+ The Iran war is a war of aggression, launched by two nuclear powers against a non-nuclear nation that has been weakened by years of economic sanctions, targeted assassinations, industrial sabotage and cyber-attacks. This is a war of aggression that was initiated during bad-faith negotiations by the US, where diplomacy was used as a cover for a looming bombardment. The gloating over the ease with which US and Israeli airstrikes decimated Iran’s leadership was appalling, given the circumstances under which it occurred. Wars of aggression are crimes. But who is left to enforce international laws? If you can get away with a genocide, as the US’s war partner has done, every conceivable atrocity is fair game. Israel turned Gaza into rubble and still the bombs fall.
+ What is the objective? To destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities? To kill the Ayatollah? To topple the Islamic Republic? To emasculate the Republican Guard? To de-industrialize Iran? To wreck the Iranian economy? To “liberate” Iranian women? To spark a revolution? Who knows. Probably not Donald Trump. He claims he’ll “feel it in his bones,” though surely he meant his bone spurs.
+ Trump tried to blame the girls’ school strike on the Iranians, saying they’d somehow acquired a US-made Tomahawk cruise missile. Even the Pentagon wouldn’t back up this murderous lie. The school was on the target list. Bad intelligence? Not if the intelligence came from the Israelis, as it likely did. As we know from Gaza, the Israelis targeted schools as if they were ballistic missile batteries.
+ US airstrikes destroyed Iran’s Russian-supplied air defenses within the first couple of days of the war. Since then, the US and the Israelis can bomb at will, the only risk being an F-35 encountering a little rain or wind that might send it into a tailspin.
+ The blowback from this war will be intense and is likely to last for decades, assuming the planet has that many years left. The war has already spread across the Middle East to Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, Dubai, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and Yemen. The oil shock from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has jolted an already wobbly global economy. Soon, refugees will be pouring out of Iran and Lebanon. In choosing to go to war aligned only with Israel, the US will inherit its pariah status across the Muslim world and beyond. Trump doesn’t seem capable of learning lessons, but he may soon find out that it’s easier to impulsively choose to start a war of aggression than to decide when and on what terms the war ends.
+ Jason Hickle: “The US bombing of schoolchildren in Iran is the biggest single US massacre of civilians since My Lai. The Israeli bombing of Tehran’s oil storage constitutes the biggest single act of chemical warfare against a civilian population in history. Grotesque new depths of barbarism.”
+ According to Axios, Trump rejected an offer from Vladimir Putin to move Iran’s uranium to Russia.” They wanted the spectacle of bombing the hell out of the country.
+ German Chancellor Merz said the US and Israel appear to have “no common plan” for bringing the war against Iran “to a swift and convincing end”.
+ “Plans?” What plans? Who needs a friggin’ plan? Don’t you know plans are woke, man?
+ Claudia Sheinbaum: “I oppose the U.S.-Israeli war axis. Bombing schools full of girls is a crime, not defense.”
+ Lindsey Graham, Senator from Tel Aviv: “I will be with Israel until my dying day. To all of the isolationists, forget it. I am not with you. I am with Israel.”
+ Spain’s government has approved the removal of Ambassador Ana Salomon from Israel, as a response to escalating tensions over Gaza and Israel’s war on Iran. Spain leads, who will follow?
+ Joe Rogan: “It just seems so insane based on what he ran on. I mean, this is why a lot of people feel betrayed, right? He ran on ‘No more wars, end these stupid, senseless wars,’ and then we have one that we can’t even really clearly define why we did it.”
+ A week into the Israeli/US war on Iran and 53% of Americans oppose the war, 74% oppose sending US troops to Iran, including 52% of Republicans…
+ A week into the Israeli/US war on Iran and 53% of Americans oppose the war, 74% oppose sending US troops to Iran, including 52% of Republicans…
+ David Sacks, White House AI and crypto czar, breaks the blackout on the effectiveness of Iranian counterstrikes against Israel: “Israel is getting hit harder than they’ve ever been hit before in their history. And we’re only two weeks into this. If this war continues for weeks or months, then Israel could just be destroyed, large parts of it…”
