I think Iran will win this horrible war

Sweet are the uses of adversity. 

How paradoxical if Iran triumphs over the Americans and Israel.

The Houthis did, after all, but an Iranian victory could change everything - probably for the better for everyone except Israel, including the Americans.

'In the past four days, attacks by the US and Israeli regimes on relief centers, hospitals, and medical facilities have significantly increased. They are compensating for their failure on the battlefield by taking revenge on the people.' Mohammad Marandi, Professor of English Literature and Orientalism at the University of Tehran

Jeffrey Sachs: How did Europe become a complete vassal of the United States?

How did Europe become a complete vassal of the United States, which it is a little hard to understand? Partly it's the selection of the leaders which have to go through the US approval mill or they get pushed aside easily. Partly it is simple mechanics. If you have US military bases on your soil, you are an occupied country whether you like it or not. You have the CIA there. You have subversion. You have US direct political interference.  You are a semi-occupied country. 

But I have to just tell you how shocking it is to hear this. I was at the UN Security Council. I had been invited to testify about the war and then the UK and the US blocked me from testifying. This is par for the course. That's the least of it. 

But as I listened of all people, the Danish ambassador launched in to a tirade against Iran on the day that the US and Israel attacked Iran. She couldn't mention that Iran had been bombed or that 150 school girls had been murdered or that this was a violation of the UN charter, an unprovoked attack by Israel and the United States. She didn't even mention that. She just went into a tirade against Iran. 

This is the one that someday will turn to the UN and say, "How can you not help us with Greenland?" after the United States has invaded her country.

I went up to her afterwards to have a word. I wanted to point out that this is not safe for Denmark. She looked up from her notes, looked at me, turned around, and walked away. 

The podcast is here.

I agree with JD Vance Mark 1 - this is why I wanted Trump-Vance to win

Senator JD Vance wrote an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal in 2023 titled: “Trump’s Best Foreign Policy? Not Starting Any Wars.”

In the 2024 election he said that “Our interest, I think very much, is in not going to war with Iran.”

I agree strongly.

Retired Israeli general Uzi Dayan on what to do about Lebanon: “We need to act fast and with full force. Occupy the territory, expel everyone who is located there, destroy everything there, and turn it into a death zone — which means no one moves around there.”

Arturo McFields Yescas, a former Nicaraguan diplomat makes good points in The Hill:

"The U.S. remains by far the most modern and feared military power in the world, and President Trump has proven it. In one day, U.S. and Israeli forces wiped out Iran’s military leadership, along with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In one day, U.S. forces entered Venezuela and extracted Nicolás Maduro without a single U.S. fatality. Recall that it took President George H.W. Bush several days to capture General Manuel Noriega in Panama; the tracking and elimination of Osama Bin Laden took almost 10 years. Here is a historical fact for which no is crediting the current administration: Operations Absolute Resolve and Epic Fury have set a new standard."

He neglects to mention that the conquest of Panama was illegal murderous and justified by lies, like the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the American attacks on Venezuela and Iran. 

Even the extrajudicial killing (murder) of bin Laden was illegal - he should have been put on trial where what he had to say would have been highly interesting.

Cenk Uygur

@cenkuygur

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12h

Replying to

@DropSiteNews

and

@RaniaKhalek

Of course. Plan all along was to use the Iran War as an excuse to occupy southern Lebanon and expand their territory. This what they do every time - claim self-defense, kill the locals, ethically cleanse the area and then add to Greater Israel while pretending to be the victim.

Victims of Capitalism Memorial Foundation

@karaokecomputer

“Why do they hate us?” the Israeli pilot wonders as he bombs a hospital and a school and an apartment building and a UNESCO world heritage site

America is the biggest danger to the world including Romania

I decided to give an article in Foreign Policy a fair chance and got as far as this before giving up.

"That means they [Iran] could retaliate by carrying out more acts of terrorism, which is a low-cost tool the regime has already mastered."

So let's understand. The Iranians were treacherously attacked for no reason just after they made big concessions in negotiations (which must have been intended to lull them into a false sense of security), 49 top Iranians were murdered by the Americans without any provocation, 170 Iranians mostly schoolgirls were murdered when a school was hit by the Americans but the Iranians are the terrorists, not the Americans and not Netanyahu who persuaded Trump to do this?

"In the long term, Iranian officials may finally dash for and build a nuclear weapon. A weak Iran, in other words, will remain very dangerous." 

Whose fault will it be if Iran gets the bomb. America's for murdering the Ayatollah who opposed getting it?

Iran wants to force America out of the Middle East even if she wrecks the global economy to do so. 

Paradoxically, nothing is more in America's interest than to get out and stay out. 

It would make the whole world safer except Israel. 

As it is America is a danger even to Romania. America wants to use her base in Romania to hit Iran and this invites a missile in reply.

Lithuania is richer than Italy and Spain

36 years ago yesterday, on March 11, 1990, Lithuania became the first country to secede from the Soviet Union. Lithuania has overtaken Italy and Spain in its standard of living. A lot of Russian mafia money is laundered through the Baltic states but that does not explain how Lithuania attained a Western level of income. Low taxes, technology and especially FinTech do. 

Does Catholicism play a part? Catholic Lithuania feels like a southern, western country in  northern and eastern Europe

I came across President Lukashenko of Belarus interviewed by Mario Nawfal on February 27 last year and this interested me

In the interview the President gave his take on whether Vladimir Putin regrets the conflict with Ukraine.

“There's always a choice. And Putin may have had that choice. But it's not even so much about NATO expansion to the East, it's about the threats that were created in Ukraine. After all he did not attack Belarus in response to NATO eastward expansion. He did not attack Belarus. That could also have been a response to NATO expansion. He attacked or invaded, as you say, Ukraine. Why? Because that's where he saw the threat to Russia and that's where the threats were publicly made against him. That's one of the big reasons for what happened,” Aleksandr Lukashenko said.

Mario Nawfal asked if Vladimir has regrets about what happened.

“We haven't talked about it, but I know him well, Putin didn’t expect it would turn into such a war. Otherwise he would not have agreed to the negotiations back then. When he saw a huge number of people dying, Putin instantly agreed to the negotiations to stop the conflict, to negotiate both on NATO, on demilitarization, on denazification, as he described it, on not killing Russian speakers, on not cracking down on the Russian language in Ukraine. It was all on the agenda. He wanted to negotiate when he saw what it had turned into. So I think he probably regrets it turning into such a full-scale conflict, a war, which he probably did not expect,” the head of state noted. 

Persians, Jews, Cherokees and Africans

"The most ultimately righteous of all wars is a war with savages, though it is apt to be also the most terrible and inhuman. The rude, fierce settler who drives the savage from the land lays all civilized man under a debt to him." Theodore Roosevelt quoted by Professor Norman Finkelstein in a very interesting new essay comparing the fate of the Cherokees and the Palestinians.

"Many of the best of the backwoodsmen were Bible-readers, but they were brought up in a creed that made much of the Old Testament, and laid slight stress on pity, truth, or mercy. They looked at their foes as the Hebrew prophets looked at the enemies of Israel. What were the abominations because of which the Canaanites were destroyed before Joshua, compared with the abominations of the red savages whose lands they, another chosen people, should in their turn inherit? They believed that the Lord was king for ever and ever, and they believed that they were but obeying His commandment as they strove mightily to bring about the day when the heathen should have perished out of the land[…] There was many a stern frontier zealot who deemed all the red men, good and bad, corn ripe for the reaping." Theodore Roosevelt quoted in the essay.

"Netanyahu said he's been waiting for this war for 40 years. He invoked 1 Samuel 15-'kill the Amalekites'-and said 'that's what we're doing today. Amalek is Iran. This is what the media is justifying. A call for genocide, straight from scripture, delivered by a prime minister." Tucker Carlson

"As we know, there is no state on the planet more ruthless, more murderous than Israel, so the idea that they would use nuclear weapons against Iran is certainly plausible. And I really worry about this scenario.” John Mearsheimer

"Iranians were negotiating really hard to avoid a war. They’d actually offered a better deal than they’d signed off on in 2015. That was on the table and that, of course, is when America and Israel struck." Peter Oborne

“I have not been able to think out any solution to the terrible problem offered by the presence of the Negro on this continent.” Theodore Roosevelt

“You claim to stand with the people of Iran while you offer European bases to US killing machines. While you support Israel’s chemical warfare as they poison the air of Tehran with toxic fires and black rain, spreading cancers for decades. From Iran, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and Iraq — your bombs never brought democracy and never will. They bring chaos. Death. Destruction. And the unbearable silence of children who will never come home.” Belgian MEP Marc Botenga of the (Marxist) Workers' Party

This says what's important to understand about this horrible war

Conversation

Collingwood 

@admcollingwood

Conflict termination is a much bigger problem than the commentary on the Iran War suggests. There is a glib assumption that the Trump Administration can shift the goalposts on its war aims, Trump himself can apply his PT Barnum genius, and the US can walk away. Not so. As I have said many times, a world in which the US walks away while Iran still has the Strait shut and is still slinging missiles at US allies is a world indistinguishable from one in which the US has suffered a major strategic defeat. It is a world in which US allies in the region would have to ask Tehran for terms, and other major powers would have to ask nicely to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. This is to say, the US would first have to negotiate a deal in which the US backs off and Iran relents, too. Two problems with that. First, the perfidious manner in which Israel and the US kickstarted the Twelve Day War and this war, respectively, using negotiations as a cover for and aid to the opening decapitation strike, will make Iran leery of proposals to negotiate or promises made during negotiations. Secondly, Iran would undoubtedly seek reassurance that the US and Israel will not return for another bite of the cherry in six months or two years. And what guarantees can the US credibly offer? (Credible is the important word here: see Jerry Seinfeld's point regarding car rental reservations: "You know how to take the reservation, you just don't know how to keep the reservation.") I am struggling to think of any, but perhaps those with more historical knowledge might suggest something. It therefore seems likely that Iran would seek concrete steps rather than promises. These might involve a US withdrawal from the region, which would make an air war far more difficult to prosecute. Yet this would be political cyanide in Washington and Israel. This points to Iran having to continue the war to inflict really very serious economic pain indeed on the global economy in order to get to a position where its demands might be palatable. It also points to the US continuing the war to try its best to avoid a strategic defeat that would undoubtedly sink the Trump presidency (and all associated with it, including his party) and represent a massive strategic turnaround and loss of prestige for the US. In fact, it seems to me that Trump would likely increase his military risk appetite before he went down the road of giving Tehran what it wants. The only way to avoid this would be for the USAF to finally suppress Iran's capacity to fire missiles and drones and keep the Strait closed. Then, as @policytensor says, it could be turned into a 'one-sided war of punishment', even if regime change could not be obtained. But we do not seem close to that yet. The above attempts to give you the train of thought that leads me to believe that (1) the conflict termination problem is a much thornier problem than widely considered, (2) that the balance of probabilities therefore suggest a continuance for some time yet, (3) that this in turn means more economic and financial pain, and (4) oil, other commodities, and captial markets are still underpricing the risk.

[I cut out the first half of Policy Tensor's post.]

Policy Tensor

@policytensor

It’s not like the Iranians have no plan to win the war. They are going to make Trump pay such a high price that future presidents, himself included, will think twice about considering the idea ever again. They know what they need to do to impose intolerable costs on Trump and the international community. They just need to keep Hormuz closed and sustain their attacks for long enough to politically cripple Trump. According to my calculations, Iran will be able to sustain fire and keep Hormuz closed for many months, if indeed not years. One day of oil above $100 and he resorted to panicked market diplomacy. This leads me to the thesis that while he may have high risk appetite, he does not have high pain tolerance. But we are playing Mercy here. The problem of Iranian security has been triggered by the joint Israeli-American proposal for a Middle East ruled by Israel. Iran’s security problem in the context of war termination, is to deter a future US-Israeli attack. Iran is all ears for solutions to this problem. But there is no one in the international system who has stepped up to solve this problem. Unless this problem is effectively addressed by the international system, I don’t see how Iran can be prevented from crashing the world economy.