The ridiculous 2026 “National Defense Strategy”
As for the National Defense Strategy, it concludes in climactic fashion by declaring that the US must maintain capability to “conduct devastating strikes and operations against targets anywhere in the world.” As if that’s just the most obvious imperative of responsible statecraft that anyone could possibly fathom.
As for the National Defense Strategy, it concludes in climactic fashion by declaring that the US must maintain capability to “conduct devastating strikes and operations against targets anywhere in the world.” As if that’s just the most obvious imperative of responsible statecraft that anyone could possibly fathom.
Michael Tracey, Jan 25, 2026, https://www.mtracey.net/p/2026-national-defense-strategy?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=303188&post_id=185665591&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=ln98x&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
The new 2026 “National Defense Strategy,” released yesterday, contains a lot of airy rhetoric about finally transitioning to “hardnosed realism,” and away from the misbegotten “grandiose strategies” of yesteryear, wherein the US had foolishly set out to “solve all the world’s problems.” More tangibly, however, the document doesn’t call for a single discernible reduction to America’s comically-large global military footprint. In fact, it calls for expanding that footprint, rather dramatically.
Among these expansions will be for the US to “erect” new military installations in close proximity to China. Per the jargon of NatSec Speak, this means establishing “strong denial defense” in the “First Island Chain” — which may sound like a modestly-sized region to the unschooled reader, but actually encompasses Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan, and perhaps a smattering of other places like Vietnam and Malaysia, depending on what the cockamamie Grand Strategists decide to theorize and war-game next.
There will also be unspecified measures to “guarantee US military and commercial access” to what is now described as the “key terrain” of Greenland and Panama. On top of “deepening” US military involvement in the Middle East, so as to “enable integration between Israel and our Arabian Gulf partners.”
The document gestures vaguely at Europe needing to take more responsibility for its own defense, but then talks about US-directed efforts to “expand transatlantic defense” with Europe, and affirms the “vital” role of the US in leading NATO — including to counter “Russian threats to the US Homeland.” No specific adjustments in force posture re: Europe are identified.
Iran is back as an urgent threat, as it’s allegedly in the process of “reconstituting its conventional military forces,” and is again seeking to obtain a nuclear weapon. Even though its nuclear facilities were supposedly “obliterated” last June. Naturally, confronting Iran will require the US to “further empower” Israel — what more “empowerment” could they possibly be given at this point? — in recognition of our profound “shared interests” with this “model ally.”
Even in Africa, the document says the US must “empower allies and partners” to prevent Islamic terrorists from establishing “safe havens” — apparently anywhere throughout that vast continent — and the US is itself prepared to strike where deemed necessary. As we already saw with the random bombing of Nigeria last month. (Whatever happened with that? Did we eliminate the Terrorists?)
The document also calls for accelerating US military-industrial production to levels not seen since the Second World War. Yet another devastating blow to the “military-industrial complex.”
It lambasts ill-fated “regime change” expeditions of the past, but heralds the most recent foray into Venezuela, which was legally designated by the Trump DOJ as an explicit “regime change” operation.
“Nation-building” is predictably derided — mere weeks after Trump unilaterally declared himself the new ruler of Venezuela, the economy and governmental structures of which he now wants to personally “rebuild.” This open-ended endeavor could last “much longer” than people think, he says. That’ll be in addition to his other signature “nation-building” initiative — making good on his landmark pledge to “take over” Gaza, which was widely dismissed as outlandish when he first announced it last February. But then by October, there he was, bestowing himself with ultimate governing authority over Gaza. Jared Kushner just rolled out their innovative new “master plan” for nation-building the hell out of that place — complete with cool little diagrams showing how each quadrant of land will be granularly organized. The deal has apparently been sealed for Gaza as a newly-established US military protectorate: an American General was just named Commander of the “International Stabilization Force,” putting him in charge of “security operations” across the territory. A fun new dialect of Arabic might have to be invented for all the American-originated euphemisms.
As for the National Defense Strategy, it concludes in climactic fashion by declaring that the US must maintain capability to “conduct devastating strikes and operations against targets anywhere in the world.” As if that’s just the most obvious imperative of responsible statecraft that anyone could possibly fathom.
Sooooo…. there’s your historic pivot from “grandiose adventures” abroad — which the self-congratulatory document writers hold themselves out as repudiating — and toward a glorious restoration of “practical, hardnosed realism.” Of course, trying to translate the predilections of Trump into some grand strategic treatise is a pretty pointless exercise to begin with — but the intellectual warfighter Pete Hegseth and his underlings evidently felt they should at least give it a whirl. So they “fucked around and found out,” as Pete loves to smugly bluster, and out plopped whatever this is.
True “realism” would necessitate swiftly discarding the document as little more than a collection of meaningless pablum and cliches — just like the differently-named, but weirdly redundant “National Security Strategy” produced in November 2025. Among other silly items, that cousin document contains the assertion that “the days in which the Middle East dominated American foreign policy in both long-term planning and day-to-day execution are thankfully over.” And further, when it comes to changing sub-optimal systems of government in that neck of the woods, “we should encourage and applaud reform when and where it emerges organically, without trying to impose it from without.”
Then within a matter of weeks, right on cue, Trump was boisterously posting that he was “locked and loaded,” and ready to attack Iran again — this time ostensibly in defense of the besieged Iranian protesters. He also announced it’s time for the imposition of “new leadership,” i.e. removal of the Ayatollah. “Freedom” and “human rights” have even been resurrected as viable pretexts for punitive US action. Currently, large-scale US military assets are reassembling in the region.
To comprehend these bewildering developments, perhaps we’ll have to wait in suspense for a revised edition of some supplemental “strategy” document. Which we can then all download together in PDF format, and earnestly ponder, perhaps with coffee and donuts, like a book club brooding over Moby Dick.
Back in some version of “realist” reality, these “strategy” documents are really only notable insofar as they give some morbid insight into how presidential subordinates are required to haphazardly “ideologize” whatever their superior is doing at any given time. A well-worn heuristic would be much simpler, and more instructive: “America First” is still whatever he says it is.
A Note On the 2026 US National Defense Strategy and Extended Deterrence
What does the NDS have to say about nuclear weapons and the nuclear environment facing the United States? Turns out, not much.
Ankit Panda, Jan 25, 2026, https://panda.substack.com/p/a-note-on-the-2026-us-national-defense?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=10286&post_id=185656884&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=ln98x&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
The Trump administration’s unclassified summary of the National Defense Strategy (notably, they can’t call it a National “War” Strategy, by statute) is here (PDF). It released on a Friday evening, after 5 p.m.. My understanding is that the classified version has been complete for about a couple months now and this unclassified summary was going through reframing after the release of last month’s much-discussed National Security Strategy. Anyway, it’s here now, so let’s talk about it.
Much ink will be spilled elsewhere on what this document tells us about the United States’ defense priorities as the Trump administration continues to take a sledgehammer to longstanding principles of U.S. grand strategy. I want to focus on how nuclear policy-minded readers should approach this document.
If you haven’t heard, this administration is not planning on publishing a Nuclear Posture Review, which is not currently required by law, unlike the NDS. The 2026 NDS itself has very little to say on nuclear weapons. Page 17 contains this bullet, which sums up nearly the totality of what this document has to say about U.S. nuclear forces and policy:
“Modernise and adapt U.S forces: The United States requires a strong, secure and effective nuclear arsenal adapted to the nation’s overall and defense strategies. We will modernise and adapt our nuclear forces accordingly with focussed attention on deterrence and escalation management amidst the changing global nuclear landscape. The United State should never – will never- be left vulnerable to nuclear blackmail.”
Note the lack of any mention of the role of U.S. nuclear weapons or declaratory policy. Insofar as the role of U.S. nuclear forces is discussed, it is done so in a single sentence on page 3: “We will maintain a robust and modern nuclear deterrent capable of addressing the strategic threats to our country…”
There’s also no nod to allies here, either. In many of my conversations in Europe and Asia over the last year, there’s been quite a bit of interest in what the Trump NDS would have to say about alliances and extended deterrence. Silence, I suppose, is not the worst outcome, especially given the spotlighting of active U.S. hostility toward European allies in the last few weeks amid the Greenland imbroglio. Some allies took solace in the fact that the NSS did include a sentence on nuclear weapons that did allude to some role in their defense: “We want the world’s most robust, credible, and modern nuclear deterrent, plus next-generation missile defenses—including a Golden Dome for the American homeland—to protect the American people, American assets overseas, and American allies” (emphasis added, NSS, pp. 3).
Close allied readers of the NDS, however, might find that the document does appear to have something to say about how the United States views their security interests. Page 8 of the NDS observes that what makes the Trump administration’s strategy “fundamentally different from the grandiose strategies” of the past is that this document is apparently tethered to “Americans’ practical interests.” The document continues:
‘It does not conflate Americans’ interests with those of the rest of the world—that a threat to a person halfway around the world is the same as to an American.”
Part of the very premise of extended deterrence is that the United States would treat threats to allied persons (and nations) halfway around the world the same as those to the U.S. homeland. This, naturally, has been a very difficult premise to render credible—hence much of the history of our alliance management efforts over the last seven-ish decades.
It doesn’t seem far-fetched to me that allies will be willing to believe what the Trump administration is telling them here. There’s actually much in this NDS that I find doesn’t correspond all that well to the president’s views of the world (for starters, I don’t think Trump knows what the first island chain is). This bit, however, does correspond to much of what we know about how this president reasons about allies. Here you have the United States, I think, stating rather openly that, actually, it would not be willing to trade “Paris for New York,” as De Gaulle once famously asked of Kennedy. As I’ve written elsewhere, the ripple effects of this will likely be severe.
So, there’s that on extended deterrence.
Through the rest of the document, there’s very little on nuclear matters. There’s considerable attention on Iran’s program, with the expected commitment to denying Tehran the bomb (this also got a lot of attention in the NSS). North Korea is acknowledged as a country “increasingly capable of threatening to the U.S. Homeland” with its nuclear forces (a view that’s hardly controversial now in the United States). Very little else; even China’s historic nuclear build-up is not discussed head on in any detail.
It’s probably the case that the classified NDS has more to say on some of these questions, but that doesn’t excuse the lack of attention to nuclear matters in the unclassified version. Insofar as this document communicates U.S. priorities, it suggests an administration deeply uninterested in nuclear matters and aloof, at best, toward allies.
The Funeral of Hegemony
How America’s Decision to Attack Iran Would Be Strategic Suicide
Ibrahim Majed, Jan 25, 2026, https://ddgeopolitics.substack.com/p/the-funeral-of-hegemony?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1769298&post_id=185644623&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
n American attack on Iran would not be a limited military operation, a punitive strike, or a calibrated act of deterrence.
It would represent a strategic rupture, a point at which accumulated American power begins converting itself into cascading liabilities. This is not a moral argument, nor is it a humanitarian one, it is more like a balance-sheet assessment of empire.
The question is not whether the United States can strike Iran. It can, and we’ve seen it. In June 2025, American warplanes joined Israel’s twelve-day campaign against Iranian nuclear facilities. Tehran struck back at a U.S. base in Qatar. The damage was extensive on both sides.
The question is what the United States loses the moment it does so again, and this time, without a ceasefire to stop the bleeding.
What follows is not ideology, but an autopsy written before the patient is declared dead.
The Liquidation of ‘FOB Israel’
For decades, Washington has not treated Israel merely as an ally, but as a Forward Operating Base, an unsinkable aircraft carrier, an intelligence nerve center, and the technological anchor of U.S. power projection in the Middle East.
A war with Iran inverts this logic.
Iran’s response would not be symbolic or theatrical. It would be functional. Through what Tehran describes as the Unity of Arenas, a coordinated strategy of simultaneous pressure across multiple fronts, retaliation would be applied with a singular objective: rendering Israel operationally unreliable as a base.
This doctrine is not a myth. It was first operationalized in 2021 during the Saif al-Quds war, when a joint command structure coordinated operations between Hamas, Hezbollah, and other Iranian-aligned groups. The concept matured through 2023 and 2024, expanding the geography of confrontation to encircle Israel from Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.
If airports are disrupted, ports degraded, and civilian life in Israel’s economic and technological core placed under persistent stress, the asset ceases to function as an anchor. The United States would no longer project power from Israel, it would divert power into Israel merely to keep it viable.
At the moment of maximum strategic need, Washington loses its most valuable regional platform.
And then the anchor chain is cut.
The Trap of Strategic Overstretch
The U.S. military is built for dominance through speed, precision, and overwhelming force. Iran is built for endurance.
It will not fight where the United States is strongest. It will fight in time, depth, and dispersion, and force escalation without resolution.
The June 2025 strikes exposed this dynamic. Iran acknowledged extensive damage to its nuclear infrastructure. But within months, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi was claiming that Iran had “reconstructed everything that was damaged.” Whether true or not, the statement illustrated Iran’s strategy: absorb the blow, reconstitute, and wait.
Once engaged, Washington faces a structural dilemma: it cannot disengage without reputational collapse, yet it cannot remain without accelerating exhaustion. Every escalation deepens commitment. Every deployment degrades readiness. Every month consumes forces needed elsewhere.
The U.S. military currently maintains approximately 50,000 troops across bases in the Middle East. The USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group has just been diverted from the South China Sea, the very theater where America’s strategic future will be decided, and is now steaming toward the Gulf.
Iran seeks defeat by entropy—the slow erosion of capacity through overuse.
This is how empires bleed.
Economic Hemorrhage
A war with Iran would not be financed through shared sacrifice. It would be financed through monetary expansion and debt.
The consequences are predictable: inflationary pressure, rising energy costs, and the diversion of capital away from domestic resilience. Infrastructure, innovation, and social cohesion would erode as resources are consumed by a conflict offering no strategic return.
The Strait of Hormuz remains the world’s most critical energy chokepoint. Roughly one-fifth of global oil consumption passes through its narrow waters. Iran has long threatened to mine or close the strait in the event of war, and this threat grows more credible as conflict intensifies.
Tehran could also target energy infrastructure across Gulf states: pipelines, terminals, refineries. The resulting supply disruptions would send shockwaves through global markets, punishing American allies in Europe and Asia far more than the United States itself.
The empire would stabilize its periphery by hollowing out its core. History is unforgiving to systems that consume their own interior to preserve external dominance.
The China Dividend
The greatest beneficiary of a U.S.–Iran war would not be Iran. It would be China.
While Washington’s strategic nervous system is absorbed by escalation management in the Middle East, Beijing gains freedom of maneuver. The Indo-Pacific becomes secondary. Influence expands. Partnerships deepen. American deterrence thins.
This calculus is openly acknowledged in Beijing. As one prominent Chinese scholar at Renmin University recently observed: “Washington’s deeper involvement in the Middle East is favorable to Beijing, reducing Washington’s ability to place focused attention and pressure on China.”
The arithmetic is brutal. If the United States deploys two carrier strike groups off the coast of Iran, and it can only maintain three on station globally at any given time, that leaves one for the entire Pacific theater. Taiwan. The Philippines. Japan. All left with diminished coverage.
Every missile expended in the Gulf is one unavailable in East Asia. Every carrier tied down is one removed from Pacific balance.
In a zero-sum system, China collects the dividend without firing a shot.
Unconventional Retaliation
Perhaps the most underestimated consequence of attacking Iran is retaliation by actors who are not Iranian at all.
A U.S. strike would not be perceived globally as a bilateral conflict. It would be read as a hegemonic act and a signal that force remains Washington’s primary language. This perception would activate a diffuse ecosystem of anti-hegemony actors: ideological extremists, decentralized cells, and radicalized individuals scattered across continents.
They require no coordination, no command structure, and no attribution. The danger is not scale, but diffusion. American embassies, corporations, logistics nodes, and symbolic targets would face persistent, low-intensity pressure worldwide. Deterrence fails when the enemy is not a state but an environment.
This is the empire’s nightmare: a world where American presence itself becomes the trigger.
The Collapse of Credibility
Power ultimately rests on belief.
If the United States initiates a war it cannot conclude, fails to secure trade routes, exports inflation to allies, and generates instability rather than order, confidence erodes. Allies will hedge, partners will diversify, and rivals will start to probe.
The June 2025 campaign was supposed to demonstrate resolve. Instead, it demonstrated limitations. Six months later, western-backed protests have erupted across all 31 Iranian provinces, and the regime still stands. The strikes did not produce regime change. They did not eliminate the nuclear program. They did not deter reconstruction.
If the most powerful navy in history cannot impose decisive control over critical chokepoints, if it cannot translate kinetic superiority into political outcomes, the myth dissolves.
The emperor is revealed, not as weak, but overextended.
The Self-Inflicted Defeat
The final assessment is brutally simple. The greatest threat to American power is not Iran’s missile program. It is the American decision to attack it.
By doing so, the United States would neutralize its forward base, exhaust its military, hollow out its economy, accelerate China’s rise, and globalize resistance to its presence.
Empires do not collapse only when defeated. They collapse when they choose wars that consume them faster than their rivals.
In the case of Iran, this would not be miscalculation, it would be strategic suicide.
The Gratuitous Barbarity of Trump’s So-Called ‘Board of Peace’
Like Bush and Blair planning the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Trump is planning to systematically violate the UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions, and especially the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention, which guarantees protection for civilians in war zones or under military occupation.
It is perhaps no wonder that Trump and Blair see eye to eye on Palestine, as they share the same ignorance, egotism and inhumanity, and the same disdain for international law.
In the fantasy being pushed by Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, and Jared Kushner, Palestinians appear only as an absence, buried beneath the rubble of the real Gaza.
Medea Benjamin, Nicolas J.S. Davies, Jan 23, 2026, Common Dreams
At the opening ceremony for Donald Trump’s so-called Board of Peace in Davos, Jared Kushner unveiled glossy images of his vision for a “new Gaza”: shining apartment towers, luxury developments, and sweeping views of the Mediterranean. There were no Palestinians at the ceremony—and none on the Board of Peace itself. In Kushner’s fantasy, Palestinians appear only as an absence, buried beneath the rubble of the real Gaza.
But how, exactly, are Palestinians to be “demilitarized” and pacified to make way for this Riviera of the Middle East? The assassination of Gaza’s Khan Younis police chief in a drive-by shooting this January offers a chilling clue. It was not an isolated act of lawlessness, but an ominous signal of what lies ahead. As Israeli-backed Palestinian militias openly take credit for targeted killings, the United States is reviving a familiar, deadly—and thoroughly discredited—playbook from Iraq and Afghanistan, in which death squads, night raids, and “kill or capture” missions are cynically repackaged as stabilization and peace.
Gaza is now being positioned as the next laboratory for this model, under the banner of Donald Trump’s so-called “peace plan,” with consequences that history has already shown to be catastrophic.
That strategy was laid bare on January 12th, 2026, when Lieutenant-Colonel Mahmoud al-Astal, the police chief of Khan Younis in Gaza, was assassinated by a death squad based in the Israeli-occupied part of Gaza beyond the “yellow line.” A militia leader known as Abu Safin immediately took credit for the killing, which he said was ordered by Shin Beit, Israel’s anti-Palestinian spy agency.
Another Israeli-backed militia, reputedly linked to ISIS, killed a well-known Gaza journalist, Saleh Al-Jafarawi, in October. That militia’s leader, Yasser Abu Shabab, was disowned by his family for running a pro-Israel death squad and was killed on November 4th, reportedly by one of his own gang.
These Israeli-run death squad operations follow a similar pattern to the targeted killings of Iraqi civil society leaders as resistance grew to the hostile US military occupation of Iraq in 2003 and 2004. But as they did in Iraq and Afghanistan, these targeted killings are likely to grow into a much more systematic and widespread use of death squads and military “kill or capture” night raids in the next phase of Trump’s “peace” plan.
President Trump has announced that the so-called “International Stabilization Force” (ISF) in Gaza will be under the command of US Major General Jasper Jeffers, who was, until recently, the head of US Special Operations Command. Jeffers is a veteran of “special operations” in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the US occupation responded to widespread armed resistance with death squad operations, thousands of airstrikes, and night raids by special operations forces that peaked at over a thousand night raids per month in Afghanistan by 2011.
But like Israel’s Palestinian death squads during the first stage of Trump’s “peace” plan, the US mass killing machines in Afghanistan and Iraq began on a smaller scale.
For an article in the New Statesman, published on March 15, 2004, British journalist Stephen Grey investigated the assassination of Abdul-Latif al-Mayah, the director of the Baghdad Centre for Human Rights and the fourth professor from al-Mustansariya University to be killed. Professor al-Mayah was dragged out of his car on his way to work, shot 20 times and left dead in the street. A senior US military spokesman blamed his death on “the guerrillas,” and told Grey, “Silencing urban professionals… works against everything we’re trying to do here.”
On further investigation, Grey discovered that it was forces within the occupation government, not the resistance, that killed Professor Al-Mayah. An Iraqi police officer eventually told him, “Dr. Abdul-Latif was becoming more and more popular because he spoke for people on the street here… There are political parties in this city who are systematically killing people. They are politicians that are backed by the Americans and who arrived in Iraq from exile with a list of their enemies. I’ve seen these lists. They are killing people one by one.”
A few months later, retired Colonel James Steele, a veteran of the Phoenix program in Vietnam, the US war in El Salvador and the Iran-Contra scandal, arrived in Iraq to oversee the recruitment and training of new Special Police Commandos (SPC), who were then unleashed as death squads in Mosul, Baghdad and other cities, under command of the Iraqi Interior Ministry.
Steven Casteel, who ran the Iraqi Interior Ministry after the US invasion, was the former intelligence chief for the US Drug Enforcement Agency in Latin America, where it worked with the Los Pepes death squad to hunt down and kill Pepe Escobar, the leader of the Medellin drug cartel.
In Iraq, Steele and Casteel both reported directly to US Ambassador John Negroponte, another veteran of US covert operations in Vietnam and Latin America.
Just as John Negroponte, James Steele and Steven Casteel brought the methods they learned and used in Vietnam and Latin America to Iraq, Jasper Jeffers brings his training and experience from Iraq and Afghanistan to Gaza, and will clearly bring other special operations and CIA officers with similar backgrounds into the leadership of the so-called International Stabilization Force (ISF).
The ISF, as described in Trump’s “Peace Plan,” is supposed to be an international force that would provide security, support a new Palestinian police force, and oversee the demilitarization and redevelopment of the Gaza Strip. But the Arab and Muslim countries that originally showed an interest in contributing forces to the ISF all changed their minds once they understood that this would not be a peacekeeping mission, but a force to hunt down and “disarm” Hamas and impose a new form of foreign occupation in Gaza.
Turkey wants to send troops, but so far, Israel has objected, and the other countries that have expressed interest, such as Indonesia, say there is no clear mandate or rules of engagement. And what Muslim country will send forces to Gaza while Israel controls over half of the territory and moves the “Yellow Line” even deeper into Gaza?
Even if some Arab and Muslim countries are persuaded to join the ISF, the most difficult and politically explosive job of actually destroying Hamas will most likely be in the hands of the US and Israeli Special Ops commanders, the mercenaries they bring in and the death squads they recruit.
We can expect to see General Jeffers and his team provide more training and direction to Palestinians already collaborating with Israel in death squad operations, and try to recruit more militia members from current and former Palestinian Authority security forces in the West Bank and from the Palestinian diaspora.
CIA and JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command) officers with experience in death squad operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are likely to oversee these operations from the shadows, using the same “disguised, quiet, media-free approach” that senior US military officers hailed as a success in Central America as they adapted it to the “war on terror” and the “war on drugs.”
For political reasons, Jeffers will probably use JSOC officers mainly for training and planning, and employ private military contractors to conduct night raids and other combat operations. Along with the huge expansion of US and allied special operations forces in recent US wars, there has been a proliferation of for-profit military contractors that employ former special operations officers from US and allied countries as unaccountable mercenaries.
These privatized forces have already been deployed in Gaza, notably by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Its food distribution sites became death traps for desperate, hungry people forced to risk their lives just to try to feed their families. Israeli forces and mercenaries killed at least a thousand people at and around these sites.
The tens of thousands of Americans and others who took part in night raids in Iraq or Afghanistan and special operations in other US wars have created a huge pool of experienced assassins and shock troops that Jeffers can draw on, with for-profit military and “security” firms serving as cut-outs to shield decision-makers from accountability. More routine functions, such as manning checkpoints, can be delegated to other ISF forces, military police veterans and less specialized mercenaries.
The appointment of General Jeffers to command Trump’s ISF, and Israel’s formation and deployment of Palestinian death squads during the first phase of Trump’s phony peace plan, should be all the red flags the world needs to see what is coming—and to categorically reject Trump’s obscene plan before it goes any farther.
Like Bush and Blair planning the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Trump is planning to systematically violate the UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions, and especially the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention, which guarantees protection for civilians in war zones or under military occupation.
Tony Blair’s role in Trump’s plan is further evidence that the plan has nothing to do with peace and everything to do with the Western imperialism that keeps rearing its ugly head around the world, and which has bedevilled Palestine for more than a century.
Appointing Blair to any role in governing Gaza ignores not only his role in US and British aggression against Iraq, but also his lead role in the U.K. and EU’s decision, in 2003, to abandon earlier efforts to bring Palestinian factions together in the interest of Palestinian unity. Instead, they adopted a militarized, “counterinsurgency” strategy toward Hamas and other Palestinian resistance groups. Blair’s failed policy helped pave the way for Hamas’s election victory in 2006, and for the endless, US-backed Israeli violence against Gaza ever since.
It is perhaps no wonder that Trump and Blair see eye to eye on Palestine, as they share the same ignorance, egotism and inhumanity, and the same disdain for international law. But the savage methods used by US special operations forces and US-trained death squads to kill hundreds of thousands of people in Afghanistan and Iraq only fueled broader resistance, which ultimately drove U.S occupation forces out of both countries.
The same tactics will lead to the same failure in Gaza. But unleashing such horrific violence on the already desperate, starving, unhoused, captive people of Gaza is a policy of such gratuitous barbarity and injustice that it should compel the whole world to come together to put a stop to it.
As Trump Uses Military to Threaten Democracy, NYT Declares Military Needs More Resources.
In 2024, the US spent $997 billion on its military—more than the next nine countries’ spending combined, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, a fact the Times (12/10/25) acknowledged. What it didn’t state was that China—the second-biggest military spender—spent only $314 billion in 2024. Why must the US spend even more than three times more on its military than China? The Times never addressed this obvious question.
Drew Favakeh, FAIR, January 23, 2026
The New York Times published a seven-day series of editorials (12/8/25–12/14/25) meant to examine, as the initial piece put it, “what’s gone wrong with the US military” and “how we can create a relevant and effective force that can deter wars whenever possible and win them wherever necessary.”
These editorials serve as little more than propagandistic, jingoistic and Sinophobic tools that treat war as a game, turning a blind eye to the very real harms that wars have on civilians.
Devoting seven editorials to boosting the US military when the country’s own democracy is under threat—and Trump is using the military so irresponsibly and illegally that high-level officers are resigning—the Times demonstrated that its commitment to militarism knows few bounds.
‘Threaten democracies everywhere’
In total, the New York Times series referenced China 50 times, Russia 26 times and Israel just twice. It fed into an increasing Yellow Peril hysteria in a country that has a long history of hatred towards China and Chinese people, and from a news outlet that has repeatedly expressed anti-China sentiment.
The Times (12/8/25) kicked off the series by citing a Pentagon “classified, multiyear assessment,” called the “Overmatch brief,” which “catalogs China’s ability to destroy American fighter planes, large ships and satellites, and identifies the US military’s supply chain choke points.” The paper—which didn’t disclose how it obtained the brief, and didn’t publish its contents—called it “consistent and disturbing.”
The editorial opined that a “rising China” will “outlast this administration,” and will “require credible US military power as a backstop to international order and the security of the free world.”
…………………………………….It’s not China, though, that is threatening to annex its neighbors—by force if need be—or declaring it has the right to replace the leaders of any country in its hemisphere it disapproves of.
The US has overthrown at least 31 foreign governments since the late 19th century—with Trump’s kidnapping of Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro marking only the latest in that long string—and conducted more than 80 election meddling operations from 1946 to 2000 (NPR, 12/22/16). It has caused, conservatively, nearly a million deaths in the post-9/11 wars. By comparison, China has not been directly involved in a major external conflict since its 1979 invasion of Vietnam.
US special operations forces are deployed to 154 countries (Intercept, 3/20/21), and the Pentagon has at least 750 overseas military bases in 80 countries (Al Jazeera, 9/10/21), many of which surround China.
China, meanwhile, has just two overseas military bases, one it opened in 2017 in the East African nation of Djibouti (Reuters, 8/1/17; Foreign Policy, 7/7/21) and another it opened in 2025 in Cambodia (Newsweek, 4/7/25).
Moreover, the US currently has imposed some form of damaging economic sanctions on more than 20 countries, while China has issued no nationwide sanctions.
…………………………………………………………. While the US declares a right to use nuclear weapons first in a war (Council on Foreign Relations, 12/16/25), China has maintained a “no first use policy” since it first developed nuclear weapons in 1964—a position it has repeatedly re-affirmed, including late last year (Arms Control Association, 12/11/25).
The Times also warned about hypersonic missiles: “China in recent years has amassed an arsenal of around 600 hypersonic weapons,” compared to the US, which “has yet to deploy a single hypersonic missile,” wrote the Times (12/8/25). FAIR (7/12/19) has written before about media attempts to hype a hypersonic missile gap.
In fact, the US has pursued hypersonic weapons since 9/11, and is now among those “leading the pack” (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 3/12/24), underscored by Trump’s near $4 billion request in 2026 for hypersonic weapons research. Most US hypersonic weapons are being designed for conventional payloads—making them usable weapons rather than deterrents. This means they will take longer to deploy (Congressional Research Service, 8/27/25), and will be more destabilizing if they are deployed.
………………………………….The Times‘ enthusiasm for defending Taiwan from forcible reunification with China contrasts sharply with its commitment to supporting Ukraine in its efforts to retake breakaway territories. In the Taiwanese case, the right to self-determination is unquestioned, trumping China’s sovereignty; in Ukraine’s case, the sacredness of national borders renders self-determination claims irrelevant.
Though popularity of a war hardly seems to matter to US administrations, intervening to protect Taiwan separatism remains largely unpopular among US citizens (although more are in favor of intervention this year than last).
‘Transformation of the American military’
US politicians often leverage the alarmist message of “imminent military threats” to increase military spending (Defense News, 2/17/21). The New York Times took on that role in these editorials. To achieve this country’s foreign policy goals, it argued (12/8/25), requires not just maintaining current obscene levels of military spending, but increasing them: “In the short term, the transformation of the American military may require additional spending, primarily to rebuild our industrial base.”
In 2024, the US spent $997 billion on its military—more than the next nine countries’ spending combined, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, a fact the Times (12/10/25) acknowledged. What it didn’t state was that China—the second-biggest military spender—spent only $314 billion in 2024. Why must the US spend even more than three times more on its military than China? The Times never addressed this obvious question.
While the paper occasionally criticized military spending—calling the 2026 defense budget “loaded with pork for unnecessary programs” (12/11/25)—its issue wasn’t the amount spent, but rather how it was spent—“a stronger US national security depends less on enormous new budgets than on wiser investments” (12/8/25).
Ultimately, the Times (12/11/25) suggested spending $150 billion more on “manufacturing capacity” to rebuild the US naval industrial base, despite noting that the US has already spent nearly $6 billion on the industry over the past decade.
The editorial board didn’t seem to consider what the public wants in our nominal democracy: Only one in ten voters want a bigger military budget (Jacobin, 12/15/25).
Rather than funding an arms race, the US could focus more on diplomacy and turn its investments towards more popular measures like government-subsidized housing, healthcare for all, universal childhood education, infrastructure, clean energy, and/or community college. A 2023 report published by Brown University’s Costs of War project showed reducing military spending and diverting funds to these areas would create 9% to 250% more jobs than the military.
The killer robot gap
Another area where the New York Times wants the US military to spend more money is autonomous weapons systems.
The Times (12/9/25) wrote that “China is testing how to fly drones in sync. Soon such swarms could hunt and kill on their own.” To counter this “growing threat,” the US “must simultaneously win the race to build autonomous weapons and lead the world in controlling them.” To do so, “Congress needs to expand funding for research and development into technologies with military applications” and Trump needs to “bring private industry into the mission.”
The Times wrote that they “join the United Nations secretary general and the International Committee of the Red Cross in their call for a new treaty to be concluded by 2026 on autonomous weapons systems.” The editors then say the treaty should include
limits on the types of targets, such as outlawing their use in situations where civilians or civilian objects are present; and requirements for human-machine interaction, notably to ensure effective human supervision, and timely intervention and deactivation.
But that’s far short of what the secretary general and the Red Cross recommend: a ban on all autonomous weapons used to attack humans. This humanitarian goal doesn’t square with the Times‘ enthusiasm for the US to “win the race to build autonomous weapons,” even if it says it also wants to “win the race to control them.”
Then again, there’s nothing about the Times‘ editorial series that suggests any honest consideration of humanitarian concerns—just adding another notch on its belt of warmongering on behalf of the State. https://fair.org/home/as-trump-uses-military-to-threaten-democracy-nyt-declares-military-needs-more-resources/
All Unquiet on the Ukrainian Front
“The Kremlin has tried every which way to bring its ‘special military operation,’ along with its broader confrontation with the West, to a mutually beneficial conclusion.”
The Europeans have run out of postures and gestures in the way of performative statecraft: This is my conclusion. And the Russians, evidently sharing it in one or another form, see no point in indulging them any further.
By Patrick Lawrence, Consortium News, 22 Jan 26, https://consortiumnews.com/2026/01/21/patrick-lawrence-all-unquiet-on-the-ukrainian-front/
The Europeans have run out of postures and gestures in the way of performative statecraft, and the Russians see no point in indulging them any further.
Sometimes wars have occasions that can be read — immediately, soon or in time — as turning points, clarifying moments. D–Day, June 6, 1944, is an obvious case: The Allies and the Red Army were in Berlin less than a year later.
The Tet Offensive, which began 58 years ago next week (Can you believe it?), is another: All the victory-is-near illusions the American command had cultivated for years collapsed. There were many more casualties at the altar of imperial delusion, but the war in Southeast Asia was on the way to over.
On Jan. 8 Russia attacked Lviv, the city in western Ukraine, with an Oreshnik missile. To me this looks very like a clarifying event in the Ukraine war — Moscow’s announcement that it has decided to begin the beginning of the end.
The Oreshnik is a new-generation weapon that already wears a little of the mystique of Ares, the Greek god of war. It travels at hypersonic speeds and is undetectable by air-defense systems. It is capable of carrying nuclear warheads, although the missile that hit Lviv wasn’t armed with one.
This was not Russia’s first use of the Oreshnik in Ukraine. Its first was in November 2024, when the target was a munitions factory in Dnipro, not far from the front lines. That blew minds as well as production lines.
But the missile that hit Lviv seemed to have more to say to the regime in Kiev and its Western backers, notably all those supercilious Europeans. Lviv, Ukraine’s cultural capital, has been a safe haven these past four years of conflict. Not to be missed, it lies roughly 45 miles from the border with Poland.
Russia’s declared intent in launching its second Oreshnik was to respond to the Dec. 29 drone attack the Ukrainians, with the usual assistance of the Americans and Brits, launched on President Vladimir Putin’s secondary residence in Valdai, northwest of Moscow.
Parenthetically, Kiev and the C.I.A., two famous truth-tellers, deny any such attack took place, but let us not waste any time with this silliness. The Russians have reportedly presented Western officials with evidence of the event.
Would Putin raise it in a telephone exchange with President Trump were it, as corporate media now have it, just another disinformation operation?
These things said, the Oreshnik hit in Lviv merits a broader reading, in my view.
Here is an account of the Oreshnik as it descended through the winter clouds above Lviv. It is written by Mike Mihajlovic, who publishes, edits and writes frequently for Black Mountain Analysis, a Substack newsletter I have found worth looking at on previous occasions.
This passage is based on Mihajlovic’s apparently diligent study of digital evidence and eyewitness accounts. Good enough we know what happens when these things arrive, as there may be more of them in the skies above Ukraine as the war begins its fifth year:
“As the hypersonic penetrators broke through the cloud layers, each was enveloped in a luminous plasma sheath, producing brief but violent flashes that momentarily illuminated the surrounding atmosphere. These flashes were not explosions in the conventional sense, but visual signatures of extreme velocity, friction, and compression as the warheads tore through dense air at hypersonic speed.
Observers on the ground reported an unsettling soundscape that followed the visual phenomenon. Rather than a single detonation, there were sharp, cracking noises that seemed to ripple across the terrain, as if the ground itself were fracturing under stress.
“What made the event particularly striking was the setting. The impacts occurred against the backdrop of an idyllic winter landscape: fields and forests blanketed in snow, small settlements dimly lit, and a horizon that, moments earlier, conveyed calm and stillness.
Against this muted palette, the light generated by the strike stood out with almost surreal intensity. Reflections danced across the snow, briefly turning the ground into a mirror that amplified the event’s brightness. Witnesses described the glow as unnatural, a cold, shimmering illumination that lingered just long enough to be noticed and remembered.”
The Lviv attack seems to be part of an intensifying campaign to cripple Ukraine’s power grids, energy infrastructure and productive capacity. The Russians have been hitting such targets for years, of course, but these new operations suggest Moscow is after the endgame now.
Moscow’s Attempts to End Conflict
The Kremlin has tried every which way to bring its “special military operation,” along with its broader confrontation with the West, to a mutually beneficial conclusion. You can go back to the spring of 2022, when was ready to sign an accord with Kiev a few months into the war — only for the Brits, with American consent, to scotch it.
Or December 2021, when it sent Washington and NATO draft treaties as a basis of negotiating a new security framework between the Russian Federation and the West. They were dismissed as “nonstarters,” a British-ism the Biden regime thought was clever.
Or the Minsk Protocols, September 2014 and February 2015, which the British and French sabotaged. Or back to the early 1990s, when Michail Gorbachev hoped to bring post–Soviet Russia into “a common European home.”
The Kremlin has proven exceptionally restrained, not to say forebearing, through all of this. And it would be a mistake now to conclude the Russians have lost their patience.
No, in my read they have simply concluded there is no point waiting around while the Western powers indulge themselves in pantomime statecraft or — maybe better put —some kind of group onanism they seem to find satisfying.
And in public, no less.
For weeks toward the end of last year we read incessantly of the intense diplomatic work Kiev, the Europeans and the Trump regime’s contingent were getting up to. The swashbuckling Musketeers cooked up a 20–point peace plan that was supposed to supersede Trump’s 28–point document.
Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s unconstitutional president, went from one European capital to another and then to Washington and then to Mar-a–Lago and then back to Europe, all along asserting he and his backers were “90 percent there.”
Ninety percent there on security guarantees providing for European troops to serve as peacekeepers on Ukrainian soil. Ninety percent there on a territorial settlement. And so on.
You watched all this with your jaw dropping. None of it had anything to do with fashioning an accord Moscow would find even preliminarily negotiable. The 20–point plan’s intent, indeed, was to subvert the 28–point plan, the first pieces of paper since the spring 2022 attempt that Moscow appeared to find worth its time.
Not Enough Delusion
No, the Trump plan was too realistic as a draft of a settlement accord in recognizing that Moscow was the victor in its war with Ukraine, Kiev the vanquished. There wasn’t enough delusion in it.
And now, roughly since the start of the year, more or less complete silence from Zelensky and the Musketeers — Kier Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Friedrich Merz, a prime minister, a president and a chancellor.
There is no establishing any certain causality between the Oreshnik attack in previously safe — relatively speaking — western Ukraine, and this nothing-to-say lapse in Kiev, London, Paris and Berlin (and for that matter Washington). But the point may prove the same.
The Europeans have run out of postures and gestures in the way of performative statecraft: This is my conclusion. And the Russians, evidently sharing it in one or another form, see no point in indulging them any further.
As to the Trumpster, it seemed to me unimaginable from the outset that the national security state in all its appendages would ever allow him to reach a comprehensive settlement with Moscow that would open into a new era in East–West relations.
So has the war turned. So do matters clarify. So does the war in Ukraine appear set to end — not with a single detonation, no, rather with sharp cracking noises that seemed to ripple across the terrain.
Is the end now in sight for the war in Ukraine?
James WhiteJanuary 22, 2026.
German companies have already begun negotiations with their connections in Russia to resume trade once the sanctions are lifted. Thus German business leaders plainly ignore Chancellor Merz and his bellicose provocations toward Russia.
Funding and arms for Ukraine from NATO countries have all but dried up. The pipeline of conscripts in Ukraine has likewise run short of victims.
Zelensky continues to flit from one European capital to another seeking more billions in handouts. But his veneer of propaganda has grown thin at best. The warm wet kisses and embraces he received from neocons and Democrats in the U.S. as well as the WEF puppets of Europe, Macron, Starmer, Merz, Von der Leyen no longer present the same appeal.
Kiev Mayor Klitschko has advised everyone to evacuate the capital city, as electrical power has been cut off. This can only increase the flow of Ukrainians into Europe, already weary from hosting millions of Ukrainians for the past 4 years.
Anyone paying attention has seen the wretched excess of corrupt Ukrainian oligarchs in expensive sports cars with Ukrainian license plates in Monaco and various other luxury European holiday locales.
The U.S. has cut off the Ukraine grift while all of Europe is tapped out.
Von der Leyen’s insatiable greed for more billions from Europeans and her plans to steal ‘frozen’ Russian assets have petered out once the European banks understood that doing so would be an existential threat to the Euro and themselves.
Momentum for the end of the war in Ukraine keeps building.
The only question that remains is if Ukraine can negotiate any of their surrender terms with Russia or if the government will finally collapse as the economy collapses and the battle front recedes toward Kharkiv, Odessa and Kiev.
Danish MP Warns US Takeover of Greenland Will Start a War
by Kyle Anzalone , January 21, 2026 , https://news.antiwar.com/2026/01/20/danish-mp-warns-us-takeover-of-greenland-will-start-a-war/
Trump has placed tariffs on Europeans nations that oppose the US seizing Greenland
Amid threats from President Donald Trump to take over Greenland, a Danish politician said that if the US seized the colony, a war would break out.
Danish MP Rasmus Jarlov said that if the US military invades Greenland, “it would be a war, and we would be fighting against each other.”
“There’s no threat, there’s no hostility. There’s no need, because the Americans already have access to Greenland, both militarily and in all other ways.” He continued, “There are no drug routes. There is no illegitimate government in Greenland. There is absolutely no justification for it– no historical ownership, no broken treaties, nothing can justify it.”
In recent weeks, President Trump said the US will take control of Greenland. The President argues it is a matter of national security, as Russia or China will seize Greenland from Denmark if the US does not gain control first.
In response to Trump’s threats, Denmark has begun increasing its military presence in Greenland.
Trump’s plan to take Greenland has met stiff opposition in Europe. The President has slapped 10% tariffs on eight European countries. Trump said the tariffs would increase if those nations did not change policy and support the US seizure of Greenland.
An executive at Deutsche Bank suggested that European countries could pressure the US to back away from Greenland by refusing to buy US bonds. George Saravelos, head of FX research, explained, “For all its military and economic strength, the US has one key weakness: it relies on others to pay its bills via large external deficits.”
Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent downplayed the risk of a currency war with Europe. “The media has latched on to this. I think it is a completely false narrative. It defies any logic,” he said Tuesday.
“If you look, the US Treasury market was the best-performing market in the world, or the best G7-performing bond market, and we had the best performance since 2020. It is the most liquid market.” Bessent continued,” It is the basis for all financial transactions, and I am sure that the European governments will continue holding it.”
The President said he did not expect Europe to push back too much if he annexed Greenland. “I don’t think they are going to push back too much,” he said, adding, “We have to have it.”
US aggression, UK support: The ‘special relationship’
From Iran to Libya, from Panama to Venezuela, there is a history of the UK supporting illegal US military interventions
MARK CURTIS, 12 January 2026, https://www.declassifieduk.org/us-aggression-uk-support-the-special-relationship/
Forty years ago, US warplanes bombed Libya, attempting to assassinate its leader Muammar Gaddafi. Failing in that task, they managed to kill dozens of civilians in Tripoli, Libya’s capital.
The attacks, which were in response to the bombing of a Berlin nightclub blamed on Gaddafi, were strongly supported by Margaret Thatcher’s government. Indeed, she allowed some of the US jets to take off from bases in Britain.
In the face of widespread public opposition to the US raid, a defiant Thatcher told parliament it was “a necessary and proportionate response to a clear pattern of Libyan terrorism” and to “uphold international law”.
However, the UN General Assembly, and most world opinion, condemned the attack as a violation of international law.
But for the British prime minister: “The United States has stood by us in times of need, as we have stood by her. To refuse their request for the use of bases here would have been to abandon our responsibilities as an ally and to weaken the fight against terrorism.”
Fast forward two decades, and we find ourselves in a not dissimilar situation over US attacks on Venezuela.
UK ministers give their backing to the kidnapping of a foreign head of state amidst a military intervention, condemned in the wider world but supported in Whitehall because of the so-called “special relationship”.
‘Our full support’
It was always thus. Three years after the attack on Libya, the US invaded Panama in December 1989. US aggression killed up to 3,000 people in this instance, and overthrew President Manuel Noriega, who had been on the CIA’s payroll for decades.
The invasion was widely considered to be illegal and in violation of the charters of both the UN and the Organization of American States.
A Foreign Office legal adviser wrote on the day of the invasion that “it is not possible to conclude that the American action was justified in international law”.
This didn’t matter in the British corridors of power. In a private phone call, Thatcher assured US president George W Bush that the intervention “was a very courageous decision which would have our full support”.
In the days that followed, Britain even vetoed a UN Security Council resolution which “strongly deplores” the invasion.
Clinton/Blair double act
A change in leadership in London and Washington made little difference to this pattern in the 1990s when the double act became Bill Clinton and Tony Blair.
In August 1998, Clinton launched a wave of cruise missile attacks on targets in Afghanistan and Sudan in retaliation for Al Qaeda’s bombing of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania earlier that month.
Al Qaeda’s bombings were horrific, killing over 300 people. But while the US retaliation struck terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, its target in Sudan was a pharmaceuticals factory that produced medicines for the country’s population.
The US claimed the plant was manufacturing chemical weapons but no strong evidence ever emerged for this.
Amid the controversy, Bill Clinton blocked proposals for a UN investigation into the matter while Tony Blair strongly backed his ally’s attacks — against the advice of some British diplomats reportedly being appalled at them.
‘Proper legal authority’
It was only a few months later, in December 1998, that Bill and Tony worked even more closely together in a new bombing campaign.
They authorised four days of air strikes on Iraq, ostensibly to degrade dictator Saddam Hussein’s ability to store and produce weapons of mass destruction (which, of course, never materialised).
The declassified files show that Blair and his closest advisers were consistently informed by UK legal advisers that attacking Iraq would not be lawful.
The only exception would be if a new UN Security Council resolution were to be passed saying Saddam was in “material breach” of Iraq’s previous commitments – which London and Washington never secured.
In a sign of Blair’s attitude towards legal requirements, he privately wrote at the time that he found his law officers’ legal advice “unconvincing”.
When he announced military action to parliament in November 1998, Blair misled the house by saying: “I have no doubt that we have the proper legal authority, as it is contained in successive Security Council resolution documents”.
‘Act of war’
Over 20 years later, it was the turn of Boris Johnson to acquiesce to Donald Trump in an overtly illegal US act of aggression.
In January 2020, Trump ordered a drone strike that killed Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the Quds force, a branch of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps which the US had designated a terrorist organisation.
Washington tried to justify the killing by claiming it had intelligence that Soleimani was plotting imminent attacks on US interests across the Middle East.
But a UN report found that the assassination was illegal. Indeed, the then UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, Agnes Callamard, said it marked a watershed in international law.
“It is hard to imagine that a similar strike against a Western military leader would not be considered as an act of war, potentially leading to intense action, political, military and otherwise, against the State launching the strike”, she wrote.
By contrast, Johnson defended the US action and said that “we will not lament” Soleimani’s death. He added that “the strict issue of legality is not for the UK to determine since it was not our operation” — precisely what Keir Starmer has just said about Venezuela.
London’s support for Washington also came in the form of Johnson’s equally belligerent foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, who added that the US “had a right to exercise self-defence”.
Bombing Iran
Trump attacked Iran again after Keir Starmer had been in office for nearly a year. In June last year, the US launched air strikes on nuclear-related sites in the country, ostensibly to prevent Tehran developing a nuclear arms programme.
A group of UN experts condemned the intervention, stating: “These attacks violate the most fundamental rules of world order since 1945 – the prohibition on the aggressive use of military force and the duties to respect sovereignty and not to coercively intervene in another country.”
Yet Starmer’s response was a rehearsal of his reaction to Trump’s recent kidnapping of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela. The British prime minister failed to condemn the US intervention, instead going along with it by saying it was “clear Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon”.
Similarly, foreign secretary David Lammy was repeatedly asked whether the US attacks were illegal, and refused to say.
Backing the law by violating it
By the time the US under Trump overthrew the Venezuelan government earlier this month, the UK response was utterly predictable.
Starmer and other ministers welcomed Maduro’s overthrow, failed to identify it as an obvious violation of international law and even had the audacity to claim they remained strong supporters of that law.
Foreign secretary Yvette Cooper said in a parliamentary debate on Venezuela that “we will always argue for the upholding of international law”, precisely at a time she was supporting an obvious violation of it.
It was the same with her deputy. A day after telling parliament she welcomed the illegal US removal of Maduro, foreign minister Jenny Chapman told parliament the UK’s “support for international law… is unwavering”.
Maduro’s kidnapping was strongly condemned by UN experts while its human rights chief, Volker Turk, said it “violates the country’s sovereignty and the UN charter”.
This failed to deter the UK immediately proceeding with military collaboration with Trump’s rogue state. Four days after the kidnapping, the UK provided military support to Washington to help it seize a Russian-flagged oil tanker near the northwest waters of the UK.
Declassified asked legal experts to comment on Trump’s latest military intervention and many are concluding it is yet another violation.
The decades-long cycle goes on. The US and UK have long been repeatedly undermining what exists of a rules-based international order – while claiming to uphold it.
Who knows where it will lead us in terms of future wars and what price will be paid by ordinary people for the world’s leading states creating a global law of the jungle.
A Cruel Truce: Israel’s Ongoing Demolition of Gaza
15 January 2026 Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.net/a-cruel-truce-israels-ongoing-demolition-of-gaza/
What matters peace if it permits killing, maiming and destroying the infrastructure of a society supposedly once at war? This is the situation facing Gaza as the occupying Israeli forces go about their business making the Strip even more uninhabitable for the Palestinian residents, ensuring that that land will be vacated, either through force or massaged consent, to enable its eventual seizure.
In a January 12 report, The New York Times found that Israel had razed over 2,500 buildings in the Strip since the ceasefire with Hamas commenced on October 10, 2025. These have been initiated on the Israeli side of the demarcated side known as the Yellow Line. The report, however, also notes the demolition of buildings on the side controlled by Hamas. “The scale of ongoing destruction is stark. Across eastern Gaza, in areas under Israeli control, satellite imagery reveals that entire blocks have been erased since the cease-fire, as well as swaths of farmland and agricultural greenhouses.”
The NYT quoted the grave words of Gaza-based political analyst Mohammed Al-Astal: “The Israeli military is destroying everything in front of it – homes, schools, factories and streets. There’s no security justification for what it’s doing.” A former Israeli official did not disagree. “This is absolute destruction,” assessed Shaul Arieli, commander of Israeli forces in Gaza in the 1990s. “It’s not selective, it’s everything.”
Under the thin covering of a cruel truce, Israel’s demolition campaign, according to the Palestinian National Initiative Movement, is intended to “deepen the humanitarian catastrophe and impose forced displacement and collective punishment on the people of Gaza.”
Justifications provided to the NYT were not reassuring, relying on that part of President Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan affirming that, “All military, terror, and offensive infrastructure, including tunnels and weapons production facilities, will be destroyed and not rebuilt.” An Israeli military official denied a lack of discrimination in the destruction. At times, buildings collapsed because of the IDF’s detonation of explosives in tunnels underneath them. The air force had also been striking structures deemed a threat to Israeli soldiers, some of them being adjacent to the Yellow Line. It was also conceded that demolitions were taking place on both sides of the Yellow Line, though Israeli forces had not crossed the line in doing so.
This pattern is not a newly discovered one. The BBC took note of this in November last year when it revealed that “entire neighbourhoods controlled by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have been levelled in less than a month, apparently through demolitions.” The broadcaster’s Verify unit had analysed satellite imagery showing “that the destruction of buildings in Gaza by the Israeli military has been continuing on a huge scale.” Many of the buildings destroyed showed no indication of being damaged prior to their razing, notably in such areas as eastern Khan Younis, around Abasan al-Kabira. Gardens, trees and a number of small orchards were also pulverised in the exercise.
Such actions should have been considered blatant violations of the ceasefire terms. Israeli officials, current and former, were having none of it. Ex-head of the National Security Doctrine Department, Eitan Shamir, suggested that the IDF had acted in accordance with the terms, seeing as they did not apply to areas of the Strip behind the Yellow Line. This gorgeous casuistry also found form in the cold language of an IDF spokesperson who explained that, in accordance with the agreement, “all terror infrastructure, including tunnels, is to be dismantled throughout Gaza. Israel is acting in response to threats, violations, and terror infrastructure.” The level of destruction permitted relies on the beholder’s definition of the threat posed.
In December, it was the turn of Al Jazeera’s Sanad fact-checking agency, which found much the same thing. “Satellite images showed the latest demolitions took place between November 5 and December 13, with most concentrated in the Shujayea and the Tuffah neighbourhood.” The images also revealed demolitions in the southern city of Rafah and the levelling of agricultural facilities east of Deir el-Balah in central Gaza.
The Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits the destruction by an occupying power of real or personal property belonging either individually or collectively to private persons, or to a State, public authorities, or social or co-operative organisations, except in circumstances where it is absolutely necessary as part of military operations (Article 53).
In an email to Al Jazeera in December, Adil Haque of Rutgers Law School was sceptical that the systematically destructive activities of the IDF had complied with the provisions of the Convention. “With a general ceasefire in place, and only a few sporadic exchanges of fire, it is not plausible that such significant destruction of civilian property has been rendered absolutely necessary by military operations.” Absolute necessity, he explained, had to “arise from military operations, that is, from combat or direct preparations for combat.”
In responding to the NYT report, Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, summed up the grim state of affairs with characteristic sharpness. “The so called peace plan,” she fumed on social media, “is allowing Israel to ‘finish the job’: 450 killed; 2,500 structures destroyed; lifesaving aid blocked.” Less a peace plan, it would seem, than a state of ongoing, permitted violence falling just short of war.
Study reveals ‘persistent danger’ from Israel’s white phosphorus strikes in southern Lebanon
Middle East
An investigation mapping out 248 strikes highlights Israel’s use of white phosphorus during the recent conflict in southern Lebanon between October 2023 and November 2024. Open-source researcher Ahmad Baydoun, who conducted the study, emphasises the serious and ongoing concerns regarding the substance’s impact on health, agriculture and the environment.
The FRANCE 24 Observers/ Djamel BELAYACHI, 03/12/2025, https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20251203-study-reveals-persistent-danger-israeli-white-phosphorus-strikes-southern-lebanon
Burnt olive groves, devastated fields and toxic fragments buried underground – in southern Lebanon, Israel‘s use of white phosphorus during the conflict with Hezbollah from October 2023 to November 2024 left a lasting mark.
Although not explicitly prohibited by international law, the use of white phosphorus is regulated as an incendiary weapon. Its use against civilians or in populated areas is prohibited. In June 2024, the Israeli army claimed that it did not use white phosphorus shells to target or set fires, adding that “Israel Defence Forces procedures require that such shells are not used in densely populated areas, subject to certain exceptions”.
‘91% of white phosphorus strikes took place before Israeli forces entered southern Lebanon’
Ahmad Baydoun is an open source intelligence (OSINT) researcher at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. According to data from the study he led, presented in an interactive map published in October 2025, a significant proportion of white phosphorus strikes in southern Lebanon hit civilian and agricultural areas.
Collecting this data involved combining digital tools, verification of images posted on social media (particularly Facebook and Instagram), and testimonies from residents on the ground. Baydoun explains:
“Israel justifies the use of white phosphorus as a smoke screen to protect the movements of its troops or to mark targets. But according to my research, 91 percent of white phosphorus strikes took place before Israeli forces entered southern Lebanon in October 2024, which contradicts the official Israeli version. Furthermore, 39 percent of all phosphorus strikes we documented took place over civilian areas, 16 percent over agricultural land, and only 44 percent in uninhabited areas or areas far from residents.”
NGOs such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have documented the use of white phosphorus in or near residential areas, contradicting official Israeli statements.
‘A persistent danger to human life and livestock’
White phosphorus was used only with artillery during the last war, according to Baydoun. The munition explodes, scattering incandescent fragments over a wide area, reaching temperatures of up to 800°C.
Baydoun told our team:
“The munitions explode in the air and produce 115 small fragments that sink into the ground and continue to emit this toxic substance for ten to fifteen minutes. Fragments can remain active in the ground. They can remain dormant until they are exposed to oxygen again. Then they reactivate and produce smoke.
We had a farmer in southern Lebanon who, a year after the initial strike, hit a fragment with a stick, and the fragment started emitting toxic smoke again, demonstrating the ongoing danger to people’s lives and livestock.”
The study lists nearly 28,700 fragments scattered throughout the region, which are considered very difficult to extract.
“It is very difficult to extract them from the ground. If someone has livestock and that livestock eats one of these fragments, it dies immediately, and if a human consumes the meat from that livestock, they also die.”
Among the villages in southern Lebanon most affected by white phosphorus strikes are Al-Khiam (30 incidents), Meiss El-Jabal (28 strikes), Kfar Kila (26 strikes), Yaroun (24 strikes) and Rmaysh (17 strikes).
Fear of consuming local products
Thanks to the geolocation of hundreds of photos and videos, Baydoun’s project has precisely documented 248 strikes. Residents can check whether their land or homes have been affected.
Many residents express fear of consuming local products, particularly olive oil and vegetables, over concerns of invisible contamination. In February 2025, analyses conducted by the Lebanese Ministries of Agriculture and Environment did not detect traces of phosphorus in olive samples. However, high concentrations were found in some soils, posing a potential risk to future harvests.
According to the United Nations FAO, nearly 2,100 hectares of orchards were burned, 2.3 million livestock were killed, and agricultural losses in the south of the country and the Bekaa Valley (in eastern Lebanon) exceeded 704 million dollars between October 2023 and November 2024.
US Evacuating Some Troops From Middle East Bases as It Considers Attacking Iran
One of the bases the US is pulling troops from is the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, which Iran previously attacked in retaliation for the US bombing its nuclear facilities
NEWS.ANTIWAR.COM, by Dave DeCamp | January 14, 2026
The US is pulling some troops from several of its bases in the Middle East, as European officials told Reuters on Wednesday evening that a US attack on Iran could come within the next 24 hours. The US pulled forces from bases in the region before the start of the 12-day US-Israeli war against Iran in June 2025.
One of the bases the US is pulling troops from is the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, which Iran attacked in June in retaliation for the US bombing its nuclear facilities. Iran gave the US advanced warning ahead of the attack, giving the US military time to evacuate its forces and prepare to intercept the missiles.
Iranian officials have been warning they will strike US bases and ships in the region in response to any attack, and it’s likely this time they won’t give advanced notice……………………………………………………………………………………… https://news.antiwar.com/2026/01/14/us-evacuating-some-troops-from-middle-east-bases-as-it-considers-attacking-iran/
Biden knew Ukraine would lose proxy war with Russia….provoked it anyway
Yet..and yet, President Zelensky is refusing to accept the reality of Ukraine’s defeat, even demanding return of territory lost forever. NATO countries led by delusional leaders Starmer in UK, Merz in Germany and Macron in France, claiming they’re Russia’s next target, are still pledging war resources they don’t have and never will
Walt Zlotow, Jan 17, 2026, Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL
The US proxy war against Russia destroying Ukraine has largely disappeared from mainstream news. US warfare with Venezuela, possible renewed war with Iran, seizing Greenland from Denmark have put a virtual blackout on Ukraine war reporting.
But a bigger reason is the war is lost with no chance of reversing the destruction of Ukraine short of nuclear war with Russia. If that happens we’re all destroyed.
So Trump, his advisors, the national security state (A.K.A. war party) and the aforementioned mainstream news have moved on. They realize the war has become a spectacular defeat for America’s goal of bringing Ukraine into NATO to further weaken Russia and isolate it from the European political economy. Publically admitting defeat and failure is something none of them will dare not speak its name.
Trump, to his credit, is trying to get both Ukraine and NATO to give up and settle on Russia’ sensible terms: no NATO for Ukraine, Ukraine to be forever neutral between Europe and Russia, no return of land containing mainly Russian leaning Ukrainians brutalized by Kyiv for 8 years before Russia intervened.
How badly has Ukraine lost? Over a million and a half dead, wounded or MIA, a quarter million soldiers deserted and over 9 million fled to safer climes. The economy down by a third surviving on European life support. Reconstruction costs once war ends at a half trillion dollars and rising.
Russia meanwhile is thriving, economy up by pivoting away from trade with Europe to the Global South and others only too happy to degrade both US and European hegemony. Result is a tripling of NATO energy costs, collapse of leaders support with nationalist, antiwar opposition poised to take over next election.
Could it get any worse for Ukraine and NATO?
Yet..and yet, President Zelensky is refusing to accept the reality of Ukraine’s defeat, even demanding return of territory lost forever. NATO countries led by delusional leaders Starmer in UK, Merz in Germany and Macron in France, claiming they’re Russia’s next target, are still pledging war resources they don’t have and never will
The only logical explanation is that they know the inevitable defeat facing Ukraine and NATO but are terrified to admit it and do the right thing. Trump, while sensibly pushing Ukraine and NATO, refuses to pull all US support for the lost war. He’s cynically telling NATO to keep the weapons flowing…just as long as they buy them from America. For Trump, lost war can still be a profitable business deal. He’s also refuses to pull the plug on massive weapons Biden foolishly authorized in his last days knowing Trump had no stomach to continue the war.
Speaking of Biden, he knew Ukraine could not prevail when he provoked the Russian Special Military Operation in February, 2022. But he viewed Ukraine’s destruction as collateral damage to so degrading Russia in the process that they would be forever weakened and out of the European political economy. Biden likely viewed US/NATO Ukraine support as a repeat of US meddling that defeated Russia in Afghanistan in 1989. Big mistake as history didn’t repeat.
Biden’s Mother of all Sanctions and $150 billion in weapons backfired spectacularly. So not only did Biden destroy Ukraine by provoking war, he’s likely destroyed America’s dominance leading NATO in Europe. In fact he may have put NATO on the path to history with their impending defeat flailing away at a lost cause.
The only question, besides how badly the rump state of Ukraine will end up at war’s end, is whether Ukraine and NATO’s futile perseverance will end up in nuclear war with Russia still possible every day this nightmare continues.
However it ends, Joe Biden’s legacy will be making the greatest foreign policy mistake so far in America’s 250 years.
Say it wasn’t so, Joe.
On the Eve of Destruction: Has His Majesty’s Madness for War Led His Loyal Supporters Astray?
15 January 2026 David Tyler, https://theaimn.net/on-the-eve-of-destruction-has-his-majestys-madness-for-war-led-his-loyal-supporters-astray/
The Persian Gulf is no longer a tinderbox; it is an inferno. Just this morning, President Trump of the USA and Venezuela, as he now styles himself, has effectively issued a declaration of intent, telling Iranian protesters that “help is on its way.” Is that a threat or a promise? Survivors remember US help last time. But as B-2 bombers warm their engines and squadrons of Israeli Adir, as they call their versions of F35s, stealth fighter jets, sit fuelled on the tarmac, we must pull back the curtain on the “spontaneous” uprising that serves as the pretext for this looming catastrophe.
The Hand of the Provocateur
The economic misery of Iran’s people is raw and real; the rial has lost around four-fifths of its value since the June 2025 war; inflation is crippling. But the timing of this chaos cannot be ignored. Tehran is right to point to the meddling of foreigners. When former CIA Director, Mike Pompeo, tweeted a “New Year” greeting to “every Mossad agent walking beside” the protesters, the mask wasn’t just slipping; it was discarded.
History repeats as farce: just as the CIA orchestrated the 1953 coup in Tehran by paying mobs to riot, today’s agents provocateurs are reportedly steering protesters toward IRGC outposts and banks. Iranian state media has showcased confessions from alleged Mossad agents, while reports of 40,000 Starlink terminals smuggled into the country by the CIA and Mossad lend credence to Tehran’s narrative; even as the protests’ roots in economic despair remain undeniable.
The CIA may have wasted its time with the Starlink. Iran has successfully disrupted 80% of Starlink service using military-grade GPS jamming; the first regime to effectively cripple what was thought to be “unjammable” satellite internet
Iran accuses the CIA of creating a level of “state-directed” “massacre” that provides the moral high ground for a “Humanitarian Strike.” The irony could not be any darker. The US mission is to save lives. Even if their agents have to shoot every protester themselves to create the pretext for a US-Israeli attack.
Iran’s Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi claims Trump’s warning of military intervention motivated “terrorists” to target protesters and security forces to encourage foreign intervention. Translation: he’s alleging provocateurs are shooting people deliberately to justify Trump’s promised intervention.
“Protesters are speculating” – CNN reports: “protesters are speculating whether the violence is being fuelled by the Iranian regime itself, or by foreign powers.” In the digital blackout, any atrocity can be committed and blamed on anybody. Qatari state broadcaster, Al Jazeera, is giving serious airtime to Tehran’s claim that terrorist groups are shooting people.
When Al Jazeera gives prominent airtime to Iran’s “armed terrorist groups shot people” narrative, that’s not neutral journalism – it’s Doha signaling to Tehran that they’re sympathetic to their version while trying to keep communication channels open
Classic Gulf realpolitik: publicly neutral, privately picking sides based on gas pipelines and base leases.
The Napoleonic Blunder: Two Fronts, Zero Carriers
But US forces may struggle. In his hubris, the President has committed the ultimate strategic error: the creation of a war on two opposing fronts. On January 3, US Special Forces captured Nicolás Maduro in Caracas, and the USS Gerald R. Ford; the Navy’s most advanced carrier, is now anchored in the Caribbean, not the Persian Gulf. This has left a catastrophic “Carrier Gap” in the Middle East. For the first time in years, there is no US aircraft carrier in the 5th Fleet’s area of responsibility.
To launch a war against a sophisticated adversary like Iran, while the Navy is playing colonial administrator in the Caribbean, is more than a mistake; it is a Napoleonic blunder of historic proportions. Or it’s Thiel and Miller’s idea of a military 4D Chess gambit.
The “Grey Figures” and the Fascist Blueprint
The common refrain that Trump “appoints the worst” is only half-true. As Robert Reich has pointed out, the real danger lies in the “grey figures” who are terrifyingly competent. Figures such as Peter Thiel, whose Palantir systems are now the “eyes” of the US military, and Stephen Miller, the architect of the administration’s most ruthless nationalist policies, are not bumbling sycophants. They are “highly capable fascists” who view the destruction of the Iranian regime as a necessary “disruption” to the global order.
Thiel’s Palantir isn’t just watching the war; it’s scripting it. The company’s AI platforms, honed in Ukraine and Gaza, are now the “eyes” of the US military, turning battlefield data into kill chains. The same AI that monitored Iran’s nuclear porgram, identified strike targets in June 2025. It now processes protest data, social media and Starlink traffic. It predicts “threats using predictive policing algorithms. This is “creative destruction” as geopolitical doctrine, with Thiel and Miller as its high priests.
Their criterion for service is not just sycophancy, but a shared disdain for the “old world” of diplomacy. They have led the President’s loyal supporters astray by rebranding a traditional regime-change war as a “populist rescue,” while simultaneously building the digital surveillance infrastructure to ensure that “liberty” abroad looks a lot like “control” at home.
Just to recap. When 12,000 Iranians die in two nights with the internet dark, and Palantir’s AI is processing every data point – who decided they were threats? An algorithm trained on Israeli battlefield data? A predictive model that flags “rioters” the same way it flagged Gaza civilians as “militants”?
Thiel’s company doesn’t just see the war – it authors it. And it’s making billions doing so.
The Retaliation Forecast: A Doomsday Scenario
If the “Iron Strike” protocols are triggered this week, the response will be a regional fireball:
Targeting the “Fixed” Assets: Without carriers, the US must fly from land bases like Al Udeid (Qatar) and NSA Bahrain. These are static targets. Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Ghalibaf, has already warned that these bases will be “totally obliterated” by ballistic missile swarms the moment the first US bomb falls.
The Strait Chokehold: Expect the mining of the Strait of Hormuz, which will send oil prices, already spiked by the Venezuela crisis, into territory that could collapse the global economy.
The “Shadow Fleet” Conflict: The recent US seizure of the Marinera (the renamed Bella 1) shows that the “Shadow War” has already turned kinetic.
With no carriers in the Gulf and US bases in Qatar and Bahrain sitting ducks for Iranian missiles, the “Humanitarian Strike” could quickly become a humanitarian catastrophe. The two-front trap is set; and the empire may have walked right into it.
The Periphery as a Laboratory: The “Donroe Doctrine”
Joseph Schumpeter spoke of “Creative Destruction” as the essential fact of capitalism, the incessant revolutionizing of the economic structure from within by destroying the old one.
In 2026, the Trump administration has applied this to geopolitics.
Under what independent commentators are calling the “Donroe Doctrine,” the administration is treating the global periphery – Venezuela in the West and Iran in the East – as obsolete structures to be liquidated.
The Venezuelan Template: The January 3rd abduction of Maduro wasn’t just about drugs; it was about the “destruction” of a non-compliant energy node to make way for a US-managed resource monopoly.
The Iranian Bait: Al-Jazeera’s recent reporting highlights that while Iran’s Foreign Minister Araghchi pleads for dialogue, the “Grey Figures” in Washington; the Thiels and Millers, are busy ensuring the “creative” part of the destruction. By baiting the regime into the January 8th massacre via agents provocateurs, they have created the “moral” vacuum necessary to install a new, techno-dependent order.
The Symbiosis: Sycophants vs. The “Highly Capable”
Trump is very useful to his key staffers; they need the distraction of his madness. The real power dynamic is not found in the sycophancy of a Pete Hegseth, but in the calculated brilliance of the ideologues.
The Architect: Stephen Miller has successfully pivoted from domestic nativism to a “Brute Strength” foreign policy. He isn’t just a sycophant; he is a practitioner of realpolitik who views the two-front war (Venezuela/Iran) as a necessary “stress test” for American hegemony.
The Engineer: Peter Thiel’s involvement represents the ultimate Schumpeterian shift. Through Palantir’s integration into the “Iron Strike” protocols, the war is being fought as an algorithmic liquidation. This is the symbiosis: Trump provides the populist gale, while the “Grey Figures” provide the silicon-grade precision to ensure the “destruction” is permanent.
The Australian Connection: The Mirror of Suppression
As we look at the suppression of speech in Australia, the parallels are chilling. The “Public Assembly Restriction Declarations” (PARD) in Sydney, ostensibly to “ensure safety” after the Bondi tragedy, are being used to silence those protesting the US attack on Venezuela.
In Canberra, the “Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism Bill” is a masterclass in Orwellian doublespeak. Ostensibly targeting hate, its sweeping powers could just as easily silence critics of US wars or Israeli apartheid. And with a loophole for religious scripture, it may even protect the very extremists it claims to combat.
The Schumpeterian Irony: In the drive to “creatively destroy” foreign adversaries, the administration and its allies are destroying the very liberal-democratic structures they claim to defend.
Strategic Assessment: The Two-Front Trap
Despite the “capable fascists” at the helm, the Napoleonic blunder remains. With the USS Gerald R. Ford anchored in the Caribbean, the US is vulnerable. Iran knows this. Their “Arc of Fire” retaliation plan doesn’t target carriers; it targets the static, land-based infrastructure of the “Grey Figures’” digital war.
Next Update: I am currently tracking the flow of “emergency” data-sharing agreements between Canberra and Washington. It appears the suppression of the Sydney protests is being used as a training set for the very “Human Geography” mapping Thiel is deploying in Tehran.
In the next instalment, we’ll examine how the “Donroe Doctrine” is reshaping the global order, and why the “help” that is “on its way” may be the very thing that finishes us.
US Surging Military Assets To the Middle East To Prepare for War With Iran After Trump Postpones Attack
Reports claim that Netanyahu asked Trump to delay the attack as Israel wants more time to prepare for counterattacks
by Dave DeCamp | January 15, 2026, https://news.antiwar.com/2026/01/15/us-surging-military-assets-to-the-middle-east-to-prepare-for-war-with-iran-after-trump-postpones-attack/
The US military is planning to surge military assets to the Middle East to prepare for a potential war with Iran after President Trump backed down from bombing the country, according to a report from The New York Times.
US officials told the paper that the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and some warships from its strike group were on their way to the Middle East from the South China Sea, a roughly week-long trip. The US is also planning to send an array of warplanes to the Middle East, including fighter jets and refueling aircraft, and additional air defenses.
According to other media reports, the US military’s message to Trump amid his threats to bomb Iran is that there weren’t enough US assets in the region to face a potential counterattack, which could target the many US bases in the region. Trump was also reportedly told that US strikes likely wouldn’t result in regime change and could lead to a prolonged war.
The Times report also said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked Trump to postpone his plans to attack Iran, and Axios reported the same thing later, saying that Netanyahu wants more time to prepare for Iranian retaliation.
If the reports about Netanyahu’s request are true, it’s likely that he also wants more US military assets in the region since Israel relied on US forces to intercept Iranian missiles during the war back in June 2025, and many still got through and struck Israeli territory, which is what led to Israel agreeing to a ceasefire after 12 days.
On the other hand, the leaks and delays could be meant to keep Iran off guard as the US and Israel engaged in a deception campaign before Israel launched the opening salvo of the 12-Day War.
The White House has claimed that Iran has postponed planned executions due to Trump’s threats and warned that if the “killing” in Iran continues, there will be consequences. However, the unrest in Iran is just the latest pretext for war with Iran.
Iran’s nuclear program was the pretext for launching the 12-Day War, and while meeting with Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago back in December, Trump said he would back an Israeli attack on Iran if Tehran “continues” its conventional missile program. There’s no sign that Iran would even consider limiting its ballistic missiles since they are the Islamic Republic’s only form of deterrence.
1 This Month
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12 February – Webinar The Big Push: New Nuclear Projects in Canada
Thursday, February 12, 7 pm Eastern | 2nd of 4 sessions in the 2026 Nuclear Waste Online webinar series
Join a webinar on the push for new nuclear generation in Canada. Go to Northwatch.org to register or use the registration link https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ZfWOf1GITqSRIZX8CB-A9w
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