Tag: perpetual war

NYC’s First Lady Exposed Approving of Suicide Attack Propaganda, Plane Hijackers, and Outrageous Attacks on US Troops

New York City’s First Lady and wife of Democratic Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Rama Duwaji, has a history of glorifying terrorism, as evidenced by her past social media posts.

The Washington Free Beacon investigated Duwaji’s accounts on platforms Tumblr and X, finding posts she made in her teens and 20s that may raise an eyebrow with anyone thinking the Muslim couple now residing in Gracie Mansion are moderate in their politics.

In September 2017, she posted an image on Tumblr of Leila Khaled, captioned, “If it does good for my cause, I’ll be happy to accept death.”

Khaled is famous for her role as a militant who took part in two plane hijackings. She is a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which is designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department.

In 1970, according to The Washington Free Beacon, Khaled threatened to set off a grenade during one of those hijackings if she was not allowed in the cockpit of the plane.

In another post from March 2015, Duwaji praised another terrorist, Shadia Abu Ghazaleh, on International Women’s Day. Her post on X read “shadia abu ghazaleh, first palestinian woman to fight in resistance after 1967 occupation #InternationalWomensDay.”

Ghazaleh died in 1968 after a bomb that she was making to use on a building in Tel Aviv, Israel, accidentally blew up in her home. She had previously bombed a bus and committed other acts of terrorism.

In June 2015, she reposted an attack on the U.S. military, commenting, “*taps mic* American soldiers fighting in imperialist wars are not brave nor are they fighting for anyone’s freedom. They are mercilessly slaughtering 3rd world civilians and fighting to maintain American hegemony. That is all, thank you! *drops mic*”

After video sharing platform Snapchat added Tel Aviv to a live story feature allowing users to share footage from the city, Duwaji reposted an account that reacted to the decision in July 2015. “But in all reality, @Snapchat has disappointed me. Fuck #TelAviv. Shouldn’t exist in the first place. They’re occupiers. You celebrate them.”

Another post said, “And finally. Hey @Snapchat, as you give Israelis an outlet to celebrate their atrocities, youre supporting a genocidal state. Bye. #TelAviv.”

Some are chastising an investigation into Duwaji’s past, noting that it’s a page right out of the left’s playbook.

But there’s a distinction. Destroying someone’s life for calling their friends edgy insults on Facebook does not equate to revealing that the wife of a prominent public official has a love affair with a terrorist organization and downplays the sacrifice of American service members.

Duwaji is Syrian, moving with her family to Dubai in 2006, where she attended Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar before transferring to the campus in Richmond, Virginia. She was living in the Middle East, praising Middle Eastern terrorists.

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Lindsey Graham on Iran’s Kharg Island: ‘We Did Iwo Jima. We Can Do This.’

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Sunday called for the US to capture Iran’s Kharg Island, where most of the country’s oil exports pass, comparing the potential operation to the Battle of Iwo Jima in World War II.

“Here’s what I’d tell President Trump: Keep it up for a few more weeks, take Kharg Island … control that island. Let this regime die on the vine,” Graham said in an appearance on Fox News.

When pressed on the fact that US troops involved in the operation would face significant missile and drone attacks, Graham said, “I’m sort of tired of all this armchair quarterbacking. This has been an amazing military operation — God bless the fallen.”

The South Carolina senator said that he “trusted the Marines” and noted that two Marine Expeditionary Units are heading to the region. “We did Iwo Jima. We can do this,” Graham said. “My money is always on the Marines. I don’t know if you take the island or you blockade the island, but I know this: the day we control that island, this regime, this terrorist regime, will die on the vine.”

The Battle of Iwo Jima is known as one of the most brutal battles in World War II, involving US troops, and resulted in about 26,000 US casualties, including more than 6,000 deaths. On the Japanese side, more than 18,000 defenders of the island were killed.

Graham’s comments come after NBC News reported that President Trump is considering whether to send thousands of troops into Iran for potential operations aimed at opening up the Strait of Hormuz. The report said ground operations could involve attempts to seize control of Iranian ports, small islands, or oil infrastructure.

Another option being considered is launching a raid to capture Iran’s stockpile of uranium that’s enriched at the 60% level, though it’s believed to be buried under rubble following the June 2025 US airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

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Did Iran launch missiles at US-UK base on Diego Garcia? Here’s what to know

The United Kingdom has slammed “reckless Iranian threats” after missiles targeted a joint United States-UK military base located on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia.

However, Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Monday denied the allegations that it was behind the launch of what US media reports said were two ballistic missiles.

The US has not commented officially on the firing of the missiles at Diego Garcia, which is approximately 4,000km (2,500 miles) from Iran.

The incident over the weekend came three weeks into the war launched by the US and Israel against Iran on February 28. One of the goals of the war, they have said, is to degrade Iran’s nuclear and missile programmes.

Tehran has maintained its nuclear programme is for civilian purposes. The United Nations nuclear watchdog and US intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard have said Iran was not on the verge of making nuclear bombs. Contrary assertions were invoked to launch the current war.

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Iran threatens to ‘completely’ close Strait of Hormuz and hit power plants after Trump ultimatum

 The United States and Iran threatened to target critical infrastructure Sunday as the war in the Middle East, now in its fourth week, puts lives and livelihoods at risk throughout the region.

Iran said the Strait of Hormuz, crucial to oil and other exports, would be “completely closed” immediately if the U.S. follows up on President Donald Trump’s threat to attack its power plants. Trump late Saturday set a 48-hour deadline to open the strait.

Israeli leaders visited one of two southern communities near a secretive nuclear research site struck by Iranian missiles late Saturday, with scores of people wounded. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it was a “miracle” no one was killed.

Netanyahu claimed Israel and the U.S. were well on their way to achieving their war goals. The aims have ranged from weakening Iran’s nuclear program, missile program and support for armed proxies to enabling the Iranian people to overthrow the theocracy.

There has been no sign of an uprising, nor of an end to the fighting that has shaken the global economy, sent oil prices surging and endangered some of the world’s busiest air corridors. The war, which the U.S. and Israel launched Feb. 28, has killed over 2,000 people.

The Iranian-backed Hezbollah claimed responsibility for an airstrike that killed a man in northern Israel, while Lebanese President Joseph Aoun called Israel’s new targeting of bridges in the south “a prelude to a ground invasion.”

“More weeks of fighting against Iran and Hezbollah are expected for us,” said Israeli military spokesperson Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin.

Meanwhile, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates said early Monday their air defenses were dealing with missile and drone attacks as air raid sirens sounded in Bahrain.

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Citizens In Eastern Ukraine Will Not Be Allowed To Vote, Zelensky Says

President Volodymyr Zelensky has confirmed that Ukraine and Washington are in talks about holding elections, after earlier this month he much belatedly said while under pressure from Trump that he’s ready to allow national elections, so long as they can be done fairly and freely.

Zelensky indicated current discussions also hinge on the US and other partners helping set the conditions so Ukrainians can vote in safety. He previously stated the country could hold a vote within 60 days – but only if there are security guarantees.

Already over the weekend he erected more barriers to holding a vote, stipulating that citizens in Eastern Ukraine would not be able to participate. 

“Any election in Ukraine can not be held in Russia-occupied parts of the country,” Zelensky has been quoted in international press as saying, and he once again added that a proper voting process can take place only if security is ensured.

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‘Punish Iran’: Saudi Arabia & UAE Inch Closer To Joining US-Israeli War

Earlier this month, Elbridge Colby, a senior official in the US Department of War, held a call with Saudi Arabian Defense Minister Khalid bin Salman, who is also the brother and top adviser to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Iran’s attacks on US bases in the Gulf were heating up, and the US needed expanded access and overflight permissions. Saudi Arabia agreed to open King Fahd Air Base in Taif, in Western Saudi Arabia, to the Americans, multiple US and western officials familiar with the matter told Middle East Eye.

The base is important because it is farther from Iranian Shahed drones than Prince Sultan Air Base, which has come under repeated Iranian attacks. Taif is also close to Jeddah, the Red Sea port that has become a critical logistics hub since Iran effectively took control of the Strait of Hormuz. Current and former US officials tell MEE that if the Trump administration is preparing for a longer war on Iran, Jeddah may be critical for sustaining US armed forces. Thousands of US ground troops are en route to the region from East Asia. 

Saudi Arabia’s decision to expand base access, current and former officials say, underscores a shift in how the kingdom and some other Gulf states are responding to the US-Israeli war on Iran. “The attitude in Riyadh has shifted towards supporting the US war as a way to punish Iran for strikes,” a western official in the Gulf told MEE.

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Patriot missile involved in Bahrain blast likely US-operated, analysis finds

An American-operated Patriot air defense battery likely fired the interceptor missile involved in a pre-dawn explosion that injured dozens of civilians and tore through homes in U.S.-ally Bahrain 10 days into the war on Iran, according to an analysis by academic researchers examined by Reuters.

Both Bahrain and Washington have blamed an Iranian drone attack for the March 9 blast, which the Gulf kingdom said injured 32 people including children, some seriously. Commenting on the day of the attack, U.S. Central Command said on X that an Iranian drone struck a residential neighbourhood in Bahrain.

In response to questions from Reuters, Bahrain on Saturday acknowledged for the first time that a Patriot missile was involved in the explosion over the Mahazza neighborhood on Sitra island, offshore from the capital Manama and also home to an oil refinery.

In the statement, a Bahraini government spokesperson said the missile successfully intercepted an Iranian drone mid-air, saving lives.

“The damage and injuries sustained were not a result of a direct impact to the ground of either the Patriot interceptor or the Iranian drone,” the spokesperson said.

Neither Bahrain or Washington has provided evidence that an Iranian drone was involved in the Mahazza incident.

The use of costly, advanced weaponry to defend against attacks by far cheaper drones has been a defining feature of the war. The incident points to the risks and limitations of this strategy: The blast from the powerful Patriot, whether or not it intercepted a drone, contributed to widespread damage and casualties, while Bahrain’s air defenses were unable to prevent strikes that night on the nearby oil refinery, which declared force majeure hours later.

When asked for comment, the Pentagon referred Reuters to Central Command, which did not immediately reply to questions.

In response to questions sent to the White House, a senior U.S. official said the United States was “crushing” Iran’s ability to shoot or produce drones and missiles. “We will continue to address these threats to our country and our allies,” the official said, adding that the U.S. military “never targets civilians.” The official did not answer specific questions about the Patriot attack.

On February 28, the first day of U.S. strikes on Iran, an Iranian girls school took a direct hit. Investigators at the U.S. Defense Department believe U.S. forces were likely responsible, Reuters first reported, possibly because of outdated targeting data, two U.S. sources previously told the news agency.

Video of the aftermath of the Mahazza blast in Bahrain verified by Reuters shows rubble around houses, a thick layer of dust in the streets, an injured man and screaming residents.

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Western silence allows Israel to get away with killing journalists

On March 19, RT war correspondent Steve Sweeney and his cameraman Ali Rida Sbeity were injured by an Israeli strike meters from where they stood in southern Lebanon.

Sweeney was on camera reporting on recent Israeli attacks on southern Lebanese towns and infrastructure when he heard the sound of an incoming projectile. Ducking and running, he managed to escape the brunt of the impact.

According to the journalists, an Israeli aircraft fired a missile at their filming position near Al-Qasmiya Bridge, where Sweeney was reporting on, “the targeting of bridges and the forced displacement of one million people, an ethnic cleansing operation on a larger scale than the Nakba,” as he later stated, referencing the violent displacement of Palestinians which accompanied the creation of the Jewish State in the late 1940s.

The men were treated for shrapnel injuries. Sweeney said, adding “I’m amazed that we survived. We were incredibly lucky to come away with the injuries we did.”

Just a day prior, Sweeney had posted on X about the Israeli targeted airstrike on Lebanese journalist and Al-Manar TV presenter Mohammad Sherri and his wife. Both were killed. Sweeney reposted the news with the words, “Targeting journalists is a war crime.”

The next day, he himself was targeted.

This deliberate targeting of journalists wearing press vests is another Israeli war crime, in a long list of Israeli war crimes which include killing at least 261 Palestinian journalists in Gaza in the past two years alone, as well as previously killing Lebanese journalists and bombing Iranian media repeatedly.

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The State Will Always Socialize The Cost Of War

War is often sold to the public as an act of national will: decisive, necessary, and under control. The bill arrives later, in a quieter form. It shows up in insurance markets, shipping rates, emergency guarantees, higher fuel prices, and sudden policy reversals designed to keep the economic damage from spreading too far or too fast. That is what is now happening with the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. The fighting is not only destroying lives and widening instability. It is also revealing something more familiar about the American state: when private actors no longer want to bear the risk of a war Washington helped ignite, Washington moves to spread that risk across everyone else.

The clearest example came when maritime war-risk premiums in the Gulf surged, in some cases by more than 1000%, as ships and cargoes moved through a combat zone centered on one of the world’s most important energy chokepoints. This is what markets do when governments create danger: they start pricing reality honestly. Insurance underwriters do not care about speeches about resolve or credibility. They care about missiles, mines, damaged hulls, and the odds that a vessel will not make it home intact. Once those odds change, the market does what it is supposed to do. It becomes expensive to move goods through a war.

But the American state does not like that kind of honesty, because honest prices expose the real cost of intervention. So instead of letting war become unaffordable to the people escalating it, Washington stepped in. The U.S. International Development Finance Corporation announced a maritime reinsurance facility covering losses up to roughly $20 billion on a rolling basis, and later named Chubb as the lead insurance partner. In plain English, the government decided that if the private market was no longer willing to carry the full risk of this war, the state would help carry it instead. That is not a side effect of interventionism. It is one of its operating principles. Risk is privatized on the way up, then socialized when the numbers stop working.

The same pattern is visible in energy policy. As the war tightened shipping and pushed oil prices above $100 a barrel, Washington issued a thirty-day waiver allowing purchases of stranded Russian oil at sea to stabilize markets. That move was not just an emergency adjustment. It was an admission. The administration was effectively saying that one war had already become costly enough to require loosening pressure in another theater. A foreign policy that presents itself as hard and disciplined suddenly becomes very flexible when gasoline, shipping, and inflation begin threatening domestic politics. The slogans remain moralistic. The mechanics turn transactional overnight.

This is what statism looks like in practice. It does not simply bomb another country and call it security. It also rearranges the economic landscape at home and abroad so that the political architects of the war do not face the full consequences of their decisions. The cost is pushed outward onto taxpayers who did not authorize the war, consumers who will pay more for energy and goods, and trading systems that now have to absorb new shocks because Washington and Israel chose escalation over restraint. The state does not merely fight. It conscripts logistics, insurance, credit, and public balance sheets into the campaign.

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War Becomes Spectacle in Trump’s Horrific Propaganda Promoting War in Iran

During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised to be an antiwar candidate, boasting that, unlike his predecessors, he would end endless wars and keep the United States out of new military conflicts. Yet the trajectory of his presidency has unfolded in the opposite direction. From expanding military confrontations in the Caribbean to the escalating war with Iran, launched through large-scale strikes that risk igniting a wider regional catastrophe, Trump’s rule has increasingly relied on the language and machinery of war. As Zachary Basu points out in Axios, “he has attacked seven nations [and] authorized more individual air strikes in 2025 than President Biden did in four years.”

What makes this moment particularly disturbing is not only the violence itself, but also the way it is staged and celebrated. As the conflict with Iran intensified, the White House circulated promotional videos that fused real footage of bombing raids with visuals drawn from video games and action films, transforming acts of destruction into a spectacle of national triumph. In such images, war appears not as tragedy or political catastrophe but as thrilling display, inviting viewers to admire the technological performance of power while remaining detached from the human suffering it produces. These spectacles are more than crude propaganda. They reveal a deeper shift in political culture in which violence is aestheticized, cruelty normalized, and militarism staged as entertainment, training the public to experience domination not as a catastrophe but as an exhilarating display of power.

We live in an age of monsters. More than two centuries ago, Francisco Goya captured such a moment in his haunting 1799 etching, “The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters,” an image that now reads less like a relic of the Enlightenment than a prophecy of our own time. The Italian political thinker Antonio Gramsci described moments like this as periods of historical crisis, writing that “the crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” Our present moment bears all the marks of such an interregnum.

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