Seymour Hersh: THE SHAME OF DROPPING BOMBS

THE SHAME OF DROPPING BOMBS

There is no glory in unopposed air wars

Seymour Hersh

March12 2026

US Air Force ground personnel prepare munitions for a B-1 Lancer bomber on the tarmac this week at RAF Fairford in south-west England. Fairford is one of two bases, along with the Diego Garcia facility in the Indian Ocean, that the UK has given the US permission to use for “specific defensive operations into Iran” to destroy Iranian missiles at source, the British defence minister said in a statement. / Photo by Henry Nicholls/AFP via Getty Images.

As I write, American and Israeli warplanes are bombing targets in Iran at will, since its Russian-supplied S-300 air defense systems were shredded in earlier attacks. Today’s strikes on pre-selected and unprotected targets were known in previous wars as “turkey shoots”—which is to say there’s no significant opposition. Another example would be the Israeli Air Force’s unchallenged bombing attacks in Gaza, which have killed and maimed hundreds of thousands, if not more, in response to the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel. The bombing of Gaza is still going on.

Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s unfit choice for secretary of defense, cannot stop bragging about the unopposed air war that has been tearing Iranian military and civilian targets apart. Hegseth has told journalists that the US combat operations, code-named Epic Fury, are “crushing the enemy,” whom he has labeled “terrorist cowards.” A few days ago he told a news conference: “We have only just begun to hunt. We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.”

In terms of reading newspapers and beginning to understand the world, I came of age in the late years of the Second World War, when America’s newspapers were full of US heroics abroad, as they are now full of murderous deeds in Iran. During the war, as kids in our pre-teens, my twin brother and I would be taken to afternoon movies—the local theater in Chicago was named V, for victory—by our older sisters. We would cheer madly at the blatant propaganda that was being produced about the war on the ground and in the air by Hollywood. We loyal Americans are, I fear, getting much of the same today.

The films I remembered the most involved movie star pilots—John Wayne was one—flying against the Japanese Air Force. The Japanese pilots, all with buck teeth, were known to us as “Nips”—and our American heroes spent their days protecting each other in combat and their nights dancing and flirting with nurses at the base. Years later, as a reporter in Washington, I would learn from a CIA official that American fighter-bombers flying late in World War II out of Brindisi, an Allied air base on the Adriatic Sea, against German industrial targets, repeatedly filmed evidence of what photo interpreters later concluded were Jewish prisoners in Nazi concentration camps being lined up in front of gas chambers and crematoria. There was no doubt about the horror that was going on. The mission was to end the war as soon as possible.

Ending a murderous air war against an enemy with no air defenses that has never had the wherewithal to manufacture a nuclear warhead is not a priority for President Trump or his partner in the enterprise, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. They have chosen to destroy, kill, and maim from the air when there was another option: finding a way to work with and train with the secular Iranian Army and encourage that force to take on the Islamist Revolutionary Guards, who recently murdered thousands of protesters, many of them students who wanted a different future.

That option, which would have involved months of vetting and recruiting the right Iranian Army generals and the efficient training of a force that could take on the Revolutionary Guards, was never in the playbook. Netanyahu and Trump were too eager to get on with it.

What is it about air war that inspires men like Trump, Hegseth, and Netanyahu to choose bombing when there could be other ways to achieve similar results? I remember when as a grunt in the army reading John Hersey’s The War Lover, a brilliant 1959 novel about American pilots who were flying B-17 bombers, known as flying fortresses, in World War II over Germany, risking death at all times. The novel was later adapted into a movie starring Steve McQueen as the pilot whose constant near-death experiences were akin to a sexual addiction, one that was satisfied only by war.

Hersey was famously assigned by William Shawn, then the assistant editor of the New Yorker, in the immediate aftermath of World War II to go to Hiroshima and focus on the survivors of the US nuclear attack. Hersey’s report filled an entire issue of the magazine and changed the way many Americans felt about the bomb. (It was Shawn who hired me in 1970, when the Washington Post and New York Times would not, after I did my reporting on the US Army’s massacre at My Lai.)

So here we are: Trump is conspiring with an Israeli leader desperate to stay in office and avoid a jail sentence for corruption, while also trying to shirk an official inquiry into his role as prime minister in the failure of the Israeli Defense Forces to protect its soldiers and civilians from Hamas on October 7.

Tehran and other parts of the nation may be in ruins, but the American and Israeli air forces have shown the world what they can do to a nation with no operable air defense system.

Iran is down, as Hegseth said. Shame on us. 

The US/Israel Alliance. Terrorising The Middle East and the World.

Israel bombs oil depot in Tehran causing acid rain over city of 10 million

Richard Mellor
afscme Local 444, retired
HEO/GED

 

As the US and its settler colony wages an illegal war against Iran, it is worth reflecting a little on some history in this region. It is important to recognize that Israel is also bombing Lebanon and Syria. What the Zionists are doing is engaging in another Nakba. Nakba is the Arabic word that means catastrophe and is the Palestinian term for the violent expulsion of some three quarters of the Palestinian people from their homes and land by Zionist militias as part of the formation of the state of Israel from 1947 to 1949.  

 

Contrary to the accepted narrative that promotes the Zionist ideology, Palestine was not devoid of people, “A land without people for a people without land”, Palestinian Muslims, Christians and Jews have occupied this land for a millennium. According to an Ottoman census of 1878, 85% of the Palestinian population was Muslim and 3.2% Jewish. In 1914, Jews were about 7–8% of the population of Palestine, by 1947 it was over 30%.

 

The central core of Anti-Semitism was Europe where Jews have been persecuted for centuries culminating in the Nazi Holocaust that murdered some 6 million of them. It is no surprise then that European Jews that survived, fled what they considered an existential threat to their very existence in the face of an organized genocide. Up to that point, Jewish workers in particular, had never been drawn to Zionism which is a political formation representing a form of Jewish supremacy. Roger Silverman writes in a post on this blog:

 

“Before the Nazi holocaust, Zionism was little more than an outlandish sect. The Jews in Eastern Europe were a persecuted minority forcibly confined to their own ghettoes. They spoke their own language, Yiddish, they had a distinct culture, music, theatre, magazines and newspapers, and their political orientation was to the socialist Bund. The Bundists’ riposte to the Zionists was: We’re going nowhere! This is our home! Even the terrible pogroms which propelled a huge tidal wave of mass migration (including by my own ancestors) gave little sustenance to Zionist aspirations.”

 

The empty land narrative is a cover for the reality that Palestine had a vibrant indigenous population. But Zionism, a form of Jewish supremacy, could not survive in a country where Jews were a minority, certainly not a democracy. You can’t have a Jewish state in which Jews are a minority of the population. The same would hold true for any “religious” state like Pakistan for Instance or Iran.

 

The native land had to be cleansed of the non Jews for it to survive. There is no doubt many Jews that fled Europe after the Holocaust did not consider the experiment would become what it is today. But the Jewish and Gentile capitalists had a different world view.

 

With the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after WW1, the need for a foothold for western colonial power in this important region was central to the support of a Jewish state from Britain and later much more so the U.S. In this sense, the Jewish population of Europe, in dire straits themselves, were used to serve western capitalist interests by states whose ruling elite is rife with anti-Semites. Politics makes strange bedfellows as the saying goes.

 

Since the creation of the state of Israel, and with the support of the western powers, what amounts to a European settler colony has acted in way that settler colonies do. It sees itself as a nation under siege and by the indigenous population as an interloper. The expulsion of close to a million people and the efforts to ethnic cleanse the region from another few million are the result. Those whose populations suffered a genocide at the hands of the European ruling class are imposing similar horror on the Palestinians Muslim, and Christian community.

 

The Zionist regime could not have committed the horrific crimes that it has and continues without the support of the US rogue state whose ruling class also has interests in the region. For decades, as long as I can remember, the cause of the unrest in the Middle East and the reason there is no peace, is the Palestinians. They hate Jews. The Arabs and Muslims are the problem. The racist lies, the demonization, the decades long portrayal of Israeli’s as innocent victims who are being attacked by the entire Arab world is what we have been taught. 

 

The most successful weapon in this propaganda war has been that Zionism and Israel speaks for the Jews of the world. Zionism cannot exist without anti-Semitism and therefore promotes it, welcomes it. But Zionism is not Judaism; it is a political formation and Judaism is a religion. All Germans were not NAZI’s and all Jews are not Zionists. Fewer diaspora Jews support Zionism and Israel today due to the Gaza holocaust. That so many young Jews in the US and UK are in the forefront of the fight for Palestinian rights is the best and most effective way to combat anti-Semitism.

 

When we look at the events of the past 30 years we can see that the most destabilizing force in the region is the existence of the Zionist state and its US backers. 

 

More than three million Iranians have been displaced as a result of the illegal and unprovoked attack on Iran by the US and Israel.  The UN refugee agency reports that 700,000 have been displaced in Lebanon in the past week due to the Israeli bombing of that country. 

 

The US invaded Iraq in 2003 and withdrew in 2011 leaving at least half a million Iraqi’s dead while displacing 9.2 million according to al Jazeera. Beyond that, Iraq is no longer a viable state. What happens to all these people? Where do they go?

 

The effect on neighboring countries of millions of war refugees is catastrophic. I have little time for Europeans and those in the UK who are blaming immigrants for their woes. People have to eat. “Go back to where you came from” doesn’t work too well when the accuser’s government has participated in the destruction of their homes, livelihoods and safety. In the UK the so-called Labor government led by Kier Starmer is allowing the US to use British airfields to load bunker busing bombs on the planes headed for a Iran as I write. There will be more victims of UK policy and they will suffer assault and racism if they find themselves in the UK.

 

The Iranian regime is a backward theocracy, a repressive misogynistic, anti-worker regime. One doesn’t have to be a supporter of this regime, to oppose the barbaric attack on the Iranian people and bombing people in order to get them to change their government doesn’t work. The US ruling class doesn’t care about repressive regimes mind you, it has supported, endorsed or installed them all over the world. The Mullah’s are in power because the US overthrew a democratic secular government in Iran in 1953 led by Mohammad Mossadegh and installed one of the world’s most brutal dictators.

 

We can’t say where this will end. The possibility of the insane Israeli regime using a nuclear device cannot be ruled out. And listen to Trump and Lindsey Graham or Hegseth talk and the Mullahs seem mild by comparison. But the sexual deviant Trump and the menagerie of lunatics in the US Congress have underestimated Iran’s resolve, this is an existential situation for Iran, one of the western world’s oldest civilizations and it is fighting for its survival as a nation state. Iran has a lot to lose. Trump and others have talked of dividing Iran up in to smaller countries. They want the settler colony to be the only power in this region.

The US rogue regime is, in one sense losing this war and its other so-called allies in the region, the corrupt statelets run by monarchical families that rely on the US for protection are beginning to reflect on this relationship. After all, it is their neighborhood too. What the former Prime Minister of Qatar says in the graphic is true. If these statelets declare war on Iran the US will pull back and send weapons to both sides, The Kurds and all forces in this area have been betrayed many times by the US imperialists and their British predecessors. 

 

Whatever the final result, the quick regime change Trump expected after the Israeli’s assassinated the Iranian head of state and many important government officials has not materialized and Iran has given US Imperialism and Israel a bloody nose.

 

This arrogant and irresponsible decision backed by the US Congress is wreaking havoc on the world’s population. There is not a thought about what it means for us at home either. One billion a day it's costing. We don't get to vote on war though. It is threatening to bring down the world economy. The Israeli bombing of an oil storage facility in Tehran is poisoning a city of 10 million people with toxic fumes. The natural habitat in the region is threatened as oil facilities are damaged, not to mention the possible sinking of an oil tanker. This war, like the Iraq war is an environmental catastrophe. And the decision to take this road lies primarily on the shoulders of a man who is a convicted felon, a rap*ist, and a con man and those backing him.  

Michael Roberts: Trump’s Hobson’s choice

Trump’s Hobson’s choice

by Michael Roberts

Today the crude oil topped $95 per barrel, despite the International Energy Agency (IEA) approving its largest-ever release of emergency oil reserves, with member states set to release 400 million barrels. That had little effect on the oil price because Iraq had to halt operations at its oil terminals after two oil tankers were targeted in Iraqi waters. The Strait of Hormuz also remains effectively shut, with several commercial vessels reportedly struck off the coast of Iran. That has prompted major Middle Eastern producers to curb output, tightening global supply further. The Iranian government says that the US must guarantee that neither it nor Israel will strike the country in the future for a ceasefire to be considered. 

So the war in Iran is not going well for Donald Trump.  His ‘war of choice’ (ie unbridled aggression) has become a Hobson’s choice.  His ‘plan’ to decapitate the Iranian leadership with some quick bombing and so achieve regime change along the lines of the ‘Venezuelan solution’ did not happen.  Iran is not Venezuela.  It is a huge country with over 90m people and with a state armed to the teeth with weaponry to defend itself.  For the Iranian mullah-controlled regime this is an existential struggle. 

The hope that Trump had for an uprising by the Iranian people against the regime has not materialised.  The regime is hated by the majority and only recently killed upwards of 30,000 people who protested against the regime.  But when bombs are raining down on the heads of people, they are in no position to come on the streets.  Moreover, any such protest would be viciously suppressed by the regime, which so far has not split and seems united in continuing to resist.

So now it’s Hobson choice for Trump.  Either he calls a ‘victory’ and gets a ceasefire with the regime intact or he doubles down with the possible use of ground troops and yet more bombing in order to try and bring down the regime by sheer military might.  But that could mean many Americans dying. The Israelis don’t want to stop. They want to reduce Iran to the condition of Gaza if they can. But they need US funding and weaponry and they also face dangerous missile attacks from Iran and from Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Either way, having launched a war that a majority of Americans oppose (according to opinion polls), Trump and his acolytes are facing defeat in the mid-term congressional elections.  Congress, as controlled by Trump’s Republicans, has done nothing to stop this war, illegal under the US constitution. A Democrat Congress cannot be guaranteed to rein in Trump either, but at least it might block funding for the war and stop other Trump economic policies.

And this war is costing the American state over $1bn a day.  Sure, the Trump administration has dramatically increased the ‘defence’ budget to over $1trn a year, but even after just two weeks, the war is using up a sizeable part of the weaponry and logistics available. This is squeezing what is required to continue the Ukraine war as a result.  Already Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy is complaining of the lack of funding and arms that he needs to sustain the frontline against the Russians.

But it is not just the cost of the war to America’s budget, much more worrying is the impact on energy prices and eventually the global economy.  As I argued in a previous post, oil and gas prices would rise to astronomical levels only if two things happened:  first, if the Strait of Hormuz, a key choke point for shipping traffic, was blocked; and second, if the oil production and distribution facilities in the Gulf states, Saudi Arabia and Iran were destroyed. 

So far, the former is in place. Just the threat of attacking tankers in the Strait has stopped movement, while shipping insurance premiums have rocketed, pricing out many shipping. And to avoid destruction, many Gulf states have closed down production facilities.  So despite claims by Trump that ships will be escorted through the Strait by the US navy and that the Iranian regime is ‘almost completely’ defeated, the massive swings in oil and gas prices continue and stay well above pre-war levels.

What might all this mean for the world economy? That depends on what happens to the shipments of oil and gas from the region and the scale of long-term damage to oil and gas facilities. If a ceasefire is achieved within the next week, there would still be a fall in world oil and gas exports, but not serious enough to keep energy prices at current high levels. But if the conflict goes on for months, energy exports could fall 5-6% which would keep prices some 10-20% above pre-war levels.  And if oil and gas installations were permanently damaged or out of operation for a long time, then oil prices could reach $150/b or nearly three times pre-war levels and natural gas prices would rocket to €120 mwh, or four times the pre-war rate.  According to Capital Economics, such a rise would be comparable to the global supply shock of the late 1970s, which contributed to high inflation and global recession. But it may not be that bad as the major economies are much less dependent on oil and gas than in the 1970s, thanks to the move to renewable energy and a general improvement in energy efficiency.  

Even so, if a long war ensues, it will intensify the existing trend in the major economies towards ‘stagflation’ i.e. rising price inflation and unemployment alongside falling economic growth. According to the Royal Bank of Canada economists, US consumer price inflation would surge to 3.7% from a current 2.4% yoy, if oil prices hold at $100 a barrel.  The US economy shed 92,000 jobs in February and the unemployment rate climbed to 4.4 per cent. And that was after a 2025 marked by the weakest average monthly job increases outside a recession in more than two decades.  The Iran war will only increase unemployment even more.

Europe’s inflation would also spiral if natural gas prices stay at current levels.  And inflation would rise significantly in the East Asia economies and India.  World economic growth would weather a 10% lift in energy prices, according to the International Monetary Fund, and only slow from about a currently projected 3.2% for this year to 3%. The UK and the euro area would each grow by just 1% or less.  

But if oil prices stay above $100/b, the damage would be much greater. For example, Société Générale, estimated that every $10 sustained increase in oil prices would widen India’s current account deficit, currently around 1 per cent of GDP, by half a percentage point and would cut economic growth by 0.3 per cent.  At $100/b, that would mean a current deficit of 3% of GDP and a reduction in economic growth from a 2026 forecast of 6.4% to 5%. And at such an oil price level, it could cut US real GDP growth by 0.8% points (i.e. from 2% a year to near 1%) and US inflation could reach 4% a year. 

This would pose a serious dilemma for central banks.  Should they raise their policy interest rates to try and curb inflation or just see the inflation spike through rather than damage economic growth?  Hiking rates could trigger the bursting of the AI bubble that is still coming.

Either way, households across the globe, in the economies of the Global North and of the Global South, would face rising prices and borrowing costs and/or falling employment and incomes.  It will be Hobson’s choice for them as well as Trump.

Opinion: The War On Iran Has Four Possible Outcomes

The author is a Human Rights Lawyer. He made these comments on Facebook. He is clearly a Democrat and refers to “corporate” Democrats rather than the party as whole which is the main problem and difference I would have with him. apart from being a socialist and recognising that this crises, like all the others, is a product of the capitalist system and cannot be resolved unless the capitalist system is destroyed. And, as I have said before, in the piece below the role or possible role of the working class, organized or otherwise, is absent. He is appealing to the “progressive” wing of this warmongering capitalist party. Nevertheless, it’s a thoughtful piece and I agree with much of his assessment of the situation. Richard Mellor 

 

The War On Iran Has Four Possible Outcomes
Qasim Rashid

 

Only one of these four paths protects humanity—the other three are likely destroy it

This week Donald Trump threatened more war crimes on the people of Iran.

 

We are now in the most dangerous phase of this crisis, and pretending otherwise is reckless. As a human rights lawyer, I do not view war as an abstraction, a chessboard, or a television spectacle. I view it in terms of law, civilian life, state accountability, and foreseeable human devastation. If we are honest about the present moment, there are only four plausible scenarios from here. Three are catastrophic. The fourth is the only one consistent with constitutional government, international law, and basic human survival. It is also the one Donald Trump appears least willing to accept—but one our Congress must rally to ensure happens. 

 

As of Monday this week the United States’ and Israel’s illegal war on Iran has killed 1,200 Iranians, mostly civilians. Up to one third of them are children—including the near 175 children killed by a U.S. military Tomahawk missile. Iran’s response has targeted military bases, resulting in reportedly 6 U.S. soldiers killed and 13 Israelis. Now, Trump is promising “Death, Fire, and Fury” and “twenty times” the damage if Iran does not unconditionally surrender.

In other words, we are running out of time to end this illegal war and prevent global and irreparable catastrophe. Right now we have four possible paths ahead of us. It is critical we rally and demand Congress act to enact Option Number Four.

 

Option One

The first scenario is that Trump eventually admits defeat and withdraws from Iran. In purely human terms, that would be preferable to escalation, but it would still come after an illegal war already launched without constitutional authority and under a pretext that has not been substantiated. The geopolitical consequences would be significant.

 

A failed American war would further erode U.S. credibility and likely accelerate a broader shift in influence toward China and Russia. Iran, having survived direct U.S.-Israeli assault, would emerge emboldened. Oil may no longer be pegged to the U.S. dollar as the global currency, devastating the US economy. None of this is favorable, though this is the bed Trump has made so far. But also, compared with what comes next, it is survivable.

 

Option Two

The second scenario is a ground invasion. Trump has not ruled that out. He has not ruled out a draft either. The Pentagon is already reportedly preparing to seek roughly $50 billion in supplemental funding for Middle East operations, a strong indication that the administration is contemplating a longer and more expensive war footing. A quick reminder that politicians lie when they say we cannot afford to fund universal healthcare, free public college, free school lunches, or affordable housing.

 

Anyone speaking casually about invading Iran is either ignorant of the facts or indifferent to the lives that would be destroyed. Invading Afghanistan and Iraq was already catastrophic. As I’ve cited before, a Brown University study documents an estimated 4.6 million civilians killed by western wars since 2001.

 

And Iran is not Iraq. Iran is about 1.63 million square kilometers—which is triple the size of Iraq. I has a population that recent estimates place in the low 90 million range—which is double that of Iraq. It’s largest city, Tehran, has a population of 9.6 million—larger than New York City. It is geographically vast, heavily populated, politically complex, and militarily formidable.

 

A U.S. ground invasion would not be a quick operation. It would be a regional inferno. Potentially millions could die. The global economy would likely be pushed into a prolonged recession. And because major powers would not passively watch such a war unfold, the risk of a broader world war would rise dramatically. Thus, option three.

 

Option Three

The third scenario is the use of nuclear weapons by Israel or the United States. That is the scenario many people still resist discussing openly because it sounds too horrible to contemplate. But refusing to contemplate it does not make it less real. This is not hyperbole. Research published in Nature Food and highlighted by Rutgers found that a large-scale nuclear war could kill more than 5 billion people through famine and system-wide collapse, even apart from the immediate blast deaths. In ordinary language, that means the deaths of four to six billion human beings within a relatively short period are well within the range of expert projections in a full nuclear exchange. It would be worse than any Hollywood film can imagine because movies still assume that civilization survives in recognizable form. Nuclear war does not promise survival. It promises planetary ruin. Thus, we must push for Option Four.

 

Option Four

That leaves the fourth scenario, which is the only morally serious option: Trump resigns or is impeached, the war is halted, and actual peace negotiations begin. With Trump removed from power, there is at least a possibility of returning to diplomacy, de-escalation, and meaningful non-proliferation efforts. History gives us a model. In the mid-1980s, the United States and Soviet Union moved from existential nuclear hostility toward negotiations that helped reduce the risk of annihilation. That kind of diplomacy is still possible, but only if the men driving this escalation are stopped. The obstacle, of course, is political cowardice. This would require the Republican Party to develop a spine and fulfill its constitutional duty. It would require Corporate Democrats to grow a spine and demand an end to this war. Instead, Hakeem Jeffries refuses to rule out funding this illegal attack on Iran with another $50B.

 

At present, it seems unlikely that Republicans and Corporate Democrats will grow a spine or a conscience. But unlikelihood is not an excuse for silence when the alternative is mass death.

Conclusion

 

Here’s the bottom line. This is not red versus blue. This is not left versus right. This is working people versus billionaires, civilians versus war planners, constitutional government versus authoritarian impulse. This is why the culture wars must stop. Because as bad as things are, they can get much worse. Trump has not ruled out the worst options. He has not ruled out sending American troops into a catastrophic ground war. He has not ruled out escalating further. He has already shown that he will ignore constitutional limits, and too many members of Congress still behave as though strongly worded statements are an adequate response to an unlawful war.

 

There is also a deeper pattern here that should disturb every serious observer. In 2013, Trump claimed Obama would bomb Iran to distract from his failures. In 2023, J.D. Vance warned against repeating in Iran the same mistake made in Iraq. Now they are doing exactly what they accused others of doing. That is not irony. It is the operating logic of fascist politics: accuse the other side of the crime you are preparing to commit yourself.

 

The legal and moral stakes are immense. Congress must act now to stop this war, cut off funding for unauthorized escalation, and reassert that the Constitution is not optional. Military service members must also remember that “I was just following orders” did not excuse unlawful conduct at Nuremberg, and it will not excuse it now. To those cheering this war from a distance, understand what you are cheering for: possible nuclear confrontation, higher prices for families already struggling, and the deaths of ordinary soldiers while the sons of powerful men remain far from the battlefield.

 

We need option four, and we need it immediately. Trump must be removed from the machinery of war before his recklessness becomes irreversible. If we fail to stop this now, history will not say we were uninformed. It will say we were warned and did too little.

________________________________

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Document: Homeland Security Warns of Iranian “Fatwa”

U.S. military issues its own Fatwa

KEN KLIPPENSTEIN AND JASON PALADINO MAR 9

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth

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The Department of Homeland Security is circulating a “critical incident note” warning that Iran has issued two “fatwas” for Muslims to avenge the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, orders that the department sees as predicting a terrorist strike on America.

The DHS report—titled “Iranian Religious Leaders Issue Fatwas Calling on Muslims to Avenge Supreme Leaders Death”—says the fatwas label the U.S. and Israel as “the most wicked enemies of humanity” and that it “urges followers worldwide to take revenge.”

On March 2, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps also threatened the US directly, issuing a proclamation that “the enemy … will no longer have security anywhere in the world, even in their own homes.”

Iran, however, is not the only country framing the Iran war in religious terms. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth is invoking God as being on the American side, while claiming that Iran is “hell-bent on prophetic Islamist delusions.”

Leaked DHS report

Leaders of the right-wing Christian community in America, meanwhile, have overtly tied the Iran war to end times theology.

Televangelist John Hagee and chairman of Christians United for Israel delivered a sermon at the Cornerstone Church in San Antonio earlier this month, standing in front of a banner reading: “God’s coming…Operation ‘Epic Fury’.” In his sermon, he thanked Trump for having “crushed the enemies of Zion,” saying the attack on Iran will trigger biblically prophesied events including the invasion of Israel by a Russian-led army and Jesus’s defeat of the Antichrist at the Battle of Armageddon.

John Hagee delivers sermon at Cornerstone Church

The religious fervor has permeated much of the military as well.

The nonprofit Military Religious Freedom Foundation put out an alarming statement on March 3 saying such, and that the organization was “inundated with complaints of gleeful commanders telling troops [the] Iran War is ‘part of God’s divine plan’ to usher in the return of Jesus Christ.” The organization reported over 200 calls from more than 50 military installations reporting similar remarks from U.S. military commanders.

One said that “President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth,” according to MRFF. 

On Sunday, Hegseth told 60 Minutes correspondent Major Garrett that the “providence of our Almighty God is there protecting those troops” in the Iran war.

When asked directly if he saw the war in religious terms, Hegseth basically said yes, preaching at length his own version of a militarized Christian doctrine.

PETE HEGSETH: The providence of our Almighty God is there protecting those troops. And we’re committed to this mission.

MAJOR GARRETT: You made that reference to the providence of Almighty God. Is there any part of you, Mr. Secretary, that views any of this in a religious context?

HEGSETH:  I mean, obviously we’re fighting religious fanatics who seek a nuclear capability in order to, for some religious harm. Again, but from my perspective, I mean obviously I’m a man of faith. Who encourages our troops to lean into their faith, uh, rely on God. There’s no atheists in foxholes. Your mortality’s right in front of you.

I remember prayer for me on combat missions, how important that was. That’s why we’re making the Chaplain Corps great again and active again, making sure we’re pouring into the … faith of our troops. My Christian faith, faith in general, is important to the president. It’s important in our fighting ranks to give him perspective, you know, of human nature.

On their own humanity, on our own mortality. Uh, and we lost a lot of that with sort of self-help, self-esteem, nonsense, which is not what troops need. They need a … connection with their almighty God, uh, in these moments. And, um, I’m proud of how our … troops are conducting themselves, and I pray for them every day.”

Perhaps this is not surprising for a figure like Hegseth who literally published a book in 2020 titled “American Crusade,” and has “DEUS VULT,” which he described as a Crusader battle cry, tattooed on his arm.

“That entire regime is led by radical clerics who don’t make geopolitical decisions,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio adds. “They make decisions on the basis of theology, their view of theology, which is an apocalyptic one that has to be taken very seriously.”

The U.S. Ambassador to Israel, former Arkansas governor (and pastor) Mike Huckabee also casts the war in deeply religious terms. In an interview with Tucker Carlson last month, Huckabee said that Israel has a religious right to much of the Middle East, remarking: “It would be fine if they took it all.”

“This is a religious war, and we will determine the course of the Middle East for a thousand years,” Senator Lindsey Graham, a close ally of President Trump’s and the most vocal advocate for military action in Iran, said last week.

In February 1989, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for the death of British author Salman Rushdie for his book “The Satanic Verses.” Iran went on to cut off diplomatic relations with the UK over Rushdie’s book. We all know how that subsequently turned out.

In August 1996, Osama Bin Laden issued his own 11,500 word “fatwa” and declared holy war against US forces in the Arabian peninsula. “Your blood has been spilt in Palestine and Iraq, and the horrific image of the massacre in Qana in Lebanon are still fresh in people’s minds,” he said. The declaration followed the June 25^th truck bomb attack at Khobar towers in Saudi Arabia, where 19 US military personnel were killed and over 500 were injured.

That November, the still obscure bin Laden was interviewed and asked why there hadn’t yet been attacks in response. He replied, “If we wanted to carry out small operations, it would have been easy to do so after the statements, but the nature of the battle requires qualitative operations that affect the adversary, which obviously requires good preparation.”

Two years later, in February 1998, bin Laden issued a second fatwa, calling on Muslims to kill Americans anywhere in the world, a shift from focusing solely on Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states. This fatwa inspired a new generation of fighters, including the generation that undertook the 9/11 attacks. 

Capitalism Threatens Life as We Know It. An International Working Class Movement is the Only Force That Can Stop It.

The US and Israel Must Be Stopped. 

 

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

HEO/GED

3-09-26

 

An interesting discussion with John Mearsheimer on the status of the imperialist aggression waged by the US and Israel against Iran. It’s useful given the near blackout of information by the main stream media in the west. Israel has even gone to great lengths to defend its image as untouchable, threatening 5 years in prison and huge fines for any Israeli sending out video clips of the destruction caused by Iranian missiles after Iran retaliated to the unprovoked attack. The assault also assassinated Iran’s head of state and numerous government officials, clearly in violation of international law.

 

I respect Mearsheimer’s views and he is perhaps the most astute of the bourgeois commentators on world events in my opinion.  He was an early critic of the Zion*ist regime and was condemned as an anti-Semite by Israel and zio*ists in the US and around the world for co-authoring an article criticizing the influence AIPAC has on the US body politic. In another interview, Mearsheimer points out that between 1971 and 2021 the US "murdered" 38 million people. He includes in this, the US sanctions it imposes on states and individuals, an aspect of warfare that hides the deaths by its very nature. The US having the reserve currency is another weapon of war that allows the US to accumulate wealth and punish enemies and competitors alike. British. colonials had this same weapon with the pound sterling.

 

An aspect that is missing, or a question that is glaringly absent in the video, is: What will the US working class do? There is tremendous anger and frustration within US society. What is the situation in the rank and file of the military, or among the brass? That is not easy to gauge and from what I understand Trump has replaced any or most of the top officers with his bootlickers. But it is inevitable that fissures will appear and probably already have.

Americans are angry at the politicians and both of the capitalist, war mongering parties to the point that in the electoral sphere, as many as 100 million of the registered voters refuse to support either party in national elections. The sheer cost of these ventures, about a billion dollars a day both in the Caribbean and the Persian Gulf, is staggering, and does not go unnoticed by the millions of Americans that are victims of such a waste of resources. The crisis of capitalism and the so-called free market is felt in every aspect of US life, particularly when it comes to the essentials like housing, health care and mass transit. More and more the effects of climate change are becoming a serious disruption in everyday life.

 

In a post on this blog some time ago I shared these details about life in the US:

Sixty-three percent of U.S. adults currently agree with the statement that the Republican and Democratic parties do “such a poor job” of representing the American people that “a third major party is needed.”  Gallup

 

According to a Gallup survey…… 62 percent of Americans now say that the federal government should ensure that all Americans have health coverage, Dec 2024

 

 Nearly four times as many voters

support increasing public transportation funding as support reducing it. 

70 percent of respondents agree that “providing people with more transportation options is better for our health, safety, and economy than building more highways.” 

Data show that these kinds of investors bought almost 1 in 4 homes sold in 2021. (private equity and corporate property management firms. The results reflect Americans’ broad concern about housing costs. Rents have reached all-time highs in the U.S., wit  half of renters spending 30% or more of their income on rent and one- quarter spending more than 50%. 

 

82% of Americans want the government to make housing more affordable PEW

Two-thirds of Americans prioritize developing alternative energy sources, like wind and solar About three-quarters of Americans support a U.S. role in global efforts to address climate change Pew

The federal minimum wage was last raised in 2009 to $7.25 per hour. Since then, consumer prices have increased by 45% — including a 49% increase in medical care prices, a 51% increase in food prices, and a 67% increase in rental housing prices. Nonetheless, the federal minimum wage hasn’t budged in those 15 years.

I don’t think things have improved for US workers and the middle class. For some, the stock market is making them richer than ever before. No doubt those holding Lockheed Martin or Raytheon stock are doing well but it’s not a working person’s game. In my state, California, there are some 200 billionaires, over 80 of them live within a 60-mile radius from where I am now.

It should come as no surprise, that the issue of how the US working class and population in general might respond to this war is missing, should come as no surprise. And it’s not simply people like Mearsheimer and other “experts” that never consider the working class in their calculations. But why would they?  

Over the past 40 years the US working class and the organized sector have been quieted, bar a few rare exceptions. Massive debt, no state health care system, increased political repression and militarization of the police and antiunion laws, have made the likelihood of a mass movement in the streets similar to the anti-war and civil rights movement of the 60’s much more difficult. So many US workers rely on their employer for health care coverage so striking is a risky business in more ways than one.

There was an effort in the 1980’s among sections of organized labor to push back. There were major strikes that adopted tactics used during the great labor battles of the 1930’s that led to the formation of the United Auto Workers union and, rise of industrial unions and the formation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CEO). 

These strikes were defeated primarily through a powerful combination of the employers and the trade union hierarchy that act as representatives of the Democratic Party within organized labor. 

As I always stress, it is not so much criminal activity or corruption that is the cause of the labor bureaucracy’s failures and outright betrayals. They accept that the capitalist mode of production is the only form of social organization and believe the so-called free market is the answer to all things. So when the system enters crisis they move to bail it out and that inevitably means undermining the living standards of their own members and the working class in general. A mass movement from below, whether within organized labor or outside of it (it will engulf  both) can only lead to chaos for the them. The movement will demand all sorts of social needs that capitalism will not provide. Zorhan Mamdani is feeling this reality right now.

When President Joe Biden, the former Senator from Du Pont and the self-described most union friendly president in US history, went to his friends in Congress and passed legislation overnight that prevented rail workers from engaging in what would have been a “legal” strike, the trade union leadership did nothing in response. And here Trump is causing havoc around the world, causing economic disaster and untold misery and likely will send more US workers to their deaths and the heads of oraganized labor remain silent. The Dogs That Don’t bark is appropriate when describing their absence from the fray.

A friend on Facebook commented today that Trump can’t be stopped. “Who will do it? “, she wrote.

 

Well he can be stopped. The Democrats winning in the primaries, which seems likely, will not lead to a path that reverses the likelihood of global conflagration as the capitalist system exhausts it ability to take humanity forward. The status quo was still misery for millions of Americans. Climate catastrophe alone and the damage the free market inflicts on the natural world is threatening life as we know it, and this too is a market driven catastrophe. The biggest polluter on the planet is the US military and it affects every human being on earth.

 

It will take a mass movement to halt this increasingly dangerous slide in to the abyss. And while nothing is guaranteed, I believe it is guaranteed that the working class in the US, and around the world,  will attempt to resolve these crisis that are driving us to despair. Our backs will be against the wall. 

 

It is not utopian to have the position that the working class in the US and throughout the world will step to the plate. It is utopian to think we can survive as a species by doing nothing.