Tag: perpetual war

Iran strikes UAE base housing British, US and Australian troops

Iran struck a military base housing British, US and Australian troops in the United Arab Emirates during overnight strikes across the Gulf.

A missile hit the Al Minhad Air Base where the UK maintains a permanent military facility, at 9.15am AEDT on Wednesday morning.

Anthony Albanese, the Australian prime minister, said the projectile caused ‘minor damage’ to an accommodation ​block and a medical ‌facility ⁠due to a small blaze that was created as ​a result ​of ⁠the missile hitting on ​a road leading ​up ⁠to the base.

More than 100 Australian military personnel are deployed at Al Minhad.

Albanese confirmed that all Australian staff were ‘absolutely safe’ following the attack at the base, which is operated by the UAE and functions as Australia’s military headquarters for the Middle East. 

He could not confirm if Tehran directly targeted the site, however, while maintaining Australia was not at war. 

‘The Iranian regime is engaging in random attacks right across the region. We know that is the case,’ the prime minister said. 

In 2014, the UK launched a permanent headquarters at the base to support British operations in the region. 

The Ministry of Defence has yet to comment on the attack. 

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Israel Claims to Have Eliminated Iran’s De Facto Leader Ali Larijani

The Israeli military on Tuesday announced it has eliminated Iran’s de facto leader, Ali Larijani, with an airstrike.

If the remnants of Iran’s government confirm his death, he will be the highest-level leader of the terrorist regime to be eliminated since Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei died in the first hour of the war, and he could prove to be a greater operational loss than the elderly cleric was.

“I was just informed by the Chief of Staff that the Secretary of the National Security Council, Larijani, and the head of the Basij — Iran’s main suppression body — Soleimani, were eliminated tonight and joined the head of the destruction plan, Khamenei, and all the thwarted members of the evil axis in the depths of hell,” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Tuesday.

Gholamreza Soleimani was the commander of the Basij, the thuggish militia deployed by the Iranian regime to keep its people in line during uprisings.

Soleimani assumed command of the Basij six months ago, meaning he was in charge during Iran’s violent suppression of the “Bloody November” protests in 2019, the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement in 2022, and the massive popular uprising in January 2025. The regime admitted to murdering almost 10,000 of its own people to suppress the latest uprising and some observers believe the true death toll was over three times that high.

Soleimani, 61, was under sanctions from the United States, Canada, and the European Union for his part in brutally repressing the Iranian people.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Soleimani was eliminated by a “targeted strike yesterday in the heart of Tehran” that was “guided by precise intelligence.”

The IDF described Larijani as “the effective leader of the Iranian terror regime,” with a rap sheet that included “violent enforcement measures and repression operations,” including personal supervision of “the massacre that was carried out against Iranian protesters.”

Larijani, 67, brought scholarly credentials and a calm demeanor to his decades in the politics of the Islamic Republic. He was the consummate insider, born to a family so powerful and well-connected that it has been compared to the Kennedy dynasty in the United States.

The Larijani family popped up on American media’s radar during Iran’s brutal crackdown on protesters in January because Ali Larijani’s daughter Fatemeh held a position with Emory University in Georgia. The university severed its relationship with her in late January under intense public pressure as the death toll in the crackdown supervised by her father mounted.

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The Most Obvious Question Liberal Media Refuses to Ask About the Iran War

Doubtless, the war launched by US President Donald Trump is not popular among ordinary Americans.

According to the latest public opinion poll, only a minority of Americans—part of the dwindling core of Trump’s supporters—believe that the US-Israeli aggression against Iran has merit.

According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in early March 2026, only 27 percent of Americans approve of the US-Israeli strikes on Iran—while 43 percent disapprove and 29 percent are unsure.

This pro-war constituency is likely to remain supportive of Trump until the end of his term in office, and long after.

However, the war on Iran is not popular, and it is unlikely to become popular, especially as the Trump administration is reportedly fragmented between those who want to stay the course and those desperate for an exit strategy. Such a strategy would allow their president to save face before the midterm elections in November.

Mainstream media—aside, of course, from the pro-war chorus in right-wing news organizations, podcasters, and think tanks—also recognize that their country has entered a quagmire.

If it continues unchecked, it will likely prove worse than the war in Iraq in 2003 or the long war in Afghanistan, which lasted 20 years and ended with a decisive American defeat in August 2021 following the withdrawal of US forces and the collapse of the Afghan government.

Both wars have cost US taxpayers an estimated $8 trillion, including long-term veteran care and interest on borrowing, according to the Brown University Costs of War Project.

Iran is already promising to be even more costly if the insanity of the war—instigated by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his war-crazed government—does not end very quickly.

Many Americans may understand the difficult situation in which Trump’s unhinged behavior and his unexplained loyalty to Netanyahu have placed their country. What they rarely confront is the moral dimension of that crisis.

Though they speak of the war’s failure—the lack of strategy, the lack of preparation, the absence of an end goal, and the confusion surrounding its objectives—very few in mainstream media have taken what should have been the obvious moral position: that the war itself is criminal, unjustifiable, and illegal under international law.

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The Explosion Inside Trump’s War Machine: Joe Kent Resigns

Joe Kent’s resignation is not an anomaly but an alarm: elite dissent is surfacing early because this war is built on deception.

Joe Kent’s resignation is shocking, but not for the obvious reason.

It is not shocking simply because it comes from within the Trump administration. Any administration of that size, stretching across thousands of officials, operatives and career personnel, will contain people who, despite the surrounding culture, still draw moral lines of their own.

Even an administration defined by blunt militarism, racialized rhetoric and an unapologetic embrace of force is not morally monolithic. There is always room, however narrow, for someone to say: enough.

What makes Kent’s resignation important is something else entirely: the language, the timing, and the political location from which it emerged.

When other officials resigned over Gaza, they established a standard of ethical clarity that still matters. Former UN human rights official Craig Mokhiber resigned on October 28, 2023, warning that “we are seeing a genocide unfolding before our eyes” and describing Gaza as “a textbook case of genocide.”

Former State Department official Stacy Gilbert, who resigned in May 2024 over a government report on Israeli obstruction of aid, put it just as bluntly: “There is so clearly a right and wrong, and what is in that report is wrong.”

These were not carefully lawyered exits. They were moral positions.

Kent belongs in a different political universe than Mokhiber or Gilbert. That is precisely why his resignation carries such force.

He was not some liberal holdout inside a hawkish administration. He was the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, confirmed in July 2025, a former Green Beret, a former CIA paramilitary officer, and by every normal measure a deeply embedded figure within the national security state.

He was also a Trump-aligned Republican whose confirmation battle was shaped by ties to far-right figures and conspiracy politics, according to AP. In other words, this was not an outsider recoiling from empire. This was a man from within that machinery saying he could no longer justify this war.

And he did not mince words.

“I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran,” Kent wrote. “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”

That sentence alone is politically explosive. It does not merely criticize tactics. It indicts the rationale of the war itself.

Then Kent went further.

“Early in this administration, high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media deployed a misinformation campaign that wholly undermined your America First platform and sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage a war with Iran,” he wrote.

And then the bluntest line of all:

“This was a lie and is the same tactic the Israelis used to draw us into the disastrous Iraq war.”

This is not bureaucratic dissent. This is a direct accusation of manipulation, deception, and foreign-policy capture.

That is what makes this resignation different.

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The Truth About Cuba

Not distracted by the war on Iran, on March 3, President Trump, once again, warned that Cuba was in its “last moments.” The next day, he said, “It may be a friendly takeover. It may not be a friendly takeover. It wouldn’t matter because they are down to, as they say, fumes” before admitting that the U.S. has caused a humanitarian disaster in Cuba.

Trump’s rhetoric has continued to escalate. On March 17, Trump said,  “I do believe I will be having the honor of taking Cuba. Taking Cuba. I mean, whether I free it, take it. I think I can do anything I want with it. They’re a very weakened nation right now.” The Trump administration is reportedly pursuing a policy of removing  President Miguel Díaz-Canel from power while keeping in place his government. They have communicated to Cuba that no deal can be negotiated while he is leader.

The U.S. has cut Cuba off. The Secretary-General of the United Nations has said that he is “extremely concerned about the humanitarian situation in Cuba” and warned that it “will worsen, if not collapse,” if the U.S. does not ease its chokehold. But as the humanitarian catastrophe unfolds, while the world looks on, there are three enduring American myths about Cuba that need to be dispelled.

The Trump administration has cut Cuba off from its energy lifeline: “THERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA – ZERO!, Trump announced. “I strongly suggest they make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.” With that threat, Trump declared a “national emergency” and signed an executive order imposing tariffs on any country that sends oil to Cuba. “Now there is going to be a real blockade. Nothing is getting in. No more oil is coming,” the U.S. Charge d’Affairs in the U.S. Embassy in Havana told his staff.

And, with the exception of a trickle of aid from Mexico and the promise of a drop of aid from Canada, nothing is getting in. “There’s no oil, there’s no money, there’s no anything,” Trump boasted. There is no longer enough oil in Cuba to guarantee your car, generator or hot water will run. There is not enough electricity to keep the lights on. Classes have been cancelled at many schools, and many hospitals have cut services. Tourism, the economic lifeblood of Cuba, is drying up. Cuba has announced that international airlines can no longer refuel there due to fuel shortages. On Monday, a “complete disconnection” caused a blackout across all of Cuba.

The American embargo has gotten so successfully out of hand that, after the leaders of Cuba’s Caribbean neighbours expressed alarm over the suffering of Cubans, the U.S. has relented a little and now says it will loosen some restrictions and let some Venezuelan oil into Cuba.

Foundational to the American embargo on Cuba are three myths that need to be undermined: the hostility to Fidel Castro and Cuba has been going on longer than expressed in the official narrative, the hostility was never about communism, and the intent of the embargo has always been to starve the Cuban people.

The hostility toward Cuba stretches back two years and one administration further than told in the official narrative. Though the embargo, the Bay of Pigs and Operation Mongoose’s determination to assassinate Castro are all attributed to Kennedy, they all need to be deposited in Eisenhower’s foreign policy account.

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US Encourages Syria To Consider Military Action Against Hezbollah In Lebanon, But Damascus Remains Hesitant-Barrack Denies

The United States has privately urged Syria’s new government to deploy forces into eastern Lebanon to help dismantle or disarm the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah, according to sources familiar with the discussions. However, Syrian authorities have shown strong reluctance, citing fears of drawing the country into a wider regional war and exacerbating sectarian tensions.

The proposal, first reported by Reuters, comes amid heightened efforts by the US and its allies to weaken Hezbollah following its attacks on Israel in support of Iran. Hezbollah opened fire on Israel on March 2, triggering an Israeli offensive in Lebanon as part of the broader Middle East conflict.

Sources briefed on the matter, including two Syrian officials and others with knowledge of the talks, told Reuters that Washington encouraged Damascus to send troops across the border to target Hezbollah positions in eastern Lebanon. The idea reportedly originated last year and gained renewed attention around the onset of US and Israeli military operations against Iran. Accounts differ on the precise timing: Syrian officials claim the request came just before the escalation, while a Western intelligence source placed it shortly after.

US Special Envoy for Syria Tom Barrack, who also serves as ambassador to Turkey, swiftly denied the reports. In a post on X, Barrack described the claims that the US encouraged Syrian intervention in Lebanon as “false and inaccurate.” The US State Department declined to comment on private diplomatic exchanges.

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How War in Iran Affects Grocery Prices for Everyday Americans

Walmart has essentially eradicated all of the mom & pop grocery stores where I live in western Kentucky. Which, for better or worse, forces virtually the entire city’s population to descend on the store for grocery shopping. As you walk into the store, you will inevitably be bombarded with messages from the intercom to get a flu shot or some other seasonal vaccine. This will be followed by a reminder that soda and potato chips are on sale.

Shopping in the local Walmart presents a fair picture of middle America. The county’s poverty rate is above 17%, homes are unaffordable, drug addiction is rampant, and wages remain stagnant. Among all of these issues, the rising cost of grocery prices make it challenging for many people in the community to afford real, whole foods. The unfortunate alternative is to purchase cheap junk food, go to a local food pantry, or simply go without. The simple reality is that many Americans can no longer keep up with rising costs in the grocery store.

But what does this have to do with war in Iran?

We often hear that Congress has passed a new defense budget, ever again surpassing its previous allocations. The most recent appropriations allocated $838 billion to military services in FY26 and now both President Trump and his domestic allies are calling for an increase to $1.5 trillion. For everyday Americans, that number is frankly unfathomable. But have you ever questioned, how does America pay for war?

Income tax has not always been permanent in America. But to give you the short version of the story, it was created to fund war and then later adopted as a permanent fixture. During times of war, Congress has periodically increased taxes to fund operations. However, politicians can only raise taxes so much before citizens begin caring about where their dollars are going. As a result, we no longer increase taxes for the sole purpose of funding wars.

Instead, we use debt. Because the public would be unwilling to fund wars through taxes, the American government defers to borrowing money. But where does that money come from? There is never enough capital in circulation to fulfill the American bloodlust, so it must be printed.

The American government’s incessant use of debt as a means to pay for wars of choice directly devalues the dollar’s purchasing power by forcing banks to digitally print money. Every dollar borrowed inflates our currency which, in turn, increases prices for everyday goods while working class compensation remains stagnant. It has held true for decades that wages do not and will not keep up with inflation.

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Trump Threatens Oil Facilities After US Strikes Iran’s Kharg Island

Following a US strike on the military infrastructure of Kharg Island, Trump warned that Iran’s

oil facilities would be targeted if ships aren’t permitted to pass through the Strait of Hormuz.

The bombing of Kharg Island’s military infrastructure follows reports that the US has sent a roughly 5000-strong amphibious ready group and marine expeditionary group to the Middle East.

Commenting on the US strike from Truth Social, President Trump said:

“Moments ago, at my direction, the United States Central Command executed one of the most powerful bombing raids in the History of the Middle East, and totally obliterated every MILITARY target in Iran’s crown jewel, Kharg Island.

“Our Weapons are the most powerful and sophisticated that the World has ever known but, for reasons of decency, I have chosen NOT to wipe out the Oil Infrastructure on the Island.”

“However, should Iran, or anyone else, do anything to interfere with the Free and Safe Passage of Ships through the Strait of Hormuz, I will immediately reconsider this decision.”

According to Fars News Agency, an Iranian outlet with close ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), targets hit included the island’s air-defense systems, a naval base, a helicopter hangar, and the airport control tower. Over 15 explosions were reported.

Kharg Island is Iran’s main export hub for petroleum products with 90 percent of Iranian crude oil being distributed through its facilities.

Iran exported between 1.1 million and 1.5 million barrels per day from the start of the war to Wednesday last week.

As such, the island was frequently targeted during the Iran-Iraq War due to its strategic importance, serving as an economic lifeline of the IRGC.

Iran has already threatened retaliation against the Gulf states should any of them attack the country’s energy infrastructure.

Trump’s threat comes the day after Mojtaba Khameini, the new Supreme Leader of Iran, declared in his first public statement that Iran would continue its blockade of the Strait throughout the war.

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Just Get Out! Now!

As is becoming clearer from President Trump’s own statements and those of his staff, along with press reporting, the US has launched a major war without the input of the experts we pay to advise the President on such matters. The State Department, Pentagon, National Security Council Staff, Defense Intelligence Agency, and NSA were simply bypassed because, as White House Spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said, President Trump “had a feeling” Iran would attack.

The President’s real estate developer son-in-law and friend reinforced that “feeling” when they returned from the second round of talks with the Iranian foreign minister and his team. However, as the news outlet Responsible Statecraft (RS) reported over the weekend, both son-in-law Jared Kushner and friend Steve Witkoff appear to have mis-represented those talks in a way that helped push President Trump toward war. No State Department officials were on hand to ensure the reporting was accurate.

Also, arms control experts at home, according to the RS report, believe that “the duo appeared to have fatally misunderstood a series of basic technical and historical matters” regarding Iran’s nuclear program leading to inaccurate information conveyed to the President.

Congress was completely out of the picture – seemingly uninterested in performing its Constitutional duty – and no case was made to the American people that they must sacrifice and die once again for a war in the Middle East.

Trump’s repeated promises to not start new wars, especially in the Middle East, have turned out to be empty, and Republicans are set for a crippling defeat in the upcoming midterm elections.

Iran had been warning for months – since the last US/Israeli surprise attack in June – that if they were attacked again they would not hold back on US bases in the region and that they would close the Straits of Hormuz. Trump and Netanyahu attacked anyway, and Iran has done what it said it would do.

Now the Strait of Hormuz is closed, oil is about to go out of control, and the global economy – along with the US dollar – seems about to implode.

On March 6th, President Trump refused a UK offer of help, saying we don’t need help when we’ve already won the war. Five days later, at a rally in Kentucky, President Trump repeated that “We’ve won the Iran war!”

It was his “Mission Accomplished” moment, because this weekend, just days after declaring victory against an “obliterated” Iran, Trump began begging other countries to send ships to help the US open the Strait of Hormuz.

Thus far every country has declined, understanding that such a mission has little chance of success.

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How the Past Whispers to the Present in Iran

In the first chapter of his 1874 novel The Gilded Age, Mark Twain offered a telling observation about the connection between past and present: “History never repeats itself, but the… present often seems to be constructed out of the broken fragments of antique legends.”Among the “antique legends” most helpful in understanding the likely outcome of the current U.S. intervention in Iran is the Suez Crisis of 1956, which I describe in my new book Cold War on Five Continents. After Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal in July 1956, a joint British-French armada of six aircraft carriers destroyed Egypt’s air force, while Israeli troops smashed Egyptian tanks in the sands of the Sinai Peninsula. Within less than a week of war, Nasser had lost his strategic forces and Egypt seemed helpless before the overwhelming might of that massive imperial juggernaut.

But by the time Anglo-French forces came storming ashore at the north end of the Suez Canal, Nasser had executed a geopolitical masterstroke by sinking dozens of rusting ships filled with rocks at the canal’s northern entrance. In doing so, he automatically cut off Europe’s lifeline to its oil fields in the Persian Gulf. By the time British forces retreated in defeat from Suez, Britain had been sanctioned at the U.N., its currency was at the brink of collapse, its aura of imperial power had evaporated, and its global empire was heading for extinction.

Historians now refer to the phenomenon of a dying empire launching a desperate military intervention to recover its fading imperial glory as “micro-militarism.” And coming in the wake of imperial Washington’s receding influence over the broad Eurasian land mass, the recent U.S. military assault on Iran is starting to look like an American version of just such micro-militarism.

Even if history never truly repeats itself, right now it seems all too appropriate to wonder whether the current U.S. intervention in Iran might indeed be America’s version of the Suez Crisis. And should Washington’s attempt at regime change in Tehran somehow “succeed,” don’t for a second think that the result will be a successfully stable new government that will be able to serve its people well.

70 Years of Regime Change

Let’s return to the historical record to uncover the likely consequences of regime change in Iran. Over the past 70 years, Washington has made repeated attempts at regime change across the span of five continents — initially via CIA covert action during the 44 years of the Cold War and, in the decades since the end of that global conflict, through conventional military operations. Although the methods have changed, the results — plunging the affected societies into decades of searing social conflict and incessant political instability — have been sadly similar. This pattern can be seen in a few of the CIA’s most famous covert interventions during the Cold War.

In 1953, Iran’s new parliament decided to nationalize the British imperial oil concession there to fund social services for its emerging democracy. In response, a joint CIA-MI6 coup ousted the reformist prime minister and installed the son of the long-deposed former Shah in power. Unfortunately for the Iranian people, he proved to be a strikingly inept leader who transformed his country’s oil wealth into mass poverty — thereby precipitating Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution.

By 1954, Guatemala was implementing an historic land reform program that was investing its mostly Mayan indigenous population with the requisites for full citizenship. Unfortunately, a CIA-sponsored invasion installed a brutal military dictatorship, plunging the country into 30 years of civil war that left 200,000 people dead in a population of only five million.

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