Tag: perpetual war

White House doubles down on ‘regime change’ with call for Iranian people to rise up against the Ayatollah

The White House doubled down on ‘regime change’ with Iran amid concerns the Islamic republic could retaliate after America’s military strike, saying the Iranian people have the power to decide if they want to keep Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as their leader.

‘Why shouldn’t the Iranian people take away the power of this incredibly violent regime that has been suppressing them for decades,’ White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Fox & Friends on Monday morning.

Leavitt was echoing President Donald Trump‘s Truth Social post from Sunday, where he floated the possibility of ‘regime change.’

‘It’s not politically correct to use the term, ‘Regime Change’ but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!’ the president wrote. 

Leavitt said the president was ‘raising a good question that many people around the world are asking.’

‘The president believes the Iranian people can control their own destiny and what he said last night makes complete sense,’ she said. Leavitt also noted the president ‘is still interested’ in a ‘peaceful diplomatic solution.’

The double down comes after some administration officials tried to walk back any talk of regime change.

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A Brief, Bloody History of All the Times the U.S. Caused Chaos in the Middle East

If at first you don’t succeed, make more problems for yourself. That seems to be the mantra in Washington when it comes to the Middle East. Every few years, a U.S. president asks Americans to go along with a small military commitment in the region—or starts one without asking the public. Almost inevitably, it causes bigger problems than promised.

Friends turn into enemies. The chaos allows bad actors to grow, or creates new factions with a reason to resent America. The political goalposts shift; the U.S. government discovers that a problem it didn’t care about before is actually a “vital interest.” And time after time, politicians promise that all these problems can go away with just one more decisive strike against the real cause of conflict in the region. No forever war is ever advertised that way from the beginning.

President Donald Trump is speedrunning this whole problem. Just a month ago, he was promising the end of “nation building” and grandiose “neocon” schemes. Now, he’s directly entered the Israeli-Iranian war by bombing Iran. While Vice President J.D. Vance tried to claim that “we’re not at war with Iran” and the attack would be a one-off incident, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump himself have both hinted that the U.S. will escalate to regime change if Iran does not surrender. Here’s how we got to this point—and some of the times we’ve seen this movie before.

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Iran fires 10 missiles at two US bases in the Middle East in retaliation for Trump bombing

Iran has launched at least 10 missiles at the United States’ biggest base in the Middle East and another in Iraq in response to President Trump bombing nuclear labs over the weekend. 

Aerial defenses were activated shortly after a ‘credible threat’ alert was issued to the Al Udeid base in Qatar, which hosts over 10,000 US troops as well as over 100 aircraft, strategic bombers and tankers. 

US bases in Kuwait, Iraq and Bahrain also sounded their air raid sirens shortly after the Al Udeid base was targeted by Iranian missiles. 

President Trump has convened his national security team in the White House as US targets across the world are put on high alert.  

It comes as Iran warned the United States will ‘directly pay’ for strikes on its nuclear facilities ‘rather than standing behind Israel,’ with the Islamic Republic prepared for a war lasting up to two years, a senior Iranian official told reporters.

Tehran’s mission to the UN said the US and Israel, as well as the United Kingdom, France and the International Atomic Energy Agency director personally, will all ‘bear full responsibility for the death of innocent civilians in Iran.’

Trump used 30,000 pound bunker buster bombs to hit its nuclear facilities on Saturday night, then sparked Iranian fury when he raised the prospect of regime change the next day. 

Iranian state media warning that up to 50,000 American soldiers would be returned to Washington in ‘coffins’.

Israel also launched an attack on ‘regime targets’ in Tehran on Monday, with ‘hundreds’ of members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps said to have been killed in a huge wave of strikes.

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Meet the Israeli fanatic running Ted Cruz’s office

After Ted Cruz’s humiliation by Tucker Carlson, attention has focused on a top staffer of the self-proclaimed “leading defender of Israel in the United States Senate.”

On June 18, former Fox host Tucker Carlson published a video which, though marketed as an interview, was more of a snuff film. Over the course of two hours, Carlson can be seen rhetorically disemboweling his debate opponent, US Senator Ted Cruz, on the politician’s determination to see the US attack Iran on Israel’s behalf.

While Cruz presents himself as a Christian Zionist moved by his own zealotry to support Israel, the politician’s Tel Aviv-driven policy line can also be traced back to his Senior Advisor for Policy and Communications, an Israeli-born Zionist lobbyist named Omri Ceren.

Before overseeing Cruz’s public relations, Ceren managed his foreign policy docket as his national security advisor. Prior to joining the Senator’s staff, Ceren served as the press director for The Israel Project, a Zionist pressure group which was forced to close down after being exposed as a de facto Israeli government front by Al Jazeera’s groundbreaking undercover investigation, The Lobby. Before that, Ceren cut his teeth lobbying for Ivory Coast dictator Laurent Gbagbo, who relied on Ceren as a registered foreign agent lending his marketing expertise to the embattled regime.

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The F-35 Ages Worse Than the Planes It’s Meant To Replace

As the U.S. grapples with ballooning federal budgets and increasingly necessary spending cuts, the military remains ripe for austerity. In February, the Pentagon suggested cutting $50 billion per year from its budget over the next five years—a good start but nowhere near enough, considering the Trump administration is floating a defense budget of nearly $1 trillion.

A recent government report detailed even further evidence that the F-35 stealth fighter jet is a program that deserves to be scrapped.

“The F-35 Lightning II aircraft (F-35) is the Department of Defense’s (DOD) most ambitious and costly weapon system and its most advanced fighter aircraft,” the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported in April 2024. “However, DOD’s projected costs for sustaining the F-35 continue to increase while planned use of the aircraft declines.” (There are three primary variants: the F-35A, the F-35B, and the F-35C, which are primarily for use by the Air Force, Marine Corps, and Navy, respectively.)

“DOD plans to use the F-35 aircraft through 2088 and plans to spend over $2 trillion on acquisition and sustainment,” the GAO noted, even though the department also “plans to fly the F-35 less than originally estimated, partly because of reliability issues with the aircraft.”

Nonetheless, the report expressed some optimism over the F-35’s future: “As of August 2023, the program was meeting or close to meeting 17 of its 24 reliability and maintainability goals, which are aimed at ensuring that the aircraft will be available for operations as opposed to out-of-service for maintenance,” it noted. At the same time, even though the DOD planned to fly the crafts less than anticipated, that reduction in flight hours meant the various military branches “are now projecting they will meet most of their affordability targets (i.e., the amount of money they project they can afford to spend per aircraft per year for operating the aircraft).”

Last week, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) tossed even more cold water on the F-35’s viability. It turns out that not only do the F-35s not age particularly well, they don’t particularly offer a competitive advantage over the planes they’re supposed to replace.

“As F-35s have aged, their availability and use have decreased,” the CBO detailed in a report—”availability” being a measure of “the number of hours that aircraft are both mission capable and in the possession of operational squadrons,” as a percentage of that fleet’s total flight time.

“The availability and use of F-35s have been lower, in some cases much lower, than those of other fighter aircraft of the same age,” the CBO continued. “For example, the average availability rate of a 7-year-old F-35A has been about the same as that of a 36-year-old F-16C/D and a 17-year-old F-22.” The fleet’s target availability rate is 65 percent, but all three F-35 variants range between 50 and 60 percent.

The F-35 means to replace previous-generation aircraft like the F-16, but instead, the obsolete models are running circles around their intended replacement. (The F-22, like the F-35, is a stealth aircraft, which the F-16 is not; the report notes that stealth crafts “have different maintenance requirements” and lower availability than non-stealth fighters of similar ages.)

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I’ll Slug You, and If You Resist, I’ll Slug You Harder

U.S. messaging to Iran, courtesy of President Trump, is quite simple: We slugged you (with our bombing attacks on three nuclear sites in your country), and if you don’t like it, we’ll slug you again, even harder, much, much harder.

Iran’s only real choice: “unconditional surrender,” according to the president.

Well, it’s a strategy, I suppose, the one of the abuser, the bully. Do what I want, else you’ll get slugged. Try to fight back, I’ll slug you much much harder. Oh, by the way, I believe in peace. And you can have peace by totally capitulating to me.

Another way of looking at or labeling this stategy: Bombing for Bibi. Yes, I know it’s not just Bibi Netanyahu behind it all. But he’s the chief flatterer, the skilled string-puller, the master manipulator of Trump. Not that it’s entirely hard to manipulate a narcissist who’s driven by money and consumed by his own ego.

So, we have to look to Iran to show a measure of restraint, since the U.S. and Israel won’t. If Iran chooses to fight, especially to hit back at U.S. targets in the region, all bets are off as our country stumbles into what could become World War III.

As Jimmy Dore put it today, No matter who you vote for, you get John McCain. A warmonger. Someone proud to joke about bombing Iran – and crazy enough to do it. Does it really matter if the warmonger is named Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden – or Donald Trump?

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NSC advisors urged ‘ISIS’-style drone attacks on Russian rail, leaked files show

A coterie of British and American academics advising the US National Security Council explicitly urged Ukraine adopt the tactics of ISIS in a detailed proposal for “anti-rail drone operations,” according to leaked documents reviewed by The Grayzone.

The aggressive war plans recommended in the files eerily foreshadowed Ukraine’s Operation Spider Web, which consisted of a series of brazen drone attacks waged inside Russia between May 24 and June 1 – the eve of scheduled negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. A pair of Ukrainian bombings of Russian trains in Bryansk on May 31 and Kursk and the following day left seven dead, and injured more than 30 people, including two children.

The attacks on Russian rail infrastructure have continued since the launch of Operation Spiderweb, suggesting the British-born strategy has heavily influenced the thinking of Kiev’s increasingly desperate military.

The leaked plans reviewed by The Grayzone explore the use of “inexpensive drones” as “a low-cost means for disrupting Russian logistics,”  but also include blueprints for terror attacks composed by three “drone experts” before being passed to the Biden administration’s then-Director for Russia at the National Council, Col. Tim Wright.

Those experts belonged to a secret academic-intelligence cell called Project Alchemy, whose existence was first exposed by The Grayzone, and which was founded with a mission to “to keep Ukraine fighting” by imposing “strategic dilemmas, costs and frictions upon Russia.”

As previously reported here, Project Alchemy researchers called “to take a page from ISIS’ playbook,” presenting the jihadist group’s psychological operations as a model for Ukrainian attacks on Russian civilians. The Grayzone can now reveal that Alchemy’s team also urged US war planners to look to the Islamic State for inspiration in using commercial drones for attacks on Russian civilian targets.

One academic advising the Alchemy cell, Zachary Kallenborn of George Mason University, recommended Ukraine carry out “two-stage attacks like ISIS did frequently” on Russian-held railways, suggesting that Kiev first “break the track, and wait for the engineers to come to fix it, then use the drone to kill them.” In other words: double tap kamikaze drone strikes.

“Drones also could provide ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] in finding and tracking trains to support larger actions,” with satellite imagery exploited for targeting purposes, Kallenborn added.

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Trump Accomplishes Nothing by Bombing Iran While he Endangers U.S. Troops and Citizens

As everyone knows by now, President Trump ordered the U.S. Military in the Middle East to bomb three nuclear sites in Iran last night.

As events rapidly unfolded last night, it was very obvious that this was pre-planned and well choreographed by the U.S. media which basically all reported the same thing at about the same time.

Very shortly after the bombings, President Trump, along with Vice President Vance, Secretary of State Rubio, and Defense Secretary Hegseth gave a brief update to the nation.

Trump proudly announced that Iran’s nuclear sites were “completely obliterated”, something that would have been impossible to verify in such a short time, and that only the U.S. military could accomplish this destruction of Iran’s nuclear program.

Then, he gave thanks to “God” for being able to bomb Iran.

Iranian officials later stated that there was only minor damage at one of the facilities, and that the other two had already been evacuated due to previous Israeli bombings.

From Al Jazeera (live updates):

Iran official says Fordow ‘evacuated, has not suffered irreversible damage’

Mahdi Mohammadi, an adviser to Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, says Iran had been anticipating the US attack on Fordow.

“The site has long been evacuated and has not suffered any irreversible damage in the attack,” Mohammadi wrote in a social media post.

“Two things are certain: First, knowledge cannot be bombed, and second, the gambler will lose this time.”

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Closing The Strait Of Hormuz Will Be A Nightmare Scenario For The Global Economy

Our way of life depends on cheap energy.  If you remove cheap energy from the equation, our society will be thrown into a state of chaos.  The Iranians know that closing the Strait of Hormuz is one of the most powerful forms of leverage that they possess, because the world is deeply dependent on the oil that travels through that waterway.  We don’t know exactly how this crisis will play out, because the Strait of Hormuz has never been closed in modern times.  But as I pointed out earlier this month, we were warned that Israel would attack Iran, the global price of oil would rise, and the increase in the price of oil would be blamed on Israel.  And that is precisely what has happened.  Israel has attacked Iran, the global price of oil has been increasing, and many are blaming Israel for what has transpired.  Unfortunately, the truth is that this crisis is just getting started.

On Sunday, it was being reported that the Iranian Parliament “has approved a measure to close the Strait of Hormuz”…

The Iranian Parliament has approved a measure to close the Strait of Hormuz, a critical global oil choke point, after the United States bombed three nuclear sites in Iran, according to Iranian state media on Sunday.

While the Parliament has voted in favor of closing the strait, the final decision rests with the country’s Supreme National Security Council, according to state media.

Of course the Iranian Parliament never would have held this vote if the Supreme National Security Council had not already decided what it was going to do.

At a time when the regime is under threat, there is no way that we are going to be shown any signs of disunity among Iranian leaders.

So what does this mean?

It means that the price of oil is going to go higher.

A lot higher.

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US Launches Two More Airstrikes in Somalia

US Africa Command announced on Saturday that its forces launched two more airstrikes in Somalia as the Trump administration continues to bomb the country at a record pace, an air campaign with virtually no media coverage of the conflict in the US.

AFRICOM said that one of the strikes was launched on June 14 and targeted al-Shabaab northwest of Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu. The command said the other strike was launched on June 15 in Somalia’s northeastern Puntland region and targeted the ISIS affiliate in the area.

AFRICOM offered no other details about the airstrikes as it has stopped sharing figures on casualties and assessments of civilian harm. “Specific details about units and assets will not be released to ensure continued operations security,” the command said in both press releases.

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