Americans talking about the Middle East

This week, something broke. Maybe Trump does not understand the link between the past and the present, but other people do. They can see that, as a result of decisions that Trump made but cannot explain, the Strait of Hormuz is blocked by Iranian mines and drones. They can see oil prices rising around the world and they understand that it is difficult and dangerous for the U.S. Navy to solve this problem. They can also hear the president lashing out, as he has done so many times before, trying to get other people to take responsibility, threatening them if they don’t.

Anne Applebaum

We had dinner with Charlie Kirk in London last May 2025, and when Charlie I walked privately after dinner in Hyde Park, Charlie told me then that in his view Bibi Netanyahu was a psychopath and that the actions taken by his government in Gaza were psychopathic. We already knew that, so it was no shock to me, but it was good to see that his evaluation and capacity to observe the obvious was present and sane.
Charlie had completely changed his mind and his position on Israel from when I first met him in Dec 2018, and in May 2025 he did not support their actions in Gaza or many of the actions of their government, particularly their growing destructive influence in America.
British businessman John Mappin, who helped Charlie Kirk start Turning Point UK

A clear majority of Americans are against Israel now. An overwhelming majority of our politicians and media are loyal to Israel. This is unsustainable. How long can our own media and politicians oppress us and force us to support a country we think is doing great damage to us?

Cenk Uygur

Quotations

"People of lofty spirit bear insult placidly & willingly, but only the holy & righteous may hear praise without harm." St John Climacus

“The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.” Friedrich Nietzsche

"Everybody’s got to believe in something. I believe I’ll have another beer." W. C. Fields

US Counterterrorism Center Director resigned saying Iran posed "no imminent threat" to the US - the administration "started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby"

There are attempts to make  US senior official Joe Kent's resignation about antisemitism, which is silly, rather than the war. 

Even the elderly British historian Alan Sked, the founder of UKIP, said this resignation is antisemitic, so it's not just the American Israel lobby trying to close this down, but it's still silly. 

Things Joe Kent saw happen must have deeply disturbed him.

Josh Paul resigned from the Biden administration in protest of US arming the IDF in Gaza but before that has a high ranking US official resigned in protest over a war since the invasion of Cambodia?

Trump cannot end this war he started - it could wreck world economy for many years

Robert A. Pape

@ProfessorPape

Iran is more powerful now than before the war — it controls the price of world oil and more likely to fracture the US coalition than US is to grow it. Stunning gains in 17 days

I cannot recommend enough this conversation between journalist Wajahat Ali and Professor Robert Pape.

Professor Pape says that the first US objective in the Middle East was always to prevent the Straits of Hormoz being captured by an enemy and that Iran could prevent free flow of ships through the Straits of Hormuz for the next six months. 

The consequences could be comparable with the Arab oil embargo in 1984, a reaction to the Arab defeat in the Yom Kippur war, which created the inflation that bedevilled America and the developed world until around 1983.

The world economy has not yet processed what this war means - when it does so it will be like a supertanker taking time to change direction slowly.

The Professor says that Obama's deal, though certainly not perfect, bought 10-15 years without Iran developing the bomb, something which was worth achieving. 

Iran offered the US a similar but better deal the day before the US murder spree.

If you still see the Americans as the good guys you really haven't been paying attention

But the Israeli I lunched with today and ths Romanian I lunched with on Friday, two of the cleverest men I know, both told me Trump's vulgar discourse, lack of ethics and total lack of respect for international law doesn't matter. He is trying to save American or Western hegemony. They didn't use that word.

He is not being hypocritical, you say, like previous presidents. But hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue.

I think America can't behave like Julius Caesar in Gaul though Netanyahu does. American power is not just about money and military equipment. Self-respect, Protestant idealism, moral fervour and soft power matter.

You say better a world ruled by America, which is England's child, rather than China. I am not sure of that. China has almost never attacked  or overthrown the regime of other countries. Nor has Iran. I am  trying to think of any precedents for American aggression. Napoleon, Hitler and Stalin excepted.

Is Trump fighting Iran to fight China?

I had lunch with a very intelligent Israeli today who said Israel has no wish to expand into South Lebanon or Syria but can never give up the West bank but never annex it. Much of Israel proper was Philistine or Canaanite - Tel Aviv for example - but the West Bank was Jewish in biblical times,

He also impressed me by explaining that the Iran war is being fought to prevent China having Iranian petrol. This idea was new to me but apparently it has been rehearsed by someone I truly despise, Lindsey Graham. I came across this just now in the substack of Arnaud Bertrand.

Few things have annoyed me more since the start of the war on Iran than to hear some European politicians repeat the narrative that it was "all about China."

One surprising (and disappointing) example was France’s Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of La France Insoumise, France's main left-wing opposition party, who claimed that the war's objective was to “limit China's oil supply capabilities” (x.com/JLMelenchon/statu…).

By saying this he literally parrots - almost word for word - the narrative of Lindsey Graham on Fox News (x.com/OunkaOnX/status/2…) or that of the Hudson institute, an American right-wing neoconservative think tank (hudson.org/foreign-poli…). Which, you'll agree, is rather unexpected company for Mélenchon...

Why does it annoy me so much? Because it's painfully obvious that the consequences of this war are far, far worse for Europe than they are for China..

John Mearsheimer

I think there's no question that a nuclear-armed Iran would bring stability to the region, because nuclear weapons are weapons of peace. They're weapons of deterrence.

In fact, as soon as it declared independence, Ukraine should have been quietly encouraged to fashion its own nuclear deterrent.

Europe doesn't matter anymore. You know, Europe is basically a giant museum.

Had the United States and its allies not moved to bring Ukraine into NATO in April 2008 ... there probably would be no war in Ukraine today... The West made a colossal blunder, which it and many others are not done paying for.

These are two war criminals [Trump and Netanyahu]. These are two people who are responsible for a genocide. If we were to have Nuremberg Two trials, both of them would be found guilty and probably hung. ['Hanged' is the correct word.]

I am not arguing that Iran does not cause any trouble in the Middle East but the country that is principally responsible for the trouble in the Middle East is not Iran. It is Israel.

Putin will always win in a geopolitics fight against the West because he’s miles ahead of them. Not necessarily because Putin is a genius, but that the U.S. is EXTREMELY DUMB.



He has said that the scale of “murder and mayhem” caused by US interventions is “unbelievable”, pointing to the long history of wars, regime-change operations, and military actions. This is certainly true.

He said of Israel that if a nation cannot preserve its sovereignty without the support of another country it does not deserve to be sovereign, or something like that, but I cannot find the quotation.

War

Christians have killed each other, quite persuaded
That all the apostles would have done as they did.
Byron, Don Juan

Wonderful lines - Byron was not a great poet until Beppo and Don Juan, where he approaches, at a fair distance, the greatness of his idol, Pope.

“It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.”

Voltaire

"I will never oppose the Vietnam War. Americans were right to do it. I think they fought it in the wrong way. I don't think it's a war like fighting Hitler, but I think it was a right war, a correct war." Military historian Sir John Kegan, quoted in his obituary in the New York Times. I agree -it was legally and morally justified, but he was wrong to take the same line and never change his mind about the invasion of Iraq which was neither

"War does not determine who is right - only who is left." Bertrand Russell

Martin van Creveld, an Israeli military historian

We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets for our air force. ... Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother." I consider it all hopeless at this point. We shall have to try to prevent things from coming to that, if at all possible. Our armed forces, however, are not the thirtieth strongest in the world, but rather the second or third. We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen, before Israel goes under.


April 27, 2002, in an article "The Myth of Jenin Grows" in The Globe and Mail


It is simply not true that war is solely a means to an end, nor do people necessarily fight in order to obtain this objective or that. In fact, the opposite is true: people very often take up one objective or another precisely in order that they may fight.


War is the greatest fun man can have with his pants on.

In his The Privileged Sex (2013) van Creveld argued that the systematic oppression of women is a myth unsupported by any serious evidence and that in modern cultures women tend to enjoy more social protections and privileges than men do, more than offsetting any disadvantages they face.

This reminds me of Dr Johnson's remark 'Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.'

Your face, when you are actually the only suitable candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Br'er Trump and the tar baby

 

The US bombing schools

US-Israeli airstrikes have killed at least 175 children in four Iranian schools since February 28, 2026, according to Reuters and the New York Times.

The US say this was accidental and blamed outdated intelligence.

A reminder: this war is illegal and an illegal war was considered by the Nuremberg tribunal the greatest of war crimes.

The USA bombed 200 schools in Iraq in 2003 according to a 2004 UNICEF report.

In 6-9 months, nobody will admit that they were in favor of the Netanyahu/Trump War in Iran'

The 'White House AI & Crypto Czar' David Sacks: "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 or very large parts of it … And then you have to worry about Israel escalating the war by contemplating using a nuclear weapon, which would truly be catastrophic."

He wants the US to 'declare victory and get out' of this war. 

It doesn't sound like Trump made a wise move going along with Netanyahu's idea and killing all those Iranian leaders.

Is the new Ayatollah in a coma? Is Netanyahu dead? 

Who knows? 

What a fool Trump has been - this is worse than a crime it's a blunder, as Fouché said about the execution of the Duc d'Enghien and I said about Russia invading Ukraine - except, of course, that I think that the crime of starting an illegal war is actually worse.

What is the difference between Germany's invasion of Poland in 1939 and the US assault on Iran? 

The main difference is that Germany used troops on the ground and the US from cowardice used AI and missiles.

From Ed West's Wrong Side of History Substack today

'People born after the late 1970s are not becoming more conservative as they age, but the opposite. This was the thesis of my book Small Men on the Wrong Side of History, something I came to notice among contemporaries as I approached middle age. What people used to mean by ‘conservative’ was that they were ageing into the values of their society. That still happens, it’s just that the dominant values are post-revolutionary and ‘countercultural’. When young people violate those values by breaking anti-sexism or anti-racism taboos, the middle aged react in a way familiar to 1950s maiden aunts faced with gyrating rock and roll stars.'

In Romania people over fifty have the same kind of views as they had when I came here in the 1990s - meaning robustly conservative - but younger ones have become social liberals to an extent. You see this, for example, on single sex marriage. It may be for the same reason as in England.

Larry Johnson thinks Iran will win the war

Here is another talk with American former special operations man Larry Johnson, who seems very well informed and thinks Iran will win this war. I've thought that very likely for days. The Americans have lost many years' worth of missiles, at least one to a very cheap drone. 

He points out that from 1983 to 1988 Iraq launched around 20 different chemical weapon attacks on Iran.

'Not once during that period did Iran develop or use chemical weapons. Not at all. Why? Because of the religious principle. They viewed that as a sin. So we've already seen, you know, Iran has always got a history of exercising actually some moral ethical judgments in what it does.'

Iran could force the Arab Gulf States to evacuate their entire populations if they destroy the desalination plants. He thinks moral considerations have deterred her. He thinks that if Israel uses her bomb Russia and China will retaliate. I don't believe that. He even thinks it possible that Israel will cease to exist as a result, Surely this is widely speculative. I do think England and Europe should stay out of this.

Dire straits

 

Donald Trump thought Iran would surrender before closing the Strait of Hormuz, according to the press.

The Wall Street Journal reported that he was confident Iran would fall before making such a decision.

General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Mr Trump an American attack would likely lead to a blockade of the strait.

Now he is apparently sending in the marines to take the Straits in something called littoral warfare which sounds like amphibious warfare, something which worked on D-Day but failed in the Dardanelles, Dieppe, the invasion of Albania in 1949 (betrayed by Philby) and the Bay of Pigs.

As Cenk Uygur says, why doesn't he ask Israel to send her soldiers to do this since Israel is the reason America attacked Iran?

What right does America have to capture, if she can, the Strait of Hormuz? None whatever, of course.

Trump is admirable in that he sees Western civilisation is in grave danger and wants to save it. Almost no other politicians do so. He wants to save civilisation by barbaric methods, which makes him resemble a Roman emperor. He does in many ways, actually.

What he doesn't see is that Israel's land disputes are none of the West's business and will lead the West into disaster.

Ann Coulter: 'I think this war is a disaster'. Gingrich: If they can't keep the Straits of Hormuz open, this war will in fact be an American defeat before very long

Ann Coulter yesterday. She lost her faith in Trump during his first term.

'I think this war is a disaster. Disaster. Utterly pointless. The three pillars of the Trump campaign, both in 2016 and 2020, that set him apart from every other Republican and every other Democrat. I mean, for the first time, this is the basket of issues I wanted to vote on.

'Number one, the wall, deport illegals, the whole immigration program. Number two, bring back manufacturing, the tariff stuff. I'm all in favor of that. Our working class in America has been absolutely wiped out. I don't think we need a lot of schlock from China. Why are we building them up? I mean, I think a lot of it has to do with labor unions, but solve the problem of labor unions. Don't just outsource everything we make, either by bringing them here to work cheap, or by having it done over there. The third pillar was no more pointless wars.

'...Trump was attacked for the things he said in 2016. Remember, he said, Jeb's father lied us into war. The Wall Street Journal and New York Post assured us that that was going to kill him in South Carolina, biggest military state in the country.

'That was in the South Carolina primary. Next day, primaries hold. Who wins? Huge, huge majority. Donald Trump. We have voted on this over and over and over again.

Ex-CIA man Larry Johnson yesterday on 'Judging Freedom: INTEL Round Table'

The podcast is here. 

'Donald Trump has created a surge of patriotism in Iran, nationalism, national pride that they will fight and and defy anything that the United States wants to do.  

'You know, I want to combat one of the biggest lies about Iran that uh to recognize they do have limits. They impose limits on what they do to other countries unlike the United States back when the war started in September 1980 when Iraq launched the attack on Iran at the behest of the United States with the support of Jimmy Carter and Zbigniew Brzeziński that continued into the Reagan administration and in August 1983 with support from people like Donald Rumsfeld by providing chemical precursors Iraq launched the first of chemical weapon attacks, weapons of mass destruction on Iran and those continued for the next six years with the last one taking place in August of 1988.

'Maj Gen GD Bakshi Breaks Down Iran-US-Israel War Turning into 21st Century Armageddon' -

[Podcast here. He's very unfair on British colonialism to compare it with what Donald Trump and Israel have been doing. The British empire was an incalculable boon for India as Indians have told me.]

So where is this war headed? Let me be candid.

This Iran USI Israel war will be one of the defining conflicts of the 21st century.

It will determine, listen to this carefully, it will determine whether the world will slide back into unipolarity with the United States as the sole superpower and hegemon or will the world see multipolarity in full play? Which is it going to be? 

I want to stop looking at coverage of Iran - but so much clamours to be shared

Women don't wear burqas in Iran. Increasingly women do not even wear headscarves in Tehran. I have to quote for a third time American comedienne Annette Mullaney: "Historically, when Americans suddenly care about women’s rights in a Middle Eastern country, those women are about to be bombed".

John Aspinall recommended saying "As Schopenhauer said" before making a point you consider important

In order to have original, extraordinary, perhaps even immortal thoughts it suffices to alienate oneself so thoroughly from the world and things for a few moments that the most ordinary objects and events appear to one as entirely new and unfamiliar, thereby revealing their true nature.


Arthur Schopenhauer via Laudator Temporis Acti

I think Iran will win this disgusting, wicked war

How paradoxical if Iran triumphs over the Americans and Israel.

Sweet are the uses of adversity. 

The Houthis defeated the Anglo-Americans, after all.

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. 

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.

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?

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.