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Walt Zlotow – Fanatical US Iran war supporters must stop fantasy Iran attacked US 47 years ago

Walt Zlotow  West Suburban Peace Coalition  Glen Ellyn IL 8 Oct 26, https://theaimn.net/fanatical-us-iran-war-supporters-need-to-stop-fantasising/

During my 75 years following US justifications for waging senseless war, I’ve never heard anything as bizarre as that supporting the current senseless war on Iran.

Trump’s war defenders claim Iran has been waging war on America for 47 years beginning with the US embassy hostage takeover in November 1979. During the intervening 47 years, Iran has killed thousands of US miliary personnel in the Middle East. They condemn all preceding presidents beginning with Jimmy Carter for not defending against Iran’s dastardly war on America. They praise Trump for finally confronting Iran head on in a war of existential threat to our homeland.

This narrative is repeated endlessly on conservative media, even the floor of Congress. In arguing against a War Powers Resolution to end Trump’s deranged Iran war that may crash the world economy, Montana Sen. Tim Sheehy said, “We didn’t start this war, we did not. But we will finish it. Democrats were right to call the conflict a war of choice, but the choice was made by Iran’s regime decades ago — not by Trump. It’s a war of choice that was begun by a radical, lunatic band of terrorists that took over a beautiful nation 47 years ago. This regime that we are fighting does not care about our partisan politics, don’t care who you voted for, who you pray to, or where you live. They want to kill all of us. And they don’t just say it, they actually do it. And they’ve been doing it for 47 years.”

Somehow, Sen. Sheehy missed that it was President Trump repeatedly threatening to wipe out the entire Iranian civilization; indeed, even before the United Nations General Assenbly. It was Trump who sucker punched Iran with bombs while negotiating peace in June 2025, and again in all out war on February 28 this year. After twice being deceived with bombs, Iran fought back ferociously, essentially defeating the most murderous, duplicitous regime on earth.

In truth, it’s America that has been at war with Iran for decades and a lot longer that 47 years. One must go back 73 years to Operation Ajax, America’s first Iran regime change operation, which toppled the legitimate Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953 to retain British, US control of Iranian oil. Once deposed, the US installed Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, to serve US interests in perpetuity. For the Iranian people it meant the Shah’s brutal rule enabled by the US military and CIA which killed upwards of 10,000 anti Shah dissidents.

After twenty-six years the Iranian people forced the Shah to flee in February 1979, allowing the transition from monarchy to an Islamic Republic.

Had President Carter not allowed America’s three decade puppet ruler to seek refuge in the US, there would likely never been the November 4, 1979 takeover of the US embassy by 500 students resulting in taking 66 US hostages for 444 days.

Shortly thereafter the new Iranian government made 3 reasonable demands of the US, that if granted, would likely have promptly returned the hostages.

Most important was return of the Shah, a mass murderer, to face justice in Iran. Second, a US apology for the ’53 US coup that overturned Mosaddegh and installed the Shah’s brutal rule. Third, return of the $20 billion the Shah stole and the US seized after the revolution.

Besides quick return of the 66 hostages, there would have been no failed April 1980 rescue mission that killed 8 service members.

But the hard liners in the Carter administration led by National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski would have none of that, setting off 47 years of endless US machinations in behest of every US administration and Israel to complete the second Iranian regime change in 73 years.

No, Iran has never attacked the US or been at war with the US…until President Trump bombed an Iranian school, killing over a hundred little girls on the first day of his deranged, criminal war to depose the Iranian regime at the behest of Israel.

Instead of diplomacy, common sense, peace, Trump gives us war, death, economic decline, possible global economic collapse. And he justifies this madness with the fantasy that the victim has been the aggressor for 47 years.

October 13, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The Peril of Trump’s Final Act: Would He Use a Tactical Nuclear Weapon in Iran?

The real straits of Trump are dire: He is trapped in a war that has already been lost, a reality that he will never allow himself to admit. Under Republican control, the House has voted repeatedly to end the war. With Democrats likely to take the majority in the midterms, Trump faces the prospect minimally of investigative hearings that will bare the true extent of the losses, costs, and internal military opposition to his folly. He has to find a way to declare victory and get out, and soon.

Trump is trapped in a war that has already been lost, a reality that he will never allow himself to admit.

Robert L. Borosage, https://www.thenation.com/article/world/trump-iran-war-tactical-nuclear-weapon/

Donald Trump is trapped: His war of choice against Iran is lost, an abject strategic catastrophe. Now Trump has to choose: sustain another forever war until Iran breaks, a strategy his own generals oppose, or produce a grand finale to get out without admitting defeat. And there is the rub.

Reality has shattered Trump’s conceits. Instead of a few days, the war has lasted six months and counting. Instead of regime change and popular uprising, the Iranian regime stands with new hardened leadership. Instead of another display of US military prowess, the US military has been driven out of major bases across the region, stockpiles of vital offensive and defensive missiles have been depleted, and the US Navy has been overstretched and exhausted.

And Iran keeps ratcheting up the pressure. It controls the Strait of Hormuz, and its Houthi allies have just seized control of the alternative route through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and blown up Saudi Arabia’s key east-west pipeline. Crude oil is now over $110 per barrel and rising; the price of diesel—the fuel of commerce—is at record levels. The cost of fertilizer, fuel, and virtually anything that requires transport is going up, with the global economy at risk.

In response, Trump grows ever more delusional. “The failing Nation of Iran,” he claims, “wants to make a deal, quickly and badly.” He suggests that Iran is waiting until after our midterm elections to sue for peace, at which point the price of gasoline will “drop like a rock.” Then he muses that we might just stay in Iran: “We’ll ultimately get out, unless we decide to stay and keep the oil like Venezuela.” He turned to Oman as a mediator on reopening the Strait of Hormuz and then threatened that if it “gets in the way, we’ll bomb the shit out of them.”

He dismisses the war as “small potatoes,” claims full control of the Strait, suggests that the “Countries of the World…should and will reimburse the United States of America when this SCAM Confligration [sic] is over,” and jokes that he might rename the Strait “Trump Strait,” saying, “I should get something out of it.”

The real straits of Trump are dire: He is trapped in a war that has already been lost, a reality that he will never allow himself to admit. Under Republican control, the House has voted repeatedly to end the war. With Democrats likely to take the majority in the midterms, Trump faces the prospect minimally of investigative hearings that will bare the true extent of the losses, costs, and internal military opposition to his folly. He has to find a way to declare victory and get out, and soon.

Many experts report that the United States and Israel are gearing up to launch another full-scale operation, probably just after the US midterms. The Trump administration has just approved a $2.8 billion Israeli arms package that includes 40,000 bombs, half of which are 2,000-pound bombs. Even so, skeptics question how much a new bombing wave could achieve, given the depletion of US weapons stocks, naval power, and base support, without the use of nuclear weapons.

And that caveat makes the situation truly alarming.

Recently released satellite photos are said to show renewed construction activity under Iran’s remote Pickaxe Mountain. Heavily fortified underground facilities are thought to be located there beneath hundreds of meters of solid granite rock, a ceiling deemed impenetrable by conventional weapons. This makes it a natural spot for Iran to rebuild its nuclear program. Trump recently warned that the US would be bombing the mountain “very soon.”

At the same time, Hegseth’s Pentagon has been moving to integrate tactical nuclear weapons into conventional war strategy. The aim, as Under Secretary of Defense Elbridge Colby put it in the chilling language of the megadeath intellectuals, is to provide “credible, rational nuclear options that a President of the United States adopting the simple principle of being a normal human being with common sense would actually implement.”

The United States, the only country ever to drop a nuclear weapon, has repeatedly refused to adopt a “no first use” policy. The president has sole authority to order the use of a tactical nuclear weapon. Neither Congress nor the public would be given prior notice. Would Trump use a tactical nuclear weapon on relatively isolated Pickaxe Mountain in Iran as his exit line?

According to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, using a nuclear weapon against a non-nuclear nation is a violation of international customary law. But Trump, as his noxious deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, infamously asserted, dismisses international law and treaties as “international niceties,” arguing that “the real world…is governed by strength, by force…by power.” Trump boasts that the only limit on his international power is “one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”

Long-standing US policy, reaffirmed in the Trump administration’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, states that the United States “will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states that are party to the NPT [Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty] and in compliance with their nuclear nonproliferation obligations.” This promise extends to over 190 countries, including Iran —at least until last week, when the Trump administration pushed through an International Atomic Energy Agency resolution declaring Iran in violation of its obligations under the treaty. Iranian analysts warned, probably correctly, that the move presaged an imminent attack on Iranian nuclear facilities.

Dropping a nuclear weapon on Iran would not only be criminal; it would be incredibly dumb. Iran would respond by unleashing an assault on oil and desalination and energy platforms across the Emirates and an unprecedented assault on Israel.

It would also set off a race for nuclear weapons, as countries across the globe would understand that the reason Iran was targeted and not North Korea is that the latter has nuclear weapons and the former does not. Trump made that clear when he bizarrely told the zealots gathered at the Republican Midterm Convention that if Iran had nuclear weapons, “I’d be calling the supreme leader, and I’d be saying, ‘Mr. Supreme Leader, how are you, sir?  Is there anything we can do for you?’ as opposed to bombing the crap out of him.” As one commentator noted, the video of that could serve as a nuclear proliferation promo ad.

Use of a tactical nuclear weapon would set a precedent for Russia or China to invoke if they chose to use or threaten the use of nuclear weapons against Ukraine or Taiwan or other adversaries. It would put the nuclear arms race, already gaining dangerous momentum, into hyperdrive. And it would indelibly brand the US as a dangerous, pariah nation, feared but despised across the globe.

For these and other reasons, it is hard to imagine any president making that decision. But Trump, trapped, desperate, angry, delusional, intent on punishing his enemies and displaying his prowess, could well be tempted. And the anticipated Democratic election victories this fall will corner him—and that will make him even more dangerous, as we saw with the sacking of the Capitol after his 2020 loss in the presidential race.

These harrowing prospects should intensify efforts to bring the war to an end, and to warn clearly against escalation. The war is already opposed by a growing majority of Americans. Congress will be out of session until the midterms, but citizens can make certain that candidates are pressed on this issue as they campaign. Editorialists should weigh in against escalation. China’s President Xi, slated to meet with Trump in September, could put ending the war high on the agenda. US Arab allies in the region have an existential stake in avoiding a final cataclysm in this misbegotten war and should both demand restraint from the US and intensify negotiations with Iran and its Houthi allies. Recently, progress toward a settlement on Iranian “administration” of the Strait of Hormuz was interrupted by the Houthi offensive in Yemen and attacks on Saudi Arabia. European leaders could play a role, publicly warning Israel’s Netanyahu not to sabotage negotiations.

The last weeks of reduced military activity and apparent stalemate have been misleading. The economic costs of the war—now with oil transport through both Hormuz and the Red Sea constricted—are escalating. The pressure on Trump to escalate, to unleash another round of bombing in order to declare victory and get out, is rising. Without a concerted movement toward a settlement, the unimaginable is becoming more conceivable.

September 21, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Trump Is Planning Round Three of the US-Israeli War Against Iran — But Will Tehran Strike First?

In conversation with Trita Parsi, Executive Vice President of the Quincy Institute

Ian Proud, Sep 11, 2026, https://thepeacemonger.substack.com/p/trump-is-planning-round-three-of?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3221990&post_id=215182894&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

This conversation with Trita Parsi, Executive Vice President of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, was recorded before President Trump promised Americans $5,000 if he wins the midterms. That pledge does not change the argument. It sharpens it. With round three of the US-Israeli war against Iran looming, the big question is who will strike first?

Trita argues that the slow military escalation and economic warfare now under way are not the third round of the war against Iran. They are the preparation for it.

In his view, the United States and Israel are planning a much larger campaign after November. Trump believes he has already tried diplomacy, sanctions and what might generously be called limited war. What he has not tried is the menu of threats he issued and then abandoned: taking an island, striking desalination plants, hitting critical infrastructure.

After the midterms, Trita fears, that is the direction he will go. Israel is likely to be part of it. Washington kept the Israelis out of round two because it did not trust them to stay inside the box. If the United States no longer wants a box, Trump and Netanyahu may have another crack, despite prior efforts having proved a catastrophic failure.

That, Trita argues, is why Iran is hitting American bases in Jordan. Those sites matter because they help shoot down missiles bound for Israel. Tehran is clearing the path so that, when round three comes, more of its missiles get through.

The obvious objection is that Trump may emerge from the midterms a bruised lame duck. Trita does not think that restrains him. American institutions, he says, are weaker now than ever before. Congress has shown no appetite to defund the war. A Democratic House, and perhaps a Democratic Senate, would mean impeachment of Trump and a president playing defence at home.

However, that is when Trump has been most reckless before. After he lost to Biden in 2020, Mark Milley later said his fear was that Trump would look for an Iran war to block a peaceful transfer of power. He did not get that war. He got 6 January instead. Humiliation makes Trump dangerous, rather than cautious.

But the problem is that Tehran understands this and can see how critical the midterms will be to Trump’s power in the second half of his term. Trita therefore thinks there is a high likelihood that Iran starts the third round of the war a week or two before the midterms, to inflict the maximum political cost on Trump.

That may well damage Trump at the polls. But it may also leave him with fewer constraints and a taste for risk.

The escalation trap is now familiar. Washington reads every tactical gain — more oil leaving the Gulf, a weaker Iranian economy — as proof that time is on its side.

Trita’s warning is the opposite. If the squeeze actually works, Iran will not crumble. It will escalate. It has the options which it is demonstrating daily. Even if Iran fully reopened the Strait of Hormuz, the United States would not lift the blockade. The key demand on the American side has ratcheted up to state collapse, which appears no more likely to happen now than in February.

The Pentagon talks of bombing Iran periodically to degrade its ability to close the Strait. That is not a strategy, but rather “mowing the lawn”.

Yet, no one will be able to sell this war as a victory if in practice it means an on-off air campaign and no diplomacy as the world economy sinks further into depression. Which brings us back to the midterms and the fact that Trump may find that, despite the inducement of a $5000 bribe, many Americans will realise that what they need is a new lawnmower.

You can watch the full conversation here:

You can find Trita’s analysis on his Substack: tritaparsi.substack.com.

Wherever you are in the world, whatever your nationality and religion, I wish you much peace.

September 14, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment