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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.

Follow Joaquin on Telegram @NewResistance or on X/Twitter @XoaquinFlores

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In recent days, new reports about attempts by the United States to mobilize Kurdish militias against Iran have revived an old geopolitical question in the Middle East: how long will the Kurds continue to serve as shock troops for Western strategies? Recent history shows that this role has repeatedly ended in tragedy for the Kurds themselves.

Over the past decades, the Kurds have often been portrayed by Washington and its allies as a “natural partner” in the Middle East. In practice, however, this relationship has been deeply instrumental. Whenever a new regional crisis emerges, sectors of the Western establishment once again look to Kurdish armed groups as a convenient tool to pressure governments considered hostile. Today, the same logic is resurfacing in the context of the war against Iran.

The idea of fomenting Kurdish insurgencies inside Iranian territory follows the same script seen in other scenarios. The problem is that this strategy completely ignores the military and political realities of the region. Kurdish militias simply do not possess the strategic capacity to confront a consolidated state such as the Islamic Republic of Iran. Unlike low-intensity conflicts, a direct confrontation with Tehran would mean facing a sophisticated military apparatus, an efficient internal security network, and a highly resilient state structure.

In practical terms, any attempt to launch an armed insurgency inside Iran would likely be quickly neutralized. The predictable result would be the destruction of the militias involved and the suffering of local Kurdish populations. In fact, recent experiences in other countries already demonstrate the limits of such projects.

In Syria, Kurdish militias gained prominence during the Civil War and received extensive military support from the United States. However, this partnership proved extremely fragile. When Washington’s strategic interests shifted, Kurdish forces were left exposed to external offensives and regional pressures they were unable to contain, as recently seen in attacks by the HTS government against Kurdish regions.

The situation has been even clearer in Turkey. There, decades of armed confrontation involving Kurdish organizations have resulted in repeated military defeats. The Turkish state has repeatedly demonstrated that it possesses the capacity to crush ethnic insurgencies within its territory. Instead of advancing toward autonomy or political recognition, the cycle of confrontation has only reinforced the marginalization of these communities.

These precedents raise a fundamental question: why repeat the same mistake in relation to Iran?

Strategic reality suggests that any military adventure against Tehran would have a predictable outcome. The Iranian state possesses sufficient military resources, mobilization capacity, and internal legitimacy to rapidly crush insurgent militias. Attempting to turn the Kurds into a Western-backed instrument of war against Iran would only create unnecessary suffering for this population.

Beyond the military dimension, there is also an ideological and cultural issue that is often ignored. In several contemporary Kurdish political circles – especially those influenced by Western-backed structures – it has become common to adopt cultural agendas aligned with Western liberal discourse, including progressive identity politics and concepts associated with the so-called “woke” culture, as seen in the feminist and “queer” battalions in Syria.

While these agendas may resonate in certain Western political environments, they often distance Kurdish movements from the sociopolitical realities of the Middle East. Rather than strengthening their regional position, this alignment deepens the perception that some Kurdish groups act as extensions of external geopolitical projects. If the real goal is to achieve lasting political representation and stability for Kurdish communities, the path is likely a different one.

Historically, stateless peoples who achieved recognition and political rights did so through institutional integration and negotiation within the states in which they lived – not through separatism, the importation of foreign ideas, and permanent insurgencies fueled by external powers.

In this sense, the most rational strategy for the Kurds would be to abandon the role of auxiliary force for Western agendas. Instead of serving as cannon fodder in conflicts that benefit other actors, Kurdish movements should focus their efforts on internal political processes, seeking cultural rights, institutional participation, and peaceful coexistence.

Stability in the Middle East will hardly be achieved through the permanent fragmentation of the region’s states. On the contrary, peace tends to emerge when different communities find ways to coexist within existing national structures.

If Kurdish leaders understand this strategic reality, they may finally break the historical cycle of external instrumentalization. Only then will there be room for a future in which the Kurds cease to be disposable pieces in geopolitical games and begin to act as legitimate political actors within their own countries.

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In recent days, a baptism of fake news has been hitting people’s social media timelines which mostly confuses readers about the real situation on the ground when examining the war between Iran and Israel/U.S. Few understand or appreciate just how much of it is being produced by Mossad and the CIA as part of the information war which is necessary, given how unprepared the U.S. was and how subsequently badly the war is going for Donald Trump. Even the messaging is a mess, with at least three versions of why the U.S. entered the war, with the final explanation given by Trump being that Iran is run by religious fanatics – a claim hard to take seriously given that Paula White-Cain, Trump’s spiritual advisor, has broken the internet with her speaking-in-tongues spasm at an evangelistic gathering.

Fake news is creating a lot of confusion and misreporting, yet it is hardly surprising that after six days of war, Trump will be looking for regional partners to help him go ahead with a ground invasion – when it becomes more obvious to him that this is the only way a country can be taken, even though the U.S. has an atrocious record of trying this itself and failing spectacularly.

And so, news of “the Kurds” being ready to fight for the U.S. against Iranian soldiers within Iran has to be seen in the correct light. Whenever you read sloppy western journalists’ copy and such terms as “the Kurds” are used, it’s worth noting that you’re in a grey zone of truthful reporting. The news which emerged on the 6^th of March, of Kurds ready to fight in Iran, is partially true. One particular Kurdish group, an opposition group in exile from Iran, is ready to take up arms but have told journalists only if some of Iran’s weapon dumps can be destroyed first.

But there are two things about the Kurds in the Middle East always worth remembering. One, they are not united, despite being spread across at least four countries – Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran. And secondly, they seem to be constantly betrayed by anyone who teams up with them, almost like a curse.

What’s interesting about those who have been quoted from this group living in exile in Iraq is that they have hinted that they take it for granted that America will short-change them. The problem with such an approach to any partnership is that if you believe you are going to be cheated, then there is only one way to prepare for it: to cheat those who you expect are about to cheat you.

It’s hard to know if these reports about this particular Kurdish group being ready to be part of – or be the sole member of – a ground force can be taken seriously. But it is clear to see that other Kurdish groups in the region are not following suit. In fact, the president of the KRG in Iraq has gone as far as to state that his government and its forces will not support Israel and the U.S. in their endeavours in Iran.

This doesn’t bode well for Israel and the U.S. The only real group which could and should sign up to attacking Iran would logically be the Kurds, who have always kept good relations with Israel, and so it could be argued that their geopolitics are aligned with those in Tel Aviv. It is speculated by some analysts that at one point Israel was even promising the Kurdish region of Iraq that it could look forward to becoming an independent country if it were to align itself more fortuitously with Israel. So, for the KRG president to go this far only shows a lack of confidence in the operation.

The truth is that the recent betrayal by Trump of the Kurds in Northern Syria – a disciplined fighting army which chalked up a number of successful battles against ISIS during the height of the Syrian war – has probably put the dampeners on any deal with the majority of Kurds. Trump dropped them and aligned himself with the Syrian leader in Damascus, despite years of the U.S. supporting the YPG. This move not only shows how unreliable and capricious his decisions are, but also that the attack on Iran is something which has not been properly thought through.

For the Iranian Kurds, they see an opportunity to slip over the border and try to take control of some of the Kurdish regions, in line with the U.S. and Israel’s idea of carving up the country into many regions.

Kurds in Iran have a long history of fighting against both the current Islamic Republic and the monarchy that preceded it. Both regimes have marginalised them, in particular during the rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. It’s often reported that while they share a desire to see the current authorities overthrown, the Kurdish groups have also clashed with other opposition groups — notably the faction led by the former shah’s son, Reza Pahlavi, who has accused the Kurds of being separatists aiming to carve up Iran. It would seem that the only group they could arguably align themselves with, as they seem to fight with everyone, is Trump. But how long could this last before this relationship turns sour and they then become an enemy? The Kurds themselves even have a saying which refers to the mountains as their only friends.

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Summary of the first days of the conflict

February 28, 2026 marks a watershed moment in the strategic history of Western Asia. On that date, the United States, in operational coordination with Israel, launched a large-scale military offensive against the Islamic Republic of Iran, striking the top of its political and military leadership, sensitive infrastructure related to missile and nuclear programs, and command structures deemed essential to its response capabilities. The event represents not only a military escalation, but the concrete manifestation of a theoretical and practical contrast between two models of regional order: hegemony and deterrence.

Hegemony is based on the overwhelming superiority of an actor capable of imposing its political and strategic will without encountering resistance capable of inflicting equivalent costs; it presupposes asymmetry and the ability to preemptively neutralize any challenge. Deterrence, on the other hand, is based on a balance of mutual threats: it does not eliminate potential conflict, but freezes it through the credibility of retaliation.

The February 28 attack was conceived as an attempt to reaffirm a hegemonic principle, demonstrating that Western technological and operational superiority could disrupt the Iranian decision-making system before it was able to react effectively. but Tehran’s almost immediate response called this premise into question, suggesting that Iranian deterrence had not been neutralized but only prompted to activate.

The initial operation, called “Roaring Lion” by Israel and “Epic Fury” by Washington, unfolded through an air campaign of extraordinary scale, with hundreds of aircraft engaged in coordinated raids supported by naval assets deployed in the Arabian Sea. The doctrine applied followed the “decapitation” model: strike at the head of the system to paralyze the body. Within a few hours, the nerve centers of Iranian power in Tehran were targeted, including institutional residences, Supreme National Security Council facilities, and underground command networks. The elimination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, announced by Iranian state media the following day, together with the deaths of senior officers of the armed forces and the Revolutionary Guard, was intended to create a decision-making vacuum and a shock effect that would prevent a coordinated response. At the same time, installations in Isfahan, Karaj, and Qom, considered crucial for uranium enrichment and ballistic missile storage, were bombed. Air defense systems were targeted to “blind” Iran’s multi-layered shield, while Israeli military sources reported that approximately 500 targets were hit in the first 24 hours. However, the operation also caused serious civilian casualties, including the destruction of a school in Minab, an event that deeply affected Iranian public opinion, transforming the strategic confrontation into a collective trauma and strengthening internal cohesion around the need for a response.

That response came with a speed that surprised many observers: less than an hour after the bombing began, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps announced Operation True Promise 4, marking a qualitative leap in the confrontation: for the first time, the entire network of U.S. military bases in Western Asia was formally declared part of the battlefield. Ballistic missiles and drones struck the Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain, the Al-Udeid base in Qatar, and facilities in the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Jordan, and the Iraqi Kurdistan region. Tehran has made clear a legal-strategic principle: U.S. bases, regardless of their geographical location, are extensions of U.S. sovereignty and therefore legitimate targets in the event of aggression. At the same time, hundreds of missiles were launched towards Israeli territory, with alarm sirens sounding in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Haifa and impacts recorded on military installations and sensitive infrastructure. In a matter of hours, the perception of invulnerability that had accompanied both U.S. bases and Israel for decades was shattered, altering the psychological and strategic climate of the entire region.

Hezbollah’s direct entry from the southern front of Lebanon further expanded the conflict. Coordinated rocket and drone attacks opened a second theater of operations, forcing Israel to spread its defensive resources across multiple fronts. Israeli bombing of southern Lebanon and the southern outskirts of Beirut transformed the crisis into a multi-level confrontation, putting into operation the doctrine of “Unity of the Fronts” supported by the Axis of Resistance. In this context, the conflict ceased to be a bilateral confrontation between Washington and Tehran and took the form of a regional war with variable geometry, with fault lines extending from the Persian Gulf to the eastern Mediterranean.

The political and strategic factors

On the political level, the U.S. leadership justified the operation as a necessary step to definitively eliminate the Iranian nuclear threat. President Donald Trump explicitly linked the action to the goal of regime change, calling on Iranian forces to lay down their arms and promising immunity in the event of surrender. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the attack a historic opportunity to redraw Western Asia, presenting it as a preventive act aimed at ensuring the long-term security of the Jewish state. Tehran, for its part, declared the era of “strategic patience” over, announcing the closure of the Strait of Hormuz to international shipping and striking maritime targets in the Gulf. The impact on energy markets was immediate: oil prices skyrocketed, while shipping companies suspended or diverted numerous trade routes.

What is happening is part of Trump’s strategy and the MAGA motto, because the advent of a ‘new America’ involves doing what has not been done before, as Trump has reiterated, namely returning to attacking the world, laying waste to regions of interest to the U.S., and seeking to forcefully counter anything that opposes the dollar and its hegemony.

At this point, the conflict faces several possible trajectories. The first is that of a total regional war: in such a scenario, Iran could turn the threat to Hormuz into a prolonged blockade, using naval mines, anti-ship missiles, and asymmetric tactics to permanently disrupt the global energy flow. Israel would face simultaneous pressure from Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, while U.S. bases would become constant targets of intermittent attacks. Such an escalation would test Washington’s logistical and political capacity to sustain a conflict on multiple fronts, with increasing economic and military costs. In this context, the regional architecture built over the past decades around Israeli military superiority and the advanced U.S. presence could suffer structural erosion, accelerating the transition to a multipolar order.

A second trajectory envisages a deterrent rebalancing after the initial shock. If both sides were to assess the costs of further escalation as excessive, an undeclared truce could emerge, based on a new awareness of each other’s limitations. The United States and Israel would claim the slowdown of Iran’s nuclear program as a strategic success, while Tehran would consider its ability to directly strike Israeli bases and territory as proof of the end of Western immunity. This would result in a phase of low-intensity conflict, characterized by cyber operations, clandestine actions, and calibrated missile exchanges, in an unstable but contained balance.

A third scenario is that of a prolonged war of attrition. Instead of seeking a decisive confrontation, Iran and its allies could opt for a gradual erosion of the U.S. presence, progressively increasing costs without offering a pretext for a devastating response. Intermittent attacks, economic pressure, and targeted destabilization could, over time, undermine the political and financial sustainability of the U.S. commitment in the region, but such a strategy would also entail heavy internal sacrifices, requiring economic resilience and social cohesion in conditions of reinforced sanctions and isolation.

Finally, a decisive shock that forces one of the parties to quickly recalculate cannot be ruled out, namely a series of very strong, devastating attacks that could compromise the feasibility of a medium-term conflict for both sides. A devastating blow to U.S. naval infrastructure or an attack that seriously compromises Israeli defensive capabilities could generate internal pressure sufficient to force an immediate change in strategy. Similarly, a prolonged paralysis of the Iranian command system could pave the way for radical concessions. The speed and coordination of Tehran’s initial response suggest that the adaptability of the Iranian system has been underestimated.

What is at stake goes beyond the outcome of individual military operations: the stability of about half the world, and perhaps more, is at stake. The outcome will determine not only the stability of Western Asia, but also the broader configuration of the international system for decades to come.

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After the farce over Greenland, the theatrical abduction of a Venezuelan president presented as a prelude to regime change, and the long, suffocating economic siege imposed on the people of Cuba, the turn has now come for Iran. It was hardly unexpected. The destruction of an independent Iranian state has been an enduring obsession of the political constellation often described as international Zionism, for which American imperial power has long served as the most reliable instrument.

Let us, for a moment, forget the torrent of denunciations once directed at Donald Trump by Western governments and European institutions. We were told he was a madman, a proto-fascist, an enemy of Europe, perhaps even a threat to NATO itself. At various points, he was portrayed as an accomplice of Vladimir Putin and a destabilising force in the Western alliance system.

Let us also forget the arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court against Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Forget the solemn declarations by European governments recognising a Palestinian state, including those made in Lisbon. Forget the carefully worded condemnations of Israel’s conduct in Gaza and elsewhere.

These things, it turns out, belonged to another age — a distant past measured in diplomatic press releases rather than in years. Today we inhabit a political climate in which Western leaders, from the most reluctant Atlanticists to the most enthusiastic, rush to embrace both Trump and Netanyahu with remarkable enthusiasm. The attack on Iran has been greeted not with hesitation but with gratitude. If Western governments had already become the obedient lapdogs of empire, they now appear content merely to follow the scent trail and collect whatever crumbs fall from the imperial table.

Such are the rituals of the moment: the ceremonial kissing of feet and hands — even when those hands are stained with the blood of war. It is also a moment when the limits of political hypocrisy seem to have vanished altogether. The same leaders who habitually invoke “our civilisation”, “our values” and the humanitarian superiority of the Western order now applaud actions that, until recently, would have been recognised without hesitation as naked aggression.

The official explanation, endlessly repeated from Jerusalem to Brussels and faithfully echoed by smaller European governments, is that the assault on Iran aims to liberate the Iranian people from the tyranny of the ayatollahs. It is a line delivered with solemn conviction and little apparent embarrassment. Only the wilfully naïve could fail to notice, however, that the supposed humanitarian objective conveniently coincides with control over one of the world’s largest reserves of oil.

Behind the moralising rhetoric lies a far more familiar ambition: to return Iran to a political arrangement reminiscent of the era of the Shah — complete with the repressive apparatus once trained and coordinated by Western intelligence services and Israel’s Mossad. That, stripped of the humanitarian varnish, is the strategic aim. Trump, Netanyahu and their European admirers have shown little consistent concern for the wellbeing of the Iranian people. Their record suggests a broader indifference to the welfare of peoples everywhere.

A particularly curious feature of the current moment is the response of the European Union. With minor variations in tone, the unelected leadership in Brussels and the majority of the twenty-seven member governments have not merely endorsed the American and Israeli action — widely regarded by legal scholars as a violation of international law and the United Nations Charter — but have also condemned Iran for daring to respond militarily.

The implication is difficult to miss: governments confronted with imperial force are expected to accept their punishment with quiet dignity. Self-defence, it seems, is permissible only when exercised by the powerful.

This logic invites a further question. Why is the European Union simultaneously urging its member states to embark upon an unprecedented programme of militarisation? National budgets are being reshaped, social programmes quietly dismantled, and future generations invited to shoulder the financial burden — all in anticipation of a hypothetical Russian attack. If the standard applied to Iran were applied consistently across Europe, governments fearful of Moscow might simply surrender in advance and save themselves the expense.

The Last Frontier

While television studios across Europe buzz with commentators marvelling at the supposed brilliance of Western military technology and speculating — sometimes with a disturbing enthusiasm — about the possible assassination of Iran’s eighty-six-year-old spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, it may be worth stepping back to consider the broader strategic picture.

At the beginning of this century, the American general Wesley Clark, a former NATO commander in Europe, described a plan circulating among neoconservative circles in Washington. According to Clark, the United States intended to pursue regime change in seven countries considered obstacles to its influence in the Middle East.

The list was instructive: Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Lebanon, Yemen and Iran.

Egypt and Jordan were absent from the list. Both had already been drawn securely into the Western strategic orbit through a succession of American-brokered “peace processes” with Israel.

Two decades later, the fate of those targeted states is well known. Iraq was invaded, fragmented and reduced to a landscape of competing sectarian and ethnic authorities, while its oil industry passed largely into the hands of multinational corporations. Libya was dismantled after NATO intervention and the brutal killing of Muammar Gaddafi — an event greeted with memorable enthusiasm by then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who famously summarised the episode with the words: “We came, we saw, he died.”

Syria descended into a devastating war that attracted a complex array of external sponsors, leaving the country divided into zones of influence while foreign powers continue to manage its oil resources. Somalia remains a fragile political landscape, while Yemen has endured years of catastrophic conflict largely supported by Western allies in the Gulf.

Lebanon, repeatedly battered by regional confrontations and internal instability, survives precariously amid economic collapse and political paralysis.

The pattern is difficult to overlook. One by one, the states once identified as obstacles have been weakened, divided or placed under external influence. The strategic environment has grown increasingly favourable to the regional ambitions of Israel and its Western allies.

In that context, Iran appears as the final and most formidable barrier. Since the 1979 revolution that overthrew the Shah, the Iranian state has supported a network of political and military actors across the region — among them Hezbollah in Lebanon and movements resisting foreign influence in Iraq and Yemen. It has also provided one of the few remaining sources of political and material support for the Palestinian cause.

For critics of Iranian policy, this network represents destabilising interference. For others, it constitutes the last counterweight to a regional order dominated entirely by Washington and Tel Aviv.

What is clear is that the geopolitical stakes are immense. The fall of an independent Iran would transform the strategic map of the Middle East and Central Asia. Gulf monarchies, already closely aligned with Western interests, would face little regional opposition. Israel’s long-standing strategic concerns would largely disappear.

The argument that Iran’s nuclear ambitions represent the sole or even primary motivation for confrontation therefore appears increasingly unconvincing. The nuclear issue functions as a convenient and readily understandable justification for a far more ambitious geopolitical project.

Donald Trump’s role in this drama has sometimes been misunderstood. He was often portrayed as an erratic anomaly within the American political system — an accidental disruption of an otherwise stable order. In reality, he represents a particular phase in the evolution of that system.

Neoliberal globalisation, confronted with growing economic tensions and political discontent, has increasingly embraced more authoritarian forms of governance. The combination of aggressive nationalism abroad and populist rhetoric at home offers a way to manage both.

The parallel development of Trumpism in the United States and the increasingly uncompromising politics of the Israeli government suggests a deeper ideological convergence. It evokes earlier moments in twentieth-century history when economic and political crises encouraged democratic systems to adopt harsher and more authoritarian forms.

The result is a world balanced uneasily on the edge of escalation. The confrontation with Iran is not merely another episode in the long catalogue of Middle Eastern conflicts. It has the potential to reshape global alliances and to provoke reactions from other major powers.

So far, however, the international response has been cautious, even timid. Words of concern circulate freely in diplomatic corridors, but decisive action remains elusive.

On the geopolitical chessboard, the opening move has been made. The architects of imperial power believe they have delivered check. Whether anyone possesses the will — or the pieces — to prevent checkmate remains an open question.

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Iran’s Decentralized Mosaic Defense – the official denomination – keeps being tweaked 24/7: that’s the IRGC’s long-term strategy of a death by a thousand cuts designed to bleed the Empire of Chaos dry.

Let’s wade through the interconnected canals permeating the unconstitutional, unwinnable, strategically catastrophic Empire of Chaos-built swamp.

Iran’s mosaic resilience and long-term strategy; the temptation for that ghastly death cult in West Asia to go nuclear; the approaching, inexorable Interceptor Hell; China’s relentless drive to ditch the old order (hoarding gold, dumping dollars); the BRICS’s progress in creating a parallel financial system; the collapse of American vassals, in several latitudes: all that is accelerating a radical system reset.

And then, there’s Vladimir Putin, just casually, almost like an afterthought, annoncing there may not be any Russian gas to be sold to the EU after all:

“Maybe it would make more sense for us to stop supplying gas to the EU ourselves and move to those new markets, and establish ourselves there (…) Again, I want to stress: there’s no political motive here. But if they’re going to close the market to us in a month or two anyway, maybe it’s better to leave now and focus on countries that are reliable partners. That said, this isn’t a decision. I’m just thinking out loud. I’ll ask the government to look into it together with our companies.”

The pitiful Bratwurst Chancellor asked permission from neo-Caligula for Germany to buy Russian oil. He got it. But there may be nothing to buy. This is an energy war, and the EU once again does not even qualify as a homeless beggar. No Qatar gas, no Russian oil and gas. Now go back to your NATO-obsessed Forever War.

The bombing of the GCC-petrodollar pipeline

Immediately after the decapitation strike last Saturday on Supreme Leader Ayatollah Kahamenei, Iran switched to decentralised command and control and cells with a 4-level deep succession plan, launching relentless volleys of older, slower missiles and sacrificial drones to consume Patriot batteries and THAAD systems in industrial scale. With that move, Iran changed the rules of the game alread on Day One of the war.

Anyone with and IQ over room temperature knows that to use 3 Patriots – $9.6 million combined cost – to defend against a single Iranian sacrificial ballistic missile is completely unsustainable.

So it’s no wonder that it took only 4 days of the war of the Epstein Syndicate on Iran for the global financial system to go completely bonkers. $3.2 trillion evaporated in a matter of 4 days – and counting.

The Strait of Hormuz for all practical purposes is closed – except for Russian and Chinese vessels. At least 20% of global oil needs are not moving anywhere. Qatar’s entire LNG production is off line – with no resumption in sight. Iraq’s 2nd larget oil field has been shut down.

And still, volatile neo-Caligula vociferates that his war that was supposed to last only a weekend may drag for five weeks, and other industrial-military Pentagon clowns are talking about all the way to September.

By lasering on US interests across the GCC as legitimate targets – and not only military bases – Iran set a time bomb. This is a direct attack on the petrodollar (to the silent delight of Beijing). Tehran certainly gamed that the chain reaction would be instantaneous – all the way to panic as preamble to a new, generalized Great Depression.

No oil, plus no meaningful GCC defense against Iran’s missiles/drones means no more torrents of Wall Street fake money. The AI bubble, after all, is being financed by GCC “investments”. The new Pipeineistan bombing is not of the Nord Stream kind: it’s the bombing of the GCC-petrodollar pipeline.

All that is happening in record time as Iran’s decentralized mosaic is fine-tuned. For instance, an array of deadly anti-ship missiles – which have not been used yet – are coordinated by the IRGC, the navy, the army, and aerospace forces. Same for drones.

Even if ballistic missile attacks are not keeping up with the initial, breakneck pace, they are more than enough to keep steadily hammering US military bases (whose air defenses are already largely depleted); plunge the death cult in West Asia and the GCC in total economic hell; and scare to death every nook and cranny of “global markets”.

And for all the chest-thumping in Washington by the oily, clownish Secretary of Forever Wars, dozens of Iranian underground military fortresses loaded with tens of thousands of missiles and equipment remain invisible – and untouchable.

Bankrupting the Empire of Chaos business model 

This is a desperate war to save the petrodollar. An energy powerhouse like Iran trading outside the petrodollar is the ultimate anathema, especially because the process is coupled with the BRICS drive towards setting up independent payment systems.

The immense structural fragility of the GCC – Iran’s neighbors – makes them an ideal prey. After all, their entire business model is built on the petrodollar in exchange for a Mafioso US “protection”, which has vanished in the sand in the first four days of the war.

Cue to Iran’s Asymmetric Warfare Machine bankrupting the Empire of Chaos business model in real time.

The definitive exhibit is the implosion of the Dubai bling bling dream – much more than the devastation imposed on US 5th Fleet-related interests in Bahrain and even a ballistic missile destroying the $1.1 billion AN/FPS-132 phased array radar at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar.

A coordinated, in progress GCC crack up, already inevitable, eventually means the end of petrodollar recycling, opening the game to the petroyuan or energy trade in a basket of BRICS currencies.

“Checkmate” comes from the Persian “Shah Mat”, meaning “the king is helpless”. Well, Emperor neo-Caligula may not know he’s naked, because he’s incapable of playing chess. But he’s scared enough to start desperately looking for a way out.

The Astrakhan-Tehran air corridor

Now for the role of Russia. The focus should be on the Astrakhan-Tehran air corridor, crammed with secret cargo flights. The Chkalovsk military airfield near Astrakhan is the key logistical hub of the corridor: cargoes such as the Il-76MD, the An-124 and the Tu-0204-300C are shuttling back and forth covered with special material that reduces radar visibility and hides them from civilian tracking sytems.

Their cargo arrives in Mehrabad airport in Tehran (no wonder it was bombed by Israel), Pyam and Shahid Behesthi in Isfahan. Multimodal logistics also apply, as some cargo is delivered via the Caspian.

Everything is coordinated by the 988th Military Logistics Brigade from Astrakhan. Cargo contents include components for air defense systems; radar guidance modules; hydraulic systems for missile launchers; long-range detection radar modules.

On top of it, under a secret protocol, Russia is supplying Iran with state of the art electronic warfare, including an export version of the Krasukha-4IR, capable of jamming the radar systems of US drones.

Add to it that Iran will soon deploy full-fledged S-400 batteries – which will allow it to control as much as 70% of Iranian airspace.

How the economic-political stress will become unbearable

And now for the role of Turkiye.

Only two months ago the MIT – Turkish intel – directly warned the IRGC that Kurdish fighters were trying to cross from Iraq into Iran. Let that sink in: a full NATO member passing time-sensitive operational intelligence to the IRGC just as the Epstein Syndicate was getting ready for war.

There are at least 15 million Kurds living inside Iran. The last thing Ankara wants is empowered Kurds in Iran. For all of Sultan Erdogan’s insatiable hedging, he knows he can’t frontally antagonize Tehran. He needs to balance a cornucopia of interests mixing NATO; the energy corridor with Russia – but also the energy corridor to the West via the BTC pipeleine; and the role of western anchor to the Middle Corridor to China.

That’s why that alleged Iranian ballistic missile allegedly pointing to Turkiye and shot by NATO was not a big deal: Foreign Ministers Fidan (Turkiye) and Aragchi (Iran) discussed it like adults. There’s impenetrable fog of war about it: the missile might have been sent to cripple the BTC oil terminal and subsequent drones launched on Georgia designed to cripple the weakest spot of the BTC.

None of that is confirmed – and will be impossible to confirm. That might as well have been a false flag – even though Tehran may be quite interested to cut off 30% of Israel’s oil supply.

The BTC will continue to be in play, as it weaves across Georgia carrying Azeri crude across the Caucasus to the Turkish Mediterranean coast. Bombing the BTC would fit the Iranian strategy of severing every energy corridor feeding the Epstein Syndicate and its acollites across the Gulf, the Caucasus and all the way to the Mediterranean.

Along the BTC, other logical Iranian moves would be to attack the Saudi East-West pipeline (it bypasses Hormuz); Iraq’s offshore loading platforms in Iranian territorial waters that handle 3.5 million barrels a day; and the Abqaiq processing hub that handles the majority of Saudi crude before it reaches export terminals.

If Iran under extreme stress is forced to hit all of the above, there’s no strategic petroleum reserve on the planet capable of  covering the gap.

In this hellish interconnection of energy corridors, shipping lanes, global supply chains, maritime security and the oil price going out of control, only Pentagon clowns can possibly want to prolong the war until September. Asia, Europe, and every energy importer across the chessboard will be applying maximum pressure for any measure of de-escalation.

Iran’s asymmetric strategy though remains immovable: expand the war horizontally, and stretch the timeline to the max to make the economic-political stress unbearable.

Translation: this is not a quick regime change stunt by a bunch of psychos. This is a Structured War of Attrition. And the screenplay has been written in Tehran.

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The U.S.-Israeli war primordially is being waged to create Israeli hegemony across West Asia.

At one level, the conflict is an existential battle, fought out between Iranian missile and intercept capabilities, versus those of the U.S. and Israel.

Conventional thinking has been that this was a no-brainer contest: Iran would be outmatched by U.S. technology and firepower, and forced to capitulate.

Iran’s military humiliation, plus the decapitation of its leadership, would result – it is presumed – in an organic upsurge of populist resentment that would overwhelm the Iranian State, and roll it back into the western sphere.

On the plane of the purely bilateral struggle – as the war enters the fourth day – Iran sits in the driving seat. The State has not crumbled, but rather is visiting drone and missile carnage on to American military bases across the Gulf, and is striking Israel with hypersonic missiles, armed (for the first time) with multiple steerable warheads.

At this point, Iran is on the verge of exhausting Gulf interceptor stockpiles entirely – and too, has eaten deeply into Israeli-American dwindling air defence reserves through Iran initially prioritising older missiles and drones that deplete air defences. Iranian high-end missiles flying at speeds above Mach Four are proving largely impervious to Israeli air defences.

The U.S. intelligence-led assassination of the Supreme Leader has proved to be a cardinal error. Rather than precipitate a collapse of morale, it led instead to massive outpourings of support for the Islamic Republic. To evident surprise in Washington, it has also fired-up Shi’a across the region with calls for jihad and for revenge for the killing of a revered Shi’a religious leader. Tel Aviv and Washington badly misread the terrain.

In sum, Iran is resilient and holding its ground for the long-term against the U.S., whose calculus was grounded in a quick ‘shoot and scoot’ war – a strategy largely imposed by paucity of munitions. The Gulf monarchies are wobbling. The Gulf ‘brand’ – Prosperity, big money, AI, beaches and tourism – likely is over. Israel too, may not survive in its present state.

The geopolitical ramifications, however, extend far beyond Iran and the Gulf States. Iran’s selective closure of the Hormuz Strait, and the destruction of Gulf port facilities more widely, tells another tale.

Take Iran’s particular focus on destroying the U.S. Fifth Fleet’s infrastructure at Bahrain. The Fifth Fleet forms the backbone to U.S. regional hegemony – as laid out here:

“Approximately 90% of the world’s oil trade passes through these areas, and U.S. control guarantees the linked energy supply chains. The fleet also covers three vital strategic chokepoints: the Strait of Hormuz, the Suez Canal, and the Bab al-Mandeb Strait. And its HQ is not just a port. It’s a comprehensive radar, intelligence and database centre”.

Iran has succeeded in destroying the radars and much of Bahrain’s port logistic and administrative infrastructure. It is systematically driving U.S. forces out of the Gulf.

The war on Iran is not projected just for the U.S. to add Iranian resources to the U.S. energy ‘domination portfolio’, as per the Venezuelan model. Iran, last year, represented only about 13.4% of total oil imported by China by sea — not a crucial component.

The Iran war however, is all about a bigger U.S. play: Control of strategic chokepoints, and of energy transit more generally, so as to deny China access to energy markets and so to curtail its growth.

The Trump National Security Strategy (NSS) set a goal for U.S. policy of “rebalanc[ing] China’s economy towards household consumption”.

This is American code-speak for coercing China to export less, and for it to import more through a radical economic reconfiguration to consuming more domestically — the object being to restore America’s share of global exports versus hyper-competitive and cheaper Chinese exports.

One way to impose this shift would be through tariffs and trade war. But another would be to deny China access to energy markets that it — and the wider BRICS market — requires for growth. This might be achieved, the NSS strategy hints, by constricting resource supply – i.e. by imposing naval blockades of chokepoints, by siege, and the seizure of vessels through the arbitrary sanctioning of vessels (as seen in the Venezuelan stand off.

In brief, Iran’s strikes on the Gulf may be firstly intended to convey a message that, for Gulf neighbours to align with Israel and America and against Iran, is no longer acceptable to Iran. But what Iran also seems to be doing is to attempt to wrest key sea chokepoints, ports and naval corridors from U.S. control — and to bring them under Iranian control.

In other words, to bring the seaways adjacent to the Persian Gulf under Iranian control. Such a shift would be hugely important – not just to China and Iran’s relations with China, but to Russia too, which needs to keep seaborne export routes open.

Should Iran prevail in this mammoth struggle against Israel and the Trump Administration, the ramifications would be huge. The (selective) closure of Hormuz over months, in itself, would play havoc in European gas markets, as well as possibly trigger a debt market crisis.

Further, the breaking of the ‘Gulf Brand’ as a safe investment haven will likely see the dollar devalue, as investors search for alternative geography in which to situate their assets.

The U.S.’ Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity corridor across the South Caucasus will likely bite the dust. This likely will induce India to return to — and stay with — Russian oil imports, and impact on India’s relations with Israel.

Beyond the geo-political reconfiguration as a result of the war, the geo-financial architecture will change significantly too.

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Endless horror

One hundred and sixty-five. That is the number of girls between the ages of 7 and 12 who were killed by the Israeli bombing of Tehran on Sunday, March 1, 2026.

Parents running through the rubble of a school, looking into rows of black bags, fearing they will recognize the face of their daughter. It is a powerful, almost unbearable image: pain that transcends reason, loss that shatters all balance.

Celebrations circulated on Israeli social media profiles, with cynical, contemptuous comments. “He’s finally croaked!” And do you know how they joke over there? “Now the virgins have arrived in paradise for them!” This refers to the Islamic belief that martyrs are reserved virgins in paradise after death. Yesterday, it was not only girls who died, but also members of the Iranian government, considered martyrs in the country.

There is cynical humor, there is black humor, but there is also inhuman humor. This is precisely that — without even a hint of humanity. After all, it was certainly not Ayatollah Khamenei who was involved in pedophile scandals to the point of deserving virgins in paradise, but rather the American elite. From Epstein’s files, we have understood very well how this elite treats children. But now, in all likelihood, there will be less and less talk about those files because they have been overshadowed by the attack on Iran and the death of those girls, which everyone can see perfectly well.

They know everything, and they have certainly watched the videos from the school, in which mothers and fathers run desperately through the rubble, screaming, peering into rows of black bags, hoping not to find the face of their daughter. It is hell, a hell that is organized at the table and managed by the media according to double standards, because there are first-class deaths and second-class deaths. The perception of a Western double standard also stems from this: when human rights are invoked against certain governments, but seem to take a back seat when they involve strategic allies or figures within the Western power system, moral credibility is undermined.

Not all children are equal

It is sad to say, but the West as a whole knows very well how to use children in the context of information warfare, applying the hypocrisy of selective indignation as a method.

How many times in the past have we seen entire media campaigns launched for poor children, victims of conflicts, tragic events, or even entire narratives that were never verified but useful for propaganda, and which later turned out to be fake news? We would like to mention, for example, the children of Bucha, who became the subject of international media accusations, pointing the finger at Russia and crying out about crimes against humanity, with weeks of talk shows, news programs, print media, and social media content. Then, once the investigations were completed, it turned out that nothing had happened as the West had reported. But none, absolutely none, of those megaphones of lies relaunched the truth. The important thing was to have discredited Russia and portrayed President Vladimir Putin as a monstrous criminal.

On the other hand, we never hear about Ukrainian children, their condition, what happens when their fathers and older brothers are torn from their families by the armed forces to be forcibly enlisted and end up in the meat grinder of the front line. There is no longer any mention of the enormous child trafficking trade, which Ukraine has been involved in for years and which, until 2014, was the subject of international investigations that were never concluded and have now been obscured and deleted from the records because they no longer suit anyone.

Or shall we talk about the more than 20,000 children killed in the Gaza Strip in the 23 months of the most recent conflict, which were first denied, then used to fuel a certain narrative as long as it was convenient to increase ratings and views, depersonalizing the children from their ethnicity and social status in order to use them, in fact, as tools to capture the public’s attention, and then forgotten at the end of the conflict, ignoring that no conflict there has ended and even now, as for decades, Palestinian children continue to be imprisoned, tortured, and killed.

The girls of Tehran, on the other hand, do not fit into the Western narrative. They are second-class deaths, they cannot be conveniently exploited by newsrooms, they have no weight on the scales of so-called human rights, because they are girls ‘born wrong’, on the enemy’s side. For them, there is no feminist movement, no popular outrage, no hashtags on social media, no trending videos to replicate. They are ‘dead’, sterile numbers in a count that no one cares about, they are not considered human beings. No one cares about their future, cut short by Zionist madness, or their innocence trampled on for the sake of the warlords’ pockets. They must be forgotten, even casting doubt on whether they ever existed, whether it was perhaps a false flag, as some Israeli channels reported in the hours following the tragedy.

Double standards, double morality, which are the hallmark of the collective West that has no mercy on anything or anyone, that looks only to interest, profit, and success, no matter what the cost.

And the West risks paying for this price with its own life. Indeed, this is already the case, in the inexorable decline of this mass of rotten, corrupt civilizations, which have turned children into a cult of death, devouring them as commanded by Moloch, the god to whom they have pledged their faith and obedience, or Baal, eager for sacrificial blood.

Far be it from me to use emotion as a fallacious argument, but I would like to propose an exercise in humanity: if you are a father or mother, try to imagine what it means to live with this pain.

This is war, their war, the one that the people do not want but is imposed on them by the elites.

This is imperialism, this is Zionism.

And it has a name, a face, a flag.

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Did Marco Rubio just admit that Israel dragged the U.S. into the war with the first strike? The whole world is just waking up and realizing that the war is based on no strategy whatsoever. How very Trump.

Churchill’s comment about history being kind to him, because it will be him (Churchill) who will write it, isn’t going to apply to Donald Trump, who is the first U.S. president to succumb to Israel goading America into a war with Iran.

Things aren’t going very well for Israel and the U.S. in the war with Iran. Even though Iran is pounded by missiles daily, it would seem that no real effect has been felt on its military infrastructure which, itself, continues to have significant success against its enemy. While the GCC countries quickly run out of U.S. air defence missiles, many of their citizens are waking up to a new reality: that many of the missiles and bombs exploding are, in fact, not even coming from Iran but have been placed by Mossad agents whose objective is to drag these countries into the war. Despite days passing now and rumours of this happening on social media, it is unlikely this will happen, though, as those leaders are afraid that Iran’s main ace – an obliteration of the oil infrastructure – has yet to be played, which would wipe out those countries’ economies within hours. And yet there is some cruel poetic justice being played out here, as those same GCC countries went to great lengths before the war kicked off to underline their lack of support, on a practical level, for Israel and the U.S. It has transpired that at least one leader, Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, did at least goad the U.S. on to go ahead with the attack. The Iranians didn’t need to read this in the British broadsheet Daily Telegraph, as their own intelligence probably tipped them off about such a discussion, but it is hardly surprising now that they still consider the GCC countries as potential enemies and retain the threat of destroying their oil fields.

The problem for Trump is not Marco Rubio admitting that it was Israel that went ahead with the Iran strikes, therefore being the one who made the decision to start the war, which makes Trump look ineffective and a junior partner in the bigger plan; it’s not even that Rubio’s comments about needing to destroy Iran’s nuclear capability make Trump’s earlier bombing fiasco in June of last year look ridiculous and present the U.S. president as a liar and a fraud. The real problem for Trump is not even the constant, repetitive nature of a chaotic communications strategy where someone like Rubio seems to be working from a different set of messages.

Trump’s real problem is two-fold. One, he is not in command, but Bibi is. And two, even if he was in command or had some influence over the outcome or the methodology, he doesn’t have a strategy. For Israel, having no strategy is not a problem, as American lives are ten a dime for the Zionists. All Bibi wants to do is to go to war with Iran, with or without a strategy, and use American money and lives in the process. The foaming-at-the-mouth zeal of these Zionists overrides reason and rationale, and by the time everyone realizes this, it’s too late. Yes, Israel showed great capability on the battlefield twice in ’67 and ’73, but that was in a regional war with only Egypt and Syria to contend with. Iran is a different case altogether, and the plain truth is that Mossad’s impressive intelligence gathering, which tracks individuals and located Iran’s leader at his home compound, has not been put to good use to work out the realities of how long the country can sustain bombing. Israel and the U.S. have seriously underestimated Iran’s military capability and overestimated their own. The fact that the U.S. is already taking THAAD and Patriot missile systems from South Korea and shipping them to the region is an indication that despite Trump talking of weeks, in reality the truth is that he was probably told by Bibi that it would all be over in a couple of days. America’s own bases in the Middle East have also proved to be woefully under-protected, and the anger by local people in many of these GCC countries that they have been left so vulnerable and that they are often victims when those bases are struck is boiling over now and giving elites there a new problem to contend with, as a political uprising is now a reality.

It would seem almost all of the planning was ill-advised in the first place and based on wishful thinking and ignorance. The greatest example of this is the assassination of the Supreme Leader. The Israelis no doubt told Trump that this would be a critical factor in the regime collapsing, but they couldn’t have been more wrong. It has galvanized support even more behind the regime to fight this war once and for all and to reset history. Iranians are tired of being a convenient enemy for successive U.S. presidents and the Zionists who don’t even follow their own script on why they want to go to war with Tehran in the first place. Of all of Trump’s blunderings in his second term, this one will be remembered for generations to come. The worry, of course, is that the same miscalculation will be mulled over for the nuclear option, probably by the Israelis first, when they see that slowly but surely Israel is being erased from the map. The astonishing takeaway from the last few days, though, is not the buffoonery of Trump but the sombre strategizing by Iran and in how much it holds back.