War on Iran Is Fight for US Unipolar Control of World
The plan to use Netanyahu as America’s counterpart to Ukraine’s Zelensky, demanding U.S. intervention with his willingness to fight to the last Israeli, much as the U.S./NATO are fighting to the last Ukrainian, is a tactic that is quite obviously at the expense of strategy.
June 24, 2025 , By Michael Hudson / Geopolitical Economy Report, https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2025/06/22/michael-hudson-war-iran-us-unipolar-control/
Economist Michael Hudson explains how the war on Iran seeks to stop countries from breaking away from U.S. unipolar control and dollar hegemony, and to disrupt Eurasian integration with China and Russia.
Opponents of the war with Iran say that the war is not in American interests, seeing that Iran does not pose any visible threat to the United States.
This appeal to reason misses the neoconservative logic that has guided U.S. foreign policy for more than a half century, and which is now threatening to engulf the Middle East in the most violent war since Korea.
That logic is so aggressive, so repugnant to most people, so much in violation of the basic principles of international law, the United Nations, and the U.S. Constitution, that there is an understandable shyness in the authors of this strategy to spell out what is at stake.
What is at stake is the U.S. attempt to control the Middle East and its oil as a buttress of U.S. economic power, and to prevent other countries from moving to create their own autonomy from the U.S.-centered neoliberal order administered by the IMF, World Bank, and other institutions to reinforce U.S. unipolar power.
The 1970s saw much discussion about creating a New International Economic Order (NIEO). U.S. strategists saw this as a threat, and since my book Super Imperialism ironically was used as something like a textbook by the government, I was invited to comment on how I thought countries would break away from U.S. control.
I was working at the Hudson Institute with Herman Kahn, and in 1974 or 1975, he brought me to sit in on a military strategy discussion of plans being made already at that time to possibly overthrow Iran and break it up into ethnic parts. Herman found the weakest spot to be Baluchistan, on Iran’s border with Pakistan. The Kurds, Tajiks, and Turkic Azeris were others whose ethnicities were to be played off against each other, giving U.S. diplomacy a key potential client dictatorship to reshape both Iranian and Pakistani political orientation if need be.
Three decades later, in 2003, General Wesley Clark pointed to Iran as being the capstone of seven countries that the United States needed to control in order to dominate the Middle East, starting with Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, and Sudan, culminating in Iran.
The U.S. fight for unipolar control of the world
Most of today’s discussion of the geopolitical dynamics of how the international economy is changing is understandably (and rightly) focusing on the attempt by BRICS and other countries to escape from U.S. control by de-dollarizing their trade and investment.
But the most active dynamic presently reshaping the international economy has been the attempts of Donald Trump’s whirlwind presidency since January to lock other countries into a U.S.-centered economy, by agreeing not to focus their trade and investment on China and other states seeking autonomy from U.S. control. (Trade with Russia is already heavily sanctioned.)
As will be described below, the war in Iran likewise has as an aim blocking trade with China and Russia and countering moves away from the U.S.-centered neoliberal order.
Trump, hoping in his own self-defeating way to rebuild U.S. industry, expected that countries would respond to his threat to create tariff chaos by reaching an agreement with America not to trade with China, and indeed to accept U.S. trade and financial sanctions against it, Russia, Iran, and other countries deemed to be a threat to the unipolar U.S. global order.
Maintaining that order is the U.S. objective in its current fight with Iran, as well as its fights with Russia and China – and Cuba, Venezuela, and other countries seeking to restructure their economic policies to recover their independence.
From the view of U.S. strategists, the rise of China poses an existential danger to U.S. unipolar control, both as a result of China’s industrial and trade dominance outstripping the U.S. economy and threatening its markets and the dollarized global financial system, and by China’s industrial socialism providing a model that other countries might seek to emulate and/or join with to recover the national sovereignty that has been eroded in recent decades.
U.S. administrations and a host of U.S. cold warriors have framed the issue as being between “democracy” (defined as countries supporting U.S. policy as client regimes and oligarchies) and “autocracy” (countries seeking national self-reliance and protection from foreign trade and financial dependency).
This framing of the international economy views not only China but any other country seeking national autonomy as an existential threat to U.S. unipolar domination. That attitude explains the U.S./NATO attack on Russia that has resulted in the Ukraine war of attrition, and most recently the U.S./Israeli war against Iran that is threatening to engulf the whole world in U.S.-backed war.
The motivation for the attack on Iran has nothing to do with any attempt by Iran to protect its national sovereignty by developing an atom bomb. The basic problem is that the United States has taken the initiative in trying to preempt Iran and other countries from breaking away from dollar hegemony and U.S. unipolar control.
Here’s how the neocons spell out the U.S. national interest in overthrowing the Iranian government and bringing about a regime change – not necessarily a secular democratic regime change, but perhaps an extension of the ISIS/Al-Qaida Wahhabi terrorists who have taken over Syria.
With Iran broken up and its component parts turned into a set of client oligarchies, U.S. diplomacy can control all Middle Eastern oil. And control of oil has been a cornerstone of U.S. international economic power for a century, thanks to U.S. oil companies operating internationally (not only as domestic U.S. producers of oil and gas) and remitting economic rents extracted from overseas to make a major contribution to the U.S. balance of payments.
Control of Middle Eastern oil also enables the dollar diplomacy that has seen Saudi Arabia and other OPEC countries invest their oil revenues into the U.S. economy by accumulating vast holdings of U.S. Treasury securities and private-sector investments.
The United States holds OPEC countries hostage through these investments in the U.S. economy (and in other Western economies), which can be expropriated much as the United States grabbed $300 billion of Russia’s monetary savings in the West in 2022. This largely explains why these countries are afraid to act in support of the Palestinians or Iranians in today’s conflict.
But Iran is not only the capstone to full control of the Near East and its oil and dollar holdings. Iran is a key link for China’s Belt and Road Initiative for a New Silk Road of railway transport to the West.
If the United States can overthrow the Iranian government, this interrupts the long transportation corridor that China already has constructed and hopes to extend further west.
Iran also is a key to blocking Russian trade and development via the Caspian Sea and access to the south, bypassing the Suez Canal. And under U.S. control, an Iranian client regime could threaten Russia from its southern flank.
To the neocons, all this makes Iran a central pivot on which the U.S. national interest is based – if you define that national interest as creating a coercive empire of client states observing dollar hegemony by adhering to the dollarized international financial system.
I think that Trump’s warning to Tehran’s citizens to evacuate their city is just an attempt to stir up domestic panic as a prelude to a U.S. attempt to mobilize ethnic opposition as a means to break up Iran into component parts. It is similar to the U.S. hopes to break up Russia and China into regional ethnicities.
That is the U.S. strategic hope for a new international order that remains under its command.
The irony, of course, is that U.S. attempts to hold onto its fading economic empire continue to be self-defeating.
The objective is to control other nations by threatening economic chaos. But it is this U.S. threat of chaos that is driving other nations to seek alternatives elsewhere. And an objective is not a strategy.
The plan to use Netanyahu as America’s counterpart to Ukraine’s Zelensky, demanding U.S. intervention with his willingness to fight to the last Israeli, much as the U.S./NATO are fighting to the last Ukrainian, is a tactic that is quite obviously at the expense of strategy.
It is a warning to the entire world to find an escape hatch.
Like the U.S. trade and financial sanctions intended to keep other countries dependent on U.S. markets and a dollarized international financial system, the attempt to impose a military empire from Central Europe to the Middle East is politically self-destructive.
It is making the split that already is occurring between the U.S.-centered neoliberal order and the Global Majority irreversible on moral grounds, as well as on the grounds of simple self-preservation and economic self-interest.
Trump’s Republican budget plan and its vast increase in military spending
The ease with which Iranian missiles have been able to penetrate Israel’s much-vaunted Iron Dome defense shows the folly of Trump’s pressure for an enormous trillion-dollar subsidy to the U.S. military-industrial complex for a similar Golden Dome boondoggle here in the United States.
So far, the Iranians have used only their oldest and least effective missiles. The aim is to deplete Israel’s anti-missile defenses so that in a few weeks it will be unable to block a serious Iranian attack.
Iran already demonstrated its ability to evade Israel’s air defenses a few months ago, just as during Trump’s previous presidency it showed how easily it could hit U.S. military bases.
The U.S. military budget actually is much larger than is reported in the proposed bill before Congress to approve Trump’s trillion-dollar subsidy.
Congress funds its military-industrial complex (MIC) in two ways: The obvious way is by arms purchases paid for by Congress directly. Less acknowledged is MIC spending routed via U.S. foreign military aid to its allies – Ukraine, Israel, Europe, South Korea, Japan, and other Asian countries – to buy U.S. arms.
This explains why the military burden is what normally accounts for the entire U.S. budget deficit and hence the rise in government debt (much of it self-financed via the Federal Reserve since 2008, to be sure).
The need for alternative international organizations
Unsurprisingly, the international community has been unable to prevent the U.S./Israeli war against Iran.
The United Nations Security Council is blocked by the United States’ veto, and that of Britain and France, from taking measures against acts of aggression by the United States and its allies.
The United Nations is now seen to have become toothless and irrelevant as a world organization able to enforce international law. (Its situation is much as Stalin remarked regarding Vatican opposition, “How many troops does the Pope have?”)
Just as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund are instruments of U.S. foreign policy and control, so too are many other international organizations which are dominated by the United States and its allies, including (relevantly for today’s crisis in West Asia) the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), that Iran has accused of having provided Israel targeting information for its attack on Iranian nuclear scientists and sites.
Breaking free of the U.S. unipolar order requires a full spectrum set of alternative international organizations independent of the United States, NATO, and other client allies.
Trump’s attack on Iran
The sound and fury of Trump’s missile attack on Iran’s most famous nuclear sites on June 21 turned out not to be the capstone of America’s conquest of the Middle East. But it did more than signify nothing.
Trump must have listened to the military’s warnings that all game plans for conflict with Iran at this time showed the United States losing badly.
His Trumpian solution was to brag on his social media account that he had won a great victory in stopping Iran’s march toward making an atom bomb.
Iran for its part evidently was glad to cooperate with the public relations charade. The U.S. missiles seem to have landed on mutually agreed-upon sites that Iran had vacated for just such a diplomatic stand-down.
Trump always announces any act as a great victory, and in a way it was, over the hopes and goading of his most ardent neoconservative advisors. The United States has deferred its hopes for conquest at this time.
The fight is now to be limited to Iran and Israel. And Israel already has offered to stop hostilities if Iran does. Iran gave hope for an armistice once it has exacted due retaliation for Israeli assassinations and terrorist acts against civilians.
Israel is the big loser, and its ability to serve as America’s proxy has been crippled. The devastation from Iranian rockets has left a reported one-third of Tel Aviv and much of Haifa in ruins.
Israel has lost not only its key military and national security structures, but will lose much of its skilled population as it emigrates, taking its industry with it.
By intervening on Israel’s side by supporting its genocide, the United States has turned most of the UN’s Global Majority against it.
Washignton’s ill-thought backing of the reckless Netanyahu has catalyzed the drive by other countries to speed their way out of the U.S. diplomatic, economic, and military orbit.
So America’s Oil War against Iran can now be added to the long list of wars that the United States has lost since the Korean and Vietnam wars, Afghanistan, Iraq, and the rest of its adventures leading up to its imminent loss in Ukraine. Its victories have been against Grenada and German industry – its own imperial “backyard,” so to speak.
Trump Claims Iran Nuclear Sites ‘Totally Destroyed’—But That Clashes With Vance And Experts
By Ty Roush, Forbes Staff. https://www.forbes.com/sites/tylerroush/2025/06/23/did-the-us-destroy-irans-uranium-supply-or-not-vance-experts-clash-with-trumps-claims/
President Donald Trump on Monday said U.S. strikes “totally destroyed” nuclear facilities in Iran and criticized “sleazebags” in the media for suggesting otherwise—but comments from Vice President JD Vance, military officials and nuclear watchdogs all suggest the damage to Iran’s nuclear program remains unconfirmed.
Key Facts
“The sites we hit in Iran were totally destroyed, and everyone knows it,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, disputing “Fake News” he claims “would say anything different in order to try and demean, as much as possible—and even they say they were ‘pretty well destroyed!’”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told ABC on Monday the U.S. is “confident” Iran’s nuclear program was “completely and totally obliterated,” noting there is a “high degree of confidence” the locations the U.S. strikes took place is where Iran stored its enriched uranium and that Iran “no longer [has] the capability … to threaten the world.”
International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi appeared to dispute Trump’s claims in a statement earlier Monday by suggesting the agency would need to verify damage to Iran’s underground Fordow facility, including whether the site’s uranium enrichment halls were impacted, though he noted the U.S. strikes likely caused “very significant” damage.
On Sunday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine said an assessment on damage to Iran’s nuclear sites was “still pending,” and Caine claimed it was “way too early for me to comment on what may or may not still be there.”
Vance, in an interview with ABC on Sunday, suggested the U.S. strikes only set back Iran’s potential to weaponize its uranium stockpile and said the U.S. was “going to work in the coming weeks to ensure that we do something with that fuel.”
Jeffrey Lewis, a professor of nonproliferation at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, wrote on X he was “unimpressed” by the U.S. strikes while citing satellite images of the attacks, claiming the U.S. “failed to target significant elements of Iran’s nuclear materials and production infrastructure.”
How Large Is Iran’s Uranium Stockpile?
Iran stored about 400 kilograms (about 881 pounds) of uranium enriched to 60%, near weapons-grade enrichment of 90%, according to Grossi. It’s unclear whether Iran’s uranium stockpile is still this large, Grossi noted, adding IAEA’s inspectors last verified Iran’s stockpile a “few days” before Iran’s conflict with Israel began earlier this month.
Could Iran Rebuild Its Uranium Stockpile?
It’s possible Iran could rebuild its nuclear program, but a timeline for development would depend on how much damage was done to Iran’s nuclear sites, according to the Centers for Strategic and International Studies, a U.S.-based think tank. Recent U.S. strikes would make Iran “more motivated than ever” to obtain nuclear weapons, Rosemary Kelanic, a director at the U.S.-based think tank Defense Priorities, told the New York Times. Some American officials estimated an attack on Fordow set back Iran’s nuclear program by as much as five years, the Times reported.
Nuclear peril
by beyondnuclearinternational, https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2025/06/23/nuclear-peril/
US and Israeli bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities set the stage for disaster, writes Linda Pentz Gunter from London
There was widespread if not quite universal condemnation on Sunday after President Trump’s decision to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities and an immediate call for protests in cities across the United States and other countries. The US attack was launched to support Israel’s determination not to let Iran develop nuclear weapons at its civil nuclear facilities, although presently there is little to no indication that Iran is planning to do so.
“Military action against Iran is not the way to resolve concerns over Tehran’s nuclear programme,” said Melissa Parke, executive director of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. “Given that US intelligence agencies assess Iran is not pursuing nuclear weapons, this is a senseless and reckless act that could undermine international efforts to prevent the further proliferation of nuclear weapons.”
Overnight on Saturday and into the early hours of Sunday morning, Trump authorized more than 100 US war planes to bomb Iran and claimed to have “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program. The Iranians admit damage but not full destruction.
“Operation Midnight Hammer” as it was known, included B-2 bombers that dropped more than a dozen bunker busters on the heavily fortified Fordow uranium enrichment site, believed to be 80 meters below ground. American planes also bombed the Natanz uranium enrichment complex, while Tomahawk missiles were reportedly used to strike the Isfahan uranium conversion facility.
Fordow is believed by western powers to be the location where Iran could be working on producing nuclear weapons. However, the International Atomic Energy Agency had reiterated as recently as a day before this latest attack that “we did not find in Iran elements to indicate that there is an active, systematic plan to build a nuclear weapon,” its general secretary, Rafael Mariano Grossi told Al Jazeera.
Concerns remain about Iran’s only operating civil reactor at Bushehr. Even before the American incursion, Russia, which built and operates Bushehr, had warned the Israelis of the grave risks of another Chornobyl-style disaster should they strike the reactor. Russia had already begun evacuating some of its personnel but threatened to remove more if they were in danger from Israeli bombs. Alexei Likhachev, the CEO of state nuclear company Rosatom said “We are prepared for any scenario, including the rapid evacuation of all our employees.”
But a reactor, even if shut down, cannot be left unattended, raising other grave concerns about its longterm safety during the current war.
A day after the American bombing raid, Israel launched more attacks on Iran, including in Bushehr province. This now means there are two countries actively under attack where civil nuclear power plants are located — Ukraine and Iran. The consequences of a successful bombing raid on a civil nuclear plant could include widespread release of highly harmful and persistent radiation, forcing mass and permanent evacuations and sickening and killing thousands or more in both the near- and long-term.
Even greater concerns have been mounting that US involvement could trigger a wider conflict in the region. As many have pointed out consistently, Israel is a nuclear-armed state, albeit absurdly an undeclared one even though the country likely possesses as many as 200 warheads. Israel refuses UN inspections and has never signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran on the other hand is a signatory to the NPT and has long claimed it is exercising its “inalienable right” under that treaty to pursue a civil nuclear weapons program.
Those concerns were further heightened when Christian Zionist US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee urged Trump to consider using a nuclear bomb on Iran, advice Trump fortunately ignored for now. But Trump remains an unpredictable tinder box, illustrating once again the peril of countries continuing to possess nuclear weapons that an unhinged leader might launch on an impulse.
Protests erupted immediately in US cities and elsewhere across the world on the news of the US attack on Iran, which came hours after 350,000 people had marched through London in the latest monthly demonstration against Israel’s attack on Palestine, but this time also calling for halt to its bombing of Iran.
At that rally, there was skepticism that Israel’s attacks on Iran were really just about stopping Iran developing nuclear weapons. Somaye Bagher Zadeh, with Iranians For Palestine UK, said Israel’s actions were potentially about “getting rid of the Iranian regime, but to be frank, regime change by any foreign power is not in the interests of the Iranian people. And it’s entirely up to the Iranian people to decide who rules them.”
“Since they destroyed Iraq, we have known that it was inevitable that they would eventually come for us,” said prominent British-Iranian trade union leader, Maryam Eslamdoust. “We Iranians feel like we have been waiting our whole lives for the US or Israel to attack us.”
Saturday’s mass march in London to Whitehall was followed by an emergency protest called for Monday outside the US Embassy in London by Stop the War Coalition and Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, alongside other rallies across the country. So far, the UK government has continued to politically support and materially aid and abet Israel’s attacks on Gaza as well as its starvation of the Palestinian population there. A rally was also called by American groups in front of the White House.
British activists are concerned that their government may be drawn back into another disastrous war, similar to the UK’s support of the US in the war in Iraq. That war cost countless lives on all sides and failed to stabilize the Middle East region, instead giving birth to further radicalization.
“Trump’s attack on Iran is brutal, illegal and unjustified,” said a statement from Stop the War Coalition on Sunday. The group said it condemned the US attack on Iran “unequivocally and urges every possible mobilization against British military or political support for the aggression.”
In the US, Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, was quick to criticize the bombing raids. “While we all agree that Iran must not have a nuclear weapon, Trump abandoned diplomatic efforts to achieve that goal and instead chose to unnecessarily endanger American lives, further threaten our armed forces in the region, and risk pulling America into another long conflict in the Middle East,” said Van Hollen, who has also spoken out consistently against Israel’s attacks on Gaza. “The U.S. intelligence community has repeatedly assessed that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon. There was more time for diplomacy to work.”
The diplomacy Van Hollen referred to was a resumption of negotiations for a nuclear agreement with Iran that would either limit or eliminate its civil uranium enrichment program. Such an agreement — the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, limiting enrichment and allowing for stringent inspections in exchange for a lifting of sanctions — had already been in place until Trump withdrew the US during his previous administration. New talks had been progressing poorly, with Israel chomping at the bit to use military force instead, which it did then initiate with US prior knowledge.
Independent Vermont senator, Bernie Sanders, said “We cannot allow ourselves to be dragged into another Middle East war based on lies,” reflecting on previous such ventures in Vietnam and Iraq based on similar falsehoods.
While most Republicans have lined up behind Trump’s warmongering, one Republican, Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, called the attack “not Constitutional.” Earlier in the week, Massie and California Democrat Ro Khanna had introduced a resolution that would have blocked US participation in Israel’s attacks on Iran without Congressional approval.
“This is an extremely dangerous situation,” said a statement from the grassroots movement, Our Revolution, which promotes the campaigning of Sanders on a number of domestic and foreign issues, including Gaza and now Iran. “Trump has immediately threatened even more attacks, and U.S. service members are now directly in harm’s way,” the group said. “We are on the cusp of a catastrophic conflict that could cost countless American and Iranian lives.”
Linda Pentz Gunter is the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear and writes for and edits Beyond Nuclear International. She is currently reporting from London, England.
Iran Fires Missiles at US Base in Qatar
Qatar’s Foreign Ministry said the missiles were intercepted and that there were no casualties
by Dave DeCamp | Jun 23, 2025, https://news.antiwar.com/2025/06/23/iran-fires-missiles-at-us-base-in-qatar/
The Iranian military announced on Monday that it launched an attack on the US’s Al Udeid base in Qatar in response to the US bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities.
The attack was first reported by Axios reporter Barak Ravid, who cited Israeli sources that said Iran fired at least 10 missiles at the US base. Initial reports said that another missile targeted a US base in Iraq, but US officials later said the attack targeted only a base in Qatar.
“This base is the headquarters of the Air Force and the largest strategic asset of the US terrorist army in the West Asia region,” Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said of the US base in Qatar.
The IRGC said Iran would not “leave any attack on its territorial integrity, sovereignty, and national security unanswered under any circumstances.”
The Qatari Foreign Ministry issued a statement that said Qatar’s air defenses “successfully thwarted the attack and intercepted the Iranian missiles” and that there were no injuries or deaths caused by the attack.
The reported missile launch comes after Fox News and other outlets said that an Iranian attack on US assets in the region was “imminent” and Qatar announced that it was closing its airspace, signaling the US has at least a few hours’ notice that the barrage was coming.
The New York Times reported that Iran had notified Qatar of its plans to attack in order to minimize casualties, signaling Tehran is seeking de-escalation with the US. In 2020, after the US assassinated Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, Iran launched a similar attack on a US base in Iraq, which the US didn’t respond to.
A White House official told CNN that the US was expecting an Iranian response and claimed President Trump didn’t want more military engagement in the region. “We knew they’d retaliate. They had a similar response after Soleimani,” the official said.
AUKUS collapse offers Australia the chance to navigate an innovative future.
(Cartoon by Mark David / @MDavidCartoons)
By Alan Austin | 23 June 2025, https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/aukus-collapse-offers-australia-the-chance-to-navigate-an-innovative-future,19859
Donald Trump’s likely abandonment of the AUKUS contract offers the Albanese Government a welcome reprieve from a costly folly, as Alan Austin reports.
THE USA LOOKS LIKE it is abandoning the controversial AUKUS contract signed by the miserably inept Morrison Government in its dying days.
The corrupt and incompetent U.S. President Donald Trump wants out. He has proven to the world that the only projects he strongly supports are those that enrich himself and his companies directly. Australia, with other Westminster nations, refuses to pay direct bribes to individual national leaders — as it should.
Now showing advanced cognitive decline and a failing grip on reality, Trump has effectively signalled the contract’s demise by calling for a formal review by Defence Under Secretary Elbridge Colby. Colby has long been a vocal AUKUS critic and will probably recommend cancellation.
Sound reasons to abandon AUKUS
The first pillar of the deal between Australia, the UK and the USA is for the Americans to supply Australia with nuclear-powered attack submarines for its defence, starting with three Virginia-class submarines in the early 2030s.
The second pillar is collaboration between the three nations on new military technology. These include undersea capabilities, artificial intelligence, electronic warfare and advanced cyber, hypersonic and counter-hypersonic capabilities.
Colby’s argument against the AUKUS deal is simply that the USA doesn’t have enough submarines for their own needs and can’t build them fast enough to have any to spare in the foreseeable future. That is true. The current U.S. Administration is the least competent in its history.
Other AUKUS critics have more compelling reasons for its abandonment. The most cogent of these, articulated by former prime ministers Paul Keating and Malcolm Turnbull and others, is that nuclear subs supplied by the USA will necessarily be operated by American personnel and automatically commandeered by the U.S. military in the event of hostilities between the USA and China, over Taiwan or any other conflict.
It would be disastrous for Australia’s relationship with China and other nations, Keating argues, to be dragged into such a war.
Resources lost forever
If AUKUS collapses, Australia has little chance of getting back the billions already invested.
Among the countless failures of the monumentally inept Morrison Coalition Government was leaving out of the contract any penalties for defaults.
In any event, the lifelong criminal grifter currently running the White House has never felt obliged to fulfil contracts, however legally or morally binding.
The losses to Australia as a result of the incompetence of the Coalition from 2014 to 2022 now amount to hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars, including the billions paid out for AUKUS so far.
These simply have to be accepted as penalties citizens must bear for the abject stupidity of those who elected such a hopeless rabble to try to run the country.
Visionary naval future
If AUKUS fails and Australians write off the losses, they can then grasp this as an opportunity to pursue advantageous alternatives.
The future of underwater naval warfare increasingly appears to be in unmanned underwater vessels (UUVs). Australia is well-placed to build these for its own purposes and then sell them to regional neighbours and beyond.
This may seem a quantum leap for shipbuilding in Australia, but it can be accomplished.
Australia proved to the world it could build the Collins-class submarines during the Hawke/Keating period and has successfully procured other military ordnance since then.
In its first term, the Albanese Government began its investment in small UUVs. Australian marine vessel manufacturer Anduril Australia, a subsidiary of the American Anduril Industries, is already building a modest UUV which it calls Ghost Shark.
Although technical information is restricted, military monitor The War Zone has revealed details of the partnership involving Anduril, the Royal Australian Navy (R.A.N.) and the Defence Science and Technology Group.
A Ghost Shark prototype, according to The War Zone, has a 3D-printed exterior, weighs 2.8 tons, is 5.6 metres long and can operate at a depth of 6,000 metres for ten days. Advanced AI technology enables autonomous operations.
The R.A.N. hopes to get three UUVs suitable for both military and non-military missions between 2025 and 2028.
Challenges for the future, beyond Ghost Shark, are for vessels capable of higher speeds, deeper dives, longer missions, greater stealth and more advanced assignments, including accurate delivery of lethal weapons.
If Australia’s current submarines can be replaced with technologically advanced UUVs, costs will be much lower and risks to personnel dramatically reduced. This may allow Australia to cut military spending overall.
Potential partnerships
Australia does not have the resources to build UUVs alone. Just as the Collins-class submarines were built collaboratively with Swedish shipbuilder Kockums, new ventures will require partners.
Possibilities, besides American firms like Anduril, are many. Current UUVs in service include Germany’s Greyshark, France’s XLUUV and vessels from Japan and South Korea.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s discussion topics with his Canadian counterpart, Prime Minister Mark Carney, at last week’s G7 meeting included Canada joining AUKUS. That’s another possible partner.
Grounds for optimism
Australia has shipyards in South Australia and the solid experience of designing, building and maintaining the Collins-class submarines from the 1980s to the present.
Australia enjoys the goodwill of all neighbouring nations, has no current engagement in any conflict and sees no threats on the horizon.
Australians have banished the destructive Coalition parties from any chance of forming government for the foreseeable future.
So, to borrow a line from Michael J Fox in The American President, let’s take this 94-seat majority out for a spin and see what it can do.
Out of pocket and stranded: What happens if Trump pulls out of AUKUS | Four Corners Documentary
War With Iran: Made in Britain?
By Kit Klarenberg / Substack, 23 June 25, https://scheerpost.com/2025/06/23/war-with-iran-made-in-britain/
On June 14th, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer bragged he was moving the country’s military assets and fighter jets to West Asia, to provide “contingency support in the region” in response to Iran’s counterattack on the Zionist entity. Asked by Sky News if he ruled out direct military involvement, he evasively responded, “I’m not getting into that.” He also refused to clarify whether Tel Aviv gave London any advance warning of its criminal, unprovoked strike on Tehran a day prior:
“These are obviously operational decisions and the situation is ongoing and developing…I’m not going to go into what information we had at the time or since. But we discuss these things intensely with our allies.”
On June 15th, Chancellor Rachel Reeves was less ambiguous, openly declaring British military assets could “potentially” be used to defend Israel, and the government was “not ruling anything out,” noting Britain had previously “supported Israel when there had been missiles coming in.” She explicitly framed London’s interest in the conflict as driven by the threat of rising oil prices, and trade route disruption, placing further pressure on the country’s already collapsing economy.
Yet, there have been ominous indications for some time Britain has sought to ignite a wider conflict across West Asia – and all-out war between Iran and Israel, and its Western puppetmasters, upon the precipice of which we now teeter, has been London’s objective all along. On October 8th 2023, just over 24 hours after Palestinian freedom fighters breached Gaza’s concentration camp walls, veteran client ‘journalist’ Robert Peston took to ‘X’ to publish explosive insight provided to him by nameless “government and intelligence sources”:
“Hamas’ attack on Israel has the potential to be as destabilising to global security as Putin’s attack on Ukraine…[Benjamin] Netanyahu is highly likely to retaliate. Biden and the US would try to limit the scope of any Israeli strike on Iran, but would neither want or be able to veto it. There is a risk of this crisis spreading well beyond the Middle East…We are in the early stages of a conflict with ramifications for much of the world.”
At this point, the shape and scale of Tel Aviv’s response to Operation AlAqsa Flood was far from certain. Zionist Occupation Forces did not even enter Gaza until five days hence. We therefore must ask ourselves how British intelligence could’ve correctly forecast with such alacrity that Israel’s impending genocide of the Palestinians would cause mass tumult not merely in West Asia, but globally, and potentially culminate with conflict with Iran.
‘Joint Activity’
London’s direct involvement in the Gaza genocide has been evident almost from the moment of its eruption. Media reports in late October 2023 hinted at SAS units being “on standby” at British military and intelligence bases in nearby Cyprus, purportedly preparing to conduct daring operations in Gaza. Subsequent articles suggested these squadrons were “training in Lebanon to rescue Britons” in West Asia, should they get caught up in the war in Gaza, or “be taken hostage” by Resistance groups.
These revelations prompted Britain’s Defense and Security Media Advisory Committee to issue D-notices to major news outlets, demanding they “prevent inadvertent disclosure of classified information about Special Forces and other units engaged in security, intelligence and counter-terrorist operations [in Gaza], including their methods, techniques and activities.” True to form, the Committee’s “advice” was universally heeded, and references to the SAS’ presence in West Asia vanished from mainstream media reporting on Zionist entity’s 21st century Holocaust.
The DSMA’s reference to “security, intelligence and counter-terrorist operations” pointed to a very different purpose to their purpose in the region than mere hostage rescue. Investigations by Declassified UK bolster this suspicion. The independent outlet has revealed how military transport flights traveling to Tel Aviv, from the same British bases in Cyprus where SAS operatives are stationed, have been a routine occurrence since October 2023. It may be relevant that in December 2020, London and Tel Aviv signed a military cooperation agreement.
The accord has been described by British Ministry of Defense officials as “important…defense diplomacy” that “strengthens” military ties between the two countries, while providing “a mechanism for planning our joint activity.” The contents of this agreement, however, remain hidden not only from British citizens, but also elected lawmakers. Speculation thus arises the agreement obligates Britain to defend Israel in the event of attack, in turn reinforcing the conclusion the SAS has been directly involved in the Zionist entity’s genocidal assault on Gaza since day one.
‘Emergency Missions’
In November 2023, The Cradle exposed a covert initiative by Britain to secure unfettered access to Lebanese territory for its armed forces. A leaked document on the proposals offered neither a rationale for London doing so, nor specified the specific mission British Army soldiers would be fulfilling in Beirut. The demands ultimately weren’t approved, but if greenlit, the terms of London’s mandate in Beirut would’ve been unprecedented.
The agreement granted “all [British] military personnel” unprecedented access to Lebanon’s ground, air and sea territory, bypassing the need for “prior diplomatic authorization” for “emergency missions.” The nature of those missions was not specified. Moreover, British soldiers would’ve been permitted to travel in uniform with their weapons visible anywhere in Lebanon, while enjoying immunity from arrest or prosecution for committing any crime.
These audacious stipulations draw unsettling parallels with the NATO-drafted Rambouillet Agreement, presented to Yugoslavia in 1999, where refusal became a pretext for a US-led military onslaught. At the time, a senior State Department official boastfully admitted to “deliberately [setting] the bar higher” than could possibly be accepted by Yugoslavia’s government, explicitly to trigger a 78-day-long NATO bombing campaign when Belgrade inevitably rejected the derisory non-deal.
However, London had good cause to believe Beirut would capitulate to its exorbitant demands. As exposed by this journalist, British intelligence has over many years conduct multiple clandestine operations to infiltrate Lebanese military, security and intelligence agencies at the highest levels, while inserting its operatives and allies into key state ministries. Each of these initiatives was supported by a dedicated memorandum of understanding between the two states, although their precise terms have never been publicly disclosed.
Britain has-long maintained a watchful eye on Hezbollah’s military wing from a GCHQ listening post on Cyprus’ Mount Olympus. October 2023 mainstream media reports justified this spying on the basis London was deeply concerned about the Resistance group attacking the Zionist entity. Did the British know Tel Aviv intended to launch an intensive air and ground campaign against Beirut, which came to pass a year later? Was the attempted occupation of Lebanon by British forces intended to prepare for that eventuality?
‘American Aegis’
With hindsight, there are unambiguous, deeply ominous insinuations that Britain has played a key role, both overtly and covertly, in shaping the theatre in West Asia for industrial scale upheaval ever since October 7th 2023. In addition to London’s opaque conniving in Lebanon pre-invasion, Bashar Assad’s government fell in Syria in December 2024. At the time, Benjamin Netanyahu took personal credit – but subsequent disclosures indicate MI6 were grooming Assad’s replacements, Al Qaeda and ISIS-offshoot Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, for power since at least 2023.
The obvious question is what Britain seeks to gain from unalloyed chaos endlessly reverberating throughout West Asia. To date, the “conflict with ramifications for much of the world” predicted with eerie foresight by Robert Peston’s intelligence sources on October 8th 2023 has redrawn borders, destabilised every state in the region, claimed countless lives, and wrought the possible onset of World War III. At the very least, one might think the damage inflicted to London’s domestic economy might be a deterrent to stirring up such trouble.
Yet, leaked documents indicate British military and intelligence planners are well-aware of the devastating financial impact their provocation and prolongation of overseas proxy wars has on average Britons, and remain unfazed. As exposed by The Grayzone, a secret Ministry of Defence cell dubbed Project Alchemy has resolved to “keep Ukraine fighting…at all costs” ever since the conflict erupted in February 2022, despite knowing anti-Russian sanctions would “hit British voters in the pocket” as long as they were in place.
Project Alchemy also masterminded Kiev’s war on Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. The concerted effort to destroy Moscow’s entire navy serves no military purpose from Ukraine’s perspective, as it has zero frontline implications whatsoever. It also, the cell acknowledged, has produced a “cost of living crisis” in Britain. But London has major geopolitical objectives in neutralising Russia’s regional presence and influence, in order to dominate the region under a wider intended “tilt” to the Indo-Pacific.
It must also not be forgotten that today’s standoff between Israel and Iran results from an August 1953 coup in Tehran. Orchestrated by MI6, it removed popular, democratically elected, anti-imperialist leader Mossad Mossadeq from power, and installed the brutal reign of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, which resultantly led to the 1979 Iranian Revolution and Islamic Republic’s creation. Due to Britain’s expulsion by Mossadeq, London had to rely on the CIA to do the bulk of the in-country work.
Initially, the Agency, along with the State Department and White House, was opposed to the plot. However, after falsely being led to believe by MI6 a well-developed plan with a certain chance of success had been drawn up, and the Eisenhower administration being offered a hefty chunk of BP’s profits once Mossadeq’s nationalisation of Iranian oil was reversed, the CIA acquiesced. Mossadeq’s removal was quite some victory. Towards the end of World War II, a Foreign Office official lamented how post-conflict Britain would “be expected to take her place as junior partner in an orbit of power predominantly under American aegis.”
Ever since, London’s political, military, intelligence and security apparatus has been overwhelmingly concerned with exploiting and manipulating that aegis for its own ends. The 1953 Iran coup showed MI6, and their controllers in London, precisely how to very effectively steer the bigger, richer, more powerful US Empire in directions of its own choosing. For the British, the past 60 years have been an unending battle to repeat that success.
Trump’s attack on Iran is ‘unconditional surrender’ to Israel
Aaron Maté, Jun 22, 2025, https://www.aaronmate.net/p/trumps-attack-on-iran-is-unconditional?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=100118&post_id=166521469&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=ln98x&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Shunning the US intelligence consensus, Trump and top principals rely on Israeli fraud to bomb Iran.
Since his election in 2016, Donald Trump’s political opponents have portrayed him as a dangerous, unstable fabulist doing the bidding of a malign, nuclear-armed foreign power.
Having returned to the White House this year, Trump is proving his detractors correct on all counts but one: the location on the map. The rogue state that he’s colluding with — at great peril to the planet — is not Russia, as his most vocal detractors alleged, but Israel.
Israel’s June 13th attack on Iran sabotaged the then-ongoing talks on a new nuclear deal with the United States, and Trump has gone to unprecedented lengths to support its aggression. Trump undercut his own Secretary of State’s claim that Israel had undertaken “unilateral action” by acknowledging that “we knew everything” in advance of what he called a “very successful attack.” Administration officials then disclosed that Trump had previously authorized giving Israel intelligence support for the bombing. Trump then called on Tehran’s 9.8 million residents to evacuate, mused about killing Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and declared that “we” – meaning Israel – “have complete and total control of the skies over Iran.”
After Iran rejected his demand for “unconditional surrender”, Trump imposed a new deadline of two weeks, only to break it three days later by ordering a US military attack on three Iranian nuclear energy sites, including the deeply buried mountain complex Fordo, which he quickly hailed as a “great success.” Just as with Trump’s diplomacy with Iran, his two-week deadline turns out to have been a ruse whose “goal was to create a situation when everyone wasn’t expecting it,” a senior administration official said.
To wage war on Iran, Trump and his allies have employed the traditional Iraq WMD playbook of ignoring or manipulating the available evidence to fear-monger about a foreign state marked for regime change. Unlike the Iraq war, where the fraudulent case for invading was mostly concocted in-house, Trump has outsourced the job to Israel, while not even pretending to care about public opinion or Congressional approval.
Back in March, the US intelligence community assessed that “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon” and “has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program… suspended in 2003.” According to US officials who spoke to the New York Times, “[t]hat assessment has not changed.” Moreover, the US has found that “not only was Iran not actively pursuing a nuclear weapon, it was also up to three years away from being able to produce and deliver one,” CNN reports, citing four sources.
Whereas Dick Cheney and company went through the trouble of nudging subordinates to fabricate intelligence, including via torture, Trump does not care about seeking their imprimatur. “[M]y intelligence community is wrong,” Trump told reporters on Friday. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt insisted that “Iran has all that it needs to achieve a nuclear weapon,” and, if authorized by Ayatollah Khamenei, “it would take a couple weeks to complete the production of that weapon.” In White House meetings, CIA chief John Ratcliffe has argued that Iran is close to a nuclear bomb and that claiming otherwise “would be similar to saying football players who have fought their way to the one-yard line don’t want to score a touchdown,” according to one US official who spoke to CBS News. (After the Iraq war, a “Slam dunk” basketball analogy is no longer available).
If Trump’s intelligence community is “wrong,” who does he think is right? As US officials told the New York Times, the claims from Trump and his circle “echoed material provided by Mossad,” Israel’s intelligence agency. And whereas some in the government, undoubtedly those close to Trump, “find the Israeli estimate credible”, others believe that “Israeli assessments have been colored by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s desire to gain American support for his military campaign against Iran.” Moreover, according to multiple officials, “[n]one of the new assessments on the timeline to get a bomb are based on newly collected intelligence,” but instead on “new analysis of existing work.” In other words, Trump is sidelining his own intelligence community to trust a “new analysis” that is based on no new information, just the manipulation of a foreign government.
Trump’s disdain for his own agencies is a particular slight to intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard. “I don’t care what she said,” Trump said this week, referring to Gabbard’s presentation of the US intelligence consensus on Iran in March. “I think they [Iran] were very close to having it.”
Rather than defend the agencies she oversees – and the record she earned challenging previous US-driven regime change deceptions — Gabbard has bent the knee to Trump, and Israel by extension. In a social media post, Gabbard chided “the dishonest media” for taking her March testimony “out of context.” The US, Gabbard now claimed, “has intelligence that Iran is at the point that it can produce a nuclear weapon within weeks to months, if they decide to finalize the assembly.” Gabbard also shared video of that March testimony, without addressing the contradictory fact that it does not include any mention of her newfound claim that Iran has the capability to produce a nuclear bomb “within weeks to months.”
Gabbard is engaging in disingenuous wordplay. If Israel tells America that Iran “can produce a nuclear weapon within weeks”, then yes, American intelligence now “has” that intelligence. That doesn’t mean it is true, or that American intelligence believes it, which it does not. A US official familiar with the available record on Iran tells me that there is no US intelligence assessment concluding that Iran is “weeks” away from building a nuclear weapon. Gabbard is only saying, therefore, that the US intelligence community has received “intelligence” from Israel, without mentioning that the IC does not actually endorse it.
Moreover, pretend for a moment that the Israeli claim is correct. Gabbard’s caveat of “if they decide to finalize” is an acknowledgment that Iran has not decided to build a nuclear weapon. That’s because Iran has said it does not want one, and is willing to commit to that in a binding agreement — the one they were negotiating with the US until Trump and Israel sabotaged it, and not for the first time. In fact, as US intelligence officials have also predicted, Trump’s bombing now increases the likelihood that Iran will pursue the nuclear bomb that it has long foresworn. Iran claims to have moved enriched uranium stockpiles prior to the US bombing, which preserves its capacity to weaponize.
Trump and Israel insisted, in the president’s words, on “unconditional surrender”: capitulation to maximalist US-Israeli demands that Iran end its uranium enrichment program, which it is entitled to have under the Non-Proliferation Treaty; and that it limit its arsenal of missiles. In other words, Trump and Netanyahu demanded that Iran agree to abandon its sovereignty and right to self-defense just as it is under attack from US-backed Israeli aggression; and all while US-backed Israeli mass murder in Gaza and annexation of the West Bank continues unimpeded.
Iranian officials did not surrender. Trump, by contrast, cannot say the same. By enabling its bombing campaign, parroting its deceptions, and now going to war against Iran on its behalf, Trump has already offered an unconditional surrender to Israel — a betrayal that grows more dangerous by the day.
Trump Announces ‘Successful’ Attack On Iranian Nuclear Sites
Trump said Iran must quickly make peace or he will authorize larger attacks
by Kyle Anzalone | Jun 21, 2025, https://news.antiwar.com/2025/06/21/trump-announces-successful-attack-on-iranian-nuclear-sites/
President Donald Trump announced on Saturday that the US has completed an attack on three nuclear sites in Iran.
“We have completed our very successful attack on the three Nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan. All planes are now outside of Iran air space. A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow,” the President wrote on Truth Social. “All planes are safely on their way home. Congratulations to our great American Warriors. There is not another military in the World that could have done this. NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
In an address to the nation, Trump said that Iran’s three main nuclear enrichment sites had been “completely obliterated.” Trump added that if “peace does not come quickly,” the US would conduct larger attacks soon.
Iranian state media downplayed the success of the strike, saying the personnel and nuclear material were removed from the facilities before the attack.
Fox News reporter Jennifer Griffin spoke with a “well-placed source” who did not believe the Esfahan facility was destroyed. “ There is no way they got in that tunnel It’s deeper than [Fordow]- and harder rock,” they explained.
Axios reporter Barak Ravid said an Israeli official confirmed that Tel Aviv was informed of the strike before the operation. He added that Trump had called him following the attack, with the message, “We had great success tonight. Your Israel is much safer now.”
Ravid is an Israeli who served in an Israeli Army intelligence unit.
Trump also called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after the strike.
Netanyahu posted a video message on social media Saturday night praising Trump’s decision to bomb Iran. “Congratulations, President Trump. Your bold decision to target Iran’s nuclear facilities with the awesome and righteous might of the US will change history.” The Israeli leader continued, “In operation Rising Lion, Israel has done truly amazing things. But in tonight’s action against Iran’s nuclear facilities, America has been truly unsurpassed. It has done what no other country on earth could do.”
Reuters reports speaking with a US official who confirmed B-2 bombers were involved in the attack. Earlier on Saturday, six B-2 bombers departed a US airbase in Missouri, with officials saying they were en route to Guam.
B-2s are capable of dropping the GBU-57A/B MOP, a 30,000-pound bunker-busting bomb, that some US officials believed to be capable of destroying Iran’s Fordow nuclear site.
Fox News host Sean Hannity said that six GBU-57s were used to strike Fordow. The nuclear facilities in Natanz and Esfahan were targeted with 30 submarine-launched Tomahawk missiles.
Shortly after announcing the attack, Trump posted an image from the “Open Source Intel” X account that claimed Fordow is gone. The owner of the account says he is based in Israel.
Following the attack, the Pentagon began warning US troops in the region that the stikes likely put them in danger of Iranian retaliatory attacks. Ken Klippenstein reports obtaining a briefing that said strike on Iran “will likely result in counterstrikes on US bases and facilities” in the Middle East, and “likely activate Iran and other foreign terrorist organizations cells abroad including the US to conduct strikes against US persons and facilities.”
In a post on Truth Social, Trump threatened that any Iranian response “WILL BE MET WITH FORCE FAR GREATER THAN WHAT WAS WITNESSED TONIGHT.”
The American strike follows Israeli requests that the US enter the war it started last week with Iran. Over the past week, Trump appeared convinced that Iran was weeks away from building a nuclear weapon, an intelligence assessment that originated with Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad. That message was amplified in the White House by CIA Director John Ratcliffe.
Trump Bombs Iran, Then Demands Iran Agree to End the War.
After the unprovoked attack, Trump demanded that Iran effectively surrender while continuing to threaten the country.
By Sharon Zhang , Truthout, June 21, 2025, https://truthout.org/articles/trump-bombs-iran-then-demands-iran-agree-to-end-the-war/?utm_source=Truthout&utm_campaign=4917bf90b8-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2025_06_22_07_19_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bbb541a1db-cb3a7b1ac8-650192793
resident Donald Trump announced on Saturday that the U.S. military struck three sites in Iran, in an unprovoked act of aggression. The strikes come after Israel launched its own unprovoked attack on Iran on June 13, leading to an all-out war between the two countries. The U.S. strikes mark a major escalation and threaten to bring further instability to the region.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump said that the U.S. has bombed three nuclear facilities in Iran, at Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan.
The Iranian government’s Atomic Energy Organization confirmed the strikes, saying that they “were attacked in a violent act against international laws, including the Non-Proliferation Treaty, by the enemies of Islamic Iran.” Regional Iranian officials also confirmed the strikes, as Iranian news outlets have reported.
Iran has not directly targeted U.S. bases with an attack thus far in its war with Israel. Still, in his post announcing the strikes, Trump also demanded that Iran effectively surrender.
“NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE!” he wrote. In a follow-up post, he said, “IRAN MUST NOW AGREE TO END THIS WAR.”
The strikes mark the U.S.’s official direct entry into the war, though the U.S. has provided Israel with support in its bombings on Iran and has also helped provide defense for Israel. The attacks come after politicians and war mongers in the U.S. have called for war with Iran for decades.
In a brief address on Saturday night, Trump layered further threats against Iran, saying that the U.S. would continue its strikes if Iran doesn’t “make peace.” He called Iran the “bully of the Middle East” and said the strikes had gone “a long way to erasing this horrible threat to Israel” — the state that, in addition to currently conducting a genocide in Gaza, has been relentlessly attacking and invading countries and territories around it for decades.
“This cannot continue. There will be either peace, or there will be tragedy for Iran far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight days. Remember, there are many targets left,” Trump said.
Numerous lawmakers slammed the strikes, saying that they are unconstitutional as domestic law prohibits the president from launching an unprovoked strike without approval from Congress. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) called for Trump to be impeached.
“The President’s disastrous decision to bomb Iran without authorization is a grave violation of the Constitution and Congressional War Powers. He has impulsively risked launching a war that may ensnare us for generations. It is absolutely and clearly grounds for impeachment,” said Ocasio-Cortez.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres condemned the strikes, and called for de-escalation and diplomacy.
“This is a dangerous escalation in a region already on the edge — and a direct threat to international peace and security. There is a growing risk that this conflict could rapidly get out of control — with catastrophic consequences for civilians, the region, and the world,” Guterres said.
Juan Cole: The Current Iran War Will Likely End Soon, But the Arms Race Will Heat Up
Regime change in Iran as a result of the US and Israeli attacks is unlikely. Even Iranians in the opposition are likely to rally around the flag.
America’s credibility as a negotiator and mediator is completely ruined, since Trump hit Iran in the midst of negotiations
It is still not clear to me that the ayatollahs’ longstanding opposition to nuclear weapons will change.
June 23, 2025
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Al Jazeera bureau chief in Tehran, Abdul Qader Fayez, reports from “informed sources” in Tehran that Iran’s clerical Leader, Ali Khamenei, and his National Security Council have still not decided how to respond to the US attack on Iranian civilian nuclear facilities, though they want the response to be appropriate to the damage done them.
Al Jazeera notes, “Fayez pointed out that this Iranian hesitation suggests a tendency to respond in a carefully considered strategic manner not based on momentary revenge, but rather on a more comprehensive approach that allows Tehran multiple options rather than drawing it into a specific tactical confrontation or a direct, ill-considered reaction.”
Fayez says that the Iranian elite is attempting to distinguish between Washington’s attack and the ongoing Israeli escalation, especially since the US bombardment was unprecedented.
I would add (this is Juan Cole speaking) that Iran is weak. It has lost control of its own skies and so is as helpless as Lebanon and Syria before the Israeli Air Force (and the American). Iran still has some drones and hypersonic missiles that can penetrate Israeli defenses, but although it is able to do some damage to Tel Aviv and Haifa, it isn’t anything the Israelis can’t survive.
The weapons of the weak are guerrilla warfare, covert operations and terrorism. The US and Israel do not have troops on Iranian soil, so a guerrilla war against them is difficult to mount. Moreover, Iran has a return address and so cannot pursue classic guerrilla warfare.
Iran can hit bases in the Middle East that host US troops, as it did in January 2020 after Trump assassinated Iranian General Qasem Soleimani. In that instance, Iranian commanders were careful not to kill the troops, though the latter did get severe concussions from the missile impacts. Such a response would be purely symbolic and for the sake of Iranian domestic politics, with no military significance. US troops in Iraq and Syria are particularly vulnerable to this sort of reprisal.
If Trump is speaking truly and the strikes really were a one-off, then the direct US-Iran engagement could subside quickly. Iran has no reason to want continued direct involvement with the US while it is facing an concerted Israeli campaign. It should be noted that in his first term Trump bombed Syria, then largely ignored the country except for the Obama-initiated defeat of ISIL in Raqqa. He bombed Afghanistan and then more or less surrendered to the Taliban. He bombed an Iranian general at Baghdad International Airport and watched Iran reply, but then went back to using economic sanctions. Trump has a history of splashy one-off bombings with no follow-through, and this episode could be just as transitory.
During the first Trump round of “maximum pressure” sanctions, Iran covertly set fires to petroleum tankers of the United Arab Emirates in the Gulf. But Iran now has good relations with the Arab Gulf states and is unlikely to take the American strikes out on them.
There may, however, be attacks on other oil pipelines or tankers of states with bad relations with Iran. Oil attacks would benefit Iran by raising the price of the petroleum it smuggles to China and by hurting the US and Israeli economies.
Terrorism is a possibility, but there is a danger it would be traced back to Iran, and it is bad for a country’s reputation, foreign relations, and economic affairs.
Regime change in Iran as a result of the US and Israeli attacks is unlikely. Even Iranians in the opposition are likely to rally around the flag. Some disgruntled ethnic minorities may attempt to take advantage of perceived state weakness, but they are small and cannot disrupt the Persian Iranian Plateau, the regime stronghold. If anything, the Israeli and US attacks may have extended the life of an oppressive government that is widely disliked inside the country but which can now claim to stand against powerful external foes dedicated to attacking and destroying the Iranian nation.
……………………………………………………………………………….. The hot war will end, but the Middle East arms race is with us for the foreseeable future, and the opportunities for Russia and China, should they want them, to play a bigger role in the region have expanded.
America’s credibility as a negotiator and mediator is completely ruined, since Trump hit Iran in the midst of negotiations, which a reader reminded me is a violation of the Hague Regulations of 1907 and was held against Japan in the attack on Pearl Harbor.
It is still not clear to me that the ayatollahs’ longstanding opposition to nuclear weapons will change. Many countries throughout the world, however, may now be tempted to go for a nuclear weapon, since the difference between North Korea on the one hand and Iraq and Iran on the other is glaringly clear.
Israel’s war with Iran costs $200M a day, raising pressure for swift end
Oh dear! – Killing people is so expensive!
Israel’s war with Iran is costing the country an estimated $200 million per day, according to early assessments reported by The Wall Street Journal—a staggering figure that is quickly becoming a major constraint on the duration of the conflict, Anadolu reports.
The most expensive burden is the interception of Iranian missiles, which alone can run into tens or even hundreds of millions daily, the WSJ reported on Thursday.
Systems like David’s Sling and Arrow 3—each interception costing between $700,000 and $4 million—have been activated repeatedly in response to over 400 missiles launched by Iran in recent days.
Offensive operations are also increasing costs. Deploying Israeli F-35s over 1,000 miles to hit targets in Iran costs approximately $10,000 per hour per jet, in addition to the price of precision bombs like JDAMs and MK84s.
Altogether, the Aaron Institute for Economic Policy estimates that a month-long war could cost Israel $12 billion.
“This war is far more expensive than Gaza or Hezbollah,” said economist Zvi Eckstein. “The ammunition—defensive and offensive—is the big expense.”
The economic pressure is leading to calls for a shorter war, though Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not indicated any intention to halt operations before achieving strategic objectives such as crippling Iran’s nuclear and missile programs.
While Israeli markets remain stable—some even rising—damage on the ground is mounting.
Engineers estimate that reconstruction costs from missile strikes will exceed $400 million, as hundreds of buildings have been damaged, and more than 5,000 civilians have been evacuated.
Israel’s largest oil refinery was temporarily shut down after being hit, and work in several critical infrastructure sectors has been suspended.
Former Bank of Israel Governor Karnit Flug told the WSJ that the duration of the conflict is key to economic sustainability: “If it is a week, it is one thing. If it is two weeks or a month, it is a very different story.”
Trump Has Bombed Iran. What Happens Next Is His Fault.
Caitlin Johnstone, Jun 22, 2025,https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/trump-has-bombed-iran-what-happens?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=166504460&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
The US military has bombed multiple Iranian nuclear sites on the orders of President Trump, immediately putting tens of thousands of US military personnel in the region at risk of an Iranian retaliation which can then escalate to full-scale war.
Earlier this month Iran’s Defense Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh explicitly warned the United States that a direct US attack would result in Tehran ordering strikes on US bases in the middle east, saying “all US bases are within our reach and we will boldly target them in host countries.”
In the lead-up to Trump’s act of war on Iran, the president told the press that an attack on American troops will mean a harsh response from the US, saying, “We’ll come down so hard if they do anything to our people. We’ll come down so hard. The gloves are off. I think they know not to touch our troops.”
Trump reiterated this threat to Iran in his announcement of the US attack today.
“There will be either peace, or there will be tragedy for Iran, far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight days,” Trump said. “Remember, there are many targets left. Tonight’s was the most difficult of them all, by far, and perhaps the most lethal. But if peace does not come quickly, we will go after those other targets with precision, speed and skill. Most of them can be taken out in a matter of minutes.”
So you can see how we might already be on our way toward a war of nightmarish proportions as a result of the president’s unprovoked act of aggression. Tehran now has to choose between reestablishing deterrence with extreme aggression or opening the floodgates to a whole host of existential threats from both outside and inside the country. Add to that the possibility of Iran blockading the Strait of Hormuz and the fact that Iran has now been strongly incentivized to actually obtain a nuclear weapon, and it looks very likely that we are plunging into a situation that could unfold in any number of horrific ways.
Right now American political discourse is rife with the narrative that the US has been “dragged” into Israel’s war, which I reject entirely. Every step of the way this entire thing has been signed off on by US leadership. We are at this point because Trump and his regime knowingly chose to take us here.
US troops within reach of Iran’s missiles are reportedly being briefed that they can expect to be on the receiving end of retaliatory strikes in the coming days.
Again, Iran explicitly warned it would attack the US military if the US military did the thing it just did. If and when these retaliatory strikes come, the warmongers will try to argue that this is a valid reason to escalate this war. They will be lying. They chose to make this happen.
Whatever transpires from this point on is the fault of Donald Trump and the unelected thugs he listens to. If US troops are killed, the war sluts in Washington and the Pentagon propagandists in the press will list their names and bandy about their photos and demand that their deaths be avenged with further acts of war — but it will not be Iran’s fault that they died.
It will be Trump’s fault. It will be the fault of everyone whose decisions led up to bombs being dropped on Iranian energy infrastructure, and the fault of everyone who put those soldiers in harm’s way.
None of this needed to happen. Iran was at the negotiating table. The Iran deal was working fine before Trump shredded it to put us on this terrible trajectory. The warmongers artificially manufactured this situation and knowingly inflicted this horror upon our world.
I am really not looking forward to all the melodramatic victim-LARPing if and when Iran kills US military personnel stationed in west Asia. The US is the only nation on earth that can rival Israel in its ability to play the victim when the ball they’ve thrown at the wall bounces back.
Ted Cruz Suggests US Is Involved in Israeli Strikes on Iran, Despite US Denials
“We are carrying out military strikes today,” Senator Cruz said in an interview.
By Sharon Zhang , Truthout, June 18, 2025, https://truthout.org/articles/ted-cruz-suggests-us-is-involved-in-israeli-strikes-on-iran-despite-us-denials/
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) was caught stumbling to answer basic questions about Iran and the U.S.’s role in Israel’s war in an eye-opening interview airing Wednesday, despite his full-throated support for overthrowing the Iranian government and deeper U.S. involvement in the fighting.
In clips of the interview with far right provocateur Tucker Carlson posted on social media on Tuesday, the senator alarmingly suggests that the U.S. is, in fact, already heavily involved in Israel’s strikes on Iran.
“We are carrying out military strikes today,” Cruz said. “I said we — Israel is leading them, but we’re supporting them.”
This directly contradicts what federal officials have said about the U.S.’s involvement. The State Department has said that Israel’s strikes are “unilateral,” and directed all embassies and consular posts to reiterate that claim in a cable, CBS reported on Sunday. The cable instructed officials to emphasize to their respective host governments that the U.S. “is not involved in Israel’s unilateral action against targets in Iran and did not provide tanker support.”
This position has not changed in recent days, as the strikes have intensified and President Donald Trump openly mulls becoming more deeply involved in the war. Numerous Trump administration spokespeople claimed on Tuesday that any reports of the U.S. participating in Israeli strikes in Iran are “not true.”
“American forces are maintaining their defensive posture, and that has not changed. We will defend American interests,” said spokesperson Alex Pfeiffer on Tuesday.
The U.S. military is already involved in the conflict. Officials have been open about the U.S.’s defensive positions in helping to strike down missiles fired at Israel.
However, direct U.S. involvement in conducting strikes on Iran, as Cruz suggests is happening, would be a major escalation of the war. Cruz’s statements potentially suggest that the U.S. is actually directly aiding in the bombings, as the Senate is privy to classified information about the military not available to the public.
“You’re breaking news here,” said Carlson. “This is high stakes, you’re a senator. If you’re saying the United States government is at war with Iran right now, people are listening!”
It’s possible that Cruz is suggesting deeper U.S. involvement to push the Trump administration into striking Iran, as many conservative lawmakers have done in recent days — in hopes of pushing the dangerous pipe dream of regime change in Iran.
“I think it is very much in the interest of America to see regime change,” Cruz told Fox News on Sunday. “I don’t think there’s any redeeming the ayatollah.”
Despite his confidence that he could install a better government in Iran, earlier in the interview, Cruz is caught unable to even name basic facts about Iran’s population.
“I don’t know the population,” Cruz says.
“You don’t know the population of the country you seek to topple?” Carlson asks, incredulously. “How could you not know that?”
In a follow up, Carlson says, “okay, what’s the ethnic mix of Iran?”
Cruz hesitates, then says, “they are Persians, and predominantly Shia,” he says, tellingly naming a religious sect rather than an ethnicity. When Carlson asks what proportion of the population is Persian, Cruz becomes incensed.
“I’m not the Tucker Carlson expert on Iran,” Cruz says sarcastically, his voice raised.
“You’re a senator who’s calling for the overthrow of the government!” Carlson exclaims in response.
The exchange highlights a rift among the right over the U.S.’s role in the Middle East. Carlson’s interview circulated widely online for exposing Cruz’s blasé ignorance of the country he wants to wage war against.
However, Carlson, who has consistently allied with white supremacists, himself owes much of his career to the figures who peddled the lies that led to the Iraq War. Early on, Carlson was a proponent of the U.S.’s invasion, and only changed his mind later because of racist beliefs that Iraq and Afghanistan aren’t “worth invading” because “the people aren’t civilized.”
This is, as commentators have noted, a drastically different approach to anti-interventionism from the left’s anti-war and anti-imperialist foundations. And yet, Carlson’s interview caught attention online as the right has sought to capitalize on genuine anti-war sentiment among the public that’s been completely dismissed by the Democratic Party.
The Guardian view on Israel, the US and Iran: you can’t bomb your way out of nuclear proliferation
The age of disarmament is over. But military action only increases the dangers instead of ending the threat.
Eighty years after the US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and 40 years after the US and Soviet Union pledged to reduce their arsenals, the threat of nuclear war has resurged with a vengeance. The age of disarmament is over, a prominent thinktank warned this week: “We see a clear trend of growing nuclear arsenals, sharpened nuclear rhetoric and the abandonment of arms control agreements,” said Hans M Kristensen of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
The world’s nine nuclear-armed states have amassed the equivalent of 145,000 Hiroshima bombs. Israel’s illegal attack upon Iran is purportedly a last-ditch attempt to prevent it joining this club – as Israel did long ago, though does not admit it. While Tehran possesses the capacity to develop a nuclear weapon if it chose to, US intelligence believes it has not made that decision – and would still need up to three years to build and deploy one. Israel does not appear to be striking Iran because US nuclear diplomacy has failed, but because it fears it might succeed. Many of its targets are unrelated to the nuclear programme, and some even to Iran’s military. Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly invoked regime change: more honestly, regime collapse.
Few believe Israel can destroy Iran’s nuclear programme without the US. The Israeli prime minister seeks to bait Donald Trump into joining this assault: if he can’t get one of the peace deals he wants, how about taking a military triumph? Mr Trump’s shifting rhetoric has suggested he is being dragged along, to the alarm of Maga isolationists and others who recognise the folly of seeing an easy win. But he may still hope to threaten Iran into a deal.
The bigger threat is nuclear proliferation globally. The remaining US-Russian nuclear arms control treaty, New Start, is due to lapse in February – leaving them without limits on their arsenals for the first time in half a century. Both are already pursuing extensive modernisation programmes. China is still far behind, but its armoury is growing fastest, at around 100 warheads a year. This month’s strategic defence review commits the UK to spending £15bn on new submarine-launched warheads and opens the door to the reintroduction of air-launched nuclear weapons. North Korea appears to be building a third uranium enrichment site. Taboos elsewhere are eroding, in an increasingly unstable world where impunity reigns. Support for an independent deterrent has soared in South Korea, no longer confident of the US umbrella.
Weapons are becoming not only deadlier, but riskier, with the integration of nuclear and conventional capabilities increasing the prospect of miscalculations. And potential flashpoints dot this bleak landscape. Russia has repeatedly talked up the threat of nuclear war in Ukraine – but that does not guarantee it is an empty one. India’s unprecedented use of Brahmos cruise missiles in last month’s clash with Pakistan signals a new and dangerous phase in south Asia’s strategic balance.
The 2003 US invasion of Iraq, coupled with the survival of North Korea, sent the message that the safest course is not to shun weapons of mass destruction but to pursue and cling to them at all costs. Attacking Iran, which limited its programme in exchange for sanctions relief, will only fuel that conviction. It may set back Tehran’s nuclear progress somewhat, but makes it more likely to rush for the bomb – and avoid the international scrutiny it previously accepted. Saudi Arabia and others would surely follow fast. Arab and Muslim countries have rightly denounced Israel’s strikes and called for disarmament “without selectivity”. The current crisis makes that look a more hopeless cause than ever – but is the clearest evidence of why it is needed in place of a nuclear race which can have no winners.
Going to war with China will be an unequivocal disaster for Australia
Perhaps the Honourable Minister should also be and remain quiet – or better still be removed from his portfolio – because he is doing nothing for the Labor cause; and seems to be actively attempting to reduce Labor’s chance at a second term. He should unequivocally realise that if Australia goes to war the Liberal mantra will become, ‘this is on you Labor, you dragged us into this war and it is up to the LNP to get us out.’
the US will not place any of its assets at risk in order to defend Australia, this should be fundamentally and clearly understood by the people of Australia.
19 June 2025 AIMN Editorial, By Dr Strobe Driver https://theaimn.net/going-to-war-with-china-will-be-an-unequivocal-disaster-for-australia/
“Up shit creek in a barbed-wire canoe, without a paddle”: The implausible direction Australia’s current Defence Minister is taking the country.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the above mentioned expression it means things are about as bad as they can get; likely to get worse; and are as it stands, a continuum of a disaster.
This is where Australia stands at the moment when examining Australia’s role in the Asia-Pacific; the rise of China; the ‘position’ this is placing Australia in terms of it being a ‘middle power’ in the region; the dependence on the United States of America (US) as an ally; and the way in which the current Defence Minister (the Honourable Richard Marles (MP) is approaching the current and future components of the regional strategic situations.
The spat between former prime minister Keating and the current Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Marles is ongoing and is far too detailed to go into here other than to mention Keating believes Marles has essentially ‘ceded Australia’s sovereignty’ to another country (the US); and Marles wants ‘strategic transparency from China in its regional military build-up’ and of course the well-worn argument that Australia will be dragged into a war should the US-China situation become ‘kinetic’ – in other words the fighting becomes real. So, with this in mind let’s ‘cut to the chase’ and figure out how Australia would actually ‘fair’ in the outbreak of a war with China and utilise some rationale.
First and foremost, and as I have previously stated in my book The Brink of 2036, the US having sought and gained assurance that Australia is its ‘closest ally’ decides it will ‘go after’ China over its retrocession claims on Taiwan and a war breaks out – the question that begs is, what does that make Australia? This makes Australia an enemy of China and therefore, the Chinese military is now legally entitled to strike Australia.
China would veto any and all conversation in the UNSC (as it is a Permanent Five (P5) member) and use all of its legal powers to circumvent any and all United Nations’ debate about its use of force against US allies. Secondly, the US will not place any of its assets at risk in order to defend Australia, this should be fundamentally and clearly understood by the people of Australia. The US may come to Australia’s aid – it will utilise discretion – however, should it be deemed necessary, it will only enter into any and all aspects associated with the protection of Australia when its assets are not at a high risk of destruction/incapacitation. Where does this leave Australia? One could safely argue a dyad: alone, unless the US’ intervenes.
For the purpose of this essay war has been declared and therefore, a perspective is needed.
The most telling perspective is that Australia faces a rising power and bearing in mind China has continued its rise exponentially since circa-2010, as before that one could safely argue its rise was only incremental, and thus, it is now a major regional power – soon to become a global one. Hence, Australia will have become the enemy of an enormously powerful country.
What then, would said country do to its middle-power regional enemy? There are no surprises here as it is being played out by Israel in the Gaza strip; and the Russian Federation in Ukraine and moreover, it is exceedingly visible; and easy-to-understand. As a side issue, though an important one, and just to strike further terror into the hearts of Australians, the US and Russia as members of the P5 have shut down through the power of veto any and all conversation about whether Israel’s incursion into Gaza and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are not warranted. One need not even bother to assume what pathway China will take in its war/fight with Australia. With this in mind let’s move towards China’s kinetic tactics on Australia.
As with any war the first things that need to be destroyed are ‘bases and bridges.’ Bases because they house personnel and vital equipment and bridges which essentially refer to anything (not just bridges over a waterway) that equipment can be transported from in order to get ‘to’ a place/location. China with its significant and enormous amount of missiles and the ability to place them through assets (submarines in particular), will fire hundreds of them into Australian assets – some for advantage and some for ‘publicity,’ that is to say, ‘here’s what we can do.’ The former will be RAAF bases, RAN and RAA bases with a single focus on maintenance and repair facilities; and the latter will be major railway lines (the Ghan; Indo-Pacific; and north east coast public lines); and then major highways the Bruce Highway in particular, will be targeted as will the Darwin-Adelaide highway.
As with any war the first things that need to be destroyed are ‘bases and bridges.’ Bases because they house personnel and vital equipment and bridges which essentially refer to anything (not just bridges over a waterway) that equipment can be transported from in order to get ‘to’ a place/location. China with its significant and enormous amount of missiles and the ability to place them through assets (submarines in particular), will fire hundreds of them into Australian assets – some for advantage and some for ‘publicity,’ that is to say, ‘here’s what we can do.’ The former will be RAAF bases, RAN and RAA bases with a single focus on maintenance and repair facilities; and the latter will be major railway lines (the Ghan; Indo-Pacific; and north east coast public lines); and then major highways the Bruce Highway in particular, will be targeted as will the Darwin-Adelaide highway.
As with any war the first things that need to be destroyed are ‘bases and bridges.’ Bases because they house personnel and vital equipment and bridges which essentially refer to anything (not just bridges over a waterway) that equipment can be transported from in order to get ‘to’ a place/location. China with its significant and enormous amount of missiles and the ability to place them through assets (submarines in particular), will fire hundreds of them into Australian assets – some for advantage and some for ‘publicity,’ that is to say, ‘here’s what we can do.’ The former will be RAAF bases, RAN and RAA bases with a single focus on maintenance and repair facilities; and the latter will be major railway lines (the Ghan; Indo-Pacific; and north east coast public lines); and then major highways the Bruce Highway in particular, will be targeted as will the Darwin-Adelaide highway.
The Honourable Defence Minister should cease and desist with his current monologue and political ineptness toward China and should be upfront with the Australian people in what will happen, should we go down this ‘rabbit hole’ of exceptionalism in the region; and yet, willingly yet aimlessly back the US. Australia will become a failed state if we go to war and it is timely to remind the Australian public there are (approximately) as many personnel in the NYPD as there are personnel in the Australian Defence Force.
Perhaps the Honourable Minister should also be and remain quiet – or better still be removed from his portfolio – because he is doing nothing for the Labor cause; and seems to be actively attempting to reduce Labor’s chance at a second term. He should unequivocally realise that if Australia goes to war the Liberal mantra will become, ‘this is on you Labor, you dragged us into this war and it is up to the LNP to get us out.’
The level of political-ineptness and downright political-maladroitness shown by this minister is however nothing new, as Australia seems to have had a cavalcade of utterly hopeless defence ministers over the past three decades. The real problem this time is this one is politically stupid-to-the-core when Australians need astute, articulate and well-defined decision-making.
Meanwhile, China continues to plan its ongoing rise to ‘pax-Sino’ and we have someone at the helm who is plainly and insufferably politically incompetent when there is a dire need to truly understand the milieu of Australia’s defence needs.
‘Punishment phase’ explained: The punishment phase of aerial bombardment is designed to ‘inflict enough pain on enemy civilians to overwhelm their territorial interests’ and in doing so induce surrender, or hasten total defeat. See: Robert Pape. Bombing To Win: Air Power and Coercion in War. New York: Cornell University Press, 1996, 59.
Dr Strobe Driver – Strobe completed his PhD in war studies in 2011 and since then has written extensively on war, terrorism, Asia-Pacific security, the ‘rise of China,’ and issues within Australian domestic politics. Strobe is a recipient of Taiwan Fellowship 2018, MOFA, Taiwan, ROC, and is an adjunct researcher at Federation University.
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