Tag: iran

Israel Bombs Iranian Regime After Terrorist Strikes

Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy, has been perpetually firing on Israelis, and an Arab terrorist murdered Master Sergeant (Res.) Haim Kalomiti and injured multiple others in a jihad attack Sunday in Tzur Natan, one of over a thousand attempted terror attacks on Israelis just since March. Then Hezbollah’s Tehran paymasters began bombarding Israel. There has never been a ceasefire. Both Hezbollah and Iran’s regime never stopped shooting at civilians, not for a single day.

Israel Defense Forces (IDF) posted late on June 7, “The Israeli Air Force struck military targets belonging to the Iranian terror regime in western and central Iran a short while ago.”

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Another War for Israel We Should Never Have Gotten Into

In his highly-regarded podcast, Judging Freedom, on June 1, Judge Napolitano asked British diplomat Alastair Crooke if the Israelis really cared if the Strait of Hormuz remained closed and the U.S. economy, and by extension the world economy, suffered.

Crooke replied that the billionaires who support Israel so strongly have so much wealth that many would regard a recession or even a depression as an “opportunity” to buy farmland and other assets.

People of great wealth are not really affected by the higher gas and food prices and other inflation brought on by the U.S./Israeli war against Iran. But everyone else is, and this war, unpopular even at the start, is becoming less popular every day.

This is in sharp contrast with the Iraq war, which was very popular at the start but very unpopular three or four years later.

Even at the start, most polls showed 65 to 70% were against the war in Iran. And I believe that most who did not poll in opposition were really not in favor of the war, but just did not want to oppose the President on this.

Many leading conservatives, such as Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Steve Bannon, Rand Paul, and many others, have come out against this war. Conservatives under 50 have polled heavily against it.

Megan Kelly said on the Piers Morgan Show that this was “clearly Israel’s war,” that it  “needed to end ugly, or any other way,” and that she favored an end even if it looked like a “surrender on our part.” She added: “It was folly to begin with. It was folly throughout. It remains folly.”

Tucker Carlson said in an interview with the BBC: “The single biggest mistake Trump, or any other American president, has made in my lifetime is going to war with Iran. We are only doing this at the behest and then the demand of Israel.”

I pointed out in several columns that almost every member of Congress would have been rushing to condemn the killing, starving, and maiming of little children that went on in Gaza if it had been done by any other Country than Israel. And the exact same thing can be said about the war in Iran.

The great majority of the American people are sick and tired of foreign wars and know that we have a mind-boggling $ 39 trillion in national debt. They want our elected officials to start putting America First, and they know this war is putting Israel First.

We have bought and paid for Congress when it comes to anything Netanyahu and Israeli warmongers want. Because of campaign contributions for members of Congress, or fear of contributions against them, from supporters of Israel, members are like the three wise monkeys: see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil.

The late Charley Reese was once voted as the most popular columnist in a poll by many thousands of C-Span viewers. He wrote many times that the terrorism against the U. S. was the  “direct result of our one-sided support of Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians.”

In 2005, Reese wrote: “The big pushers for war with Iraq are the usual suspects-Americans with a long record of pretending to speak about America’s interests when in fact they are pushing an Israeli agenda.” Now put the word “Iran” where he wrote “Iraq.”

Almost everyone, if asked, will say they favor peace for the Middle East. But the United States cannot be a neutral peace broker there as long as we are so far under the thumb of the international war criminal Netanyahu.

Even the longtime Jewish New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman, wrote in May last year that “This Israeli government is behaving in ways that threaten hard-core U.S. interests in the region. Netanyahu  is not our friend.”

Many years ago, David Halberstam wrote words about the Vietnam War that could and should be applied to the Middle East today: “I do not think we are winning in any true sense, nor do I see any signs we are about to win. That is why this is such a sad story to write.”

He added: “I do not think our Vietnamese can win their part of the war, nor do I think we can win it for them. I think we will finally end up lowering our sights, encouraging our Vietnamese to talk to their Vietnamese, hoping somehow they can settle what we cannot.”

No matter how many bombs we drop or how many billions we spend, there will never be peace in the Middle East unless and until we get out of the way and force the people there to talk to each other and work things out themselves. We cannot do it for them.

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Trump says he never promised ‘no new wars’

Amid ongoing scrutiny over the U.S. war with Iran, President Donald Trump on Sunday defended his foreign policy stance — and denied that he ever campaigned on the promise of “no new wars.”

In a wide-ranging interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker that aired on Sunday’s “Meet the Press,” Trump said he built a “tremendous military.”

“First of all, I didn’t guarantee no war. Why would I have built the strongest military in the world?” Trump said. “I built our military. I inherited a terrible military. We had no equipment. We had nothing. I built a tremendous military. When you say I promised, I didn’t promise anything.”

Trump said he doesn’t like “endless wars” but added that the current conflict with Iran “is not an endless war,” asserting that the Vietnam War lasted for 19 years “because of stupid people.”

“We’re there for a few months and the threat is largely over,” Trump said. “Soon, it will be over. But you cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon, or they will blow you up. There will be no Kristen. There will be no NBC. There will be no ‘Meet the Press.’”

Throughout his campaigns for president, Trump has repeatedly criticized the U.S.’s involvement in lengthy military action in Middle Eastern countries, including lambasting former President George W. Bush for the war in Iraq during a 2016 GOP debate.

While campaigning in Pennsylvania in 2024, Trump told rallygoers: “I will not send you to fight and die in stupid foreign wars that never end.” He reiterated the promise in his 2024 victory speech, stating at the time: “I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.”

And Trump’s official White House biography also states that one of the president’s top priorities is “putting a stop to endless wars.”

Trump on Sunday denied that the U.S. is at war with Iran, telling Welker he does not “consider” the current situation a war.

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Central Command Announces Strikes in Goruk and Qeshm Island After Iranian Drone and Missile Strikes – Iran Threatens to Escalate, Says Negotiations Are “At a Deadlock”

The US and Iran traded missile strikes, with Iran targeting neighboring Gulf countries and shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, on Friday, as negotiations to end the war stall. 

Mohsen Rezaei, military adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, told CNN on Friday, “The negotiations are at a deadlock and (US President Donald) Trump must break this deadlock.”

“The ball is in Trump’s court,” Rezaei added. He further threatened that Iran will “drag the war” beyond the region “by attacking these other American bases that we have been attacking so far.”

After intercepting six Iranian missiles launched in the Strait of Hormuz,  “U.S. forces subsequently struck Iranian coastal surveillance radar sites in Goruk and on Qeshm Island to defend against further maritime attacks,” Central Command said in a statement late Friday, releasing video from the strikes.

“Initial assessments indicate six of the missiles launched by Iran were intercepted and a seventh did not reach its intended target. There are currently no reports of harm to U.S. personnel, and Iranian claims of damaging U.S. 5th fleet headquarters in Bahrain are false,” Central Command said. “CENTCOM forces remain vigilant and postured to continue responding to unwarranted Iranian aggression in self-defense.”

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War, Arrogance, and the Unraveling of US Power

The United States is not approaching collapse because it lacks power. It is approaching collapse because it has too often mistaken power for wisdom. Its armed forces remain unmatched in reach, its financial system remains central to global commerce, and its technology sector continues to shape the future. Yet these advantages can conceal a more dangerous condition: the erosion of judgment.

A superpower begins to decay when it treats coercion as strategy, military reach as political authority, and exemption from rules as evidence of strength. The result is not immediate collapse, but a cumulative weakening of legitimacy, fiscal discipline, institutional trust, and strategic clarity.

The war on Iran is the latest expression of this disorder. Washington and Israel possess overwhelming conventional capabilities, and early assessments show that Iran has suffered serious military damage. Nevertheless, the central question is not whether the United States can strike Iran; it is whether violence can produce a stable political outcome.

The conflict has already shifted from a narrow military campaign into a test of endurance, maritime pressure, domestic patience, and bargaining leverage. Iran’s ability to threaten the Strait of Hormuz demonstrates the difference between battlefield superiority and strategic control. A weaker state need not defeat a superpower outright. It need only raise the cost of victory beyond what that superpower’s public, economy, and allies are willing to bear.

This is the recurring failure of American interventionism. Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and now Iran belong to a broader tradition in which Washington enters conflicts with maximal confidence and exits them with diminished credibility. The pattern is not simply a military error. It is a conceptual error: the assumption that destroying capacity is equivalent to creating order. The post-9/11 wars revealed how quickly punitive power becomes a strategic burden. Brown University’s Costs of War project has documented the enormous human, fiscal, and social consequences of that era. Iran risks extending the same logic into a still more dangerous regional environment.

The deeper problem is imperial overstretch. Paul Kennedy’s classic argument was not that great powers fall because they become poor, but because they allow external commitments to exceed the economic and political base that sustains them. That diagnosis remains relevant. The United States carries global military obligations, subsidizes allies, maintains vast overseas deployments, and finances repeated wars while its own fiscal position deteriorates. The Congressional Budget Office projects large deficits and rising public debt through 2036, with interest costs absorbing an expanding share of national resources. A republic cannot indefinitely combine imperial commitments with domestic under-investment and expect no internal consequence.

The moral contradiction is equally corrosive. At least until recently, the United States has claimed to defend sovereignty in Ukraine, oppose coercion in Asia, and uphold international law against rivals. Yet in the Middle East, it has often shielded allies from the very standards it invokes elsewhere. U.S. support for Israel amid the Gaza catastrophe, the wider regional war, and the confrontation with Iran have deepened the perception that American legality is selective. Human rights organizations have warned that continued military support amid alleged serious abuses risks complicity and weakens the credibility of the legal order Washington has traditionally claimed to defend. A power that applies law only to adversaries does not preserve order; it converts international law into a global power hierarchy.

U.S. economic policy now displays the same arrogance. Sanctions, tariffs, export controls, investment restrictions, and financial penalties have become routine instruments of U.S. statecraft. Used carefully, they can serve legitimate security purposes. Used excessively, they teach other states that dependence on U.S.-controlled systems is a vulnerability. RAND’s recent work argues that the boundary between economic security and economic statecraft has broken down, and that U.S. policy now needs clearer tests of purpose, economic soundness, legitimacy, and sustainability. Research on financial sanctions similarly notes that the overuse of dollar power can encourage hedging against the dollar-centered system. Coercion may deliver short-term compliance, but it can also lay the groundwork for long-term exit.

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FBI RAIDS $35 MILLION CALIFORNIA MANSION — Tech CEO Arrested for Allegedly Supplying U.S. Equipment to Iran’s Nuclear and Military Programs While Reporting Just $20K Income

The FBI has arrested a California tech CEO living in a lavish $35 million mansion after federal authorities accused him of secretly supplying U.S. technology and equipment to Iran’s nuclear and military establishment while allegedly hiding millions of dollars from the IRS.

63-year-old Jamshid Ghomi, a dual U.S.-Iranian citizen and CEO of the Tehran-based tech firm Faraz Pardaz Rayaneh Co. Ltd. (FPR), was taken into custody on federal charges of conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

He faces up to 20 years in federal prison. Prosecutors are already moving to seize his mansion and other assets purchased with Iranian blood money.

According to the Department of Justice, he procured hundreds of controlled U.S.-origin items through eBay, PayPal, and direct purchases from suppliers in Minnesota and Nebraska, then routed them through front companies in the United Arab Emirates to Iran — all without the required licenses from the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).

A significant portion of the equipment went to the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) — the regime entity responsible for Iran’s centrifuge and uranium-enrichment programs — and to Iran’s Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics, along with affiliated military and defense-electronics entities.

Between 2014 and 2018 alone, Ghomi and his co-conspirators smuggled more than 250 metric tons of networking equipment into Iran, hiding U.S.-origin items inside larger shipments and keeping Ghomi’s name off paperwork.

Internal communications revealed Ghomi and his associates referred to Iran as the “Motherland.”

While Ghomi lived like royalty in one of California’s most expensive enclaves, he was systematically looting the system and cheating American taxpayers.

From 2011 to 2024, Ghomi moved more than $15 million in proceeds from his illegal Iran business into his U.S. bank accounts and a construction escrow account used to build his mansion. He falsely reported those funds to the IRS as a foreign inheritance.

His federal tax returns told a completely different story:

  • His highest reported income in any single year was just $20,684.
  • He fraudulently claimed the Earned Income Tax Credit — a benefit intended for low- to moderate-income working individuals and families — in seven different tax years.
  • Over the same period, he reported more than $1.7 million in home mortgage interest deductions and $1.25 million in state and local real estate taxes.

The mansion itself was funded with dirty money. Ghomi purchased a vacant lot in Newport Coast in 2010 for $4.49 million and spent another $10.49 million constructing the massive residence. More than $7 million in foreign-source wires — many from the same trading companies and exchange houses tied to his Iran operation — flowed into the escrow account between 2011 and 2015.

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Iran Sends Missiles, Drones Targeting Airbases Across Gulf After US Nighttime Attack On Qeshm Island

In the overnight hours local time, Kuwait is reporting inbound missiles and drones, with Fars reporting that two American bases were targeted. Explosions and air raid sirens also being reported in Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Bahrain. It seems that war is popping off once again.

Per a breaking Reuters report:

Kuwait’s army says that air defenses are intercepting hostile missile and drone attacks and urges the public to follow security and safety instructions issued by the relevant authorities.

Any sounds of explosions heard are the result of interceptions, the army adds.

Tasnim: “Blasts reported at Kuwait’s Ali al-Salem US airbase” after three missiles were fired. And the latest from CNN:

Kuwait says it is intercepting enemy missile and drone attacks. While it has not yet identified who it believes is behind the attack, the news comes shortly after Iranian media reported “explosion-like sounds” near Iran’s Qeshm island. Meanwhile, the US military said it “disabled” an oil tanker heading for an Iranian port by striking it with a Hellfire missile.

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Rubio braces for Hill grilling as Republicans join bid to curb Trump’s Iran war powers

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is expected to face tough questions on Capitol Hill this week as Congress threatens to curb President Donald Trump’s war powers, while the administration pushes for an end to the conflict with Iran.

Rubio will testify in four congressional hearings on Tuesday and Wednesday on the State Department’s budget for the upcoming fiscal year. But the Trump official is likely to be grilled on the ongoing negotiations to end the war and whether the U.S. military campaign should continue against Iranian forces and the country’s nuclear capabilities. 

The U.S. and Iran have yet to agree on terms to end sporadic fighting. Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium, the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and potential sanctions relief have emerged as key sticking points in negotiations. 

President Donald Trump said Monday that he “couldn’t care less” if the stalled talks were over, in an interview with CNBC.

“I don’t care if they’re over, honestly,” Trump told the outlet. “If they’re over, they’re over. If they’re not, you know, I think they took too much time. Frankly, I thought they started to get very boring.”

The president’s comments followed fresh rounds of fighting over the weekend that tested the fragile ceasefires in place since early April. The U.S. military has shown no signs of ending its blockade of Iranian ports while Tehran has continued to flex its hold over the Strait of Hormuz.

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The Iran Obsession

I was reading an old Atlantic Monthly from November 2007 and came across this quote:

We’ve got to be patient and committed [in Iraq], but we’ve got to multitask… We’ve got to talk about Iran – Iran is more dangerous than Iraq – and we have got to get the job done in Afghanistan and in Pakistan.

That was Rudolph Giuliani, speaking as a Republican presidential candidate in July 2007.

Back then, the saying was that everyone wants to go to Baghdad but that real men want to go to Tehran. Weirdly, neither Iran nor Iraq had anything to do with the 9/11 attacks in 2001. What those countries did have was oil – and lots of it.

The Iran obsession persists, of course, and it’s shared by both political parties. When she ran for president in 2024, Kamala Harris identified Iran as the greatest adversary the United States faced in the world.

The truth is that neither Iran nor Iraq posed a direct or imminent threat to the USA. What each country possessed was an enormous amount of oil and political leaders who didn’t want to kowtow to U.S. economic imperatives.

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Israeli Claims About an Iran ‘Threat’ Were Always a Lie. Now We Have Proof

Could it be that Israel’s 30-year narrative about Iran – one that persuaded US President Donald Trump to wage a criminal and disastrous war of aggression – was always a fiction, an invention cooked up in Tel Aviv?

Far from Tehran posing an existential danger to Israel, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed for decades, might Israel’s real fear be that a stronger Iran would undermine its unique leverage over Washington, threatening its status as the region’s sole – and unmonitored – nuclear power?

Might large parts of the globe be facing economic meltdown simply so that Israel can remain the Middle East’s top dog – an unaccountable apartheid state committing genocide against the Palestinian people and ethnically cleansing southern Lebanon?

We got a definitive answer last week, care of the New York Times. It is an uncompromising yes to all of these questions.

The newspaper reported that Netanyahu not only mis-sold Trump on the idea of quick regime change in Iran following a short “shock and awe” bombing campaign. He also identified to the White House who was going to replace Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme religious leader.

Extraordinarily, according to the Times, Netanyahu named the man for the job as former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The aim at the start of the air campaign was for Israel to kill Khamenei, then liberate Ahmadinejad from house arrest by striking the guards who were confining him.

Presumably, Ahmadinejad was then supposed to storm the citadel and seize the keys to the palace. But only Khamenei’s assassination went according to plan.

Ahmadinejad, who had reportedly been consulted on the scheme beforehand, is believed to have been injured in the Israeli strike near his home. He got cold feet, possibly suspecting he was being set up for assassination too, and went into hiding. His current whereabouts and medical condition are unknown.

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