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This is part 2 of a two-part analysis. Please read part 1 here.

President Putin sent a gracious message to Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, personally congratulating him on his election as Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Words do (italics mine) matter:

“At a time when Iran is confronting armed aggression, your efforts in this high position will undoubtedly require great courage and dedication. I am confident that you will honourably continue your father’s work and unite the Iranian people in the face of an immense ordeal.”

After stressing foreign “aggression” and continuity of government, Putin reiterated the strategic partnership in no uncertain terms:

“For my part, I would like to reaffirm our unwavering support for Tehran and solidarity with our Iranian friends. Russia has been and will remain a reliable partner for the Islamic Republic.”

Cue to a desperate President Trump, or neo-Caligula, placing a call to Putin, essentialy to ask him to intervene as a mediator to convince Iran into accepting a ceasefire. What he heard instead was a polite enumeration of unpleasant facts regarding the war of choice launched by the Epstein Syndicate on Iran.

Trump is throwing his favorite envoy Steve Witkoff under the bus, alongside puny Jared Kushner and the push up clown posing as Secretary of Forever Wars, as the ones who forced him to bomb Iran. It’s Witkoff who claimed after the phone call that Russia stated it’s not transfering intel data to Iran, as confirmed, he said, by presidential assistant for international affairs Yuri Ushakov.

Nonsense. Ushakov never said such a thing. Russians at the highest political level do not comment on military matters linked to their strategic partnerships with both Iran and China.

Now for the facts.

Russian intel, Iranian execution, and no military treaty

It’s no secret that Moscow has shared what can be defined as industrial amounts of intel – and combat data – gathered in Ukraine with Tehran. A great deal of the advanced jamming tech and satellite intel leading to the serial destruction of THAAD radars, Patriot radars, and every other ultra-heavy fixed radar installations comes from both Russia and China.

Even if footage of Russian S-400 and Krasukha systems successfully intercepting American missiles has not been released, and probably it won’t be, the fact is Russian technicians are helping Iranian crews fine-tune the trajectories of missiles and drones during flight.

So there is a sophisticated, practical interplay in effect between Chinese and Russian high-resolution orbital imagery and targeting assistance, and swarms of cheap, $20,000 drones.

Russia provided Iran with the super-charged, upgraded and battle-tested Geran-3 and Geran-5 drones. These are the facto Russian Shaheds: lethal, inexpensive cruise missiles, equipped with anti-jamming via their Komet antenna, and able to reach 600 km/h. They are now all over the battlefield.

Now for the extremely savoury part.

Slightly over a week before the Epstein Syndicate decapitation strike on Tehran on February 28, Russian intel sent to the IRGC the fully developed US strike plan – complete with target matrices, launch platforms, timing sequences.

So the IRGC knew exactly what to expect.

Six weeks before that, in December last year, Moscow signed a 500 million euros weapons deal with Iran, including the delivery of 500 Verba MANPADS launchers and 2,500 advanced 9M336 missiles.

Essentially, Russia is providing Iran with intel and air defense. And China provides anti-ship missiles and real-time satellite surveillance.

The beauty of it all is there’s no formal trilateral alliance in play. And no military treaty. It’s all embedded in their interlocking strategic partnerships.

Considering all of the above, it’s no wonder the puzzled Epstein Syndicate is blaming Russia and China intel for certified hits such as the satellite communications station part of the communications and cyber defense unit of the Israeli military near Beer Sheeba.

And we’re not even talking about the next, inevitable Russian move: installing the extremely powerful S-500 Prometheus air defense system in Iran.

How to capture market share without breaking a sweat

The Russia-Iran strategic partnership – even if does not include a military treaty – works in several interlocked levels.

On the energy front. Moscow, under Putin’s orders, is now evaluating what may eventually become a definitive pre-emptive halt of remaining exports to the EU, so they may be redirected to Asia at ever-climbing prices.

The EU after all is phasing Russian gas out: short-term contracts will be banned starting late April; full LNG ban by the end of the year; and ban on pipeline gas by 2027.

So a lot of LNG is already being directed to China, India, Thailand and Philippines. As in Follow The Money: LNG tankers diverted mid-voyage from European ports to Asia, offering higher spot prices.

Every day that the Strait of Hormuz remains closed – and it will remain closed – Russia captures extra market share, anywhere, at a premium, without breaking a sweat.

Secretary of Iranian Security Council Ali Larijani made it crystal clear in several languages, including Russian: when it comes to Hormuz, there are “open opportunities for everyone”, as in partnership with allies Russia and China; and it’s “a dead-end for warmongers”, as in the Epstein Syndicate and other hostile entities.

Russia certainly does not need the Strait of Hormuz open. Still, it received a nod and a wink from Larijani acknowledging their partnership.

The Epstein Syndicate war on Iran is becoming immensely profitable for the Russian state budget – something not seen since early 2022 price hikes. With the Strait of Hormuz closed and Qatar LNG completely out of the picture, Russian energy is the only game in town: no more a sanctioned commodity. Talk about the war on Iran weaponizing Russian oil and gas.

What will India learn from its double betrayal

India, by contrast, is a case that could break any psychoanalytic cabinet. New Delhi is chairing BRICS in 2026. It’s one of BRICS founders, and Iran is a full BRICS member. Every BRICS original member condemned the Epstein Syndicate war on Iran: Brazil, Russia, China, South Africa. India waited three days to basically say that Iran and the US should talk, “nicely”.

While Prime Minister Modi was signing defense deals with that death cult in West Asia – 40% of its weapons exports go to India – a fellow BRICS member was being bombed with some of these very same weapons.

Modi in effect was in Israel gushing about “motherland” (India) and “fatherland” (Israel) only 48 hours before the death cult in West Asia and the wider Epstein Syndicate launched their decapitation strike on Tehran.

For all practical purposes, the Modi gang privileged weapons deals – and Trump’s tariff relief – over international law.

And it gets even filthier.

India could not even issue a pro-forma statement condemning the American torpedo attack on Iranian warship Iris Dena on international waters – after the Indian Navy hosted Iris Dena in a military exercise. All BRICS founding members condemned it. Not India.

The controversy is still rolling: India may have even given the coordinates of the – unarmed and invited – Iris Dena to the Americans. And now Sri Lanka, under American pressure, refuses to hand over the dead bodies to Iran.

It will take time to evaluate how deep India’s betrayal blew BRICS apart. As it stands, BRICS are in a coma.

Perhaps there may be something auspicious coming out of it. And that’s thanks to unbounded Iranian finesse.

Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, India’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, had a phone call with Abbas Araghchi, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Iran.

Aragchi played it like a consumate gentleman. He did not lecture India, or exploded in rage – American-style. He was restrained, as in letting India know that Iran is fully aware New Delhi is in a very tight spot, and that Tehran interprets this strategic ambiguity as relatively useful, and not hostile.

In practical terms, Iran is virtually India’s neighbor: Iran’s southern Makran coast is right across the Arabian Sea from India’s western shore. Kandla Port in Gujarat to Chabahar in Sistan-Balochistan is just 550 nautical miles. Talk about a maritime corridor, which for centuries was a Maritime Silk Road between two civilizational states.

And now it’s all back, as part of the International North-South Transportation Corridor (INSTC), which links 3 BRICS: Russia, Iran and India, the theme of my ‘Golden Corridor’ documentary shot last year in Iran.

Moreover, Iran is the nearest major source of oil and LNG for India.

Russia is teaching India its own lesson. New Delhi will have to pay dearly for it – as in no more energy discounts, even if Moscow is ready to potentially raise India’s share of Russian crude imports to up to 40%, as confirmed by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak.

New Delhi may be out of the picture in terms of understanding the enormous stakes of the Epstein Syndicate war on Iran.

Moscow-Beijing though, are on a whole new level. They are investing on the optimal outcome: a war that the Empire of Chaos cannot win, and at a price it cannot afford to pay.

The stage is set. Russia briefed Iran on what was coming; Russia-China provide crucial intel and 24/7 satellite surveillance; and Decentralized Mosaic does the heavy lifting. The Exceptionalist strike “plan” was deeply compromised from the start.

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The recent statement by Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian asserting that Iran does not intend to attack neighboring countries generated widespread misinterpretations in several analytical circles. Many observers assumed the message was directed at the Gulf monarchies. However, such an interpretation makes little sense considering that American attacks against Iran are being launched from Sunni countries in the region. Moreover, Iran continues to frequently strike targets in those states.

A closer reading of the statement indicates that the message had a specific recipient: Azerbaijan. Pezeshkian’s remarks appear to have been primarily an attempt at de-escalation amid the possibility of a new front opening in the current war.

The tension began after the crash of a supposed Iranian drone at an airport in Azerbaijan. Authorities in Baku classified the episode as a possible hostile attack and responded with harsh rhetoric, including promises of the use of force. Military movements along the border were reported, suggesting that the incident could escalate into a direct confrontation.

Tehran immediately denied any involvement in the episode. Such a denial alone would not necessarily be enough to dispel suspicion. Nevertheless, several factors make the hypothesis of a deliberate Iranian attack unlikely. First, if the objective had been to strike Israeli or American strategic assets located on Azerbaijani territory, Iran would hardly have chosen such a limited and ineffective action as a simple drone incident that caused no significant damage.

Furthermore, Baku’s own reaction raises questions. Interstate conflicts are rarely triggered by isolated drone incidents, especially when there are no casualties or meaningful destruction. The speed and intensity of the response suggest that the episode may have been interpreted within an already tense political context, in which some actors might have been seeking a pretext for escalation.

Another relevant element concerns Iran’s demographic composition. A significant portion of the country’s population consists of ethnic Azeris, which creates an additional layer of sensitivity in bilateral relations. An open conflict with Azerbaijan could generate internal tensions and undesirable identity-based mobilizations within Iran itself. Historically, for this reason, Tehran has adopted a cautious posture toward Baku, avoiding direct confrontations whenever possible.

Given this context, alternative hypotheses have emerged to explain the incident. One possibility is a false-flag operation conducted by actors interested in dragging Azerbaijan into the current conflict between Iran, the United States, and Israel. Another possibility involves the use of electronic warfare capabilities to divert Iranian drones launched toward other directions and cause them to fall on Azerbaijani territory, thereby creating an artificially politicized incident.

Regardless of the origin of the episode, the decisive factor for understanding the crisis lies in Azerbaijan’s geopolitical alliances. In recent years, Baku has developed significant strategic cooperation with Israel, particularly in the fields of energy, defense and intelligence. However, this rapprochement creates tensions with another key Azerbaijani partner: Turkey. Ankara has traditionally regarded Baku as a natural ally based on ethnic, linguistic, and historical affinities between Turks and Azeris. The slogan “one nation, two states” symbolized this partnership for many years.

However, the regional scenario changed significantly after the fall of the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, an event that altered the strategic balance in the Middle East. With the weakening of the former geopolitical buffer zone represented by the Syrian state, competing expansionist projects began interacting more directly. On one side stands Turkey’s regional strategy, often described as neo-Ottomanism; on the other, the expansion of Zionist influence under the project commonly referred to as “Greater Israel.”

In this context, Turkey increasingly perceives Israel as a potential existential rival. The emergence of possible anti-Turkish military alignments in the Eastern Mediterranean – such as cooperation between Greece, Israel, and Cyprus – as well as Israeli involvement in the Horn of Africa, including the recognition of Somaliland, are clear signs of growing hostility between Tel Aviv and Ankara. For this reason, despite its many disagreements with Iran, Turkey currently sees Tehran’s role in the conflict as indirectly beneficial, since it contributes to weakening Israel and improving Turkish strategic security.

Within this framework, Turkey does not want its “brother nation” in the South Caucasus to attack Iran, as such a move would undermine Ankara’s broader strategic posture toward Israel. By threatening Iran, Baku risks ignoring its closest ethnic ally in favor of its partnership with Israel – something many Turkish observers view as unacceptable. Among Turkish nationalist circles – including Turkists, Turanists, neo-Ottomanists, and even Islamist circles – the possibility of Azerbaijan acting militarily against Iran under Israeli influence is widely interpreted as a move contrary to the interests of the broader Turkic world.

Thus, the current crisis reveals a complex web of rivalries and alliances. A direct confrontation between Iran and Azerbaijan would have profound consequences not only for the South Caucasus but also for the strategic balance involving Turkey, Israel, and other regional powers. It would also carry serious risks of internal instability within Iran due to its large ethnic Azeri population.

In this sense, Pezeshkian’s statement can be understood as an attempt to prevent a limited incident from evolving into a broader conflict. Whether this effort at de-escalation will be sufficient remains uncertain. What seems clear, however, is that a war between Iran and Azerbaijan would hardly benefit any regional actor other than those interested in deepening divisions and rivalries across the Eurasian space – namely Israel and the United States.

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“Our success will continue to hinge on America’s military power and the credibility of our assurances to our allies and partners in the Middle East.”

These were the words spoken in December 2013 by the Secretary of Defense of the Obama administration, Chuck Hagel, to the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council. That reinforced the historical guarantees given by Washington to its puppets, reaffirming the deceptive propaganda that the United States is the guardian of global security.

Promises like that are made by every administration, whether Democrat or Republican. Twelve years later, Donald Trump would reinforce that mantra again, addressing Qatar specifically: “The United States shall regard any armed attack on the territory (…) of Qatar as a threat to the peace and security of the United States.” According to Trump, the United States would respond to attacks against Qatar with “all lawful and appropriate measures,” “including militarily.”

Israel had just bombed Doha, targeting Hamas leaders. The entire speech by the president of the United States was completely hollow: the Patriot systems acquired for 10 billion dollars in the 2012 agreement, together with a new acquisition of Patriot and NASAMS systems for more than 2 billion dollars in 2019, did not intercept the Israeli bombardment. And the United States did not consider that attack a “threat to the peace and security of the United States” — on the contrary, they turned a blind eye to it.

Qatar hosts the U.S. Central Command, the U.S. Air Force and the British Royal Air Force at Al-Udeid Air Base, built with more than 8 billion dollars invested by the Qatari government. None of this has protected the Qatari people. Iran’s retaliation for the U.S.–Israel aggression revealed that the base itself (the largest U.S. military installation in the Middle East) is a fragile target: it was struck by a missile on the 3rd, which likely damaged or destroyed the AN/FPS-132 early-warning radar, one of the most important sensors in the U.S. missile defense system, valued at about $1.1 billion. Satellite images suggest significant damage to the equipment, which could compromise the ability to detect ballistic missiles at long distances.

In 2017, Saudi Arabia spent $110 billion on U.S. military equipment in an agreement that foresees spending more than $350 billion by next year — including Patriot and THAAD systems. Apparently, this enormous expenditure is not guaranteeing fully secure protection. Despite important interceptions in the current war, the U.S. government instructed part of its personnel to flee Saudi Arabia to protect themselves — which reveals that even the United States does not trust the defensive capability it sells to others. In fact, in the early hours of the 3rd, two drones struck the U.S. embassy in Riyadh and, two days earlier, U.S. soldiers were also targeted.

Since 1990, Gulf countries have spent nearly $500 billion purchasing weapons and protection systems from the United States, according to data from the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA), the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) database and reports from the Congressional Research Service (CRS). The construction and maintenance of defense infrastructure by the United States is almost entirely financed by the host countries. All of this is being blown apart by the legitimate Iranian retaliation.

The ineffectiveness of the protection provided by the United States had already been demonstrated in last year’s war, but also by the launches from Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis toward Israel, which shattered the myth surrounding the Iron Dome. In a certain sense, the success of many of those attacks represented a humiliation for the all-powerful American arms industry. The several MQ-9 Reaper drones shot down by the Yemenis represented losses amounting to $200 million — the drones used by the Houthis to shoot down the American aircraft cost an insignificant fraction to produce.

The ineffectiveness of American protection also reveals the extremely low quality of the products of its military complex. This complex is dominated by a small handful of monopolies such as Lockheed Martin and Raytheon which, without competitors and with clients subservient to the American government, see no need to make the maximum effort to produce weapons and systems of unsurpassable quality. Finally, corruption runs rampant in this field, and inferior peoples such as those of the Gulf do not deserve to consume products of the same quality as those destined for America — apparently their regimes are willing to pay dearly for anything.

Iran, with all its experience of more than four decades dealing with aggression, has known how to use these vulnerabilities very well. Leaders at the highest levels of the Iranian state publicly insist that peace in the Middle East is impossible while U.S. bases remain operational in the region. Saeed Khatibzadeh, Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister, stated, “We have no option but to put an end to the existence of American presence in the Persian Gulf area.” These appeals are certainly circulating in neighboring countries — both among the general population and within the armed and political forces.

The Persian nation is not only attacking military installations but also strategic targets that affect the nerve center of the Gulf countries’ economies: the energy industry — in retaliation for the bombings of its own oil infrastructure by the United States and Israel. These Iranian attacks place even greater pressure on the puppet regimes of imperialism to do something to stop their masters. The obvious solution would be to prevent the use of their territory for aggression against Iran, which would necessarily imply closing the military bases.

Although all these countries are dictatorships that repress any dissent, as the suffering of the civilian population increases, popular discontent may become uncontrollable. Their rulers know this and are already racking their brains to find a safe way out of this potentially explosive situation.

Will the peoples of these countries swallow all the lying propaganda that their regimes — fed by the lie industry of the United States and Israel — try to tell them, that Iran is the aggressor and responsible for the attacks? But why do the United States build missile launch bases so close to residential neighborhoods? Clearly, just like the Israelis, this is not a “moral” and “ethical” army: those people exist to serve as human shields for American soldiers. The logic of protection is inverted: it is not U.S. anti-aircraft systems that serve to protect the Saudi, Emirati or Qatari people — it is these second-class citizens who must die to protect the occupying forces.

Moreover, U.S. military bases frequently house soldiers responsible for crimes against local populations. This became explicit during the Iraq War. For example, the rape of a 14-year-old girl named Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi, followed by her murder and the killing of her family after soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division invaded her house in Mahmudiya in 2004. Or the rapes documented over years during the invasion of Iraq, together with the practice of sexual exploitation and prostitution carried out in areas near American military installations such as Balad Air Base, used by the 4th Infantry Division.

On the 1st, U.S. Marines killed at least nine protesters who attempted to storm the American consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, in protest against the criminal aggression against Iran that had already massacred about 150 girls in an Iranian school the previous day. This is what imperialist presence in the countries of the Middle East, Central Asia, Africa and Latin America serves for: to rape, murder and use the natives themselves as human shields, not to protect them.

How long will it take before they rise up against this true military occupation? Probably not long.

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Join up the dots and you come to the same conclusion. America and Israel are the biggest losers in the Iran war. But not Trump.

A recent poll in the U.S. concluded that Donald Trump tells the truth only about 3 percent of the time during his public announcements at press conferences. Perhaps it was his stint at being a celebrity on TV that taught him how gullible people in America are when fed the most fanciful, moronic lies a leading figure can tell, through the American media. Of course, it’s also about the journalists as well, and if there’s one thing that the Trump administrations have taught us, it is how poor the general level of journalism is in America these days. American journalists are not afraid to ask difficult questions or disbelieve what they are told. They simply don’t know how to do this in the first place.

Covering the Iran war, it is breathtaking, some of the brazen lies he tells while being questioned by journalists who are complicit in his dirty work. The mere idea that Iran, for example, acquired a Tomahawk missile and used it to kill its own schoolgirls is beyond absurd. How could journalists not question such a reply when it is so clear that Trump is lying through his teeth?

Because of this lying, we can see how Trump works, though. Unlike other U.S. presidents who have some shame and discomfort in lying to the press, Trump suffers no such handicap and so can take on bolder, more daring ventures on the global stage. In this environment, there is no respect for international law or even due process within the political framework of how Congress works. Trump hasn’t worked out how to defeat Iran, but he has all the contingent narratives to lay out afterwards to explain why everything that goes wrong is not his fault. We see that he is already preparing himself for the day of judgement by the press pack in the coming days and weeks by telling them that it was Jared Kushner, Marco Rubio and Steve Witkoff who told him to hit Iran.

The direction towards these three is revealing. Of course, we have learned the simple rule of Trump when it comes to decisions. When things go well, everything was his decision; when things go badly, blame others.

And so, the blaming of these three is a clear example and acknowledgement by Trump that the Iran war was a failure. The U.S. didn’t bring about regime change nor seek any military concessions from its government. In fact, it’s really hard to establish one minor point where you could say that the Americans chalked up any kind of victory, given the high energy prices around the world and the Straits of Hormuz still closed to oil tankers. Despite the U.S. being a net exporter of oil, the crisis is raising pump prices back home, and so it is Trump’s support base of blue-collar workers who are, once again, paying the price for his failed policies.

This last point about the Straits of Hormuz is worth taking stock of when we examine Trump’s lies, which just get increasingly fatuous by the day. It’s like we’re dealing with a child in power who has lost sense of any of the realities around him. One of Trump’s claims which he repeats over and over again is that the U.S. navy has completely destroyed its Iranian counterpart, and that all ships have been sunk. And yet there is no video evidence at all to support this, official or even just phone footage from even one U.S. sailor’s phone. Could this be another massive Trump lie, given that he is struggling to prove to the American people or the press that the operation has been a success? Very convenient that all Iranian vessels happen to have been sunk. Perhaps the truth sunk and the Iranian vessels are still operational. The saddest thing is that not one American “journalist” is even able at a press conference, or even in their copy, to ask the most obvious question about this claim, which is: “If there is no Iranian navy, then why are the Straits of Hormuz still closed to ships passing through?”

Or is it that the Iranian navy has been destroyed, but Iran’s control of the shipping and its threat against America’s aircraft carriers is so strong and prevalent that the U.S. navy doesn’t have the capability to break the siege?

Trump is busy building up a case to make him look less culpable in the whole war, which in itself is a massive admission that it has all gone horribly wrong. These indicators are subtle and sometimes are not easy to spot, like his recent comment that GCC countries helped the U.S. bomb Iran. So the mighty U.S. navy, air force and army did not come up to scratch and had to rely on regional partners? The president needs some help here with his messaging, as he is clearly trying to spread the blame and reduce his own importance, perhaps as a ploy to not only protect himself from impeachment but from facing international criminal courts.

The lie that GCC countries bombed Iran is even more laughable than the one about Iran bombing its own schoolgirls, but with no real journalists around who are even able to ask the most obvious questions, he’ll be able to get away with it, despite the odd dichotomy of logic shooting himself in the foot. The truth about the so-called Iran War is that almost nothing we see on our TV screens is anywhere near the truth. Sometimes it is simply omission, as in the case of the real level of destruction in Israel, which is not being reported due to a shameful agreement struck between U.S. networks and Israel to block the truth and only show bombs which have hit civilian targets rather than military ones. The biggest lie possibly concerns the reasons behind it, although blithering buffoons like Lindsey Graham can hardly keep the lid on it. Money. Do even Trump’s more vociferous supporters doubt for one moment that he hasn’t made billions out of it by manipulating markets?

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When you dance with the devil, the dance isn’t done until you are done. U.S. President Trump may have believed he could manage Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s maniacal ambitions and succeed in a contest for power; sometimes hidden, other times open. Until February 27^th, considering the ending of the 12 Day War last summer, and also UNSC 2803 on Gaza, Trump appeared to have the upper hand. But on February 28th, the script would be flipped, resulting in an honorless war on Iran; not only on the Iranian government, military, and state institutions, but on the Iranian people themselves.

The victims in this are chiefly the people of Iran, starting with some 165 Iranian school girls at the Minab school in southern Iran, killed by Israeli strikes, though Iran will not remain victims as they push to become victors. Yet this conflict has other casualties too. Trump, MAGA, and whatever efforts at rebuilding American credibility appear to be among the ruins of the US-Israeli attack on the sovereign nation of Iran, and the despicable assassination of its leader Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei. It appears that the U.S. has passed the point of no return.

The solemn burial of the 165 school girls wantonly slaughtered by U.S.-Israeli attacks

Some time ago the U.S. pushed the world into mayhem in the domain of international law. The Western powers had, since the end of the 20^th century Cold War, begun to shift away from a formal acknowledgement of international law, and pursued the rhetoric and practice of a so-called “rules based order”; one where the rules were unilaterally created by the Washington consensus, and were fluid, constantly shifting, conveniently and hypocritically to meet the needs of the American imperial machine. Trump’s mandate, from the American people, was to restore international law and credibility. But in the 47^th administration, there were some disconcerting signs early on that this would not be the case, even if somewhat hilarious. Threats made against Greenland and Canada were more comical than worrisome at the time. The strange (if mutually agreeable) outcomes with Venezuela seemed to have been a win-win for both countries. Nationalists laughed, globalists cried; but it’s all fun and games until it’s not.

So today to describe the U.S.-Israel attack on Iran as “violations of international law”, or “war crimes”, while no doubt true, feel very much like meaningless technical phrases from a bygone era. And in this new day and age, it is therefore clearer and more germane to simply describe these viscerally as murderous and valourless. It is mass murder, for at the time of writing, more than a thousand Iranian people have been killed in these wanton attacks, and this is simply ignominious, for Iran posed no imminent threat and the U.S. was engaged with Iran in negotiations towards a peaceable resolution of their differences.  It was right when the U.S. and Iran had all but tentatively agreed that Israel notified the U.S. that it was about to strike, and it is important to meditate on the profoundly dishonorable and discrediting nature of the U.S. going in on the attack instead of pushing to halt it.

Trump apparently made the grievous error, one of potentially world-changing proportions, to join in with these attacks, unlike the way his administration handled Israel’s attacks last summer. We have arrived at a catastrophic inflection point for the MAGA project and American credibility. It is impossible to underscore enough the extraordinary damage done to the U.S.’s efforts to improve its reputation under Trump, after decades of neoconservative and neoliberal imperialist adventurism in the post-Cold War period which ostensibly the Trump project was aimed at reversing.

Nuclear Blackmail?

Former CIA officer John Kiriakou claimed back in November of 2025 that Netanyahu threatened Trump with Israeli nuclear strikes on Iran, if Trump did not go along with a conventional strike at the time. Kiriakou says this information comes to him from a trusted source, and Kiriakou’s own credentials, history, and credibility as a whistle-blower who served time in U.S. prison as a result of his commitment to truth, combined with his unique access to insider information, leads us to give high credence to his testimony.

Former CIA Counter-terrorism office John Kiriakou in the November 2025 interview

According to Kiriakou:

“The reason though, I’m told that Donald Trump decided to bomb Iran, was that the Israelis said for the first time, ‘If you don’t bomb Iran to take out these deep bunkers, we are going to use nuclear weapons.’ And they have never threatened that before. And so Trump said, bombing Iran might actually save us from the start of World War III, if it keeps the Israelis from using nuclear weapons.”

In addition, we are forced to account for the conclusions of ex Saudi intel chief Prince Turki al-Faisal, who explains that Netanyahu “convinced” Trump to support him on February 28th, concluding that “This is Netanyahu’s war”.

Al Faisal’s interview with Amanpour on CNN, March 4, 2026

Trump has apparently been outmaneuvered by the Zionist establishment, even if this was the result of nuclear blackmail, and has driven MAGA smack into a Zionist brick wall, while we should caution that these are unfolding events and this is but the read of things as of today.

Trump has been trapped, compromised, and outplayed by Netanyahu and the Israeli establishment, resulting in U.S. participation in a horrifically discrediting and strategically counterproductive war on Iran. While Trump might attempt to salvage the situation, more will rely on the diplomatic and strategic intervention of BRICS leaders like Russia, China, and even India, to de-escalate this crisis.

Eliminating Khamenei was strategically self-defeating even in the narrowest and immediate sense, as the Ayatollah was arguably a moderating force on the nuclear question, and Iran’s technocratic system ensures institutional continuity regardless of leadership decapitation. It would be understandable, even expected, now if Iran were indeed to pursue nuclear weapons, assessing what has happened in some part no doubt because they do not apparently have one now. Which is not to say they ought to, but who could readily blame them today if they did?

The Kiriakou claim about Israeli nuclear blackmail, if true, represents nuclear terrorism by definition, but there is a fundamental flaw in the logic of compliance: if Trump bombed Iran to prevent an Israeli nuclear strike last summer, nothing prevents Israel from issuing the same threat again with escalating demands. The leverage problem is not resolved by submission to it, which is perhaps then what we have seen again on February 28th.

Rubio’s disavowal of the Khamenei assassination is another strange factor in this. Is it plausible deniability, or a reflection of team Trump having lost control of the situation?  Kiriakou’s claim of Israeli nuclear threats against Trump, Saudi complaints about the lack of defense for US regional bases, Prince Turki al-Faisal’s conclusion that Netanyahu pushed Trump into the war, and reports of Iranian retaliatory strikes on U.S. bases for which the Americans were underprepared, all lend towards the conclusion that the U.S. lost control of the situation and did not seek a confrontation where increasingly successful negotiations were merely a ruse.

Khamenei’s Assassination: Strategic Futility

The assassination of Ayatollah Khamenei was counterproductive on its own terms. The Ayatollah was elderly, physically declining, and had perhaps a few years remaining. If the objective was to prevent Iranian nuclearization, Khamenei’s continued leadership served that purpose better than his removal.

Iran operates as a “meritocratic technocracy” organized around organizations of experts, where individuals are promoted to below their level of competence: the next tier of leadership is perpetually prepared. This is a system governed by institutions, not men, with the sole exception of the Supreme Ayatollah’s interpretive authority. Decapitation strikes against such a system are structurally futile, and in terms of morale within Iran, these do not serve to reduce it but to strengthen their resolve and unity.

Trump’s previous behavior is inconsistent with the interpretation that he simply wanted war with Iran. Historical friction with Pompeo and Bolton, friction with Netanyahu, the fact that military conditions favored an attack far more in 2017-2018, and the events of the 12-Day War in which Trump forced Israeli jets to turn around, as they were trying to break the ceasefire just agreed to, in such a way that would pull the U.S. in the way we see now. These all point in the direction of Trump’s preference for non-military solutions at times when military conditions and a more coherent casus belli were more favorable than now. We may recall Trump being quite irate at Israel for trying to break the ceasefire:

“Uh they violated, but Israel violated it, too. Israel, as soon as we made the deal, they came out and they dropped a load of bombs the likes of which I’ve never seen before. The biggest load that we’ve seen. I’m not happy with Israel. You know, when when I say, “Okay, now you have 12 hours.” You don’t go out in the first hour and just drop everything you have on them. So, I’m not happy with them. I’m not happy with Iran either. But I’m really unhappy if Israel is going out this morning because of one rocket that didn’t land that was shot perhaps by mistake that didn’t land. I’m not happy about that. You know what we have? We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f*ck they’re doing. Do you understand that?”

Trump’s irate comments to the Guardian about Israel’s bellicosity at the end of the 12 Day War

Conclusively, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s statements to press more or less confirm that Israel initiated the conflict, and the U.S. went ahead and joined it, on the rationale that Iran would retaliate against both parties even if Israel was the chief provocateur. While from the perspective of international law, the U.S. had no business threatening Iran in the first place, within that microcosm of reality, there is a certain logic to it. Iran, after all, is not in the business of being fooled by any sort of ‘good cop/bad cop’ antics, nor would they let the U.S. off the hook by buying into some sort of plausible deniability. Moreover, Iran had already warned the U.S. that any strike from either party would result in a firm military response aimed at numerous U.S. military bases and installations in the region. Rubio accounts that the Pentagon’s assessment was that because Iran would strike the U.S. anyhow, even though Israel was the aggressor, then the U.S. had better join in on the initial attack in order to mitigate their own losses.

But Rubio’s response points to a broader reality. Rubio, on behalf of the administration, had effectively shifted blame onto Israel and the Pentagon, and in so doing attempted to deflect responsibility and tell a story that “our hands were tied” by the logic of the conflict. It’s a fair point, within the problematic setup that the U.S. had created for itself in the first place, we should note.

At the end of the day, it is most probable that Israel will begin soon to pressure the U.S. to engage in ceasefire talks with the Iranians. According to Israel’s Ynet, the Americans themselves apparently tried to immediately end the conflict right as it started, but because the Israelis (if we are to believe Rubio) had assassinated Khamenei, the Iranians weren’t having it. After all, the U.S. or Israel has now attacked Iran three times already, entirely unprovoked. Iran has planned for a multi-year war, and Khamenei’s strategic legacy was one of preparing Iran for such a conflict, with a victory strategy contingent upon decentralizing their forces within Iran, withstanding ongoing and major strikes on buildings associated with traditional command and control in Tehran, the ensuing havoc upon the global economy that such a war would create including the Strait of Hormuz, combined with Israel’s relative inability to take punches for too long – the same metric that forced Israel to push the U.S. for a ceasefire at the end of the 12 Day War last summer.

The attacks on U.S. bases in the region are meant to disrupt the ability for the aggressors to resupply and support Israel, paving the way for increasingly effective attacks on Israeli military targets like we have seen before.

Trump is no doubt in store for a very painful lesson due to his honorless bellicosity in service of Netanyahu’s unhinged war-mongering. Does he have a trick up his sleeve? Will he once again pull a rabbit out of the hat? He has surprised the world numerous times, so time will tell. But as things look, his project appears burnt and there is little sympathy for his own political survival among large swathes of his former supporters. Can he get them back? Can dead school children be brought back to life? There’s no putting the toothpaste back in the tube. At the same time, if Iran succeeds at hitting the U.S. and Israel hard, and Trump is able to end this conflict sooner than later, the world will be better off for it. As for Israel’s alleged nuclear blackmail, that’s a gift that keeps on giving, and one that needs to be confronted.

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A little clarity for everyone

Pakistan has attacked Afghanistan. American aircraft carriers have broken toilets. The embassies of twelve states are calling on their citizens and diplomatic staff to leave Iran. How are all these events connected? Let’s take a strategic and geopolitical look.

The situation after January’s “Operation 13 Days,” in which Western intelligence services plotted and attempted yet another regime change in the Islamic Republic of Iran through the old method of organized protests, was one of encirclement of Iran by U.S. armed forces, concurrent with negotiations between the American and Iranian governments. The whole world cried out against the U.S., which, with its usual gangster-like arrogance, put Iran under pressure, creating no small number of problems.

But what if the perspective were broader than that?

From a strategic point of view, both military and diplomatic, what we have seen is this: the U.S. and Iran open diplomatic talks; the U.S. surrounds them with its military force. If we stick to a technical analysis, this gesture has meant putting up a wall of military defense between Iran and… Israel.

That’s right: Israel is the country that is trying to provoke an escalation in the Middle East, pressuring the U.S. for authorization and military support to attack Iran. Without the U.S., Israel would risk ending up like a squashed fly, making a lot of noise and disturbing everyone, but it wouldn’t take much to wipe it out. This link is essential. If we admit this possibility, which, I repeat, makes strategic sense, we realize that there is an attempt at collaboration between the U.S. and Iran to redraw the maps of the Middle East. And this makes sense and is indispensable for reducing the power of the Zionist entity, reshaping Arab influences, and agreeing on zones of influence. An absurd idea? We will see in six or seven months.

If we look more closely, we realize that it is Israel itself that has tried to detonate the conflict, creating various enmities and breaking points. A method already known on the international scene. And this is where the Pakistan issue comes in.

When plumbers are lacking

If we broaden our view, we see that Israel has meanwhile tried to run for cover and has rushed to find some new allies. The first was India. The country led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi is thirsty for military technology, particularly nuclear technology, and with the agreement signed with Netanyahu, it will have access to Israeli and American technology. This choice is consistent with both the political stance of the current Indian leadership and the concrete needs of the world’s most populous country.

In order to be a power, it must have access to a range of technologies that will allow it to remain at the top of the competition, technologies that it cannot obtain from China, its long-standing rival. Israel is well aware of this, which is why it has stepped in and tried to fragment the rapprochement that had been achieved thanks to Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which had managed to bring the RIC (Russia-India-China), the three great superpowers, to the table, reaching a historic agreement on cooperation and healing the animosities of the past.

And how does Israel go against China as well, trying to create a zone of negotiation with the U.S., which cannot stand China? It inserts itself into Pakistan, which has excellent relations with China and is also a rival of India. Two possible victories in one fell swoop. But perhaps even more than that.

The detonation of a conflict between Pakistan and Afghanistan, in fact, does what the U.S. did not want to do: set the region on fire, but in the East, not in the West. In this way, Iran finds itself indirectly involved, since the well-known tensions with the Balochistan region, between Pakistan and Iran, and also the political relations that have stabilized positively with the new Afghan leadership, are now being called into question and become the subject of a series of problems to be resolved.

This choice is still a Plan B, but it makes sense. By setting the region ablaze, Israel is aiming for a change in the balance of power in the medium term, not immediately. The only way to escalate the situation is to involve the U.S. in the Pakistan-Afghanistan affair, perhaps by offering the Washington government the opportunity to return to Kabul. What is certain is that the USS Ford, with 35 hydraulic engineers on board, did not suffer a ‘random’ failure of its toilets: the tampering with one of the largest warships in the world (and other ships as well) is a simple but effective way of telling Israel that no, they have no intention of engaging in a war in the Middle East right now to satisfy the follies of the genocidal Netanyahu.

Then there is the other player that is being called into the field, Russia, which has kept its distance for the moment, leaving the U.S. to deal with Iran. Russia has already made a significant retreat from the region with the loss of exclusive access to the Caucasus, due to the century-old agreement between the U.S., Armenia, and Azerbaijan. Russia, which mediated the transition in Afghanistan with incredible foresight, could now be called upon, precisely by Israel, to have its say. In this way, Israel also aims to disrupt the hard work of rapprochement between the U.S. and Russia, which objectively constitutes a major barrier to Zionist ambitions, but this could also become an opportunity for Russia and the U.S. to disqualify Israel from the game. How? By allowing at least part of this escalation to come to light, revealing the Israeli mind behind it all, in order to completely delegitimize Israeli authority and its influence in the world.

It is not yet entirely clear who is pushing whom in this strange conflict between Pakistan and Afghanistan, nor how things will end between Iran and the U.S… what is certain is that the situation is heating up and could become very, very dangerous if Israel is not stopped in time.

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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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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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It’s 2026, but for America and its subjects, it’s still the Dark Ages, with Trump as a leader who bears resemblance to the Belgian leader of the first crusade to the promised land of Israel: Godfrey of Bouillon, a very rich nobleman. He was proclaimed the first king of Jerusalem, or, as the city is called in Arabic, al-Quds. The foot soldiers, comparable to the current American army and civilians, were incited by monks, preachers, and the ruling noble elites to go and fight against the barbaric Muslims, who, so the story went, were so cruel and barbaric that they killed children and babies. Of course, this wasn’t true, and even then, it was already full-blown propaganda. Oil was not yet a factor, but other resources, “Lebensraum” (living space), and a fanatical Catholic (now Zionist Protestant Christians in the U.S.) religion in which practices such as torturing people were normal, and in which so-called witches and unbelievers were burned at the stake in front of castles and monasteries, were the reason.

Trump and his administration are the personification of this devilish cult called the Crusaders, or in Europe, the Knights Templar. These days, we should call them the Epstein cult, given the rape of girls and boys and the scurrilous killing of people in countries where they have no business. It’s frightening how similar they are to medieval Europeans.

Take, for example, the new U.S. Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, who is completely obsessed with the Crusades. Pete Hegseth’s tattoos represent the new “crusader” — or rather the new Epstein cult. He has the Jerusalem Cross tattooed on his chest: a large cross surrounded by four smaller crosses, originally a symbol of the Kingdom of Jerusalem during the Crusades led by, among others, Godfried of Bouillon. Since the first attacks on Iran, numerous complaints have been received from U.S. military personnel (from an army organization). Members of all branches of the armed forces claim that high-ranking officers are linking the mission abroad to the fulfillment of Christian prophecy.

U.S. Commanders and generals have been ordered by Trump and Hegseth to indoctrinate their foot soldiers with medieval slogans: “The war with Iran is part of God’s plan and that President Donald Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran, to cause Armageddon, and to mark the return of Jesus to earth.” This return will, of course, take place on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, where the long-awaited Mahdi of the Muslims will return, and the Messiah of the Jews is also expected there. In other words, the Mount of Olives will be a hive of activity.

For the average citizens, confronted in our so-called “modern” age with artificial intelligence by the American leader of the new crusade, Trump, they are simultaneously confronted with a crusade against Iran and Islam. Godfried Trump labels the people of Iran as infidels, barbarians who must be exterminated — the utter madness of a sect that, under the guise of MAGA, is leading humanity towards a new catastrophe.

But Americans and this current Crusader-Epstein cult know nothing of history, nothing at all about the Persian Empire which existed for centuries (under various rulers) when America was still inhabited by the Native Americans, the original inhabitants who were exterminated by the Europeans, whose descendants now rule America and never evolved into a “civilized” society.

Iran in 2026 is a nation with a rich history and culture that the Epstein-Crusader cult wants to destroy for what they consider their “brothers in faith”: Israel, a country that has existed since 1948. Of course, it was already inhabited by Jews 2,000 years ago or so, but not as it has evolved into so-called modern Israel. It is built not on the Western model of so-called democracy but rather on fascism and, of course, a kind of Epstein-Crusader mentality, where Arabs are compared to the Nazis in Germany and must be exterminated.

These modern-day Templars of America, like their European ancestors the Crusaders, are now guilty of many crimes, like the recent murder of schoolchildren in Minab. Even the UN education agency UNESCO states that the bombing of a primary school during the U.S. and Israeli military strikes on Iran constitutes a serious violation of humanitarian law. The rockets reportedly destroyed a girls’ primary school in Minab, in southern Iran, killing approximately 150 girls and wounding nearly 100.

These crusaders also don’t value culture, simply because they are cultural barbarians. The historic Golestan Palace in Tehran, a UNESCO World Heritage site, was almost completely destroyed by Israeli and American airstrikes. The Golestan Palace, which served as the administrative center of the Qajar dynasty for many years (from the 18th century onwards), contains several historic halls known for their intricate architecture and decorative art. But these are, after all, crusader-barbarians who bomb everything, descendants of Europeans and Israelis traumatized by the Holocaust to the point of confusing Arabs with Nazis, as I said. Add to that their fanatical and ideological religion, and it’s a cocktail of catastrophe for all of humanity. ISIS was nothing compared to this. But ISIS was created and trained by the CIA and Mossad in Camp Bucca, Iraq, in 2003.

But by attacking Iran, they’ve made a mistake. They’re not the Arabs of the Gulf States; it’s a country in Western Asia with its ancient culture and beliefs. They haven’t been indoctrinated by the barbarians of America. Of course, some of them are, who emigrated after the Shah fell. In October 1971, the “last Shah” of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, organized what is often described as one of the most expensive and extravagant celebrations in history. The event was held to celebrate 2,500 years of the Persian Empire and to position the Shah as a major world leader. This extravagance, while the population lived in poverty, was one of the triggers for the revolution in 1979.

Arabs in the Gulf countries have little to no real culture; they were nomads who became rich thanks to America’s oil. This is different from the people of the Levant, who have a tapestry of cultures. These Gulf countries are now being attacked by Iran, not the countries themselves, but primarily the American bases and the assets of the head of the Crusaders, Godfried Trump.

Godfried Trump’s high-profile tour of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (Dubai) in May 2025 was aimed at securing a reported $2 trillion in investment deals that are now under pressure from Iran’s attacks, as well as the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. These fabricated countries receive all their water and food supplies through the Strait of Hormuz, and of course, oil is transported via the Strait of Hormuz to the U.S. and Europe—a clever tactic from Iran.

How will it end? America and its Western allies, the European countries, will likely lose in Iran, and this will ultimately mean the end of their final crusades to the promised land. Just as the Crusaders at the end of the 12th century were stopped by united Muslim armies led by Saladin (Ayyubid Sultanate), followed by the Mamluk Sultanate, which finally expelled them from the Holy Land in 1291. But who is the new Saladin of the Arab or Persian world? Saladin was a Kurd, but unfortunately, Kurds often play the role of traitors these days, so we should not look for him from that quarter, nor from an Arab leader. I assume a Persian scenario. Perhaps the new Saladin will arise from the Iranian people.

The statue of Saladin stands at the entrance of the Al-Hamidiyeh Souk close to the Umayyad mosque in Damascus, former Syria, which, tragically, has already fallen to the Crusader caliphate. It should teach the Arabs to stand on their own two feet; the domination has lasted too long.

Let the new Saladin rise from Iran and destroy the Crusader dream once and for all… but many lives will be lost—innocent civilians, presidents, and politicians. The struggle against these new crusaders will be very tough. The good news is that the American and European crusaders of 2026 have awakened and captivated at least 300 million Shiite Muslims worldwide. This amounts to approximately 10-15% of the total global Muslim population. They form the majority in Iran, Iraq, Azerbaijan, and Bahrain, with significant numbers in Pakistan, India, Yemen, Syria and Lebanon, and they are the new enemies of the Epstein-Templar empire.

Christianity is in decline in the West, particularly in Europe, where Sunni refugees form the majority of believers. Tragically, this is leading to the decline of Europe. In America, the predominantly white population is Protestant, with an extreme ideology. They are essentially Christian Zionists. For them, Israel is number one and America is number two. Therefore, the new crusade of the current Templar government, led by Godfried Trump, with Secretary of War Pete Hegseth a.k.a. Baldwin I of Jerusalem, is an unmitigated catastrophe, cursed with the ideology of the Hollywood film: “Kingdom of Heaven.”