Gen Stanley McChrystal in an interview in the New York Times: 'If you like this war enjoy this first part, because this is the best part'

"I tell people about this war, if you like this war enjoy this first part, because this is the best part. Because everything after this will be harder"

"There are three great seductions that happen to American administrations and to the military. The first is the idea of covert action. A new president comes in, and he’s told by the intelligence community, “We can create this great effect and it will be covert. No one will ever know who did it, and it’ll just be a good outcome.” And in my experience, it never stays covert and it rarely works. But it’s seductive because it seems like an easy approach to a knotty problem. The second seduction, which I lived as a part of, is the surgical Special Operations raid. That is probably epitomized by the Maduro raid. I would argue that we demonstrated extraordinary competence that night, but not much changed. I don’t think that we actually demonstrated the ability to change the facts on the ground to any extent. Which gets to the third great seduction, and that’s air power. We all love air power. In World War II, we went into the war with the Douhet theory, that air power, the bomber, will always get through, and therefore air power will be dominant. It was certainly very, very contributory, but it was never dominant." -

Historian David Gibbs is convincing on the reason for the Iranian war

Talking on Neutrality Studies he reminds us that Trump is only following the policy of his predecessors in seeing Iran as an enemy. Why did they?

"And so they [the US] were looking for an enemy and Iran was one of multiple enemies. Russia obviously, China is another enemy, Arab terrorism defined very broadly as an enemy and all of these I think didn't come out of nowhere. I mean obviously there's a psychological need for a bogeyman for a simple explanation for all our problems. I suppose that but I don't like psychological explanations. I think there were material interests here and the material interests were to find some justification for this enormous military the United States had, and it was only slightly downsized after the Cold War, to find a justification for hundreds of overseas bases, again which had no function if the Soviet Union was gone but it needed a function. They had to find a function. There were fleets around the world. There was, you know, the the security apparatus, the CIA and all the other agencies."

Interestingly, he says he refuses to mention the Arab-Israel conflict in his classes for fear of being penalised as a result of complaints by pro-Israel students and the Israel lobby.

Larry Johnson podcast

This is worth half an hour of your time.

Johnson is former CIA, intelligent and trustworthy. He talks about the CIA attempt at a colour revolution in Iran in December 2025 and January 2026, like the one in Kiev in 2014. From what Max Blumenthal and others say, the people Iran killed were mostly assets of the CIA and Mossad but Western journalists believe the CIA story. They have a sublime lack of scepticism which ill befits journalists but you see this all the time with most things. I do not really understand it.

America calls Iran the world's biggest sponsor of terrorism but it's not true unless you are thinking of Hamas and Hezbollah attacking Israelis which is part of the Arab-Israel conflict. Hamas and Hezbollah were certainly subsidised by Iran though Hamas was subsidised by Netanyahu too and he built it up to sideline Fatah. Hezbollah was created by Iran. Still Hamas and Hezbollah are not Iranian proxies but Iranian allies. The distinction is important.

Larry Johnson says that America and Israel are much bigger sponsors of terrorism. He also repeats the story of the US Backing Saddam's invasion of Iran which killed 3 million Iranians including 300,000 by chemical weapons.

My view. What is the killing of almost fifty Iranian leaders but terrorism?

This is a serious question, gentle reader.

3 days after starting the war it was apparent to thoughtful people that America would lose it badly

Sadly most of the world will too, Iran and her friends excepted.

“Why would Israel say something that is not true?”

BBC star TV presenter and former political editor Laura Kuenssberg asked a British minister yesterday “Why would Israel say something that is not true?” after he contradicted the country’s claim that Iran has missiles capable of hitting London.

Yet some people claim the BBC is biassed against Israel.

"I don't think Israel has a future as a society because it is built on death."

"I don't think Israel has a future as a society because it is built on death."

"I believe in the American people just as I believe in the Iranian people. I cannot believe in the Israeli people because 97% of them approve of genocide."

This is Israeli Professor Haim Bresheeth talking to the wonderful Katie Halper. 

He says Trump dislikes war but Israel is blackmailing him.

Trump (who was 'a failure as a businessman') is obviously blackmailable. Who doubts that?

I recommend this podcast. 

America's last just war was the first Gulf War

Unless I am forgetting one, the last just war Americans took part in was Vietnam and that was a big mistake on their part. They are to be congratulated for ending the Bosnian war thirty years ago. 

The bombing of Serbia for the benefit of Kosovo was illegal though I supported it. It felt just and an American I met who worked in Pristina for USAID called it the last just war but it was illegal. 

Romanians took Serbia's side almost to a man but President Constantinescu gave America the use of air bases and this led to Romania becoming a candidate for membership of the European Union. By the time Romania joined nobody remembered this.

Since Clinton left office America has been a rogue state.

Note - yes I was forgetting a just war - the first Gulf war. Thanks to the reader who reminded me.

Well said

"Iran is exercising its legitimate right to defend its sovereignty, its people, and its resources, after being subjected to blatant aggression”. I hope nobody disagrees with these words of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the French left-wing party.

The British Daily Telegraph pointed out that he condemned Hamas's "war crimes" on 7 October 2023 without using the word terrorism. If he is the next French president, as is very possible, I expect he would obey America just like all his recent predecessors. 

Chirac looks a great man for pleading with America not to invade Iran.

Curious Houthis

“Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”

“To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”

“The dog did nothing in the night-time.”

“That was the curious incident,” remarked Sherlock Holmes.

I draw you attention to the curious incident of the Houthis in the Red Sea who can stop Saudi Arabia exporting almost 4 million barrels of oil per day (out of the roughly 9.5 million barrels she produced before the war).

Trump has no way out

How can Iran not win this? 

Can the world avoid a financial crisis?

“The only thing that’s relevant to the market is the Strait of Hormuz and the impact on the price of oil and how that feeds through the supply chain and rattles the economies of the world. So that’s where the focus is. It’s so serious and so dangerous that it just can’t last long, because everybody in the world wants it resolved.” Lloyd Blankfein, former head of Goldman Sachs, quoted in today's Daily Telegraph. 

But of course Iran does not want it resolved and the Iranian government is not going to be toppled. 

Many Israelis by now may want this to end.

Trump cannot meet the various goals he might have set (he hasn't been clear about what they are) and Iran has an extraordinarily large number of missiles to fire at ships.

Michael Wolff thinks Trump chose to attack Iran to do what no other president dared. 

This is why he told the easily disproved lie that a former president told him he wished he had attacked Iran. In his head they are saying this to him. 

He asked the service chiefs if he had the power to 'obliterate' (his favourite word) and was told 'yes, but..' and ignored the but.

Likud Prime Ministers

Benjamin Netanyahu

“Terrorism is the deliberate, systematic murder, maiming and menacing of the innocent to inspire fear in order to gain political ends.” Speaking in June, 1984 at a conference held by the Jonathan Institute, named after Benjamin Netanyahu’s older brother, who was killed in 1976 during the raid at Entebbe. 

Yitzhak Shamir 

“Neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means of combat. We are very far from having any moral qualms as far as our national war goes. We have before us the command of the Torah, whose morality surpasses that of any other body of laws in the world: ‘Ye shall blot them out to the last man.’ 

50% of American Democrats think Israel committed genocide in Gaza

John Mearsheimer has seen data that show that half of people who voted for Biden decided that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza.

This is very important.

Other polls show 30 percent of Republicans under 30 no longer support Israel. This has huge implications for the world.

Gaza lost Kamala the 2024 election but much good it did the Palestinians or the Iranians.

Trump's Vietnam

The Iranian war is shaping up to be as disastrous for America as the Vietnam war or more so. Fun fact: Donald Trump described his relations with women in the 1970s and 1980s as "my Vietnam".

Will anyone negotiate with America or Israel again?

Is murdering heads of state and leaders now normal? Yes. No European government condemned it, nor did the Western press.

Strait of Hormuz could be closed for half a year or more

CNN breaking news: "A recent internal assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency that was circulating inside the Pentagon in recent weeks determined that Iran could potentially keep the passage shut for anywhere from one to six months, four sources familiar with the document told CNN."

This blog told you this on March 11. I didn't get it immediately but it was obvious before March 11. 

"Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes."

Keeping the Strait closed is Iran's H-bomb. 

America well deserves this punishment but it is the rest of the world that will suffer.

But why only six months?

Lebanese cellist Mahdi Saheli playing Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian's Andantino in the ruins of southern Beirut

 

Lebanese cellist Mahdi Saheli playing Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian's Andantino in the ruins of southern Beirut. pic.twitter.com/jdmMXFjYxx

— Kegham Balian (@kbalian90) March 18, 2026

I am ashamed of my country's government but few are any better - Ireland and Spain maybe

On the day that the USA attacked Iran Professor Jeffrey Sachs watched country after country on the UN Security Council, including Britain and France, condemned Iran!

Only three countries on the Security Council condemning the attack: Russia, China and Somalia.

“Every country that condemned Iran after an Israeli-U.S. aggression hosts an American military base on its soil. They are not sovereign countries. They dare not speak. They host the U.S. military. They host the CIA. They watch their backs.”

A sleazy, brutal US administration bought by billionaires

Alastair Crooke's sources tell him that Trump approved the Israeli bombing of the Iran's South Pars oil field, which led Iran to attack the Qatari Ras Laffan gas facility where a fifth of the world’s liquefied natural gas was produced, costing Qatar billions and sending prices soaring. Jared Kushner, whose fund has received huge sums from Qatar, called his father-in-law to report Qatar's anger at the US and Trump therefore lied that he hadn't known about it. Was there ever a more corrupt or more incompetent US President or one with so little concern for international law or honour?

The Israelis killed Ali Larjani because he was negotiating to provide Trump with an off-ramp.

Gaza and Epstein have not changed the attitudes of many or any British and European journalists. 

They now support the US-Israeli unprovoked attack on Iran, as if their countries were at war not two foreign ones on other continents. 

I recommend Max Blumenthal who is a much better source of information than mainstream journalists.

Here he is talking to Andrew Napolitano:

'And this is the Israeli strategy. This is why the Israelis killed Ali Larjani, who was essentially running the Iranian government, because he was negotiating behind the scenes with the Gulf States to provide Trump with an off-ramp and the Israelis need to keep the US in this war for as long as possible because the Israeli goal is not the same as the US goal. 

'We don't actually even know what the US goal is, but the Israeli goal is to destroy Iran as a nation. And to do that, they need the US military to be involved for as long as possible. And Iran is demonstrating that it can not only hit back, but it can reclaim escalation dominance. And that the entire narrative that we're hearing about the Iranian military from the Israelis, which has infested our own media narrative, that their missile launching capacity is been wiped out, that their drone production is wiped out, is totally false. 

'Pete Hegseth the defe-, whatever he is, war secretary, claimed that Iran's air defenses had been flattened. And guess what happened today? For the first time in history, an F-35 was hit with a missile, an Iranian [missile]. And the pilot only escaped because he was probably on the border region in western Iran and was able to get back. Otherwise, he probably would have been taken captive. So, the US doesn't even have control over Iranian skies. This caused all the other bombers that were on their way to Iran to to basically pause and turn around after this pilot got hit.'

This is very much worse than I thought. Congress should impeach Trump now

 

You cannot blame Netanyahu for taking advantage – probably never again would his country get to deal with a president so gullible

Christopher Caldwell is characteristically  brilliant in the Spectator today.

'You cannot blame Netanyahu for taking advantage – probably never again would his country get to deal with a president so gullible. But as soon as the attacks began on Iran, the news brought talk of tactical ‘divergences’ between Israel and the United States. Israel wanted Iran wrecked and weak and was hitting oil infrastructure that the United States had warned it not to. The United States wanted the oil industry up and running – first to lay claim to the oil for Trump, as happened in Venezuela, later to prevent the tit-for-tat strikes on Middle Eastern oil that could cause a global depression.'

Do you not know, my son, with how very little wisdom the world is ruled? (Count Oxiensterna)

An hour ago.

Retired Judge Andrew Napolitano: 'What are the 2,500 Marines going to do?'

Retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson: 'Be killed.'

Can this be true? No. Surely Trump lives to be admired and to win.

Sohrab Ahmari in UnHerd: 

One almost wishes, however, that they had succeeded with DeSantis, who by all accounts is a competent crisis manager who has cooperated effectively with Sunshine State lawmakers to legislate his priorities. As president, DeSantis would have been an old-school, donor-beholden hawk. But we are getting the same thing with the second Trump administration, only with the chaos, messaging confusion, and sheer incompetence characteristic of the multiply-bankrupt ex-developer and reality-TV shouter.

If the United States was bound to waste $200 billion (the Pentagon’s latest ask from Congress) on another Mideast war radiating instability into Europe and beyond, would that it were under a commander in chief blessed with an orderly mind and advised by policy heavyweights instead of yes men. A president who wouldn’t be surprised by the Iranians lashing out at the Gulf — something they repeatedly threatened to do in case of attack. A president who wouldn’t suddenly beg European allies to join him in the adventure, then insult them when they declined. A president whose son-in-law wouldn’t shamelessly commingle diplomacy with the pursuit of profit.

Please click on the link about Jared Kushner receiving billions from Arab governments for his investment fund while conducting negotiations on behalf of President Trump.

Quotations

Cardinal Newman described the Church of England in 1864 as “a serviceable breakwater against doctrinal errors more fundamental than its own." Daily Telegraph

“The mathematician is only complete insofar as he feels within himself the beauty of the true.” Goethe, quoted by Oswald Spengler

"The great replacement isn’t a theory, much less a conspiracy. It’s measurable, physical reality that has changed the West more profoundly than any war." Tucker Carlson

Virginia Woolf’s diary entries on James Joyce’s Ulysses: 

“An illiterate, underbred book it seems to me; the book of a self taught working man, and we all know how distressing they are, how egotistic, insistent, raw, striking, and ultimately nauseating. … I finished ‘Ulysses’ and think it is a misfire. Genius it has, I think; but of the inferior water. The book is diffuse. It is brackish. It is pretentious. It is underbred, not only in the obvious sense, but in the literary sense. A first-rate writer, I mean, respects writing too much to be tricky; startling; doing stunts.”

Iran on X

Arnaud Bertrand

@RnaudBertrand

·

Mar 18

It's now unarguable that the war on Iran is one of the most blatant crimes of aggression in history. You now have not 1 but 2 external participants of the US-Iran talks (Oman’s foreign minister and the UK's National Security Advisor) who confirm that the US and Israel attacked despite Iran effectively meeting US conditions for a deal - ensuring it could never build a nuclear weapon, permanently.

Glenn Diesen

@Glenn_Diesen

·

12h

The US goes for massive escalation with the attack on the world's largest gas field, and then suggests to end such attacks. This tactic will not work. If Iran permits the US to decide when to escalate and de-escalate, its deterrence collapses and it will also lose the war. The energy infrastructure of the Gulf States will now burn and US escalation control remains a delusion.

Hamja Ahsan

@HamjaAhsan

·

Mar 16

I am prosecuted German for saying for a Facebook comment on the Guardian written in UK which had "Fuck NATO" and criticised Olaf Scholz as a "neoliberal-fascist pig." for demilitarisation of Germany, led by Volker Beck. Months in prison or a 12,000 euro fine. and put in an official German State Anti-semitism guide for an artwork about a fictional Fried chicken chain called Kabul Fried Chicken which had the line "No Chicken for NATO". Have all the documents. I don't return tk Germany as I fear prison.

Trita Parsi

@tparsi

·

Mar 17

The US/Israel bombed an elementary school in Shiraz, and it appears to be another case of AI identifying the target without human oversight. How so? Because the name of the school contains the word "Shahed"...