RSS
The neoconservatives who orchestrated the disastrous wars with Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya — and who were never held accountable for the profligate waste of $8 trillion taxpayer dollars, as well as $69 billion squandered in Ukraine — look set to lure us into yet another military fiasco with Iran.
Iran is not Iraq. Iran is not Afghanistan. Iran is not Lebanon. Iran is not Libya. Iran is not Syria. Iran is not Yemen. Iran is the seventeenth largest country in the world, with a land mass equivalent to the size of Western Europe. It has a population of almost 90 million — 10 times greater than Israel — and its military resources, as well as alliances with China and Russia, make it a formidable opponent.
Iran launched retaliatory attacks today on Israel following waves of Israeli strikes that hit nuclear facilities and killed several top Iranian military commanders and six nuclear scientists. There have been dozens of expolsions over the skyline in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. There is video footage of at least one large explosion on the ground in Tel Aviv from an apparent missile strike and reports of other explosions in some half dozen sites in and around Tel Aviv.
“Our revenge has just started, they will pay a high price for killing our commanders, scientists and people,” a senior Iranian officials told Reuters. The official added that “nowhere in Israel will be safe” and that “our revenge will be painful.”
“They think it’ll be an easy war,” said Alastair Crooke, a former British diplomat and member of British intelligence (MI6) who spent decades in the Middle East, told me of the neocons when I interviewed him. “They want to reassert American power and leadership. They feel that every so often throwing a small country against the wall and smashing it up is good for this.”
These neocons, bonded with the Israeli leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu, he went on, “will not tolerate any rival power, any challenge to American leadership and American greatness.” They will create facts on the ground – a war between Israel and Iran – that will “pull Trump into a war with Iran.”
You can see my interview with Crooke here.
While Iran’s air force is weak, with many of its fighter planes decades old, it is well supplied with Russian air defense batteries and Chinese anti-ship missiles, as well as mines and coastal artillery. It can shut down the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most important oil chokepoint that facilitates the passage of 20 percent of the world’s oil supply. This would double or triple the price of oil and devastate the global economy. Iran has a large arsenal of ballistic missiles it can unleash on Israel, as well as on American military installations in the region. While initial waves can be intercepted, repeated attacks would swiftly deplete the Israeli and U.S. air defense stockpiles.
Israel is not equipped to endure a war of attrition, such as the eight year conflict between Iran and Iraq that ended — despite U.S. support for Saddam Hussein’s regime — in a stalemate, or as in Israel’s 18 year occupation of southern Lebanon that eventually forced it to withdraw in May, 2000, after repeated losses suffered from Hezbollah.
When Iran, in its Operation True Promise, launched over 300 ballistic and cruise missiles at Israel’s military and intelligence sites on April 13 and 14, 2023, in retaliation for an Israeli strike on the Iranian embassy in Damascus, the U.S. intercepted the vast majority.
“Israel cannot fight off an Iranian missile attack,” John Mearsheimer, a West Point graduate and a professor in the Political Science Department at the University of Chicago, told me. “You have this very interesting situation where not only can Israel not win these wars, but they’ve turned [them] into protracted wars” in which “Israel is heavily dependent on the United States.”
“We have lots of assets in the Middle East and the eastern Mediterranean, as well as in Israel itself and in the Red Sea,” he said. “These [are] designed to help Israel in its various wars. This includes not just Iran. It also includes the Houthis. It includes Hezbollah. So we are deeply involved in helping them fight. That was not the case in 1973 or any time before this war.”
Israel and its neocon allies believe they can eradicate Iran’s nuclear enrichment program by force and decapitate the Iranian government to install a client regime. That this non-reality-based belief system failed in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya, eludes them.
Israel, at the same time, wants to divert world attention from its genocide and mass starvation in Gaza and the accelerated ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. Internet connection has been completely shut down in Gaza. The West Bank has been placed under a total blockade.
“The Israelis understand that if you have a general conflagration, people will not be paying much attention to the Palestinians,” Mearsheimer said. “People will be willing to give Israel more of a pass than they would in peaceful times. So let’s really ramp things up. Let’s have a general conflagration, and the end result will be that we can cleanse, on a massive scale, in Gaza and hopefully in the West Bank as well.”
You can see my interview with Mearsheimer here.Subscribed
Iranian attacks would eventually leave hundreds, then thousands dead. Iran will appeal to Shi’ite Muslims through the region in what the Iranian leadership will describe as a war against Shi’ism, the second largest branch of Islam. Saudi Arabia — which condemned the attacks on Iran — has two million Shi’ites who live in the oil-rich Eastern province. There are significant Shi’ite communities in Pakistan, Bahrain and Turkey. Shi’ites form the majority in Iraq.
The Shi’ite-dominated government in Baghdad will side with Iran. Yemen will continue to disrupt maritime traffic in the Red Sea and hit Israel with drone attacks. Hezbollah, however crippled, will renew attacks on northern Israel. Expect terrorist attacks on U.S. bases in the region and perhaps even U.S. soil, as well as widespread sabotage of oil production in the Persian Gulf.
Iran will soon have enough fissile material to produce a nuclear weapon. A war will be a powerful incentive to build a bomb, especially with Israel possessing hundreds of nuclear weapons. If Iran acquires a nuclear weapon Saudi Arabia will be next, with Turkey, Iraq and Egypt not far behind. The efforts to blunt nuclear proliferation in the Middle East will evaporate.
A war, as Mearsheimer points out, will also solidify the alliance between Iran, Russia and China.
“The United States has pushed China, Russia, North Korea and Iran very close together,” he noted. “They form a tight knit bloc. Largely as a result of the Ukraine war, the Russians and the Chinese have been driven together, and given what’s happening in the Middle East, the Iranians and the Russians have been drawn together. The United States may be helping Israel, but it’s important to understand that the Russians are helping Iran. It’s not to America’s advantage to have China and Russia aligned closely against Washington. It’s not in America’s interest to have Russia and Iran working together against Israel and the United States.”
“There’s always the possibility that if a war heats up involving Iran on one side and the United States and Israel on the other side, that at some point down the road that the Russians will get dragged into that war, because the Russians now have a vested interest in supporting Iran,” he added.
A war could last months, if not years. It will be an aerial duel, one largely between Israeli warplanes and missiles and Iranian missiles. But to subdue Iran it will require perhaps a million U.S. troops being deployed to invade and occupy the country. An occupation of Iran will end with the same humiliating defeat the U.S. experienced in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The fantasy of Israel and the neocons is that they can break Iran with aerial assaults, an updated version of Shock and Awe, the bombing campaign in Iraq in 2003. But the amount of ordinance required, especially to pulverize Iran’s underground nuclear facilities, will be massive. Israel, in its decapitation of the leadership of Hezbollah in Beirut, including Hezbollah’s General Secretary Hassan Nasrallah, had to employ Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) 2,000-pound bunker-buster bombs.
“If you’re going to fly F-35’s with JDAM missiles, each of those is about 14 tons,” Crooke said. “It’s not just the weight, but the fuel they use. So you have to refuel maybe once, refuel twice, then you’ll have to fight your aircraft to suppress their defenses. You’re talking about a huge performance. Is America going to be able to do this? The Iranians have multiple air defense systems and good radars, over the horizon radars as well.”
So why go to war with Iran? Why walk away from a nuclear agreement that Iran did not violate? Why demonize a government that is the mortal enemy of the Taliban, along with other Takfiri groups, including al-Qaeda and Islamic State in the Levant (ISIL)? Why further destabilize a region already dangerously volatile?
The generals, politicians, intelligence services, neocons, weapons manufacturers, so-called experts, celebrity pundits and Israeli lobbyists are not about to take the blame for two decades of military fiascos. They need a scapegoat. It is Iran. The humiliating defeats in Afghanistan and Iraq, the failed states of Syria and Libya, the proliferation of extremist groups and militias, many of which we initially trained and armed, along with the continued worldwide terrorist attacks, have to be someone else’s fault.
The chaos and instability we unleashed, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan, left Iran as the dominant country in the region. Washington empowered its nemesis. It has no idea how to reverse this other than to attack it.
International law, along with the rights of almost 90 million people in Iran, is ignored just as the rights of the people of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and Syria were ignored. The Iranians, whatever they feel about their leadership, do not see the United States as allies or liberators. They do not want to be attacked or occupied. They will resist. And we, and Israel, will pay.
English
Arabic
Chinese (Simplified)
Dutch
French
German
Hebrew
Hindi
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Persian
Polish
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
Swedish
Turkish
Vietnamese
They went on and on about 10/7.
Will the media go on and on about 6/13, worse than even Pearl Harbor and 1000x worse than 10/7. or Gaza Uprising? Palestinians did it to resist tyranny(only to be met with genocidal rage from Israel and the West), whereas Israel attacked Iran to perpetuate its own hegemony. (And let’s not forget US, Turkey, and Israel installing Jihadis in Syria.)
Whereas Japan was pressured into a war with the US by FDR admin and took the bait, Iran did everything to avoid war and was negotiating up to the last minute despite the outrageous demands by the US as flunky of World Jewry. Iran was attacked for its civilian nuclear program by a nation with 300 illegal nukes made with material stolen from the US.
In the West, we have two main factions.
1. Those cheering on Israel and calling its attack ‘defensive’ or ‘pre-emptive’.
2. Those pretending that both are equally to blame cuz Iran is fighting back.
There is a tiny dissident sphere that’s calling out USrael as the culprit, but they go ignored.
Pure Orwell: Europe condemns Iran for attacks on its own territory. In their hypocrisy over Israel, EU elites once again expose the rotting corpse of the so-called ‘rules based order’
Thg genocidal Zionists in France and Germany came out of their HOLES and attacked Iran for her decision to fight back the aggression of their MAD DOG, ‘IRAN has a RIGHT to DEFEND HERSELF’.
These two criminal hypocrites used X to deliver their fraud piece of shit “Israel has a right to defend herself” again, with genocide in her file, where NO ONE pays any attention anymore and hold these faggot rotten rats responsible for what is going on in this world where these criminals have fully supported Israel’s invasions, bombing, terrorism on other countries, assassination, genocide, yet they are still beating on their chests and repeating their stupid line ‘Israel has a right… to go nuclear on others with full immunity by these criminal states.When Israeli warplanes struck Iran this week — violating Iranian sovereignty in a brazen act of aggression, killing scores of civilians alongside top military commanders and nuclear scientists and inviting Iran’s equally indiscriminate retaliatory strikes — Europe’s leaders didn’t condemn the attack.
They perversely endorsed it and condemned Iran for the attacks on its own territory. The hypocrisy and brutality is so intense that made Mohamed ElBaradei came out and preach these terrorist states
to understand their own CRIMINAL LAWS and then shut up.
https://twitter.com/ElBaradei/status/1933518732799701053
Mohamed ElBaradei, Nobel Laureate and former head of the U.N.’s atomic energy watchdog, offered a humiliating crash course in international law to the German foreign ministry. Reacting to Berlin’s endorsement of Israel’s “targeted strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities” (never mind the hundreds of civilians killed in these strikes), El Baradei reminded it that such strikes are prohibited under the Geneva Conventions to which Germany is a party, and that the use of force in international relations “is generally prohibited in the UN Charter with the exception of the right of self-defense in the case of armed attack or upon authorization by the Security Council in the case of collective security action.”
https://twitter.com/ElBaradei/status/1933590704661447089
Furthermore, the spokesman for the IR of Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs reacted to the claims and interventionist statements of French and German officials against Iran. Esmail Baghaei responded to the outrageous statements of French and German officials by publishing a message on the X social network.
Esmail Baghaei wrote on Saturday, June 14: It is shameful: Israel targets peaceful nuclear facilities; bombs homes; and kills Iranians in cold blood and in clear violation of international law. Yet Macron now decides to distort Iran’s nuclear program. [This amount of] hypocrisy is astonishing. The FM spokesman also reacted to the brazen statements of German officials in a separate tweet.
I add, better to shut up and fuck off faggots in Germany and France.
Russia messed up royally by not dealing with the US and Israel in Syria. Russia only fought the Jihadis, but they were only symptoms of the real disease: US-Israeli agenda to destroy Syria. Russia protected Syria from the symptoms, not the disease. It’s like using chemo against cancer cells without removing the tumor.
And so, Syria grew weaker and finally fell. And now, Israel is using Iraqi air space to attack Iran.
It’s the Jews. Will anyone name the Jews? Ukraine is a Judeo-Russian War. Syrian War was about Jewish-controlled West using Jihadis to destroy Syria.
Russia names the NATO, the EU, the British/Anglos, and sometimes the US. It never names the Jews.
When WWII ended, Germany was called out and blamed.
But when the Ukraine thing is over, Jews will remain unnamed and unblamed… and they will once again make trouble for Russia.
When Russia was in Syria, it should have helped the country drive out the US and confront Israel. Russia did everything for Syria EXCEPT deal with the real disease.
As for Iran, it should have gotten nukes long ago.
You can’t bargain with Jewish Power. It’s like bargaining with the Terminator. Jews must have everything their way. They think they’re god.
Down with the genocidal rotten rats in the European capitals, the occupied land, and Washington DC.
Iran has a right to defend herself.
Francesca Albanese, U.N. special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, reacting to Macron’s statement, commented that “on the day Israel, unprovoked, has attacked Iran, the president of a major European power, faggot Macron, finally admits that in the Middle East, Israel, and only Israel, has the right to defend itself.”
Iran says it has arrested Israeli intelligence agents as the confrontation continues
Video Link
An important speech by Iran FM, Iraghchi, who said: This terrorist attack could have not been possible without full support of the US where this fact is obvious when you read Trump’s comments on X who supports Israel’s aggression and Israel’s violation of International law attacking Iran’s nuclear program. If he is not involved, then why don’t he condemn this aggression? The FM said we don’t want to escalate, but we reserve the right to defend ourselves and will respond to any attack to defend and protect Iran’s territorial integrity at any cost. We will not ‘negotiate’ under bombing where US is involved . Iran does not buy the LIE Trump is circulating to protect his face that ‘we had nothing to do with Israel’s attack on Iran’, He is a jewish mafia member and a LIAR, LIAR, He won’t be shamed by any amount of evidence that shows his guilt and proves he is involved in this war against Iran along with NATO, especially the evil and rotten country, BRITAIN. Britain should be burned down.
‘LIAR TRUMP’: Iran FM ‘Exposes’ U.S. In Blistering Speech After Retaliating To Israel’s Attacks
Video Link
Remember, this isn’t the first war against Iran.
This is the West’s second war on Iran.
First was in the 80s when the West armed Iraq with poison gas to attack Iran with. West also supplied Iraq with tons of missiles to aim at Iranian civilians.
This time, the war is more honest because Israel did it than a proxy of West
Satellite images of missile damage in Israel is being censored.
We are being denied the opportunity to see with our own eyes the destruction which could sway support for Netanyahu.
Meanwhile, the internet is flooded with satellite images of bomb hits in Iran.
Why in this Progressbyterian windbag’s latest sermon is there no mention of any corresponding religious motivation among those
? Instead, it’s “we” who happen to have been born in Exceptionalia and pay for all the “ordinance” who are to blame.
Condescending, cowardly crap.
China has a dog in this fight.
They could send to Iran the same integrated air defense system that they sold to Pakistan and which recently performed perfectly:
You are absolutely RIGHT.. Then, US gave Saddam a GREEN LIGHT to attack Iran, and was given all kind of weapons including CHEMICAL WEAPONS to bomb Iran where over 400,000 of Iranian youth killed or wounded. Today, Trump is using Israel to bomb Iran to disarm Iran where never will happen.
Saddam used chemical weapons given to him by the US and Germany. The Western countries supported Saddam invasion of Iran. Beside US, there were other countries such as Germany, Britain, Russia and reactionary Arab head of States were supporting Saddam. The Arabs funded the war.
Today, it has been revealed that QATAR Aldo claims is supporting Iran against Israel, Qatar is allowing Israeli to do aerial refueling withing her territory, which is act of aggression against Iran. Qatar must stop helping Israel at once, or face the consequences. Iran is serious when gives warning.