Tag: perpetual war

Iran’s Inflation Protests Turned Into an Uprising. Will Trump Get Involved?

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who made Iran an Islamic republic in 1979, famously said that revolution was “not about the price of watermelons.” He held economics in contempt as the science of feeding donkeys. As his successor, Ali Khamenei, is learning, people will make a revolution about the price of watermelons. Demonstrations against inflation in late December have become some of the most violent unrest in Iran since the 1979 revolution.

The country has been under a total communications blackout since January 8, but the information that has emerged from Iran indicates that there has been a massive, bloody crackdown. The Human Rights Activists News Agency, a nonprofit in Virginia, has verified 483 civilian deaths and 47 deaths of police and military personnel. On Sunday, Iranian state television broadcast video from a morgue in Tehran overflowing with bodies; authorities claim that the situation is now under control and hosted a progovernment rally in Tehran on Monday.

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened Iran if the government kills protesters. He told reporters on Sunday that “it looks like” his line has been crossed, and that he “might meet” with Iranian negotiators, or that “we may have to act because of what is happening before the meeting.” His cabinet is scheduled to meet on Tuesday to discuss options, including war, to support the protesters.

Trump’s promise to intervene “encouraged [Iranian authorities] to act much more aggressively and brutally,” Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies Professor Vali Nasr said during a panel hosted by the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, where I used to work. “You just end the protests quickly and take this off the table, so if that’s the excuse for intervention, it’s not going to be there anymore,” he explained, quoting a hypothetical Iranian official. 

As the space for political dissent has shrunk in Iran, protests have become more frequent and violent. In 2009, around 72 people were killed in protests by the reformist movement against a contested presidential election. In 2019, the government responded to protests about fuel prices by shutting down the internet, killing at least 321 people, and banning reformists from parliament. In 2022, when Iranians rose up against mandatory hijab laws, the crackdown killed at least 551 people.

This round of protests began with a merchants’ strike that was triggered by the Iranian rial hitting a record low against the U.S. dollar. (Unlike many of Iran’s self-inflicted economic problems, economist Esfandyar Batmanghelidj pointed out, the currency crisis has been directly caused by U.S. economic sanctions.) In the midst of the protests, the government announced that it would cut billions of dollars from import subsidies—increasing prices in the short term—and instead give citizens an additional $7 per month.

The unrest suddenly escalated in the second week of January. Video evidence from before the communications blackout, compiled by military observer Mark Pyruz, shows that protest sizes ballooned by five times between January 5 and January 7. Then, several Kurdish parties and Reza Pahlavi, the former crown prince exiled in 1979, called for their followers to come out on the night of January 8. At that point, authorities shut down the internet.

It’s unclear how much control Pahlavi actually has on the ground. Last summer, after the Israeli war with Iran, he claimed to have recruited 50,000 defectors from the Iranian government online. On Sunday, the former crown prince called on oil workers to go on strike in a video message. There’s no evidence that Pahlavi has been able to summon either the defectors or the strikes; on Sunday, he went on Fox News to appeal publicly to Trump, who has refused to meet with him, for help.

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The Rubicon crossed – Team Trump’s nihilistic anti-values paradigm

So, finally an act of unvarnished predatory action by Trump and his team – the abduction of President Maduro in a lightning night-time military strike – has launched 2026 into a pivotal moment. A pivotal moment not just for Latin America, but for global politics.

The “Venezuela method” is aligned with Trump’s “business first” approach which is rooted in constructing a “financial reward system,” whereby diverse stakeholders to a conflict are offered financial benefits that permit the US to (ostensibly) achieve its own objectives, whilst locals continue to extract rewards from the exploitation of (in this case) Venezuelan resources – under US close supervision.

In this template, the US does not need to create a new governing régime from scratch, nor put “boots on the ground” – for Venezuela, the plan is that the existing government of the newly-sworn in President, Delcy Rodriguez, will remain in control of the country – so long as she follows Trump’s wishes. Should she or any of her ministers fail to follow that blueprint, they will receive the “Maduro treatment,” or worse. Reportedly, the US has already threatened Venezuela’s Interior Minister, Diosdado Cabello, that he will be targeted by Washington unless he helps President Rodriguez meet US demands.

Put another way, the plan comes down to a single underpinning premise that the only thing that matters is the money.

In this context, the US approach to Venezuela resembles that of a Vulture Hedge Fund “buy-out”: Remove the CEO and co-opt the existing management team with money to run the company to new dictates. In Venezuela’s case, Trump likely hopes that Rodriguez (who has been “talking” with Secretary Rubio via the Qatari royal family, and who is also the Minister responsible for the oil industry) has squared off all the factions that compose the Venezuelan power structure to accept the relinquishment of state sovereign resources to Trump.

What is so pivotal here is the shedding of all pretence: The US is in a debt crisis and wishes to seize – for exclusive US use – Venezuelan oil. Submission to Trump’s demand is the only variable that matters. All masks are off. A Rubicon has been crossed.

“Venezuela will be turning over 30 and 50 MILLION Barrels of High Quality, Sanctioned Oil to the United States of America, sold at market price with the money controlled by me,” Trump has written on Truth Social.

The erasure of the American “project” – the substituting of self-interested hard power for the American narrative of it being “a light to all nations” – constitutes a revolutionary change. Myths and their supporting moral stories provide the meaning to any nation. Without a moral framework, what will hold America together? Ayn Rand’s celebrated belief that rational selfishness was the ultimate expression of human nature cannot reconstitute social order.

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Mike Pompeo Says the Quiet Part Out Loud About ‘Popular’ Regime Change in Iran

Former Secretary of State and Director of the CIA Mike Pompeo is one of the most bloodthirsty and prominent neocons in the United States today. He is militantly pro-Israel and has openly and consistently pushed for regime change in Iran. In the first Trump administration, he was one of Trump’s most hawkish advisors. As one of the main advocates for the assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, Pompeo clearly is not bothered by military action which is illegal under international law. However, one factor which differentiates Pompeo from his neocon cronies is his blunt, nigh-idiotic honesty.

While Washington has orchestrated numerous coups around the globe, few prominent officials have been so bold or careless as to acknowledge that the United States or Israel is helping foment a revolution in real time. However, Pompeo did just that when he tweeted, “The Iranian regime is in trouble… Riots in dozens of cities and the Basij under siege – Mashed, Tehran, Zahedan.  Next stop:  Baluchistan… Happy New Year to every Iranian in the streets.  Also to every Mossad agent walking beside them…”

Pompeo’s remarks are important because of what it casually assumes: Israel is intimately involved in the current protests in Iran. This undermines the US and Israeli governments’ narrative that the protests are an organic development. Contrary to neoconservative narratives, the fact that every protester is not literally on a State Department payroll does not make the protests organic. While some, if not most, of the protesters might genuinely oppose the government, the fact remains that funding, intel, media amplification, training, and sanctions have all been used as tools to influence political outcomes inside Iran to the benefit of Washington and Tel Aviv.

The biggest historical example of this is the 1953 coup against Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. After Mohammad Reza Shah was installed by the Iranian military on behalf of the US and UK, the CIA hired mobsters to stage riots in favor of the Shah. On top of this, the CIA also paid for buses and trucks full of demonstrators to protest in Tehran. Following the Iranian Revolution, the US trained members of the leftist Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) who previously killed American soldiers. With the rise of the internet, the US government provided funding for online activism targeting the Iranian government, asked Twitter to delay site-maintenance to help 2009 Green Movement protesters communicate, and carried out cyberattacks in collaboration with Israel. In short, for decades the US has tried to destabilize Iran to foster regime change. Pompeo’s remark suggests that this long-standing policy has not changed under the nominally “anti-war” second Trump administration.

Like the Obama administration, the second Trump administration is following the “Arab Spring playbook.” The Arab Spring was a series of protests, insurrections, and rebellions across the Arab world which sought to “promote democracy.” In reality, many of the figures and groups involved in the Arab Spring received not only training, but also funding from American NGOs like the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute, and Freedom House. These organizations all receive money from the US government via Congress or the State Department. Most of the aims of the Arab Spring failed. Instead of democracy, the protests led to an authoritarian backlash from Arab governments. This “counter-revolution” was beneficial for Israel as the failure of the Arab Spring made normalizing relations with destabilized, divided Arab regimes easier.

Ultimately, the main beneficiaries of regime change are not the United States or its people, but instead Israel. Unfortunately, so many figures in the American government, like Mike Pompeo, have a theology which places support for the secular State of Israel in high regard. In fact, Pompeo once suggested that God sent President Donald Trump to save Israel.

To put it frankly, there is nothing godly about Israel, especially with regard to its conduct in its proxy war against Iran. A godly nation would not have its intelligence agency pose as the CIA in an attempt to recruit terrorists for a false flag operation against Iran. The terrorist group in question, Jundallah, has been responsible for murdering both Iranian government officials and civilians.

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President Trump Posts Picture of Himself as ‘Acting President of Venezuela’

President Trump on Sunday shared a picture of a fake Wikipedia page that described him as the “Acting President of Venezuela” as he continues to push the idea that the US is “running” the country following the attack to abduct President Nicolas Maduro.

Trump has insisted that the real acting president of Venezuela, Delcy Rodriguez, who served as Maduro’s vice president, is willing to go along with his plan, which has received a cool reception from US oil companies.

While Rodriguez has said she’s willing to cooperate with the US, her government has maintained a message of unity and defiance in the face of US aggression and continues to call for the release of Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.

“In these difficult times our country is experiencing, Venezuelans have once again demonstrated that our greatest strength is national unity and historical awareness,” Rodríguez said in a post on Telegram on Monday.

“The collective response has been one of firmness, serenity, and determination to preserve peace, raise our voices for the release of President Nicolas Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores, and defend the constitutional order, which guarantees protection and social justice for our people,” she added.

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Trump orders plan to invade Greenland – media

US President Donald Trump has ordered his senior commanders to draw up a plan for a potential invasion of Greenland – a move that could potentially lead to a complete collapse of NATO, the Daily Mail reported on Saturday, citing sources.

The US president has long sought to take control of Greenland, an autonomous territory under Danish sovereignty, citing security concerns and the need to deter Russia and China, while not ruling out a military option to capture the island. This stance has put him at loggerheads with the European members of NATO, which have rallied behind Denmark.

According to the Daily Mail, Trump asked the Joint Special Operations Command to prepare invasion plans, but the Joint Chiefs of Staff are pushing back, arguing that the move would be illegal and lack congressional support. One source told the paper that senior generals “have tried to distract Trump by talking about less controversial measures,” such as a “strike on Iran.”

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EU Commissioner Calls for 100-Thousand-Strong Unified Standing Defense Forces

Kubilius is actually calling for a United States of Europe – and that’s not gonna fly.

As Europe goes around in a militaristic trance, with its member countries all involved in enlarging and reequipping their military forces, an EU commissioner is making a plea that sounds rational, but it’s actually unfeasible.

European Union Defense Commissioner Andrius Kubilius has declared that the bloc ‘should consider’ forming a standing military force of 100,000 troops and – pay attention – ‘overhaul the political processes governing defense’.

Obsessed with their imagined ‘Russian aggression’ and with the US shifting its focus away from Europe, Kubilius wants to re-imagine Europe’s common defense.

Politico reported:

“’Would the United States be militarily stronger if they would have 50 armies on the States level instead of a single federal army’, he said at a Swedish security conference on Sunday. ‘Fifty state defense policies and defense budgets on the states level, instead of a single federal defense policy and budget? If our answer is ‘no,’ [the] USA would not be stronger, then — what are we waiting for?’”

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U.S. Failed To Install the Pro-US Opposition in Venezuela

The United States decapitated the Venezuelan regime and is dictating policy in Venezuela, running the country like an American colony. But the regime remains in place. Washington has been forced to exercise its dominance overtly through thuggish economic and military coercion rather than covertly by installing the pro-U.S. opposition.

There are at least four reasons for this failure. The first is past failures. Many of them. Guillaume Long, a former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ecuador and currently a senior research fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, told me that “regime change (meaning getting the pro-US opposition into power) failed in Venezuela, because there have been so many US-supported failed coup attempts in Venezuela in the last few years, that there is literally no one left to organize and support a coup attempt.” That means that to pull off complete regime change would have required a military uprising or coup in Venezuela that the U.S. could support. “The Venezuelan security apparatus,” Long says, “is too tight for that right now.”

The second is that the most recent failures of U.S. supported coups in Venezuela left the Trump administration feeling that the opposition was incapable of taking over the country. The Trump administration had consistently asserted that Nicolás Maduro was an illegitimate leader who had stolen the last election from the María Corina Machado led opposition. Following the capture of Maduro, Machado declared that “Today we are prepared to assert our mandate and seize power.” But if she was, Trump wasn’t. Trump spurned Machado, saying “it would be very tough for her to be the leader if she doesn’t have the support within, or the respect within the country. She’s a very nice woman, but she doesn’t have the respect within [Venezuela].”

That reversal and rejection “blindsided Machado’s aides” and “landed like a gut punch” for Machado. The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump was leery of the Machado led opposition “after concluding it failed to deliver in his first term.” The U.S. had broken Venezuela with sanctions that had reduced oil production by 75 percent, that led to the “worst depression, without a war, in world history,” and caused tens of thousands of deaths. They had, to a large extent, diplomatically isolated Maduro, and they had done everything they could to catalyze a military uprising. But the armed forces did not rise up, the people did not rise up, and the opposition failed to take power. The Trump administration assessed “the opposition overpromised and underperformed.”

“Senior U.S. officials had grown frustrated with her assessments of Mr. Maduro’s strength, feeling that she provided inaccurate reports that he was weak and on the verge of collapse,” The New York Times reports. They had become “skeptical of her ability to seize power in Venezuela.” After repeatedly asking Machado for her plan “for putting her surrogate candidate, Edmundo González, into office,” they came to the realization that she had “no concrete ideas” on how to achieve that goal.

The third reason is that Machado is too radical to unite the opposition and the people of Venezuela. She “represents the most hardline faction” of the opposition, William Leo Grande, Professor of Government at American University and a specialist in U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America, told me. Yale University history professor Greg Grandin says, Machado has “constantly divided… and handicapped the opposition” by advancing a “more hardline” position.

When Machado won the Nobel Peace Prize, Miguel Tinker Salas, Professor of Latin American History at Pomona College and one of the world’s leading experts on Venezuelan history and politics, reminded me that Machado supported a coup against a democratically elected government, was a leading organizer of the violent La Salida insurrection that left many dead, and endorses foreign military intervention in her country. She was a signatory to the Carmona Decree, which suspended democracy, revoked the constitution, and installed a coup president.

Machado has supported the painful American sanctions on Venezuela. According to The New York Times, this strategy lost her support among the people and the elite. The business elite were threatened by sanctions and had “built a modus vivendi with Mr. Maduro to continue working.” The general population were anxious to improve living conditions, and Machado’s message alienated them. But as Trump tightened sanctions, Machado “remained largely silent.”

Her loss of support led to the loss of control of the levers required to come to power. Leo Grande told me that Machado’s hardline approach made her “the least acceptable to the armed forces.” “Trying to impose her,” he said, “would be very risky.” Tinker Salas told me that Machado is both “unacceptable to the military and the police forces” and to the ruling PSUV party structure. “Her imposition,” he said, “would have been a deal breaker.”

A classified U.S. intelligence assessment came to the same conclusion. The CIA analysis recommended working with the vice president of the current regime over working with Machado. The assessment convinced Trump “that near-term stability in Venezuela could be maintained only if Maduro’s replacement had the support of the country’s armed forces and other elites,” which Machado did not.

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US Carries Out Large-Scale Strikes Against ISIS in Syria

US Central Command (CENTCOM) reported that they have carried out “large-scale” airstrikes against ISIS in Syria, saying the hit multiple sites belonging to the terror group as part of their commitment to “pursuing terrorists” and in retaliation for the mid-December incident in which an ISIS infiltrator attacked and killed two US troops and an American civilian translator in Palmyra.

The strikes began Saturday evening, and CENTCOM claimed multiple coalition partners participated, though only Jordan has actually confirmed being involved so far. 35 sites were reportedly hit in the strikes, involving 90 “precision munitions.”

Details of what exactly was hit are unclear, though the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported three checkpoints within the Deir Ezzor Governorate were attacked by coalition strikes, though they noted that no damage was done and no casualties were reported in those cases.

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Trump Threatens Cuba, Suggests Rubio Could Serve as the Country’s President

President Donald Trump asserted that Cuba was vulnerable after he kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. He demanded that Havana make a deal with Washington or face additional aggression from the US.

“Cuba lived, for many years, on large amounts of OIL and MONEY from Venezuela,” the President wrote on Truth Social Sunday. “THERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA – ZERO! I strongly suggest they make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.”

Earlier this month, President Donald Trump ordered an attack on Venezuela that killed over 100 people and captured Maduro. Some of those killed were Cuban soldiers who were serving as Maduro’s bodyguards.

“Cuba provided ‘Security Services’ for the last two Venezuelan dictators, BUT NOT ANYMORE! Most of those Cubans are DEAD from last week’s USA attack,” Trump wrote. “And Venezuela doesn’t need protection anymore from the thugs and extortionists who held them hostage for so many years. Venezuela now has the United States of America, the most powerful military in the World (by far!), to protect them, and protect them we will.”

Following the capture of Maduro, Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio threatened several other nations in our own hemisphere. “If I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I’d be concerned,” Rubio said.

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Nostalgia isn’t strategy: Stop the Monroe revisionism and listen

“[T]herefore you may rest assured that if the Nicaraguan activities were brought to light, they would furnish one of the largest scandals in the history of the country.”

Such was the concluding line of a letter from Marine Corps Sergeant Harry Boyle to Idaho Senator William Borah on April 23, 1930. Boyle’s warning was not merely an artifact of a bygone intervention, but a caution against imperial hubris — one newly relevant in the wake of “Operation Absolute Resolve” in Venezuela.

The Trump administration has amplified the afterglow of its tactical success with renewed assertions of hemispheric hegemony through a nostalgic and often ahistorical reading of the Monroe Doctrine. Despite the administration’s enthusiasm for old-fashioned hemispheric imperialism, the historical record ought to caution for restraint, not revisionism.

When modern American officials invoke the Monroe Doctrine, they often do so with a confidence that suggests its meaning is settled and its record vindicated. Historically, the doctrine — both in meaning and in application — was far more contested than modern enthusiasts let on. Indeed, the high-water mark of American imperialism in the Caribbean exposed the high costs and meager returns of micromanaging neighboring states.

Critics of the president’s muscular approach to Latin America have often cited the recent Middle Eastern record of U.S. interventionism as a warning. While such comparisons have limits, the Latin American record offers little reassurance of its own. For all the confidence of its modern champions, the meaning and application of the Monroe Doctrine was never fixed, codified, or uncontested.

The apex of American military hegemony in the Caribbean basin, often justified under the auspices of the Monroe Doctrine, came during the so-called Banana Wars. From the 1890s through the early 1930s, U.S. forces intervened in seven countries, including decades-long occupations of Haiti and Nicaragua. Over this period, successive presidents used military force to protect American agricultural interests from nationalization and labor unrest and to prevent Latin American debt defaults that policymakers feared might invite European intervention.

Despite new waves of wistfulness in some corners of the MAGA movement, such interventions were not uniformly popular on Capitol Hill or in the general populace, and by the mid-1920s, the tide had turned against such acts of naked imperialism. Bolstered by the anguish of World War I, a diverse set of domestic voices, religious pacifists on one end, to xenophobic populists on the other, viewed military action in the Caribbean as wasteful, pointless, and morally abhorrent.

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