Tag: perpetual war

US Orders Americans Out Of Southeast Turkey After Reports Of CIA Arming Kurds

Within the opening days of the Iran-US-Israel war, the State Department urged Americans across 14 countries in the Middle East region to urgently depart. There’s since been an ongoing US government facilitated evacuation effort. Private tour groups have also been coordinating to get people out.

For example, stranded tourists in Israel have rushed south, across the Egyptian border on buses, where they can safely arrange flights from Cairo. For the first time of the war, Turkey has just been added to the list – a rarity given it has long been viewed as a place of stability and is a prime tourist destination. 

But the new State Department travel advisory has yet to be extended over the whole of the country, instead Americans are being warned not to visit southeast Turkey and for anyone currently there to depart immediately.

It warns of the potential terrorism, armed conflict, and arbitrary detentions, according to the advisory – at a moment bombs between Iran, Israel, the US and Gulf countries continue to fly. And importantly, a staff draw down:

Washington has advised non-essential staff to leave its consulate near the southern Turkish city of Adana near a key NATO base and ordered US citizens to leave “southeast Turkey,” the US embassy to Ankara said Monday.

There are American troops at several bases in Turkey, particularly at NATO’s major Incirlik air base, near Adana

“On March 9, 2026, the Department of State ordered non-emergency US government employees and US government employee family members to leave Consulate General Adana due to the safety risks,” the US embassy said on X.

It further declared that “Americans in southeast Turkey are strongly encouraged to depart now.”

Last week saw a couple of very serious developments which impact Turkey. First, a ballistic missile from Iran flew over the large Asia minor country and was intercepted by NATO defenses in the Mediterranean.

Also, days ago there was an avalanche of global headlines alleging the CIA was preparing Kurdish groups based in Iraq for a cross-border attack on Iran.

Some of these are the very groups Turkey has long been bombing just across its eastern border in northern Iraq. While Iraq as well as the Iraqi Kurdistan government of the north denied that this was happening – the alleged plan has the potential to destabilize part of southeast Turkey.

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Trump Cabinet Members Allegedly Buying Nuclear Bunkers

The Iran conflict has ignited a massive surge in demand for nuclear-proof bunkers across America, with even top Trump administration officials securing their own underground fortresses amid whispers of World War Three.

As The Telegraph reports, Ron Hubbard, owner of Atlas Survival Shelters, reports being “inundated with calls” since the conflict erupted, with enquiries spiking “tenfold.”

The Texas-based company, which builds everything from $20,000 basic shelters to multimillion-dollar compounds, is reaping a harvest from the heightened tensions.

Hubbard revealed that two senior Trump Cabinet members are new customers.

“One of them texted me yesterday, asking me: ‘When will my bunker be ready?’” he said.

These bunkers boast hardened steel construction, armoured blast doors, air purification systems, and luxuries like cinemas, pools, and gun ranges—designed to withstand drone strikes or worse.

Yet Hubbard is blunt about limits:

“No bunker in the world is designed to withstand a bunker buster from an American bomber. I’m sorry you just can’t make a bunker strong enough.”

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At Sea: Goliath Crushes David (David Wasn’t Even Fighting)

Americans of a certain disposition are cheering and thumping their chests in celebration of the fact that their navy, the largest and most-expensive navy in the world, just sank the first “enemy warship” with a torpedo fired from a US submarine since the Big One that ended in 1945.

And so it did: a not-yet-identified US Navy fast attack nuclear submarine displacing between 3500 and 10,000 tons fired one $4.2-million torpedo at a “blind” and possibly unarmed Iranian destroyer of 1,500 tons displacement returning home from a non-hostile participation in an international naval exhibition in the Bay of Bengal hosted by the Indian Navy. This triumph was attained with a Mark 48 torpedo said to be capable of sinking a 100,000-ton aircraft carrier with a single well-placed hit, marking the first submarine kill since 1945 in which the submarine was larger (possibly seven times larger) than its target on the surface. (Running out of targets, the submarine USS Torsk took out two Japanese coastal patrol boats of 745 tons on the last day of World War II, perhaps launching a proud tradition of America’s Silent Service that lives on to this day.)

The unlucky IRIS Dena was “blind” because its entire ability to detect underwater threats was embodied in the helicopter it was designed to carry and deploy, but which it did not carry, since it was on a “mission” that did not contemplate hostilities of any kind. That the Dena was indeed blind to the presence of the submarine was of course known to the American attacker, who made the otherwise-risky decision to remain at periscope depth after launching the torpedo, in order to capture exciting film footage for the people back home who were the purported beneficiaries of the slaughter.

The Dena may likewise be supposed to have been “unarmed.” The launchers for four anti-aircraft and four anti-ship missiles with which it was equipped may have been empty. It also sported a 3-inch gun on its foredeck along with smaller guns for air defense, for which it may have had ammunition aboard, so it may indeed have been armed, although in no way against submarine threats.

The grotesquerie of a small warship being sunk by a submarine at least twice its size is pointed up by the November 1944 sinking of the aircraft carrier Shimano, at 65,000 tons the largest ship ever sunk by submarine-launched torpedo, by the USS Archerfish, displacing 2,500 tons when submerged (its heaviest). The submarine hit the aircraft carrier with four torpedoes. A further incongruity with the norms of submarine warfare is that US nuclear attack submarines are faster underwater than the Dena’s maximum speed of 25 knots. The hapless Iranian couldn’t have outrun its American pursuer even if it had known she was being shadowed. The time and place of the attack were entirely the attacker’s choice.

The use of an almost-2-ton torpedo to kill 150 of Dena’s 180-man crew cannot be blamed on any malice or cruelty on the part of the American submarine’s captain; the Mk 48 torpedo has been “standard issue” on US submarines for over 30 years, and was quite likely the only type of torpedo the attacking vessel had ready to launch at the chosen moment.

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Lindsay Graham Met With Israeli Intelligence In Attempt To Lobby Trump On War With Iran

Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham made multiple trips to Israel in recent weeks to gather ammunition for his push to get President Trump to strike Iran, sitting down with members of the country’s spy agency along the way.

“They’ll tell me things our own government won’t tell me,” Graham told the Wall Street Journal (WSJ). The South Carolina Republican also admitted to advising Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the best way to pitch Trump on military action, according to the same report. Netanyahu ultimately presented intelligence to the president that helped convince him to green-light the operation, WSJ reported.

Israel Hayom, an Israeli outlet, confirmed the tight relationship between Graham and Netanyahu, describing the senator as one of four central figures behind the war. The outlet reported that Graham flew back to Mar-a-Lago from his Middle East tour carrying word that Gulf states wanted the U.S. to act, a message that clashed with what was being reported publicly at the time.

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Epic Fury, Epic Incoherence, Epic Propaganda

The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps did not confess to accidentally bombing a girls school in the Iranian city of Minab last weekend, killing 165 students. Israeli warplanes weren’t involved, either, and U.S. military investigators have tentatively concluded that U.S. forces were responsible.

Here’s a huge and amazing story from Fox News on Wednesday: Thousands of Iraqi Kurds launch ground offensive in Iran. Absolutely nothing of the kind occurred, not even close, as Fox itself was later obliged to admit in a sideways kind of way.

A major US radar installation at Qatar’s Al-Udeid Air Base was not destroyed by an Iranian drone strike in the early hours of the war. The USS Abraham Lincoln was not hit by four Iranian ballistic missiles last Sunday. And no, 650 U.S. troops were not killed in the first two days of fighting. The number of U.S. servicemen who lost their lives: six.

Elon Musk’s X has been an absolute swamp of “fake news” and video-game imagery and burning buildings in Dubai that actually burned in Tel Aviv last summer. I can’t even be bothered to debunk a fraction of it. More pressing business is at hand.

Let’s get something important out of the way, up front.

Its about what we mean when we talk about “the war.”

The wildly ambitious American-Israeli operation that began last weekend as a now-or-never confrontation with the hydra-headed Khomeinist military-industrial theocracy in Tehran had become, by the third day, another war altogether.

By Wednesday the war was primarily an all-out Khomeinist war against a dozen countries in the Greater Middle East, a war of survival that was itself merely an immediate extension of the war the regime had been waging against the Iranian people since last December.

The European Union’s foreign affairs and security chief Kaja Kallas described the state of play succinctly on Wednesday: “Tehran’s strategy is to sow chaos and set the region on fire. By indiscriminately attacking its neighbours, the regime is making a strong case for its own demise.”

The war Kaja Kallas described is merely the most urgently prosecuted campaign in the same war the Iranian regime has been waging in various forms and phases, both subterranean and out in the open, by regional proxy and by state satrapy, ever since 1979.

The many Khomeinist wars against Israel and by necessary extension against the United States and the rest of “the west” have been waged most consistently and brutally against the democratic rights of the Iranian people themselves, especially Iran’s women and Iran’s minorities.

Those are the “forever wars” you haven’t been hearing much about over the past week in all the complaints, from the “left” as well as from the “right,” from certain Liberal Party pseuds and Code Pink noisemakers and batshit MAGA influencers Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly about what the White House has gotten itself into.

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As War Rages In Iran, UK MoD Surveys Troops On Wearing Makeup And Nail Polish

While flames engulf Iranian oil depots following U.S. and Israeli strikes, and Iran retaliates with missiles targeting the UAE and Israel, the UK Ministry of Defence has sparked backlash by circulating a survey to troops about relaxing appearance standards. The questionnaire asks if male soldiers should be allowed to wear makeup, nail polish, and longer hair, ridiculously framing it as a push toward “gender-free” policies.

The timing of this clownish behaviour couldn’t be worse. The survey, originating from Army HQ in Andover, proposes uniform rules on hair, jewelry, and even facial aesthetics like fillers and microblading for all genders.

The review builds on recent shifts in UK military policies. In 2024, the Army reversed a long-standing ban on beards. Back in 2019, then-Defence Secretary Ben Wallace floated allowing men to use camouflage-colored makeup. And in 2017, instructions emphasized avoiding gender-specific language like “best man for the job.”

Shadow Defence Minister Mark Francois slammed the initiative, stating, “Upgrading to mascara from camouflage cream is hardly likely to deter Putin.”

An Army spokesman pushed back, clarifying, “As the Chief of the General Staff has said, the Army is focused on enhancing our lethality and fighting readiness. There are no plans to change policy – and this was not an official Army survey.”

This comes against a backdrop of escalating conflict in Iran. U.S. and Israeli forces have conducted devastating strikes on regime oil depots, with reports of “fire rain” over Tehran after the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a daytime assault. Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz, raising fears of UK gas shortages with only days’ reserves left. Iranian drones and missiles have struck Dubai skyscrapers and airports, killing civilians.

In addition, U.S. President Donald Trump has publicly dressed down UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer for what he calls a tardy response to the crisis.

In a social media post, Trump dismissed Britain’s offer to send aircraft carriers, writing, “The United Kingdom, our once Great Ally, maybe the Greatest of them all, is finally giving serious thought to sending two aircraft carriers to the Middle East. That’s OK, Prime Minister Starmer, we don’t need them any longer — But we will remember. We don’t need people that join Wars after we’ve already won!”

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Sen. John Kennedy: Trump Had “No Choice” But to Strike Iran

Senator John Kennedy is pushing back against growing criticism from Democrats over President Donald Trump’s recent military strikes against Iran.

During a new interview on Newsmax, Kennedy made the case that Trump’s actions were not the beginning of another endless Middle East conflict—but rather an effort to prevent a far larger and more dangerous war from erupting.

“President Trump did not start a war by entering Iran,” Kennedy said during the interview. “He is trying to stop a war.”

The Louisiana senator explained that intelligence briefings and basic strategic realities point to the same conclusion: Iran’s leadership had no intention of abandoning its nuclear ambitions.

According to Kennedy, Iran’s ruling regime—which he described as religious zealots—was actively rebuilding its military capabilities after previous strikes earlier this year.

“They were not going to ever stop trying to develop a nuclear warhead,” Kennedy said.

Kennedy noted that after the United States bombed Iranian targets in June, the regime quickly began rebuilding its missile arsenal and expanding weapons production.

“They were manufacturing hundreds of missiles a month,” he explained.

Even more concerning, Kennedy said, was Iran’s growing cooperation with global adversaries.

The regime’s strategy, according to the senator, involved working with China and Russia to produce such a massive stockpile of missiles that any attempt to strike Iran would risk triggering a regional catastrophe.

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Attacks on Iran a breach of international law, Swiss defence minister says

The United States and Israel have broken international law with their attacks on Iran, said Swiss Defence Minister Martin Pfister in an interview published on March 8.

He is the latest European leader to raise concerns about the conflict.

Legal experts have said many countries will consider the attacks unjustified under the United Nations Charter, under which member countries must refrain from using force or the threat of force without UN authorisation or unless acting in self-defence.

Mr Pfister, speaking to the SonntagsZeitung newspaper, said: “The Federal Council is of the opinion that the attack on Iran constitutes a violation of international law.

“In our view, it constitutes a violation on the prohibition of violence.” He also called on all sides to halt the fighting to protect the civilian population. The Federal Council is the Swiss Cabinet.

Mr Pfister said he was referring to all the countries not complying with the prohibition on violence, including the US and Israel.

“The Americans and Israel have attacked Iran from the air. In doing so, they, like Iran, violated international law,” he added.

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US will ‘make a ton of money’ from Iran war – senator

The US will control almost a third of the world’s oil and make record profits if it succeeds in toppling the Iranian government, hawkish Republican Senator Lindsey Graham told Fox News on Sunday.

Graham made the comments as global oil prices surged past $100 per barrel, which US President Donald Trump dismissed as “a very small price to pay” for the US-Israeli war against Iran, which was launched on February 28.

Graham described the cost of the attacks as the “best money ever spent,” arguing that the purpose is to prevent the country from developing nuclear weapons – which Iran has denied that it intends to do, insisting that its nuclear program is peaceful.

“When this regime goes down, we’re going to have a new Middle East, we are going to make a ton of money. Nobody will threaten the Strait of Hormuz again,” Graham said, adding that the US will install a “friendly” government in Tehran.

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Israeli minister calls for widespread Palestinian emigration to West

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called on Palestinians to “voluntarily emigrate” to Western countries on Tuesday in response to an op-ed by Likud MK Danny Danon and Yesh Atid MK Ram Ben Barak that was published in the Wall Street Journal and called on Western countries to accept Gazan refugees.

“I welcome the initiative of voluntary relocation of Gazan Arabs to countries worldwide,” Smotrich wrote. “This is the right humanitarian solution for the residents of Gaza and the whole area after 75 years of being poor refugees. The majority of Gaza is fourth and fifth generations to 1948 refugees who, instead of being rehabilitated long ago like hundreds of millions of refugees around the world, were held hostage in Gaza in poverty and overcrowding and were a symbol of the desire to destroy the State of Israel and of the refugees’ return to Jaffa, Haifa, Acre, and Tiberias.”

He went on to say this has bred the hatred for Israel and Jews “upon which the population in Gaza is raised and educated” and led them to believe that the only solution is the destruction of Israel.

“The small area of the Gaza Strip, which doesn’t have any natural resources or independent sources of income, has no chance of independent, economic, and diplomatic existence in such high density long-term,” he went on. “Therefore, the only solution to end the suffering and the pain of Jews and Arabs alike is for countries around the world who truly want what’s good for the refugees to accept them along with support and economic aid from the international community, including the State of Israel.”

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