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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 25th 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.
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
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.
I would argue that, next to the catastrophic climate impacts that are accumulating rapidly, the America First turn is the most decisive and devastating expression of the deep contradictions within global capitalism.
The system of US world leadership that emerged after WW2, was maintained and adapted during the years of economic boom, the neoliberal turn and the post 2008 instability. It was in effect during the Cold War, the 'unipolar' period of US rule after the Berlin Wall fell and the subsequent years in which it became ever clearer that 'the end of history' had been proclaimed too soon.
Under conditions of declining US power, seven decades of 'Pax Americana' have now gone over to the volatile and massively unstable brand of gangster imperialism that the Trump administration is putting into effect. However, the failed effort to restore 'responsible' US leadership during the 'Biden restoration' indicates that the change of course that Trump personifies isn't simply the subjective choice of his administration. Carney was right to speak of a rupture and the end of the 'rules based' global order. The factors that drove the Trump turn are the limitations and contradictions of a weakening US imperialism and subsequent administrations won't escape them.
The period we are now entering into is one in which the still dominant US will use its remaining power without restraint. The horrors we are seeing in Latin America and the Middle East reflect an effort to restore hegemonic power that leads ultimately to a dreadful confrontation with China, the rising power and the key rival.
Carney's 'middle powers' will now have to pay tribute to a far more demanding US, trying at the same time to strengthen their own military capacities and roles as global predators, while adopting class war measures against their working-class populations. The countries of the Global South face a new and terrible level of aggression and exploitation.
This is a uniquely unstable and dangerous period that is going to be marked by unprecedented levels of social conflict. Working-class struggle, global resistance and a clear anti-capitalist political orientation are the only viable responses and the only means for humanity to survive and move forward.
Origins of International Women's Day (IWD) – March 8th Submitted by Frank Hammer
International Women's Day (IWD) is celebrated on 8 March, commemorating women's fight for equality and liberation along with the women's rights movement. International Women's Day gives focus to issues such as gender equality, reproductive rights, and violence and abuse against women.
Spurred by the universal female suffrage movement, International Women’s Day originated from labor movements in Europe and North America during the early 20th century.
The earliest version reported was a Woman's Day organized by the Socialist Party of America in New York City on 28 February 1909. In solidarity with them, communist activist and politician Clara Zetkin proposed the celebration of Working Women's Day approved at the 1910 International Socialist Women's Conference in Copenhagen, albeit with no set date; the following year saw the first demonstrations and commemorations of International Women's Day across Europe.
Vladimir Lenin declared 8 March as International Women's Day in 1922 to honor the women's role in the 1917 Russian Revolution; it was subsequently celebrated on that date by the socialist movement and communist countries. The holiday was promoted by the United Nations in 1977.
International Women's Day is a public holiday in several countries. The UN observes the holiday in connection with a particular issue, campaign, or theme in women's rights.
Commenting last week on the build-up of US military forces targeting Iran, Robert A. Pape, Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, got it right:
‘This represents 40-50% of the deployable US air power in the world. Think air power on the order of the 1991 and 2003 Iraq war. And growing. Never has the US deployed this much force against a potential enemy and not launched strikes.’
Just prior to the US and Israeli launch of ‘Operation Epic Fury’, Trump’s name for the onslaught that began last Saturday, Professor Pape commented again:
‘250+ combat US aircraft poised to strike Iran. Trump is cocking the gun— not for 1 day of strikes, but weeks long air campaign to grind down the regime.’
In fact, we know the goal is regime change. In announcing the war, Trump declared:
‘Finally, to the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand. Stay sheltered. Don’t leave your home. It’s very dangerous outside. Bombs will be dropping everywhere. When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.’
Of course, a central theme of Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ campaign was his supposed determination to end Forever Wars. In 2016, he said:
‘We will stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about, that we shouldn’t be involved with.’
In the Guardian, Julian Borger described this latest war as ‘an unprovoked attempt at regime change in collaboration with Israel, with no legal foundation, launched in the midst of diplomatic efforts to avert conflict, and with minimal consultation with Congress or the American public’.
Borger’s use of the adjective ‘unprovoked’ is interesting. Endlessly repeated in describing Russia’s supposedly ‘unprovoked’ war of aggression on Ukraine, there are scarce mentions in current media coverage of ‘Operation Epic Fury’. Borger added:
‘The attack on Iran is a clear violation of the UN charter, in any absence of any credible, imminent Iranian threat to the US.’
Again, the word ‘illegal’ is absent from almost all media coverage. By contrast, Jeremy Diamond, CNN Jerusalem Correspondent, commented:
‘BREAKING: Israel has launched pre-emptive strikes against Iran and a state of emergency has been declared across Israel in anticipation of Iranian retaliation.’
There were no quote marks around ‘pre-emptive’, even though there is no evidence that Iran was about to attack. Reuters pushed the same propaganda:
‘Israel has launched a preventative attack against Iran, defence minister says.’
Even the BBC’s Jeremy Bowen perceived the mendacity:
‘The word preemptive has been used. Now that’s a word that suggests there was an imminent threat, that is an imminent attack before these strikes started. There’s no evidence of that. It looks very much as if this is a war of choice that Israel and the US have done.’
The US has since tragicomically claimed the war was ‘preemptive’ in the sense that they knew Israel was going to attack, so had to become involved.
Hours before the war began, Oman’s foreign minister – the chief mediator in US-Iran negotiations – told CBS a deal could be reached ‘tomorrow’ and warned that it would be derailed by military action. Patrick Wintour, the Guardian’s diplomatic editor, reported:
‘The Iranian delegation believes that if American negotiators convey the current reality in the negotiation room to the White House and Washington trusts the IAEA as a specialized arbiter in non-proliferation matters, Tehran’s proposed initiatives address Trump’s claimed concern about the necessity of the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program.’
Which would have left us pretty much where we were in 2018, before Trump wrecked the highly successful Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear agreement (see below).
Filmmaker and journalist Richard Sanders described coverage of a major massacre of civilians by three US-Israeli missiles:
‘The killing of dozens of girls at a primary school in Iran is not on the front page of a single British newspaper.
‘A simple test – imagine the reaction if they were Israelis.’
Later that day, the BBC devoted a leading headline to nine people killed in Israel, while the 148 children then estimated to have been killed remained what they had been the previous day, a second-order story lower down the page. After the school death toll was revised to 165 killed, the BBC shamefully dropped the story from its ‘Summary’.
The BBC subsequently posted two articles on the same morning. In one report, four US troops killed in an Iranian attack were pictured, named, ages given, backgrounds described. They were fully humanised, as they should have been. In a separate report on the school massacre, none of the Iranian schoolgirls or staff were pictured, named or humanised. As usual, they were lumped together as an anonymous mass.
As in Venezuela, the BBC claims a significant portion of the target population is actually relievedto be subject to one of the most intense bombing campaigns in modern history:
‘But, says BBC Persian, at the same time there appears to be a sense of relief – even celebration – among those who believe the regime’s downfall can only come through military intervention.’
Considering the state of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, the future must look bright indeed.
As expected, only two British political leaders responded with integrity and humanity. Jeremy Corbyn, who will soon be made leader of Your Party, said:
‘The attacks on Iran by Israel and the United States are illegal, unprovoked and unjustifiable. Peace and diplomacy was possible. Instead, Israel and the United States chose war. This is the behaviour of rogue states — and they have jeopardised the safety of humankind around the world with this catastrophic act of aggression.’
Green Party leader Zack Polanski – currently being subjected to the same campaign of defamation and dehumanisation directed at Corbyn – said:
‘This is an illegal, unprovoked and brutal attack that shows once again that the USA and Israel are rogue states.’
‘Now watching @ZackPolanski spewing shockingly naive and delusional nonsense about Iran. God help us if he and his extreme left-wing Green Party ever win real power. He makes Corbyn look mainstream.’
On X, Mehdi Hasan of Zeteo News skewered Morgan with great precision:
‘Zack is taking an antiwar position that you took in 2003, Piers. You were attacked in the same way you are now attacking Zack.’
‘History will judge the Mirror’s campaign on the Iraq war as one of the strongest, bravest and best campaigns that any newspaper ever waged against anything ever, and I believe that passionately.’
‘Shockingly naïve,’ Morgan was so convinced that conditions in Iraq had become so appalling that he argued in all seriousness that Saddam should be put back in power:
‘Armed fighters are swarming all over Iraq. We have devastated the region beyond any repair in the short term at all. None of this was going on while Saddam was in charge of things…’.
Presumably, Morgan can perceive no prospect of a similar catastrophe occurring now.
Trump-level hypocrisy abounds elsewhere. In 2015, Reform Party leader Nigel Farage boldly opined:
‘We don’t need to take foreign policy advice from the American President. The last time we did that it was called the Iraq War.’
Last week, Farage posted on X:
‘The Prime Minister needs to change his mind on the use of our military bases and back the Americans in this vital fight against Iran!’
At the far-distant extreme of ethical ‘mainstream’ commentary, Peter Hitchens of the Mail on Sunday wrote:
‘It is interesting that dissent on foreign policy is almost invariably slandered as support for the foreign state to which we are being urged to be hostile. When it is in fact a desire to keep my own country out of needless danger.’
Does concern for our own safety really represent the limit of our moral vision? Dissent is also driven by respect for international law, by concern for the horrendous consequences for civilians under our bombs, and by the keen awareness that, for decades, ‘our’ foreign policy has been controlled by greed-driven interests lacking any moral compass. Ultimately, by standing against wars of aggression we are standing up for our own humanity. We are not monsters.
Journalist Glenn Greenwald commented on the notion that Trump is concerned about the welfare of Iranian people:
‘Trump – whose favorite regimes on the planet are the most savagely and viciously tyrannical: Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, etc., and whose 2025 National Security Strategy said we don’t care if other governments offer freedom – says his main goal is that Iranians be free.’
Iran – ‘Transparently, Verifiably, And Fully Implementing The JCPOA’
But why attack at all? And why now? Two weeks ago, a post from the Jerusalem Post reported ominously:
‘Iran is about a week away from having the ability to make industrial-grade bombs, US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff told Fox News on Saturday, while offering a rare glimpse into Trump’s decision-making process on the issue.’
That seemed clear – Iran was a week away from possessing an atomic bomb. Readers had to click the link to find the truth:
‘The US envoy left out that Iran currently has no access to its material, no machines to enrich it, and no weapons program to use it for any operational purpose.’
Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University supplied some background:
‘The fact of the matter is that the claim that Iran wants a nuclear weapon and is just about to get a nuclear weapon has been the false propaganda literally for 30 years. Netanyahu, who is a war criminal, has been saying for 30 years since 1996.’
In 2019, the US Defense Intelligence Agency reported:
‘Iran’s military strategy is basically defensive and is designed to deter an adversary, survive an initial strike, and retaliate against an aggressor to force a diplomatic solution.’
We can be confident that the case for war is as bogus as ever because, in 2015, Iran signed up to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), an agreement to limit the Iranian nuclear programme in return for lifted sanctions. For reasons best known to Trump and (no doubt) Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018. Trump described the deal as ‘disastrous’, saying, ‘The Iran Deal was one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into.’
As Trump would say, this was ‘fake news’. Between 2016 and early 2019, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the official ‘watchdog’ tasked with monitoring Iranian compliance, issued eleven consecutive reports confirming ‘that Iran is implementing its nuclear-related commitments’.
The EU High Representative repeatedly stated that the JCPOA was ‘working and delivering on its goal, namely, to ensure that the Iranian programme remains exclusively peaceful, as confirmed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 11 consecutive reports’.
The UN Secretary-General issued biannual reports to the Security Council that consistently reflected the IAEA’s findings, confirming that Iran was meeting its nuclear-related obligations. In 2017, the US State Department twice certified to Congress that Iran was compliant with the deal:
‘Iran is transparently, verifiably, and fully implementing the JCPOA; it has not committed a material breach with respect to the JCPOA; and Iran has not taken any action during the reporting period, including covert activities, that could significantly advance an Iranian nuclear weapons program.’
Ignoring all of the above as non-existent, the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg commented on the difficulty of dealing with Iran in an interview with Zack Polanski:
‘They have shown for years to be [sic] completely disinterested in negotiation or respecting international rules and regulations.’
Pure, mendacious propaganda on prime-time BBC TV.
The Protests And Death Tolls
Estimates on the number of people killed in protests in Iran from December 2025 to January 2026 range from 3,000 to 36,000. The Iranian government claims some 200 security personnel were killed.
Journalist Alan MacLeod reports that ‘… the source of many of the most inflammatory claims and shockingly high casualty figures reported in the press’ are ‘bankrolled by the Central Intelligence Agency, through its cutout organization, the National Endowment for Democracy’.
As with false claims made before the 2003 Iraq war, politicians have used extreme claims sponsored by the US government to sell their war of aggression as humanitarian intervention. Thus, UK foreign secretary Yvette Cooper, who said Iran’s government is ‘… a regime which we know has brutally killed tens of thousands of its own people’.
In fact, nobody has a clear idea of how many people were killed during the protests or by whom. But then nobody in the ‘mainstream’ cares about the methodology or evidence behind the high death toll estimates – concerns that arise only when claims reflect badly on the West, as in the case of Iraqi and Palestinian civilian casualties.
Similarly, press coverage blithely ignores the clear involvement of Israeli agents provocateurs. On December 29, The Jerusalem Post reported:
‘On Monday, the Mossad [Israeli secret service] used its Twitter account in Farsi to encourage Iranians to protest against the Iranian regime, telling them that it will join them during the demonstrations.
‘“Go out together into the streets. The time has come,” the Mossad wrote.
‘It continued, “We are with you. Not only from a distance and verbally. We are with you in the field.”’
Mike Pompeo, former director of the CIA and former Secretary of State, posted on X:
‘Happy New Year to every Iranian in the streets. Also to every Mossad agent walking beside them…’
It would hardly be a surprise if, as in Syria, Western forces worked hard to make the protests as violent as possible, presumably as part of their preparation for ‘Operation Epic Fury’. The BBC reported:
‘The protests began as a reaction to the spiralling cost of living and soon focused on the whole regime, whose policies people blamed for their difficulties.’
The key point:
‘Since May 2018, when Donald Trump pulled the United States out of a nuclear deal with Iran and reinstated wide-ranging sanctions on the country, the Iranian currency has lost more than 95% of its value against the US dollar on the open market… The rapid fall in the value of the rial sparked the protests in Tehran’s bazaar in late December, which soon spread across the country.’
In fact, the US has been destroying Iran’s economy in an attempt to destabilise the country and achieve regime change. This is conscious policy. In February, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent openly stated that the ‘Maximum Pressure’ sanctions campaign was specifically ‘designed to collapse [Iran’s] already buckling economy’ by driving oil exports to zero and denying the regime access to hard currency. Many other US politicians have made the same point. This lethal policy would certainly have been the key focus, if the BBC had been reporting on Russian attempts to economically destabilise a Western ally. In the event, the word ‘sanctions’ was mentioned just twice, both buried in the middle of the piece.
A BBC headline described Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s last Shah, as being ‘at centre of protest chants’. In 2018, journalist Nafeez Ahmed reported:
‘Altogether, since 2006, successive US administrations have invested tens of millions of dollars a year on “democracy promotion” efforts in Iran, serving as cover for longstanding ‘regime change’ aspirations.
‘Much of the media programming funded by the State Department has focused on glorifying the reign of the Shah of Iran, the brutal US-UK backed dictator who was deposed by the 1979 revolution. The propaganda appears to have worked, with many participants in the latest protests calling for the Shah’s exiled son, Reza Pahlavi, to return to power in Iran.’
Naturally, this ‘democracy promotion’ of the Shah’s son requires the omission of some embarrassing historical facts.
In 1953, US-supplied armoured cars took to the streets of Iran deposing the democratically elected nationalist Mohammad Mosaddegh and replacing him with the Shah. According to then CIA agent Richard Cottam, ‘…that mob that came into north Teheran and was decisive in the overthrow was a mercenary mob. It had no ideology. That mob was paid for by American dollars and the amount of money that was used has to have been very large’. (Quoted, Mark Curtis, ‘The Ambiguities of Power’, Zed Books, 1995, p.93)
As in Iraq 2003, Libya 2011 and Venezuela 2026, the motive was oil.
The BBC made vague mention of ‘human rights abuses’ under the Shah. In fact, according to Amnesty International, Iran had the ‘highest rate of death penalties in the world, no valid system of civilian courts and a history of torture’, which was ‘beyond belief’, in a society in which ‘the entire population was subjected to a constant, all-pervasive terror’. (Martin Ennals, Secretary General of Amnesty International, cited in an Amnesty Publication, Matchbox, Autumn 1976)
None of this troubles our ‘free press’, who are busy following the line adopted by journalist John Sweeney in 1999:
‘Life will only get better for ordinary Iraqis once the West finally stops dithering and commits to a clear, unambiguous policy of snuffing out Saddam. And when he falls the people of Iraq will say: “What kept you? Why did it take you so long?”’ (Sweeney, ‘The West created a monster. Now it’s time to destroy him. As a good liberal, I personally vote for obliterating Saddam’, The Observer, 10 January 1999)
One would be hard-pressed to find a ‘mainstream’ commentator currently concerned about human rights in Iraq. Last week, Antiwar’s Jason Ditz reported:
‘Once and possibly future Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s candidacy is increasingly in doubt this weekend, with reports that President Trump’s demand he not be allowed to return to office increasing the possibility that the Coordination Framework bloc may withdraw him as their choice for premier…
‘Late last month, Trump demanded that Maliki step down from the nomination, but he refused at the time, saying that the US should stay out of Iraq’s internal affairs. Maliki was already Iraq’s PM from 2006 through 2014.’
Ditz explains how the US controls Iraq’s ‘democracy’:
‘Underpinning this whole thing is that after the 2003 US invasion and occupation of Iraq, the country was restructured such that all of Iraq’s oil revenue was paid in US dollars through the New York Federal Reserve Bank. Since that revenue is almost the entirety of Iraq’s government budget, that means the US can virtually seize Iraq’s treasury at any time and bankrupt the country on a moment’s notice.’
This is the kind of ‘freedom’ that awaits Iranians in the event of US-Israel ‘regime change’, which would actually mean conquest and colonisation.
Oil remains a key goal, of course. In 2015, Noam Chomsky described the deeper motives:
‘The answer is plain: the rogue states that rampage in the region… do not want to tolerate any impediment to their reliance on aggression and violence. In the lead in this regard are the U.S. and Israel, with Saudi Arabia trying its best to join the club….’
DE
Note To Readers
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David Edwards is the author of ‘A Short Book About Ego… and the Remedy of Meditation’, Mantra Books, available here. He is also the author of the science fiction novel, ‘The Man With No Face’, to be published by Roundfire Books in 2026
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