, which in turn affects the international competitiveness of European companies. In the medium and long term, this process may accelerate deindustrialization or relocation to regions of the world with lower energy costs.

The effects can also be significant at the macroeconomic level. Rising energy prices tend to fuel inflation, reducing the purchasing power of households and forcing central banks to adopt more restrictive monetary policies. This mechanism can slow economic growth and aggravate the burden of public debt in many European countries. In other words, a conflict in the Persian Gulf could generate a chain of economic effects that extend far beyond the regional military theater.

In light of these dynamics, a question of economic and political responsibility emerges that is rarely addressed explicitly in the European debate. If strategic decisions taken by external actors – or by allies with greater military autonomy – have significant economic effects on European economies, it is legitimate to question how these costs are distributed within the international system.

This phenomenon reflects a broader feature of international governance: strategic security decisions are often taken in contexts where economic costs are distributed asymmetrically among the actors involved. Major military powers have a greater capacity to absorb economic shocks or to transfer part of the consequences to their economic and trading partners, and Europe, the EU as a political entity but also all European countries in general, are not superpowers.

This dynamic therefore raises questions about the European Union’s ability to develop a truly autonomous foreign and energy policy. In recent years, the debate on ‘European strategic autonomy’ has highlighted the need to strengthen the continent’s decision-making capacity in the areas of security, energy supplies, and industrial policy… but none of this has been achieved. The entire eurozone is a giant chimney that consumes energy purchased from outside, without any guarantees of supply, due to its own political incapacity. European leaders have engaged in geopolitical somersaults to declare war on Russia, but they have failed to notice that they would land on extremely hard and painful ground.

The point is: this time it will not be possible to blame Putin. On the contrary, European leaders run the risk of finding themselves buying back Russian energy resources, perhaps at a higher price or through other players, such as the United States of America itself. The Moscow government had already anticipated that such a situation would arise, and it was also clear to less experienced analysts. Now Europe will have to suffer the dramatic consequences of its political arrogance. Listening to London and Washington has not produced good results, but now… it is too late.
War

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The recent escalation in the Middle East has brought back to the center of strategic debate a recurring concept in Western military doctrine: the so-called “decapitation strike.” The idea is simple in appearance and politically seductive – eliminate the leadership of an adversary state in order to trigger institutional collapse, military disorganization, and ultimately regime change. However, historical reality shows that such an approach is far from the magic solution its proponents often imagine.

The bombings carried out by the United States and Israel against Iran, culminating in the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, were clearly conceived under this logic. The expectation seemed to be that by removing the main political and religious authority of the Islamic Republic, the system would either collapse outright or face sufficient internal unrest to enable a forced transition. At the same time, it was assumed that Iran’s response would remain limited, as in previous confrontations.

That calculation proved mistaken. Instead of disintegration, there was internal consolidation. Thousands of Iranians took to the streets across the country, even under bombardment, to support the Islamic Republic and chant “death to America.” Moreover, there was no strategic paralysis among Iranian decision-makers, who promptly responded by striking targets throughout the Middle East.

This gap between expectation and reality stems from a structural characteristic of contemporary Western military thinking. Washington, accustomed to rapid interventions against fragile states, has consolidated a culture of short-duration warfare, marked by overwhelming initial destructive power followed by swift disengagement. Tel Aviv, due to its territorial dimensions and demographic limitations, developed a doctrine based on preventive strikes and the rapid neutralization of enemy leadership. However, this model tends to fail when applied against states with national cohesion, solid institutional frameworks, and mobilization capacity.

Iran is not a collapsed state, nor a fragmented tribal structure. With more than 90 million inhabitants and a political order consolidated since 1979, the country built mechanisms of succession and redundancy within its command structure. Khamenei’s advanced age had already made the question of transition an internal matter. Thus, the “decapitation” attempt did not strike at the functional core of Iranian power. On the contrary, it strengthened patriotic sentiment and expanded popular support for the government.

The strategic lesson is clear: complex political systems do not depend exclusively on a single individual. When institutions are deeply rooted and chains of command are distributed, eliminating a symbolic figure may generate martyrdom and cohesion rather than collapse.

This understanding helps explain why Russia did not adopt, in its conflict with Ukraine, a systematic policy of targeted assassinations against the political leadership in Kiev. Since the beginning of the special military operation, Moscow has demonstrated technical capacity to strike command centers and critical infrastructure. Even so, it has not prioritized the physical elimination of President Vladimirr Zelensky or other central figures of the Ukrainian government.

This choice does not stem from incapacity, but from strategic calculation. First, Zelensky’s removal could have produced the opposite of the intended effect, transforming him into an international symbol and further consolidating Western support for Kyiv. Second, the Ukrainian state structure – sustained by intense NATO assistance  – does not depend exclusively on one individual leader. A replacement could occur rapidly without fundamentally altering the conflict’s dynamics.

Furthermore, Russian strategy has been characterized by a prolonged war of attrition focused on the gradual degradation of the adversary’s military and logistical capacity. This model stands in direct contrast to the logic of decapitation. Moscow appears to understand that in conflicts between organized states, victory is rarely achieved through a single spectacular blow, but rather through the systematic erosion of the enemy’s material conditions.

The myth of decapitation persists because it offers a simplified and politically marketable narrative: remove the “head,” and the body will fall. Yet recent experience demonstrates that this assumption ignores the resilient nature of modern states. Leaders can be replaced; institutions, when consolidated, tend to endure.

Ultimately, the obsession with decapitation strikes reveals more about the strategic limitations of those who execute them than about the vulnerability of those who suffer them. Recent history suggests that wars between powers or structured states are not decided by dramatic gestures, but by prolonged processes in which internal cohesion and industrial capacity weigh more heavily than the elimination of individual figures.

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On the island of Great Britain there are three countries: England, Scotland, and Wales. During the Roman Empire, Great Britain, called Britannia, was populated by Britons. Hence the island’s name. Why this division of countries? During the Middle Ages, barbarian tribes left present-day Denmark and Saxony to conquer Great Britain and expel the Britons, a Celtic people, from their lands. These were the Angles and the Saxons, who mixed with each other and gave rise to England, or the Land of the Angles. A portion of the expelled Britons went to a part of France that became known as Brittany, making the name Great Britain convenient for differentiating the large island from this new land of Britons. Another portion of Britons was trapped in the tiny country of Wales, the land from which the Christian King Arthur tried to resist and reconquer the land lost to the infidel barbarians.

Now, given the failure of the poor Celtic king, why did England decide to create, in the Elizabethan period, the British Empire? And not, say, an English Empire?

The answer lies in the mythology surrounding the founding of England. Still in the High Middle Ages, an anonymous work entitled Historia Brittonum claimed that the first British king had been a certain Brutus of Troy, who was a descendant of Aeneas, the mythical founder of Rome. In the 12th century, a Welsh cleric with great literary talent named Geoffrey of Monmouth acted as historian with the work Historia Regum Brittaniae, in which he describes even the night of love in which King Arthur was conceived. Now Arthur was a British king descended from Aeneas and Brutus, who named the island Britain in his own honor. Geoffrey also invented a number of Nordic conquests for Arthur.

At the dawn of modernity, British mythology, invented in the Middle Ages, gained unprecedented political importance with the coronation of the Welshman Henry VII in 1485 as King of England. He was the first king of the problematic Tudor dynasty – and the Tudor kings, being of Welsh origin, would be transformed into descendants of King Arthur, Brutus of Troy and, of course, the founder of Rome.

To complicate matters further, there was the Reformation: Henry VIII, son of Henry VII, broke with the Catholic Church in the 1530s because he refused to remain married to his wife, who had not given him a male heir. At the same time, the reformer John Bale (1495 – 1563), a pioneer in presenting Rome as Babylon and the Pope as the Antichrist, was already swearing that the ancient Britons had a purer Christianity than that of the Romans; that the British had always fought Rome and that the Tudors were the legitimate heirs of King Arthur, therefore having the obligation to fight Rome, under penalty of being punished by God.

For the fanatical Protestants of the period, fighting Rome could mean something relatively simple like purging the Anglican Church of things considered papist. (So much so that hundreds of Puritans, frustrated with the rule of Queen Elizabeth, would leave for America because they believed that God would destroy England because of it. The destruction of the papacy, accompanied by the greatest cataclysms, was predicted for 1650.) But in this time of widespread madness, not all madmen were of a pious kind. And the madman who interests us is an occultist madman named John Dee (1527 – 1609).

Another World Empire

We have seen in previous articles that, in the 17th century, the idea that a new world empire was about to emerge, along with a new ecumenical religion and the Millennium, circulated among circles influenced by Kabbalah. In most versions, the new emperor liberates Jerusalem from the Turks and rules the world from there. In the 17th century, I highlighted Christina of Sweden and Antonio Vieira as followers of La Peyrère, who in turn repeated the 16th-century Postel. In the latter’s scheme, the French are the chosen people, and a French king would liberate Jerusalem from the Turks, installing the Jews there. For Antonio Vieira, the people destined for the Fifth Empire of the world were the Portuguese, led by D. João IV, who fulfills Bandarra’s prophecies and will be resurrected to lead Portugal to glory. Now, in relation to France and Portugal, England had the advantage of having a descendant of Aeneas himself on the throne!

In England, John Dee, who came to know Postel, was the mentor of the “Brytish Impire.” He was the son of a Welshmen, and he was an advisor to Queen Elizabeth I since she ascended the throne in 1558. In fact, at the age of 20, the young Dee was already admired inside and outside England for his advanced mathematical knowledge.

Regarding the consultancy, it is worth citing a declassified NSA article: “As government consultant, he excelled in mathematics, cryptography, natural science, navigation, and library science, and above all in the really rewarding sciences of those days – astrology, alchemy, and psychic phenomena. He was, all by himself, a Rand Corporation for the Tudor government of Elizabeth.” Rand Corporation is a private organization with obscure funding that subsidizes United States military intelligence with scientific and social research.

It is impossible to overstate John Dee’s importance to the British crown. Therefore, the relative silence of academia about him is noteworthy. Surprisingly, the area in which it is easiest to find writings and information about Dee is esotericism. Thus, it is relatively easy to discover that John Dee conversed with “angels” using paraphernalia such as an Aztec mirror, a crystal ball, starry boards (paraphernalia on display at the British Museum), plus the assistance of the medium Edward Kelley – and that the partnership lasted until both obeyed the orders of an “angel” to exchange wives. What is difficult to discover is that this eccentric figure was so important in politics.

Dee’s great beliefs connected to the Empire

One of the few works dedicated to the political and philosophical life of John Dee is John Dee: The World of an Elizabethan Magus, by Peter French. In the work, we see that John Dee believed in British mythology, so that Queen Elizabeth descended from the founder of Rome through King Arthur. It is worth noting that British mythology had already been refuted by the Italian humanist Polydorus Virgil in the first half of the century with the work Anglica Historia. However, in addition to believing in the legend, Dee expanded it, placing King Arthur as the leader of a colossal British Empire to which Queen Elizabeth was entitled.

Sometime between 1578 and 1580, Dee delivered to the queen the document Title Royall to… foreyn Regions in which, as a descendant of Arthur, Elizabeth was entitled to “Atlantis” (as Dee called America), Iceland, Greenland, as well as the phantom islands of Friseland and Estotiland (which were mentioned in the Voyage of the Zeno Brothers, a medieval work published in the Renaissance).

From the 1550s to the 1580s, Dee was the leading mentor in English navigation. This was due to both ideological and practical factors. The practical factor was that England, even before the Protestant Reformation, was experiencing an Erasmian reformist spirit aimed at combating the influence of the Middle Ages in universities and replacing it with belles-lettres. With England’s conversion to Protestantism, this trend deepened, and during the brief reign (1547-1553) of Edward VI (the male heir so desired by Henry VIII), the Puritans invaded the universities and destroyed writings identified with “papism.” To make matters worse, mathematics was associated with occultism. Thus, broadly speaking, it was as if English universities only dealt with belles-lettres, and only the eccentric magician John Dee was qualified to deal with practical matters such as navigation.

Regarding the ideological rationale, Dee believed that Queen Elizabeth should lead a British Empire, and that such an empire should be based on naval supremacy accompanied by extensive mercantile activity. This is the description of the British Empire as it went down in history, but it primarily reflects the 19th century. In Dee’s time, there were no English colonies in America, but he believed that a certain Lord Madoc, Prince of Northwales, had built a “colony” near Florida and therefore Queen Elizabeth had a right to “Atlantis.”

In Dee’s time, England invented a system of chartered companies in which the state gave a trading company a monopoly on trade relations with a region. (I have already written about this in more detail here.) Thus, Dee’s most immediate naval projects included the expeditions of the first English chartered company through the Arctic (seeking a route from England to the East via the Arctic), expeditions to Canada (if Humphrey Gilbert had not been shipwrecked, Dee would have been entitled to land in Canada), or the circumnavigation of Drake (the second circumnavigation in history, following that of Ferdinand Magellan).

Voyages of such great scope were, ultimately, necessary because Queen Elizabeth was destined to lead a world empire, without comparison to all precedents: the “Incomparable Brytish Impire,” in the English of the time.

Thus, we have that the British Empire is the invention of a Celtic sorcerer who communicated with rather strange “angels” (since they recommended wife swapping…) and believed that Queen Elizabeth would restore and surpass the mythical empire of King Arthur.

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“Whatever happens in Iran, the defeat of the West and its civilisation is inevitable. Trump cannot stop its implosion; he is accelerating it.” The American empire is collapsing like the Soviet Union, says Emmanuel Todd. In 1976, the demographer predicted the fall of the communist superpower based on infant mortality data. Today, he sees demographic statistics as a sign of the decline of the United States. And he warns against a re-armed Germany.

Interview with EMMANUEL TODD, Die Weltwoche, 27 February 2026

The war in Ukraine concerns Germany, the French demographer, historian and best-selling author told Weltwoche magazine in the spring of 2023. Shortly afterwards, Emmanuel Todd devoted a book to this country, in which the nihilism of Western civilisation occupies an important place: ‘The Defeat of the West’, published in 2024. In the spring of 2025, another interview was published in Weltwoche magazine. Todd then declared: ‘Russia has won the war’. This opinion is now shared by world-renowned experts such as American Colonel Douglas Macgregor.

As a young researcher, Todd made a name for himself in 1976 by predicting the collapse of the Soviet Union. He justified this prediction with the high infant mortality rate in the communist empire. Later, when he criticised the introduction of the euro, demanded by France in exchange for German reunification, he was in high demand for interviews in Germany. Todd attributed a ‘German neurosis’ to his country’s elite. He predicted that the single currency would help Germany assert its political supremacy in Europe.

His book Après l’Empire, published in 2002, became an international bestseller. He gave us his third interview since the start of the war in Ukraine, in which he draws a parallel between the decline of America and the collapse of the Soviet Union. And he asks the following question: what will Germany do when the war is over?

Weltwoche: Mr Todd, the war in Ukraine is entering its fifth year. In hindsight, are there any aspects that you misjudged?

Emmanuel Todd: I always have scruples and doubts. The prediction was correct: the West lost this war long ago. If the Americans had won it, Joe Biden would have been re-elected. Donald Trump is the president of defeat. Today, we must add that the consequence of defeat is the decline of the West. This collapse of a civilisation – Western civilisation – can be compared to the end of communism and the Soviet Union. It is still difficult to get a clear picture of how it will evolve. Its most spectacular symptom is the loss of reality.

Weltwoche: When did you realise the scale of the war in Ukraine?

Todd: When I managed to determine the number of engineers in the United States and Russia. The American population is two and a half times larger than the Russian population, but the United States trains fewer engineers. John Mearsheimer, whom I admire, believes that Ukraine is of existential importance to Russia. This is undoubtedly true. But unlike Mearsheimer, I am convinced that Ukraine is even more important to the United States: defeat in Ukraine reveals the weakness of the American system. It has a completely different significance from the defeats in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. The United States loses, leaves chaos behind and withdraws. In Ukraine, they are fighting a war against their historical enemy since 1945. Losing it is unimaginable.

Weltwoche: Donald Trump wanted to end it in 24 hours.

Todd: That was his sincere intention. Trump’s vulgarity and amorality are unbearable for a European bourgeois like me. But he also defends entirely reasonable causes. The MAGA project, ‘Make America Great Again’, is about representing the interests of the nation. After a year, Trump had to admit that, despite protectionism and high customs duties, reindustrialisation was not working. There is a shortage of engineers, technicians and skilled workers. The illiteracy rate among young people aged 16 to 24 has risen from 17% to 25% in the last ten years. America depends on imports; it cannot do without them. As the world’s leading power, relocating industry to China was pure madness. Even in the agricultural sector, the trade balance is in deficit. Customs duties have become a threat to the dollar. It is the weapon of an empire that lives on credit from the labour of other countries. The disastrous state of American society makes it impossible to implement MAGA. It lacks the necessary economic and intellectual dynamism.

Weltwoche: And that is why Trump has to wage wars against his will?

Todd: That is his dilemma. He has been sucked into the vortex of American foreign policy over the last few decades. The United States was seeking to expand and strengthen its empire. Trump did not slow down this evolution, he accelerated it. Joe Biden has compensated for the decline of the empire with the war in Ukraine. Trump is multiplying theatres of operation. He has tried to measure his strength against that of China, which has brought him to his knees with its embargo on rare earths. He threatens Canada and Cuba. He wants Greenland and humiliates Europeans. In Venezuela, the imperialism of a dying empire has manifested itself in the form of kidnapping and looting. His customs policy is a form of blackmail. In almost every area, it has achieved the opposite of what it wanted.

Weltwoche: And all this because the United States can no longer win the war in Ukraine?

Todd: These are diversionary tactics. The result is that its enemies are forming alliances: Iran, Russia, China. Trump has not reduced the United States’ military commitment, but has multiplied it spectacularly. With their war cries and hostility towards Russia, Europeans are partly responsible for this development.

Weltwoche: After the negotiations in Alaska, during which European heads of state were treated like schoolchildren by Trump, Emmanuel Macron called Putin an “ogre” and a “beast to be fed” in a frightening interview.

Todd: Trump is taking advantage of this. America – the Biden administration – is responsible for the war in Ukraine, but Trump has managed to portray himself as a moderate and peaceful negotiator. He is presented by the media as an omnipotent ruler of the world, who reorganises it according to his will and fantasies. And this at a time when America is suffering its first strategic failure in the face of Russia. Venezuela, Cuba, Greenland – these are just diversionary tactics. It’s all about diverting attention from Ukraine to other theatres of operation. This is also the intention behind the negotiations. They only serve to buy time for all parties involved. The decision will be made on the battlefield, and Trump has realised that he cannot prevent Putin’s victory. Ukraine is on the verge of a total collapse of its system, however tragic and sad that may be for the Ukrainians.

Weltwoche: Is Iran also a diversionary tactic?

Todd: Yes. For me, Israel is not an autonomous country that pushes the United States to intervene in the Middle East. Israel is a satellite of the United States. Just like Ukraine. Israel does what Trump allows it to do. When he wanted a ceasefire in Gaza, he got it immediately. It was Israel that asked him for permission to end the Twelve-Day War. Netanyahu had to realise that the enemy was capable of producing many more rockets than expected.

Weltwoche: You have described the war in Ukraine as the beginning of a third world war.

Todd: The war in Ukraine is the beginning of a world war. One of the reasons for the Russians’ victory is the support they receive from China and India. The BRICS countries are siding with the Russians against the West.

Weltwoche: And now we will see a world war between the Americans and Russia and its allies, Iran, China and India?

Todd: Russia, China and Iran are taking a defensive stance. For now, it is an American attack on Tehran. No one knows what it will trigger. How will the regime, China and Russia react?

Weltwoche: But will they be allies against the United States in World War III?

Todd: During World War II, we had the Third Reich attacking everyone. Today, the attacks are coming from the United States. All the allies are authoritarian regimes threatened by the declining American empire.

Weltwoche: What is the role of Europeans? In one of our previous conversations, you said that the Americans are actually waging war against Germany.

Todd: What we are currently experiencing normally only happens in science fiction novels. The Western media system has become an empire of lies, incapable of describing reality. Its axiom is as follows: Russia threatens Europe. I find this absurd. I think Putin will annex part of Ukraine to Russia. Then the Russians will end the war. The conquest of Europe is simply impossible, and Putin is not interested in doing so. In my book, I discuss American nihilism, the decline of churches and moral values in detail. Today, I realise that I underestimated European nihilism. Europe is no longer a union of equal states. It is dominated by Germany. I found Olaf Schulz’s cautious policy reasonable. Friedrich Merz’s election as chancellor changed everything. He pushed the United States to relaunch the war against Russia. The CDU is the party of the Americans, and Merz has fuelled the Germans’ Russophobia. The Chancellor is creating a perverse synthesis between Russophobia and the economic crisis caused by the war. He wants to overcome the crisis by militarising industry. This is the new German doctrine for Europe. And the secret services are issuing warnings about a Putin attack on Germany.

Weltwoche: Merz wants the most powerful army in Europe. This brings back bad memories, and not only in France.

Todd: To believe that this rearmament is aimed exclusively at Russia is actually a naive mistake. For Russia, it is a serious threat; for the Americans, it is a blessing. I can only explain this madness by the crisis the EU is going through. It is at an impasse and has replaced its original ideals with the hostile image of Putin. The West is by no means on the path to regaining its lost unity. The return to nationalism is predominant in the United States and Europe. In Germany, the resurgence of national consciousness is less pronounced than in other EU member states: it has taken control of Europe. I must resort to science fiction once again: the war in Ukraine is over, Russia has achieved its goal. In this world without Russian threats, nations are returning and Germany is once again becoming a dominant and self-confident power with the strongest army on the continent. Who will be threatened then?

Weltwoche: As during the Second World War: all of Europe, including Russia, and in particular France, the hereditary enemy?

Todd: For Canada, it is not the Russians who pose a threat, but the United States. Yes, and for France it is Germany. French politicians lack historical awareness. Relations between France and Germany have improved because we French no longer have anything to fear from Germany.

Weltwoche: This was evident again during reunification, which France wanted to prevent.

Todd: There is cause for concern. The collapse of the West is accompanied by a return to brutality and hierarchisation: one submits to the strongest and attacks the weakest. That is what the Americans are doing to the Europeans, and the Germans have accepted this by electing Friedrich Merz. They need a scapegoat. For now, it is still Putin. But Franco-German relations are deteriorating.

Weltwoche: Does Macron’s willingness to share nuclear firepower with Germany testify to a desire for submission?

Todd: Merz makes very unpleasant statements about France. The war in Ukraine is turning into a world conflict between the former colonies and the West that exploited them. And within a decaying West, the conflicts of the past are resurfacing. Whatever happens in Iran, the defeat of the West and its civilisation is inevitable. Trump cannot stop its implosion; he is accelerating it. The Chinese and Russians are arming the mullahs, and the Americans have had to recognise that one aircraft carrier was not enough. Not even two. The Tehran regime cannot give in, and Trump cannot give up on an attack, because he would really lose face after promising his help to the insurgents.

Weltwoche: He backtracked on Greenland.

Todd: It was just theatre; he won’t start a war against Denmark. From Denmark, the NSA monitors all of Europe. Greenland is a secondary theatre of the end of the world.

Weltwoche: You compared it to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Todd: At the time, not a shot was fired; the Russians accepted the end of their empire with great dignity.

Weltwoche: Ukraine gained independence.

Todd: The Russians turned their backs on communism with great elegance. Their empire was not based on the exploitation of their satellites; they had tortured themselves with Stalinism. The period after the collapse was extremely difficult, especially since the Russians had centuries of totalitarian rule behind them. Compared to Russia, the United States and Europe are bad losers. This is particularly true of the Americans, whose history had been crowned with success until then.

Weltwoche: In World War III, do you see the Americans in the role of the Third Reich?

Todd: I am wary of comparisons with the 1930s. The situation is different. But of course there are similarities. For Trump, diplomacy consists of spreading lies. When he talks about negotiations, you can be sure there will be war. It was the same with Hitler.

Weltwoche: Trump has not yet started a war.

Todd: He has not sent ground troops because he does not have the power to do so: society does not accept deaths, and this is generally the case in the West. No one likes to wage war, not even Russia. Even Putin manages his human resources with caution; he has not dragged his population into total war. Trump will not send ground troops to Iran either. We are still in the phase of rhetoric and air strikes. The mullahs’ regime has been weakened by the uprising. Intensive bombing could trigger a civil war. It could cause chaos and spark internal struggles. The war in Ukraine now seems to me to be a civil war triggered by the Americans. A regime change in Iran is not in their interest at all. The mullahs are a terrible regime, but the mosques are empty. A nationalist government supported by the population would not be much less hostile to the United States. As in the 1930s, we lack imagination today. The Shoah was possible because no one could imagine Auschwitz. Reality exceeds our imagination.

Weltwoche: You’re probably right, and we should read more science fiction novels to understand the present. Politics is content to learn from the past.

Todd: Rather than the past, we should be interested in what might happen and what we cannot possibly imagine. The central question that haunts me is this: what is happening to the Germans? Americans want to be Americans and Russians want to remain Russians. The AfD is not comparable to the Rassemblement National. It is a party whose aggressiveness is frightening. At the same time, the German elite is getting used to the idea of war. What will happen if the AfD and the CDU form an alliance? Will German nationalism then meet German militarism? Is Germany returning to being an authoritarian society because that corresponds to its temperament? This is a question we need to think about today.

Weltwoche: Do you have a tentative answer?

Todd: All my wrong predictions were about Germany: because I mistakenly thought that Germans could be like the French. When Schröder and Chirac protested with Putin against the war in Iraq, I saw it as an encouraging rapprochement and thought that Paris should share its seat on the UN Security Council with Berlin. I saw Germany as the leader of a sovereign Europe. My hopes were dashed. Germany immediately began imposing its unilateral decisions without consulting its partners: from the nuclear phase-out to the reception of refugees. Germany is jointly responsible for the Maidan, it presented Ukraine with a choice: Russia or Europe. Even in my book on Ukraine, in which I harshly criticise Great Britain, I spare Germany: because I largely agreed with Olaf Scholz.

Weltwoche: Why can’t Germans become French?

Todd: As a demographer, I was interested in the family structures of peasant society. They continue to influence political culture. In countries where brothers had equal rights, the concept of equality among men was able to take hold. This was the prerequisite for universalistic revolutions, such as those in France and Russia. Russia established communism, which applied to everyone. In Germany, revolution had no chance because brothers did not have equal rights. This explains its propensity for authoritarianism. In Germany, the idea of inequality between men and peoples prevails and, unlike Russia and China, a multipolar world order is unimaginable. This immediately raises the question of why France, with its tradition of equality, does not side with the Russians: because it submits to German hegemony. Macron’s willingness to share the atomic bomb weakens national sovereignty. For Germany, only hierarchical relationships are possible. The Germans want to dominate Europe because that corresponds to their temperament. After all, they are once again the strongest power.

Weltwoche: Once a Nazi, always a Nazi? You will be accused of systematic hostility towards Germany.

Todd: It’s not the first time. My assessment is not a reproach, but an observation. I admire and recognise the superiority of the Germans in many cultural areas.

Weltwoche: You argue as an anthropologist. Is there a nostalgic desire in the German unconscious for victory over Russia, for revenge for the Second World War?

Todd: I wouldn’t talk about revenge. After the war and after reunification, no one could have imagined how quickly Germany would rise to the challenges it faced. That’s a compliment. This country is different, it has enormous potential. But of course the Germans know who defeated the Wehrmacht. The aggressive rhetoric of the Russians gives the impression that they have been deprived of their victory. The refusal to acknowledge the Russian victory is tantamount to denying the German defeat.

Weltwoche: After reunification, the fall of the Soviet Union was also presented as a victory for the West, and the Russians were denied recognition for freeing themselves from communism, something the Germans had failed to do with Hitler.

Todd: The defeat of 1945 is considered a thing of the past, as if it never existed, just like National Socialism.

Weltwoche: At the same time, the Nazi past is omnipresent as a German obsession, and the AfD is fought as if it were a matter of resisting the Nazis. At home against Hitler, in Europe against Putin.

Todd: Are Germans really that obsessed with Hitler? If so, there is something in their subconscious that I have missed. And that would mean that the risks are even greater than I ever imagined. We are truly in a science fiction novel. The elites no longer have explanations or plans. They rely on the EU, which makes any decision impossible and has a distorted perception of reality. Germany dominates Europe, but this must not be said. We have a completely distorted view of the past, which guides our present, and we cannot imagine the future. And when you don’t know where you’re going, you can at least cling to Russophobia.

Weltwoche: Russophobia stemming from anti-fascism, with Putin in the role of Hitler. There are attempts to ban the AfD.

Todd: I don’t know Germany well enough to comment on that. Sometimes I tell a joke, but it’s not funny. I don’t know, I’m not sure… Yes, maybe that’s it: Germany is giving free rein to its authoritarian temperament. The AfD is compared to the Rassemblement National, Marine Le Pen to Meloni and Putin, and Meloni to Trump. These comparisons are pointless. What all countries have in common is a return to the nation. Even the Germans want to go back to being German. This dynamic has infected all parties, SPD, CDU, AfD. The differences between post-national ideologies are blurring. In the United States, we are seeing a rapprochement between the neoconservatives, who supported war as a means of imposing democracy, and the Maga movement, which wanted to end it. In Germany, a merger between the CDU and the AfD is conceivable. And it is conceivable that the return to the authoritarian nation will this time present itself as a struggle for freedom and democracy.

Weltwoche: How do you assess developments in France, where politics has long been characterised by the fight against populists and neo-fascists and where the radicalisation of the left is raising fears of a civil war between ‘anti-fascists’ and ‘fascists’? Jean-Luc Mélenchon, of the La France insoumise party, has called next year’s election to choose Macron’s successor “the final battle”.

Todd: This opposition is paralysing France. No party wants to abolish the euro or leave the EU. Only a radical uprising can end the political impotence. We need a movement that recognises our collective interests and leaves post-national ideologies behind. There is no sign of this on the horizon.

Weltwoche: Who will be the next president?

Todd: I don’t know, I’m not a prophet. Even though I have that reputation.

Weltwoche: It was Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind the attacks on the Twin Towers, who spread it around the world. While fleeing from the Americans at the beginning of the millennium, he cited you as a prophet: after the end of the Soviet Union, it would be the turn of the American empire to fall. Who will you vote for?

Todd: I have no idea.

Weltwoche: Dominique de Villepin, che, in qualità di ministro degli Affari esteri di Jacques Chirac, ha condotto la campagna contro l’attacco americano in Iraq?

Todd: È l’unico politico che può contare sulla mia simpatia, almeno.

Weltwoche: Voleva raccontare una barzelletta.

Todd: È la storia di un campo di concentramento per ebrei, che vengono imprigionati e sterminati perché antisemiti.

Weltwoche: Questa idea non mi sembra affatto irrealistica, vista la confusione mentale e la retorica dominante che lei descrive. Ma restiamo nel campo della fantascienza: non sarà la Russia ad essere attaccata dall’«esercito più potente d’Europa», ma la Francia?

Todd: No, non credo, almeno nel medio termine. La Germania non ne è capace, noi abbiamo la bomba atomica. I giornalisti e i politici hanno dimenticato che De Gaulle l’ha costruita per proteggerci dai tedeschi. Se continuano ad accanirsi contro la Russia, potrebbero costringere Putin a usare armi nucleari tattiche. Posso solo sperare che i missili russi non mirino alla Dassault, ma alle fabbriche della Rheinmetall.

Original article: lafionda.org

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Watching British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announce that Britain is joining U.S. military operations against Iran was like listening to a broadcast from the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s 1984.

Speaking from Downing Street with Union Jack flags behind his shoulders, Starmer affected a somber, reassuring tone, saying that Britain was permitting the United States to use British military bases for “defensive strikes” to prevent Iran from “firing missiles across the region, killing innocent civilians.”

The British leader’s ability for double-think is impressive. Even after making the announcement, he assured the public that Britain’s involvement is not “offensive”. This is while the U.S. uses British bases in England, Cyprus, and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean to mount bombing raids on Iran, which have so far killed nearly 800 civilians in only a matter of days. Civilian deaths from Iranian strikes across the region – so far, fewer than 20 – are a tiny fraction of that figure.

For several weeks, the United States had been flying squadrons of fighter jets and refueling tankers to Britain on their way to the Middle East for what has now turned out to be a major war with Iran. Starmer previously maintained the double-think that Britain wasn’t going to let its bases be used by Trump for any eventual war. The British premier said that this reluctance was based on “lessons learnt” from the Iraq War in 2003 when his predecessor Tony Blair had backed the George W Bush administration in launching a disastrous decade-long conflict that resulted in over one million deaths, millions of displaced, and regionwide terrorism that continues to haunt multiple nations.

Britain has learnt nothing from history. Today, it is repeating the same reckless rush to war in the Middle East in the service of American imperialism. Only this time, a war with Iran could be on an even greater disastrous scale than in Iraq. And Starmer is projecting the risible fiction that Britain is not involved because, he claims, what it is doing is “defensive”. This is Orwell meets Alice in Wonderland.

Starmer, like the rest of the European leaders, is throwing fuel onto a potential conflagration in the Middle East. They are fueling Washington and Israel’s impunity to commit even more crimes by not calling out the aggressor. Instead, the British and the Europeans are pathetically appeasing the aggressor and blaming the victims, Iran.

No wonder Donald Trump has such contempt for these vassals because they have no backbone or independence. This week, Trump told British media that Starmer was an inferior ally, even after the prime minister did a U-turn in favor.

When the Americans and the Israelis started bombing Iran on February 28, it was in the midst of diplomatic negotiations between U.S. and Iranian delegates. Omani mediators were saying on February 27 that progress was being made on talks about Iran’s nuclear enrichment program. But the decision to bomb Iran was taken weeks ago by Trump and Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu. The talks were just a pretext to give time for cranking up the war machine, with Britain’s help, of course.

Just like the attacks last June on Iran during previous negotiations, Washington and Israel opted for unilateral military action. That is aggression, a blatant violation of international law. Trump and Netanyahu’s claims about Iran building a nuclear weapon and their taking defensive action are cynical lies. Are we to believe people who are carrying out genocide in Gaza?

On the first morning of the latest round of aggression, Iran’s religious leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, was killed in air strikes on his home in Tehran. Scores of other Iranian senior figures were also murdered in separate attacks. Trump boasted about “decapitation”.

That same morning, U.S. and Israeli air strikes hit an elementary school in Minab in southern Iran, killing 165 schoolgirls.

Yet none of the European leaders, including Starmer, condemned this mass murder and aggression. They saved their hypocritical words to censure Iran after it retaliated with its own strikes on U.S. interests across the Persian Gulf and on Israel. Bahrain, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia have been hit with waves of Iranian drones and missiles.

Like Britain, the Gulf monarchies are not innocent bystanders. They have provided the U.S. war machine with crucial bases and logistics to mount the aggression on Iran.

Britain’s Starmer tries to feign innocence that his country and the Gulf states are somehow “not involved”. This is an insult to common intelligence.

Britain and the Gulf monarchs are up to their necks in complicity with the U.S. and Israeli aggression against Iran. They will reap the whirlwind for the crimes they have sown.

Trump and his administration have foolishly walked over the abyss, and they are dragging their vassals with them. Trump’s stupidity and lies are so outrageous that they beg questions about his sanity.

Iran has reluctantly gone to war out of self-defense. But it is clear that once committed, Iran is prepared for a long war. It has taken out much of the supply and logistical bases in the Gulf that the U.S. needs to maintain its armada of warships and aircraft. It is believed that when the U.S. and Israel are depleted of their million-dollar missiles and not very effective air-defense systems, the Iranians will move to the next phase of firing their more modern and more powerful anti-ship ballistic missiles.

Moreover, the impact on the global economy from shutting down the Persian Gulf is going to be even more consequential and devastating for the fragile American and European economies.

Iran warned the United States for years not to go to war. But the arrogant Americans and their allies did not listen. They were so full of their own propaganda, illusions, and ignorance of history.

That’s why Trump, Rubio, Netanyahu, Starmer, and other European politicians are speaking with such incomprehensible doublespeak and double-think, and why they are walking into catastrophe.

These arrogant people learn nothing from history, and they are doomed to repeat it. Tragically, and criminally, a lot of innocent people will suffer because of these psychopathic clowns and liars who slavishly serve a capitalist system driven by war.

Part of the problem, too, is that the Western media have for years indulged in the propaganda lies that afforded impunity to criminals in office who keep repeating their crimes.

However, the whole Western warmongering system is about to crash against a wall of objective reality. Orwellian deceit and distortion of history can postpone reality… until the absurdity and contradictions become unbearable.

Finian Cunningham is coauthor of Killing Democracy: Western Imperialism’s Legacy of Regime Change and Media Manipulation

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Four years have passed since the Russian Federation launched the Special Military Operation, bringing to an end an eight-year cycle marked by internal clashes and discriminatory policies against the ethnic Russian population in Ukraine. What began as an intervention with limited objectives quickly took on far broader proportions, structurally altering the balance of power in global geopolitics.

The initial plan for the operation was based on the expectation of a brief and surgical action. Moscow sought to pressure Kiev into accepting an agreement that would recognize the independence of the republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, restore the co-official status of the Russian language, and formalize Ukrainian neutrality, definitively removing the possibility of NATO membership. During the first months, there were concrete signs that an understanding could be reached. Negotiations progressed, and the withdrawal of Russian forces from the Kiev region was presented as a gesture intended to facilitate diplomatic dialogue.

However, the course of events changed decisively. After the infamous visit of the British Prime Minister to Kiev, the negotiation process was interrupted. From that moment on, the conflict ceased to have an essentially regional character and became part of a broader strategic dispute between Russia and the Atlantic bloc. NATO intensified the supply of weapons, training, and logistical support to Ukrainian forces, progressively expanding both the scale and sophistication of the equipment delivered. Western long-range artillery systems, armored vehicles, air defense systems, and advanced munitions became part of Kiev’s arsenal.

In response to this scenario, Russia also adjusted its strategy. Referendums were organized in areas under Russian control, resulting in the incorporation of Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhye, and Kherson into the constitutional map of the Federation. At the same time, a partial mobilization was decreed, incorporating several hundred thousand reservists into frontline forces. This was supplemented by a significant contingent of contracted volunteers, substantially increasing Russia’s operational capacity in the theater of operations (currently, most fighters are contracted volunteers).

Four years after the beginning of the campaign, the territorial situation shows significant consolidation on certain fronts. The entirety of Lugansk is under Russian control, although occasional incursions by Ukrainian forces still occur. In Donetsk, Zaporozhye, and Kherson, Russian control extends over approximately three-quarters of the respective territories. Fighting remains intense, with relatively stabilized front lines in some sectors and more fluid dynamics in others.

Casualty figures remain disputed, but estimates released by Western sources themselves point to Ukrainian losses exceeding one and a half million men, including both dead and wounded. On the Russian side, the reported totals are said to be significantly lower, likely not reaching 200,000. Regardless of statistical discrepancies, it is undeniable that this is a high-intensity conflict, marked by profound human and material attrition.

Some argue that the length of the war reveals a strategic stalemate – one that could supposedly be resolved through “decapitation strikes.” However, from the Russian perspective, the central objective does not lie merely in replacing political leadership in Kiev. The declared goal is the demilitarization of Ukraine and the neutralization of its capacity to function as a forward platform for NATO.

In this context, superficial changes in the leadership of the Ukrainian government would be insufficient to alter the structural logic of the confrontation. Unfortunately, despite the massive human cost, only prolonged attrition can enable Russia to annihilate the enemy’s military potential and bring about a transformation in Ukrainian society’s mindset (denazification) through deep military trauma.

The prevailing perspective in Moscow is that any lasting agreement will depend on full control of the incorporated regions and the creation of a security zone along the border. This is therefore a confrontation conceived in long-term plans, inserted in a systemic dispute between Russia and the Collective West. More than a limited conventional war, the current conflict is, in effect, the Third World War in its active phase.

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MOSCOW – Four years on after the start of the Special Military Operation (SMO) in February 2022 – actually the proxy war between NATO and Russia until the last Ukrainian – no wonder every corridor of power and dinner table in Moscow, for days, was abuzz on the pros, cons and countless shades of gray embedded in this de facto vicious conflagration were Slavs kill Slavs: a dream scenario for an array of Russophobes embedded in selected EU political “elites”.

So, from the point of view of a foreign correspondent for 40 years, editor-at-large and geopolitical analyst, the privilege of listening to top Russian analysts, diplomats and military experts at this critical juncture on the SMO and beyond, all the way to the geopolitical Big Picture, could hardly be equaled.

That happened thanks to the National Unity Club – a new, dynamic space for high-level discussion set up in Moscow (here is their YouTube channel) chaired, among others, by former Prime Minister of Ukraine, Nikolai Azarov, and premier economist and current head of the Russia-Belarus Union State, Sergey Glazyev.

My dear friend Larry Johnson, former CIA analyst, and myself are now part of what could be described as the international branch of the club.

Over two long sessions held at the TASS studios, organized by Igor Goncharenko and his tireless team, we conducted a series of interviews, especially crucial for a global audience. The interviews confirmed how it’s impossible to understand all the complex, interlocking issues revolving around the SMO without considering the analysis of these specialists.

Here is just a sample of our conversations.

Alexander Babakov: Uber-gentleman Babakov is the vice-speaker of the Duma and one the best informed players in Russia. This is our third conversation in the past three months. Babakov digs deeper on the Geneva “negotiations” kabuki – and beyond.

Andrey Gurulyov : a Duma member, retired Lt. Gen. and former commander of the 58th Combined Arms Army. Gurulyov is an absolute treasure trove of hardcore military info. He engages in a no holds barred analysis of the SMO, where “Russia is not waging war with Ukraine, but with the collective West, and retains the strategic initiative.” Gurulyov stresses that Europe is actively preparing for war with Russia, building up its armies and military-industrial complex.

Vasily Prozorov: a former SBU officer from 1999 to 2018, when he defected to Russia. Survived an assassination attempt in Moscow in 2024. Prozorov details how from Maidan in 2014, “the SBU became a machine against its own people”. Before, the SBU was engaged in the fight against crime, corruption and economic crimes. Afterwards, the main task is “to fight dissent and political opponents.”

Gen. Apti Alaudinov: In June 2012, when he was only 38 years old, Alaudinov became the youngest top General in Russia’s modern history. During the fight in Chechnya, Apti’s father and older brother were killed in battle with Dudayev’s forces, as well as many family members. Since 2022, he is the Secretary of the Economic and Public Security Council of the Chechen Republic. Here’s all about the SMO and beyond – as in the possible attack on Iran – seen by the ultimate warrior-intellectual insider.

Former Prime Minister of Ukraine (2010-2014), Nikolai Azarov: Mr. Azarov is also co-chairman of the National Unity Club. This is extremely special: here he is interviewd by the one and only George Galloway and myself – on the exact day of the 4^th anniversary of the SMO. Azarov delves into how the SMO, which many considered short-term, escalated into a protracted war.

In an extremely poignant testimony, Azarov calls what’s happening a personal tragedy: after all his whole life is connected with both Russia and Ukraine. He goes back to Kiev’s course after 1991; Maidan – which he interprets as a coup d’etat; and the escalation around Donbass as key factors that led to the SMO.

He also details how weapons supplies, financing and intelligence from NATO countries have made the war inevitably protracted.

And now for the two bonuses

Then these past few frantic days in Moscow offered two bonuses – which may be particularly appealing for a global audience.

A little over a week ago, Larry Johnson was in Florida, and myself in Moscow: we ended up interviewing each other on the whole kabuki regarding Iran, just as Larry had received the best info from his CIA sources that an attack on Iran was imminent. The Big Picture of course remains.

Then The Fates also intervened – in this matryoshka of auspicious coincidences: George Galloway and myself interview each other in a Moscow studio.

We talk about West Asia; why is the transfer of 50% of US aviation to the Gulf not an exercise, but an agony; what are Epstein’s unreleased files hiding; why doesn’t Iran capitulate; BRICS vs. NATO: If Iran is attacked, will China stand up? Will Russia act? Why has the United States not yet realized that the Global South will no longer allow aggression?

Here it is: from Moscow, with Grit. Dig deeper – this is really something special.