Romania has taken part in US attacks on Iran. An illegal war is the greatest of war crimes according to the Nuremburg tribunal

The NATO Secretary General boasts about Nato's and Romania's participation in the US attacks on Iran.

“500 U.S. planes took off from U.S. bases in Italy to support Operation Epic Fury”, Rutte said.

“Bucharest had to cut down on commercial flights because they had to use the airport for tanker facilities."

What has the Middle East to do with the North Atlantic?

The UK was also involved tangentially but Starmer, finally remembering that he is a human rights lawyer, refused to let the US uses its bases in the UK, arousing criticism from Donald Trump and the Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch.

Esmail Baghaei, spokesman for the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs:

Musk reposts Benz post, though he helped Mossad and CIA try to bring down the Iranian government in January.

 

It was the Ukrainians who blew up the Nord Stream pipeline with CIA knowledge. The media gaslit us over a gas pipeline.

It was the Ukrainians who blew up the Nord Stream pipeline. Dr Kissinger was right.

It was not the Americans but buried in this Daily Telegraph article you find it gingerly stated that the Ukrainians had CIA approval.

America is a rogue state.

What is Germany going to do about it?

Nothing.

Back at the time the Telegraph told us that Putin had blown up his own pipeline under the headline 'Why Putin would want to blow up Nord Stream 2, and the advantages it gives him'.

The mainstream media are CIA controlled in all Western countries except perhaps till recently Hungary and Slovakia.

The Iranians are very impressive fighters, the Israelis not.

The Iranians are fighting as bravely against Trump and Netanyahu as they fought against Saddam.

Colonel Douglas Macgregor quotes an Israeli admiral saying that Iran has decimated the Israeli navy, something suppressed by the Israeli censors. 

Is the admiral using decimate correctly to mean killed or reduced by one tenth or as the vulgar do nowadays to reduce to one tenth? I bet it's the latter. After all Rishi Sunak educated at Winchester and Oxford misuses the word enormity.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian says if Iran did not have their missiles, which are for their self-defence, Israel and America would have ploughed through Iran the way Gaza was ploughed through, and they would have shown no mercy to the old or the young. "Therefore, we shall never, under any circumstances, negotiate with anyone over our defensive capabilities."

The Iranians are very impressive. 

Quite an achievement of Trump and Netanyahu to make much of the world view the Iranian government as heroic.

Seen today

“It is a good rule in life never to apologise. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them.”

PG Wodehouse quoted in the Daily Telegraph 

“To my daughter Leonora, without whose never-failing sympathy and encouragement this book would have been finished in half the time.” PG Wodehouse 

"British PMs are bad and worse and worst. A degenerative ratchet. The next one will be horrible. There is something deeply wrong with England itself. There is something deeply wrong with the whole West." Alexander Dugin, 22 June 2026

'This is our fifth praetorian coup in 10 years. Even the Roman senate would consider that too many.' (Tim Stanley)

People say 'Andy' Burnham Great Britain's next PM will be another Starmer but this is not true. Nobody resembles anyone else.


Nobody thought Mrs Thatcher would be any good when she became Conservative leader or PM but she was.


Mr Burnham is a human being and makes jokes and read English at Cambridge.

It's incredibly important that he has read good books. You don't need to read English or go to Cambridge to do that but I bet KS hasn't. Corbyn certainly not. Has Kemi? Sunak's fave is Jilly Cooper. Brown read a lot but politics and economics. Blair read the Koran and Ivanhoe.


I wrote about this here.

Tim Stanley behind paywall is here.

A lack of principals

What is the collective noun of Prime Ministers asked James Callaghan while that picture was being taken, to which Harold Macmillan instantly replied: a lack of principals.

England (Yukay if you must) had 6 PMs in the 1760s and 8 from 1827 to 1837, not counting Wellington twice. 

PMs were gentlemen then and read Homer. 

We will have had 7 when the new man takes office since 2016, of whom only one Johnson could read Homer and only one Cameron was a gentleman. 

Or can he read Homer too? Possibly but I doubt it. 

All the recent ones have been terrible. Compare Grey, Peel, Melbourne or Canning. To say nothing of Wellington who wasn't a very good PM but was much better than Starmer.

Brian Berletic: The US-backed Israeli War on Lebanon is Part of the US War on Iran

▪️The US has, from 2024-2026 waged direct war on Iran either through its own military forces or those of Israel spanning both the Biden & Trump administrations;

▪️The US has also waged regional war on Iran for decades, attacking and toppling the nation of Syria culminating in war spanning 2011-2024, war on Ansar Allah in Yemen, and of course war on Hezbollah in Lebanon spanning the entire 21st century including a major US-sponsored Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon in 2006 and now again in 2026;

▪️This is one single war - not separate semi-related conflicts - which is why an "MOU" supposedly ending hostilities against Iran must include ending hostilities against Hezbollah in Lebanon;

▪️ A failure to end attacks on Hezbollah in  Lebanon & forcing Israel out of Lebanese territory means that despite the "MOU" being signed - the US gets to continue its war on Iran simply via Israel against Iran's asymmetric regional defenses;

Ave atque vale!

Starmer announces his resignation in tears of self pity that would have been better shed for the victims of rape gangs or US bombs.

The American constitution has some good points, especially the First Amendment, but basically the American congress and administration is for sale. 

How wonderful that England (by which I mean the Ukay) can get rid of bad leaders quickly when everyone sees through them.

What a terrible PM he has been. A human rights lawyer who instructed the RN to help US ships commit piracy, who condemned Putin for invading Ukraine but not America for attacking Venezuela and Iran, who made a non-violent protest group a terrorist organisation and imprisoned its members for years without the jury knowing what penalty they faced, etc.

He hid the truth about Pakistani gang rapes of vulnerable white girls for fear of losing votes.

A practiced liar who pretended to be left-wing to win the Labour leadership and then became an authoritarian leader who expelled all sorts of left-wing MPs from his party for specious reasons.

I admit I loathe his voice too and wooden self consciousness.

The Telegraph says

Starmer won a landslide... but had no idea what to do with it

This was true of Sir A Blair, as he then wasn't, in 1997. At least Sir Keir did much less harm than Sir Anthony.

Former Labour minister Tom Harris is right when he says:

Keir Starmer never quite got the hang of politics, let alone the job of prime minister. And now he won’t have to keep trying.

And he did try. Watching him make the effort was at times painful. Part of Starmer must have known there was something different, something lacking in his personality that made politics a foreign language to him.

The Prime Minister has his talents, to be sure, but they belong in chambers, not in Westminster or Whitehall.

'Starmer has known about the child rapes for a decade'. What a disgusting, putrid homunculus he is.

 

I live in Romania and don't follow British politics closely enough to know about the findings of the Casey report. This was written a year and six days ago by the extremely antiracist (that's how he lost his eye) Dan Hodges, a Blairite-Cameroon liberal conservative or conservative liberal.

Starmer has known about the appalling abuse for a decade. Yet he opposed a national rape inquiry because he knew it would damage Labour

By DAN HODGES, DAILY MAIL COLUMNIST

16 June 2025 

Keir Starmer knew. Senior Home Office minister Jess Phillips knew. They all knew.

Today the wall of deceit, corruption and confusion the government attempted to buttress around the rape gang scandal finally collapsed. The 'audit' produced by Baroness Casey at the behest of Downing Street – clearly in the forlorn hope it would cement the cover-up of the worst sexual abuse crisis in British history – instead brought the entire crumbling edifice crashing down.

Children and women had been abused on an industrial scale, Casey confirmed. A disproportionate number of the vile assaults were perpetrated by men of Pakistani origin. The race of the abusers had been a major factor in the failure to intervene or prosecute them. A national investigation was now required.

If you believe the Prime Minister, all this came as a bolt from the blue. On Saturday, as he expeditiously jetted out of the country to attend the G7 summit, he claimed to reporters to reporters "I have read every single word of her report, and I am going to accept her recommendation. That is the right thing to do on the basis of what she has put in her audit."

But no one does believe Keir Starmer. Rightly so.

Quotations

Haruki Murakami, "Kafka on the Shore":

"A deserted library in the morning – there’s something about it that really gets to me. All possible words and ideas are there, resting peacefully. I want to do what I can to preserve this place, keep it neat and tidy. Sometimes I come to a halt and gaze at all the books on the stacks, reach out and touch the spines of a few." 

Robert Graves, Grotesques:

Starmer betrayed

An anonymous Labour source says Keir Starmer feels "betrayed".

"He gave everything to Labour, including sacrificing much of his children's teenage years to help make the party electable. He feels deeply betrayed, especially by those he believed were loyal to him."

He has been betrayed by the British people, I'm afraid.

Still he has been for two years Prime Minister of England, something no Greek or Roman ever was. 

That must be better than spending time with his children.

I wonder if we'll find out now about the Ukrainian male prostitutes. That story was mysteriously suppressed.

The Israeli press is vastly more informative and critical of the Israeli government, despite the military censorship, than Western media

I actually don't know exactly why except that the information space in most of the world is tightly controlled by America. 

But years ago European governments were mildly sympathetic to the Arabs, who are now called Palestinians.

My guess is that September 11 2001 made people see Islamism as the problem rather than America's record of interference in the Middle East. 

I found observing from Bucharest British reactions to September 11 as strange as their reaction to the death of Diana. 

I was in London for that one and realised I no longer understood most of my countrymen.

There has followed a quarter of a century of American prompted madness.

"Our War Against Russia"

 

  

This framed newspaper hangs on my wall.

Change but no change

Had I had a vote in the Makerfield by-election I'd have been attracted by both the two right wing parties, the Greens for their policy on Gaza, the Conservatives and absolutely not at all by Labour but probably would have voted Labour to oust Sir Keir Starmer and vote against McSweeney and Mandy.

It seems the good burghers of Makerfield, wherever that is, thought like me.

What Great Britain needs is a PM who isn't an Atlanticist (think Enoch Powell or Charles de Gaulle) and ideally is an isolationist.

Unfortunately inly the Corbynites fit that description and that cure would be much worse than the disease.

Why will the UK have six PMs in 7 years.

That's reminiscent of Italy in the old days or a banana republic.

Partly because party members who shouldn't be given the choice don't know the candidates or understand politics and choose badly but mostly because in Great Britain and every country centre left and centre right are exhausted, meaningless traditions.

The people who rule the world, the international deep state which includes the media, rule anyway and if people disagree they are ignored or on occasion imprisoned. 

Still Sir Keir Starmer is incapable of leasing the country or much else, even though he was DPP, he got elected Labour leader by lying about his opinions, has expelled anti Israel MPs whom he knows aren't anti-Semites for that offence, is a human rights lawyer who has been an accomplice of Israel's and America's in very illegal things, including piracy, and I want him gone.  

He is also an ardent atheist and insufferably wooden.

I agree with Brian Berletic here who advises "Beware of Triumphalism"

▪️Iran has simply survived the latest round of DECADES of US encroachment, encirclement, containment, and aggression;

▪️Actual "winning" looks like what the US has done in Syria, where one side completely loses, is removed entirely from the regional equation, and there are no "talks" or "negotiations" because the losing side has zero leverage to even get the other side to the table;

▪️The fact there are "talks" with the US in the first place indicates a fundamental lack of leverage on Iran's part;

▪️The US will not be withdrawing from the region, nor will US-backed proxies be rolled back and eliminated - instead the US and its proxies will simply rebuild, rearm, and reorganize their approach ahead of an inevitable renewed conflict, if there is even a significant pause to begin with;

▪️The US has already attacked Iran, paused a year, attacked again, paused a year and attacked again - in 2024 (via Israel), 2025, and again this year - nothing yet has been done by Iran to break this cycle, just survive it;

▪️Iran "controlling" the Strait of Hormuz is moot if the economic damage it causes advances US interests in placing the rest of Asia under energy dependence on the US - the only variable the US seeks to control is the speed & severity of the damage caused - this "MOU" allows the US to manage and slow it down;

▪️A US defeat would look like the full withdrawal of US troops from the region, the elimination of or reconciliation with its most dangerous proxies in the region, and iron clad security guarantees for Iran (via allies like Russia and China) - anything short of this means future conflict is inevitable;

▪️In other words, future conflict is inevitable

Washington Post Claims Israel "Sabotaging" US Attempts at "Lasting Peace" with Iran

▪️Who thinks the US actually desires "lasting peace?" - of course - no one;

▪️Using Israel as a pretext for continued war while affording the US plausible deniability is literally stated US policy repeatedly used by the US spanning the Biden and Trump administrations from 2024 to now to provoke and sustain this war of aggression against Iran in the first place;

▪️As warned about all throughout these "negotiations," as long as the structural realities driving US policy - the pursuit of power and profit over people and purpose - US policy itself will not change;

▪️In this case, not even the lies we're being told are changing as to why US policy won't change...

Holocaust delayed?

Israeli paper Maariv reports that memorandum of understanding makes Iran the strongest and most influential regional power in the Middle East instead of Israel.

That would stabilise the region but Israel intends to destroy the deal.

Most Israelis think all Gazans are Hamas and all Lebanese Shia are Hezbollah and that both groups are intent on repeating the German holocaust of the Jews. Israel therefore wants to do to Southern Lebanon what they did to Gaza, which can also reasonably be called a holocaust.

(Holocaust of course means sacrifice by fire and was used to describe Hiroshima, Dresden and many other things. On August 12, 1982 Ronald Reagan angrily called Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin during the Israeli siege of Beirut and deliberately described the heavy bombing as a holocaust.)

Remember that in May 2025 a classified IDF database listed 8,900 Palestinian fighters as dead or likely dead in Gaza out of at least 73,770 Palestinians reported killed. 

Probably the number of dead Palestinian civilians was very much greater.

A report written by Israeli academic Yaakov Garb for the Harvard Dataverse in June 2025 estimated that nearly 377,000 Palestinians remain unaccounted for since October 2023. 

A report by academics Richard Hil (sic) and Gideon Polya in September 2025 said Israel was responsible for 680,000 deaths by April 2025, 380,000 of whom were infants under 5 and 99,000 children over 5.

Israel has not defeated Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis or Iran and has lost younger Americans

Alastair Crooke today quotes Lazar Berman, military correspondent of the Times of Israel.

“The post-October 7 wars, which came with expectations and promises of “total victory,” are over - as are their illusions. Palestinians are not going to leave Gaza. Hamas won’t disarm, nor will Hezbollah. Trump is not going to return to war in Iran, which can now threaten to withdraw from a deal to get Trump to stop any major Israeli operation against Hamas or Hezbollah …The Middle East has certainly changed”.

And leading Israeli commentator Nahum Barnea. 

“There probably wasn’t anyone from Military Intelligence, the National Security Council or the Mossad who raised at the meetings the possibility that the Iranian regime might survive and emerge stronger."

Mr Crooke continues:

"....In this reconfigured Israeli strategic landscape, perhaps even the pusillanimous Europeans might begin some corrective action by insisting on a return to ancient understandings of war — in which de-capitation strikes and multi-assassination campaigns of women and children lie outside of all civilised norms of war, let alone of human morality. Iranian negotiators insisted in the negotiations that any assassinations or killings would kill relations with the US stone-dead.

".....Even amongst American Jews, 61% have concluded that Israel committed war crimes in Gaza, and 39% regard Israel’s conduct in Gaza as genocide."

Losing moral superiority to Belarus

Ynet the website for the mass market Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported last night an IDF order "Don't allow Shiites to return to their homes."

Former Israeli PM Ehud Olmert:

President Lukashenko of Belarus:

"They have already earned such a reputation in the international community that it can't get any worse, having bombed Gaza to rubble. Many have even looked back at history: 'What Holocaust?! What Holocaust could there possibly be, the one Israelis talked about, when they have killed so many people, and above all women and children?'"

“Gaza was simply wiped off the face of the Earth.” 

“And now they are trying to build a resort on the very land where these people were killed?”

Catholic Mozart

 

Is the American empire contained or recoiling to spring further?

Tucker Carlson: 

You probably never imagined that the end of American Empire would come in a little over a 100-day conflict with a little rogue state on the Persian Gulf that has the 34th largest economy in the world, a country called Iran. You just couldn't imagine that would happen.

I hope he's right but as Adam Smith said there's a lot of ruin in a nation.

Brian Berletic has a very different view.

In the latest phase of the US’ decades-running war on Iran, Iran has simply “survived,” not “won;”

▪️Iran now faces either a possible longer pause it will need to race the US in preparations for the next confrontation, or another immediate disruption of any longer-term peace for the continued psuedo-ceasefire it has agreed to with Iran where it stays just under the threshold of total war with Iran while managing energy prices based on shipping disruptions and the prospect of wider war;

▪️The US already has two excuses ready and waiting to undo any agreement it makes with Iran including its long-established and well-used “Leave it to Bibi” option and the US’ own “intelligence community” preparing to accuse Iran of not abiding by any agreement made;

▪️Both options have been repeatedly used by the US to unilaterally withdraw from previous agreements made with Iran as well as to provoke armed aggression against Iran;

Enemies

We should not consider a country's domestic policies when judging her foreign policies. They are irrelevant. 

England's problems with Napoleon, the Kaiser, Hitler, the USSR and Argentina were not their internal policies but their invading countries and threatening our interests. By this criterion Iran is not England's or NATO's enemy and the USA is.

What he said

On X

Unreal: the symbolism of Trump signing a surrender agreement at Versailles in which the US agrees to pay massive reparations is just too perfect. Arnaud Bertrand

Handre

@Handre

·

Jun 16

In 1968, while teenage Red Guards beat their professors to death with clubs in Beijing courtyards, Jean-Paul Sartre sat in Paris calling Mao's Cultural Revolution a model of revolutionary democracy. The most celebrated intellectual in France looked at a country burning its own libraries and saw liberation. He sold the Maoist newspaper La Cause du Peuple on French street corners himself, holding it aloft like a sacrament.

Iran now the fourth most powerful country in the world

Is Iran now the world's fourth great power? It looks like it. 

I see it bruited that in 5-10 years Iran could reach the military power of Russia, if they invest a lot and they will have the money to do so!

Israel's downfall began the day the US murdered the Ayatollah Khamenei and united Iran. It's reminiscent of how Saddam's invasion galvanised the Islamic Republic.

Ex-Israeli jazz musician Gilad Atzmon two hours ago:

"The Sodomites lost; their pretense of being a ‘regional superpower’ evaporated into thin air. The Iranians, on the other hand, won a spectacular victory on all fronts. 

"What we observe here is the difference between the people who refer to themselves as 'light unto the nations' (the Israelites) and the nation that proves to be light unto humanity (Iran)…"

Who would have expected that outside America and Israel Iran would be widely supported by the public?

Un englez în Pasajul Englez

 

Iran has won

Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal says US officials have confirmed that Iran will get full access to a total of $100 billion of their money frozen (stolen) by America and $300 billion for reconstruction.

US intelligence agencies have assessed that Iran can now effectively shut down the Strait of Hormuz at will, three sources tell CNN. This is hardly news. “We have now handed Iran de facto control over the strait — a weapon more powerful than any nuke."

Iran has also learned it can leverage targeted strikes against Gulf energy infrastructure and deploy Houthis to close the Bab-el-Mandeb strait as an economic “nuclear option” if negotiations collapse. Again a statement of the obvious. 

Sweet are the uses of adversity, as I quoted before. 

But can Iran get Israel out of Lebanon?

Is there any point in American forces being in the Persian Gulf (the clue is in the name)?

The world looks on without sympathy for America or Israel. Many people have found to their amazement an unlikely hero in the Iranian government. 

As Disraeli said, the unexpected always happens but it's much more true now than during the cold war, which seems like a period of stability.

What were Mr Trump's war aims?

What were the aims of Trump's attack on Iran just at the moment when the Iranian government had offered America a good deal and were meeting to discuss peace? 

His main enemy was not Iran but Obama.

The second target was China.

Then perhaps Iran.

But with Netanyahu and Trump it's a case of Greek meets Greek, two conmen in a folie a deux.

Mossad no doubt has plenty of information about Mr and Mrs Trump but that's not the reason for this war or it would have happened in his first term.

Professor Marandi says that, in accordance with the MOU, the Zionist regime must withdraw from the occupied territories in Lebanon and the US has accepted Iran's right to enrichment. 

This is a humiliation for America but America was humiliated anyway.

Trump was quoted weeks ago saying he could accept any deal because he could sell it as a victory, but the Iranians refused even to talk. 

Now they have.

Ari Benashe who worked with Epstein in Mossad says Netanyahu will release new Epstein files if Trump goes ahead with the deal.

Peace in our time? I have lots of doubts, frankly

The news of a deal sounds wonderful but I do not trust Trump or the US deep state one inch.

Will Netanyahu really withdraw from Lebanon and end the killing in Gaza? I find that hard to believe.

Professor Marandi says Iran wins if the Americans honour the deal and if they don't, in which case the world blames America and Israel.

Brian Berletic this morning calls it "a deal the US had no right to demand be made in the first place, in a region of the planet it has no right to be in, and all while the US continues striking at or seizing ships transporting Russian energy and continues destabilizing Asia ahead of confrontation with China..."

He's right, of course. I hope it's a statement of the obvious but people have been misled by the media and politicians.

Robert A. Pape

@ProfessorPape

·

1h

US-Iran MOU is a Memorandum of Disagreement Rushing to sign Friday, both sides fundamentally split on: • Iran wants $12B upfront; US says no cash • Israel's Lebanon campaign • US force withdrawal Thin ice today, total collapse tomorrow — unless US capitulates

Turkey which is in NATO better look out

 

War and terror

In November 1941 Sir Richard Peirse, then C-in_c of Comber Command, told The Thirty Club 'For a long time the Govt for excellent reasons has preferred the world to think that we still held some scruples and attacked only what the humanitarians are pleased to call military targets...I can assure you, gentlemen, that we tolerate no scruples'. Arthur Harris wrote in April 1942:'We have got to kill a lot of Boche before we win this war'. Attacks were especially directed against crowded working class areas, where they did most damage, so hitting those Germans who had voted against Hitler for as long as it was possible to do so.

Peter Hitchens today

Brian Berletic: There is no US-Iran "Deal"

BB points out that the US signed arms control treaties with the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation and Iran and unilaterally resiled from them.

"There are no agreements with the US. 

"Only illusions of agreements the US makes to buy time for itself and to position targeted nations ahead of betrayal planned before any of these agreements were even proposed let alone signed.

"The toppling of Iran using the "Nuclear Deal" was proposed in 2009 by the Brookings Institution then verbatim carried out over the course of the Obama, Trump, Biden, and Trump administrations."

Whether I agree or not it seems, as Chas Freeman says, to be impossible to negotiate with the US now. They murdered 49 Iranian leaders just after they made very big concessions to the US.

I do not know what is happening but I hope Iran is very, very cautious. He who sips with the devil must use a very long spoon. I think the negotiations are American trickery.

BB mentions the tale of the scorpion and the frog which teaches children actions speak louder than words and that scorpions have to kill because it's their nature.

He turns to Indonesia.

"When Indonesia turned down US demands for military access to its airspace to better threaten the Strait of Malacca earlier this year, it was inevitable that US-engineered protests would follow;

"...The protests are specifically citing high energy prices as the reason they're in the streets;

"Recall just weeks before these protests started, US-funded propaganda outlets in Indonesia attacked and smeared alternative media exposing US involvement in violent protests last year in Indonesia to get ahead and pre-empt attempts to expose it again this year;

"Everyone talks about military industrial production (including myself) but far too many ignore or underestimate the US' actual superweapon, political capture through organization like the NED, Open Society, and USAID simply hidden better directly within the State Department.."

What the American defence establishment (aka the deep state) is doing to smear opponents and manipulate the media in Indonesia is exactly what they are doing in Europe and Great Britain.

I said months ago that we are all Iranians now. We are all Indonesians too.