What does the US want from Iran? Tracking one month of Trump’s changing demands.
After saying the US would attack if protesters were harmed, the president appears now to be tying the threat of airstrikes to Iran’s nuclear programme.
Jonathan Yerushalmy, Thu 29 Jan 2026 , https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/29/trump-iran-usa-one-month-demands-protesters-nuclear
Donald Trump has warned that Iran must come to the table to negotiate a deal over its nuclear programme or face the possibility of airstrikes and regime change, capping off a month of bellicose posturing and whiplash inducing u-turns from the US president.
The US president’s demands threaten to open a new chapter in America’s long and tumultuous relationship with Iran, which in just over a decade has seen rapprochement, broken deals, targeted assassinations and unprecedented airstrikes.
Here’s a recap of just the last 31 days:
29 December : ‘We’ll knock the hell out of them’
At the end of December, Trump suggested that Iran was “building up weapons” again, just six months after the US launched unprecedented strikes against the country’s nuclear sites.
Speaking beside Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Florida, Trump said if Iran was working to build up again “we’ll knock the hell out of them. But, hopefully, that’s not happening.” He added that the consequences of such a move would be “more powerful than the last time”.
After Netanyahu suggested that Iran may be attempting to rebuild its nuclear programme, the country’s foreign minister called for renewed talks with the US.
2 January: ‘We are locked and loaded and ready to go’
After Iranians took to the streets in the largest national demonstrations in years, Trump said that if protesters were killed, the US would “come to their rescue”.
“We are locked and loaded, and ready to go,” he said.
The unrest, triggered by an unprecedented decline in the value of the national currency, prompted a renewed escalation in tensions between the US and Iran.
6 January: ‘Make Iran Great Again’
Days after Trump launched strikes on Venezuela and captured the country’s president Nicolás Maduro, Trump was pictured posing with a “Make Iran Great Again” hat.
With protests in Iran spreading and reports of dozens dead, Trump again said that if Tehran “violently kills peaceful protesters” the US would “come to their rescue”.
10 January: ‘The USA stands ready to help!!!’
As the reported death toll in the protests soared into the hundreds, Trump was said to be weighing a response. “Iran is looking at FREEDOM, perhaps like never before. The USA stands ready to help!!!,” the US president said on the Truth Social platform.
The speaker of Iran’s parliament warned that Israeli and US interests in the Middle East would be “legitimate targets” if Washington attacked Iran.
13 January: ‘Help is on its way
Trump announced new 25% tariffs on countries that do business with Iran, but there was no official documentation from the White House and it appears they were never implemented.
Amid reports of a brutal regime crackdown on the protesters, Trump had initially claimed Iran wanted to negotiate, but later went on to say that he had cancelled all meetings with officials.
“Iranian Patriots, keep protesting – take over your institutions!!! … help is on its way,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Tuesday.
14 January: ‘The killing in Iran is stopping’
Despite reports that as many as 3,428 Iranians had been killed and that executions as punishment were imminent, Trump said he had been told that “the killing in Iran is stopping … And there’s no plan for executions.”
It was understood he had reviewed the full range of options to strike Iran but was unconvinced by any single action. His administration had also been lobbied by Middle Eastern allies not to go ahead with strikes, with fears that an attack would lead to a major and intractable conflict across the region.
In the days that followed the huge protest movement slowed under the weight of the regime’s brutal crackdown. Mass arrests followed and many Iranians said they felt betrayed and confused by the president’s sudden about turn.
22 January: ‘We have a lot of ships going that direction’
After several days which saw Trump distracted by anti-ICE protests in Minneapolis and a breakdown in relations with European allies over the fate of Greenland, Trump returned to the issue of Iran, saying “We have a lot of ships going that direction, just in case.”
With the death toll from the protests now said to be more than 5,000 – and reports it could be many times higher than that – Trump’s decision to send the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and several guided-missile destroyers to the Middle East were thought to be in response to the regime’s brutal crackdown.
28 January: ‘Time is running out’
With US ships now in position in the Middle East, Trump issued an extraordinary threat to Iran, saying of the armada, “like with Venezuela, it is, ready, willing, and able to rapidly fulfill its mission, with speed and violence, if necessary.”
Warning that Iran must “make a deal”, Trump said that the country would have “NO NUCLEAR WEAPONS”.
The statement marked a shift in his administration’s rationale for sending the armada to the region, with no mention of the protesters, their demands or the regime’s brutal crackdown.
Trump May Launch Strikes on Iran — Regime Change, Not Nukes, Is the Goal.
January 30, 2026, By Joshua Scheer, https://scheerpost.com/2026/01/30/exclusive-trump-may-launch-strikes-on-iran-regime-change-not-nukes-is-the-goal/
A Drop Site News exclusive reports that senior U.S. military officials have informed the leadership of a key Middle Eastern ally that President Donald Trump could authorize direct military strikes on Iran as early as this weekend, with targets potentially extending beyond nuclear and missile facilities to include senior Iranian leadership — a push some strategists say aims at precipitating regime change rather than merely halting Tehran’s military programs. This after new sanctions were placed on Iran by the US treasury department.
With Drop Site reporting “This isn’t about the nukes or the missile program. This is about regime change,” said a former senior U.S. intelligence official who consults for Arab governments and is an informal advisor to the Trump administration on Middle East policy. He told Drop Site that U.S. war planners envision attacks that target nuclear, ballistic, and other military sites around Iran, but will also aim to decapitate the Iranian government, and in particular the leadership and capabilities of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The IRGC is a branch of the Iranian armed forces created after the country’s 1979 revolution whose leadership now plays a major role in the country’s politics and economy.
Trump not sharing that regime change is part of the plan posted “Hopefully Iran will quickly ‘Come to the Table’ and negotiate a fair and equitable deal – NO NUCLEAR WEAPONS – one that is good for all parties,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “Time is running out, it is truly of the essence!”
From Senator John Cornyn: in a foregin realtions meeting with Rubio: Cornyn stating: “I know the President is being presented with a range of options. We’ve noticed a lot of movement into the region by our Navy… but what happens if the Supreme Leader is removed in Iran?”
From Marco Rubio: “We have to have enough force and power in the region to defend against the possibility that, at some point, as a result of something, the Iranian regime decides to strike at our troop presence in the region.”
“I hope it doesn’t come to that, but I think what you’re seeing now is the effort to posture assets in the region to defend against what could be an Iranian threat against our personnel.”
This came from Department of War head Pete Hegseth during a recent Cabinet meeting: the Iranians “have all the options to make a deal,” he said. But if the goal is purely regime change, what deal is even possible? Hegseth also claimed that the war in Ukraine and the October 7 massacre “would not have happened” if Trump had been in power.
Iranian officials have made clear that they would respond with a major counterstrike using all means necessary if the U.S. attempts a Venezuela‑style operation or, worse, targets Iranian leadership — a scenario that has regional allies deeply concerned about the risk of a wider war. With Iran’s misison to the UN tweeting…..
While the region waits Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi stated in Istanbul saying about the above issue “The Islamic Republic of Iran, just as it is ready for negotiations, it is also ready for war,”
adding:
“Our position is exactly this: Applying diplomacy through military threats cannot be effective or constructive,” Araghchi told journalists Wednesday outside of a Cabinet meeting. “If they want negotiations to take shape, they must abandon threats, excessive demands and the raising of illogical issues.”
Looking at Iran’s past stance versus what could be coming, a recent interview sheds some light with Dr. Foad Izadi, a professor at the University of Tehran, telling Drop Site that in the past:
“a number of high-ranking military officials … made the decision to inform the United States when they were attacking the U.S. bases.”
“The idea was basically trying to ride out the Trump administration, not to confront him in a serious manner, respond to him, but respond in a very limited style so they don’t start a huge war with the United States,” he said. “This was their decision. And they were killed in June,” during the 12-day bombing campaign unleashed against Iran by the U.S. and Israel.”
The report comes amid escalating U.S.–Iran tensions that have woven together diplomatic brinkmanship, regional alliances, and conflicting strategic priorities. While U.S. and Israeli forces previously carried out coordinated strikes on Iranian nuclear sites in 2025 — prompting retaliatory missile barrages and suspending negotiations — the Trump administration has continued to oscillate between threats of further military action and claims it prefers a negotiated settlement over Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
International concern is growing, with Arab states urging restraint to prevent a wider regional conflagration, even as Tehran signals readiness for both talks and defense in the face of mounting pressure.
With at least two nations, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, have made it clear they will not allow their airspace to be used for any potential U.S. strike on Iran. Yet the United States has moved the USS Abraham Lincoln and several guided-missile destroyers into the region, assets capable of launching attacks from the sea. Egypt’s Foreign Ministry emphasized diplomacy, with top diplomat Badr Abdelatty engaging both Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and U.S. Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff to “work toward achieving calm, in order to avoid the region slipping into new cycles of instability.”
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Oman, and Qatar have all been in contact with Washington and Tehran, warning that any escalation could destabilize the region and disrupt energy markets. Arab and Muslim states fear that even a limited U.S. strike could provoke immediate retaliation from Tehran, potentially targeting regional or American interests and causing collateral damage. Saudi Defense Minister Khalid bin Salman, currently in Washington for high-level talks, reinforced this message, noting on social media that he discussed “efforts to advance regional and global peace and stability” with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and other top U.S. officials. With Saudi prince Khalid bin Salman tweeting from the west wing:
This is a developing story, but in Washington, it feels like the only ones pushing it are Trump and his allies. The Saudis are calling for calm, Israel is en route to the capital, and the only thing anyone can predict is that more fuel might soon be thrown on an already blazing fire. Tensions are high: Iran warns it will strike at the heart of Tel Aviv, and whispers of war are spreading across Israel.
The memories of past conflicts remain sharp for Israelis. The latest round of threats between Tehran and Washington has stirred anxiety and put the country on edge. During previous wars, Israel’s air defenses were remarkably effective—but citizens still ran for shelter at the sound of sirens, and the fear of another confrontation has only intensified in recent weeks.
As U.S. warships draw closer, Israeli headlines have been dominated by speculation over a potential American strike on Iran—and the grim expectation that Israel, as the closest U.S. ally in the region, would bear the first wave of retaliation.
Some towns are reopening public bomb shelters. Airlines are canceling flights, hotels are seeing reservations vanish, and citizens are stockpiling food and water. Yet the government and the Home Front Command—Israel’s alert system based on real-time security intelligence—have issued no special guidance.
Without official word, rumors flourish. Both Trump’s and Iran’s statements are heavy on drama, light on specifics, and in Israel, everyone knows “someone who knows something.” Daily chatter revolves around alleged knowledge of a U.S. strike—hours or days away—and debates over whether to cancel travel or postpone events.
In the end, nobody—neither in Tehran nor Tel Aviv—can say for sure what’s coming next.
What we all know is this: war is bad for humans, and our leaders don’t care.
As Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’ presses forward, Palestinians in Gaza fear what lies ahead.
“I’m afraid that this committee will be the thing that enforces Trump’s plan on Gaza to turn our homeland into a place that’s not for us,
Mondoweiss spoke with Gazans after the announcement of the Palestinian technocratic committee that will oversee Gaza under Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’. While some hope for change, many fear the committee will ultimately serve U.S. and Israeli interests.
Mondoweiss, By Tareq S. Hajjaj January 27, 2026
On January 22, the long-awaited Palestinian technocratic committee, which is set to administer Gaza under the direction of the U.S. President Donald Trump’s so-called ‘Board of Peace’, was finally announced.
In his first address to the people of Gaza, the committee’s director, Ali Shaath, said that the Rafah crossing with Egypt, which has been unilaterally closed by Israel since May 2024, will be reopened in both directions. The announcement went viral in Gaza, and brought to the forefront a flurry of questions on the minds of Gazan society right now.
Is Trump’s plan for Gaza actually moving forward? What kind of power will this committee actually have? Will Israel actually allow for this next phase of the so-called “ceasefire” to move forward? What comes next for the people of Gaza?
And while Hamas has officially welcomed the committee and expressed its commitment to handing over administrative power in the Strip to the committee known as the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), people in Gaza are nevertheless skeptical over how and when a transfer of power will happen, and whether the committee will actually produce positive results for Gazans, or be just another tool in Israeli and U.S. domination.
“The committee will not end the crisis immediately, but at least there is a committee that has a green light from the U.S. and mediators to make a difference,” Anwar Abu Jabal, 33, a Gaza resident, said.
Abu Jabal, like many in Gaza, is primarily concerned with reconstruction, and who is going to be able to change the daily living conditions of the millions of people living in tents and bombed-out buildings. He hopes that the committee will be able to rebuild Gaza, or at least, play a role in it. But he remains skeptical and distrustful of the U.S. role in overseeing the committee.
“We have hope in this committee to rebuild Gaza, especially as it is supported by Trump. However, the same reason we put our hope in this committee can be used against us, because Trump does not care about people in Gaza. We hope this committee cares and starts to get us back to our places first,” he said.
For Abu Jabal and others, the presence of familiar names in Gaza on the committee, like Husni al-Mughanni, a well-known tribal leader in Gaza, provides some hope or reassurance that the committee may help alleviate the suffering of Gazans. “We all in Gaza want one thing: to live in safety and stability, and to have our needs and requirements met without hardship or suffering,” Abu Jabal said.
Others, in fact, most of the Palestinians in Gaza that spoke to Mondoweiss, are not as hopeful. Many Gazans, like 21-year-old Moaz Zayed, a resident of Nuseirat refugee camp, are concerned about the ultimate control that Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’, of which Israel is a member, has over Gaza and the Palestinian NCAG.
“If this committee’s power is confined to managing crossings and aid trucks, then it’s nothing but a play [by the U.S. and Israel] to lead people to think that Palestinians in Gaza have a government now, and that their issues are [being solved],” Zayed said, likening the committee to the ceasefire, which has continuously been violated by Israel since it went into effect, to little international attention or outrage.
To him, while reconstruction is important, opening the Rafah crossing and allowing in aid is secondary to Israel withdrawing its troops from Gaza, the return of all the displaced people to their homes on the Israeli-occupied side of the ‘yellow line’, and the guarantee of safety and basic human rights for Palestinians in Gaza in their own homeland – none of which, he pointed out, is currently guaranteed.
“I’m afraid that this committee will be the thing that enforces Trump’s plan on Gaza to turn our homeland into a place that’s not for us,” Zayed said. “Where are they? Why are they not here in Gaza among the people? My biggest fear is that this committee will be working and ruling the Gaza Strip according to Trump’s and Israel’s instructions.”
Israel’s role
While reactions and attitudes in Gaza towards the committee are mixed, there is one sentiment that all Gazans share: the feeling of near certainty that Israel will sabotage any kind of progress for Gaza.
Abdel Hadi Farhat, a journalist from the Gaza Strip, points out that Israel did not adhere at all to the first phase of the ceasefire, and that there is no guarantee it will adhere to the second phase, which includes the work of this newly formed committee………………………………………………………………………………………………………..https://mondoweiss.net/2026/01/as-trumps-board-of-peace-presses-forward-palestinians-in-gaza-fear-what-lies-ahead/
The Justifications For War With Iran Keep Changing
The justifications for war with Iran keep changing. First it’s nukes, then it’s conventional missiles, then it’s protesters, and now it’s back to nukes again. Kinda seems like war with Iran is itself the objective, and they’re just making up excuses to get there.
As the US moves war machinery to the middle east and holds multi-day war games throughout the region, President Trump and his handlers have been posting threats to the Iranian government on social media warning them to “make a deal” on nuclear weapons.
The following appeared on Trump’s Truth Social account on Wednesday:
“A massive Armada is heading to Iran. It is moving quickly, with great power, enthusiasm, and purpose. It is a larger fleet, headed by the great Aircraft Carrier Abraham Lincoln, than that sent to Venezuela. Like with Venezuela, it is, ready, willing, and able to rapidly fulfill its mission, with speed and violence, if necessary. Hopefully Iran will quickly “Come to the Table” and negotiate a fair and equitable deal — NO NUCLEAR WEAPONS — one that is good for all parties. Time is running out, it is truly of the essence! As I told Iran once before, MAKE A DEAL! They didn’t, and there was “Operation Midnight Hammer,” a major destruction of Iran. The next attack will be far worse! Don’t make that happen again. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP”
It’s interesting that we’re back on the subject of needing to bomb Iran because of nuclear weapons, given that just a couple of weeks ago we were being told it was very, very important for the US to bomb Iran because of Iran’s mistreatment of protesters. Earlier this month Trump was openly saying “Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING — TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!!… HELP IS ON ITS WAY” while issuing threats to the Iranian government not to respond violently to the uprising. The president then backed off of these threats, reportedly at the urging of Benjamin Netanyahu who told him Israel needed more time to prepare for war.
Prior to that, Trump was saying he would bomb Iran if it continued expanding its conventional missile program. Asked about reports that the US and Israel were discussing plans to strike Iran to stop it from building on its ballistic missile arsenal and reconstructing its air defenses that were damaged in the Twelve Day War, the president told the press “I hope they’re not trying to build up again because if they are, we’re going have no choice but very quickly to eradicate that buildup.”
The US justified its airstrikes on Iranian energy infrastructure during the Twelve Day War by citing concerns that Tehran was building a nuclear weapon, after which Trump confidently proclaimed that “All three nuclear sites in Iran were completely destroyed and/or OBLITERATED. It would take years to bring them back into service.”
And yet here we are a few months later back on the subject of nuclear weapons, with the US president citing urgent concerns over nukes to justify its renewed brinkmanship with Iran.
I kinda think they’re lying to us, folks.
Trump’s October 10 ceasefire, Board of Peace, simply continues Israeli Palestinian genocide in slow motion.
Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL , 26 Jan 26
That was some ceasefire Trump negotiated with Israel October 10. Since then Israel has killed nearly 500 Palestinians with bullets and bombs. Many more are likely dead from starvation and disease as Israel lets in less than 170 trucks of food daily instead of the required and promised 600. ‘Ha ha…little nourishment for you starving Palestinians.’
Water, medicine, everything needed to sustain life is restricted to drive out the beleaguered living in makeshift tents. Why tents? Israel, with over 50,000 tons of Biden, Trump bombs, pulverized over 80% of all Gaza buildings, including over 90 % of all housing. Likely over 10,000 Gaza corpses are rotting under the 60 million tons of rubble including over 9 million tons of hazardous material. Ceasefire notwithstanding, Israel has knocked down or damaged over 2,500 post ceasefire buildings.
In order to force Palestinians from Gaza, Israel has reopened the Rafah Crossing between Gaza and Egypt. But it’s Israel’s version of a reverse Roach Motel. Palestinians can check out…but they can never check back into their rightful homeland. Every Palestinian that leaves, along with every Palestinian shot, bombed or starved to death, is one less pesky Palestinian to get rid of in absorbing Gaza into Greater Israel.
Israel has exploited the ceasefire to occupy over 50% of Gaza territory, shooting any Palestinian who strays over or close to Israel’s yellow boundary lines.
Astonishingly, the UN Security Council’s November 17 Resolution 2803 (2025) certified Trump’s Board of Peace which effectively makes Trump Gaza’s ruler, totally excluding Palestinian involvement. In doing so it upends over 70 years of UN resolutions and requirements that Palestinians in Gaza have the right to live and govern their homeland free from subjugation; indeed annihilation.
Why did this Security Council resolution pass? Simple, Trump essentially blackmailed Council members that it was either Trump’s ceasefire and Board of Peace, excluding Palestinians, or he would greenlight continuing the horrific 2 year bombing obliteration of Gaza and its citizens till they were all dead and gone. .
Israel, with US support, will never allow a Palestinian state in Gaza the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The horrific daily slaughter may be reduced to a trickle, but it will continue indefinitely till every Palestinian in Gaza is gone.
Trump’s ceasefire and Board of peace have the additional benefit to both Israel and Trump administration of removing the daily ethnic cleansing of Gaza from mainstream media coverage. They have moved on to more dramatic foreign hotspots in Venezuela, Iran and Greenland as well as Trump’s ICE thugs murdering fellow citizens in Minneapolis
Israel and the Trump administration’s slow motion genocide of Palestinians in Gaza should be opposed by all decent, moral nations and persons as fervently as their opposition to the preceding two yearlong all out genocide. Trump’s ceasefire and Board of Peace has put lipstick on the pig of Israeli genocide destroying Palestinians in Gaza.
US military moves Navy, Air Force assets to the Middle East: What to know
Trump says US ‘armada’ is heading towards the Gulf, raising fears of a military escalation in the region.
Aljazeera, By Yashraj Sharma, 25 Jan 2026
A United States aircraft carrier strike group is heading towards the Gulf as tensions build with Iran.
The US military last staged a major build-up in the Middle East in June – days before striking three Iranian nuclear sites during Israel’s 12-day war with Tehran.
This month, US President Donald Trump backed antigovernment protesters in Iran. “Help is on its way,” he told them as the government cracked down. But last week, he dialled down the military rhetoric. The protests have since been quashed.
So what are the US military assets moving to the Gulf? And is the US preparing to strike Iran again?
Why is the US moving warships?
Trump said on Thursday that a US “armada” is heading towards the Gulf region with Iran being its focus.
US officials said an aircraft carrier strike group and other assets are to arrive in the Middle East in the coming days.
“We’re watching Iran. We have a big force going towards Iran,” Trump said.
“And maybe we won’t have to use it. … We have a lot of ships going that direction. Just in case, we have a big flotilla going in that direction, and we’ll see what happens,” he added.
The aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln changed its path from the South China Sea more than a week ago towards the Middle East. Its carrier strike group includes Arleigh Burke-class destroyers equipped with Tomahawk cruise missiles capable of striking targets deep inside Iran.
The US military vessels en route to the Middle East are also equipped with the Aegis combat system, which provides air and missile defence against ballistic and cruise missiles and other aerial threats.
When Washington hit Iran’s nuclear sites, US forces reportedly launched 30 Tomahawk missiles from submarines and carried out strikes with B-2 bombers.
When asked on Thursday if he wanted Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to step down, Trump replied: “I don’t want to get into that, but they know what we want. There is a lot of killing.”
He also reiterated claims that his threats to use force stopped authorities in Iran from executing more than 800 people who had taken part in the protests, a claim denied by Iranian officials.
An unnamed US official told the Reuters news agency that additional air defence systems were being considered for the Middle East, which could be critical to guard against an Iranian strike on US bases in the region.
Iranian state media said the protests killed 3,117 people, including 2,427 civilians and members of the security forces.
How widespread is the US military presence in the Middle East?
The US has operated military bases in the Middle East for decades and has 40,000 to 50,000 soldiers stationed there.
According to the Council on Foreign Relations, the US operates a broad network of military sites, both permanent and temporary, at at least 19 locations in the region.
Of these, eight are permanent bases, located in Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
The first US deployment of soldiers in the Middle East was in July 1958 when combat troops were sent to Beirut. At its height, almost 15,000 Marines and Army soldiers were in Lebanon.
The US naval movement towards Iran was ordered despite a new National Defense Strategy being released on Friday. The document is drawn up every four years by the Department of Defense, and the latest security blueprint outlines a pullback of US forces in other parts of the world to prioritise security in the Western Hemisphere.
How has Iran responded?
Ali Abdollahi Aliabadi, who heads coordination between Iran’s army and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, warned on Thursday that any military strike on Iran would turn all US bases in the region into “legitimate targets”.
General Mohammad Pakpour, the commander of the Revolutionary Guard, said two days later that Iran is “more ready than ever, finger on the trigger”.
He warned Washington and Israel “to avoid any miscalculation”……………………………………………………………………………………………. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/1/25/us-military-moves-navy-air-force-assets-to-the-middle-east-what-to-know
The Funeral of Hegemony
How America’s Decision to Attack Iran Would Be Strategic Suicide
Ibrahim Majed, Jan 25, 2026, https://ddgeopolitics.substack.com/p/the-funeral-of-hegemony?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1769298&post_id=185644623&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
n American attack on Iran would not be a limited military operation, a punitive strike, or a calibrated act of deterrence.
It would represent a strategic rupture, a point at which accumulated American power begins converting itself into cascading liabilities. This is not a moral argument, nor is it a humanitarian one, it is more like a balance-sheet assessment of empire.
The question is not whether the United States can strike Iran. It can, and we’ve seen it. In June 2025, American warplanes joined Israel’s twelve-day campaign against Iranian nuclear facilities. Tehran struck back at a U.S. base in Qatar. The damage was extensive on both sides.
The question is what the United States loses the moment it does so again, and this time, without a ceasefire to stop the bleeding.
What follows is not ideology, but an autopsy written before the patient is declared dead.
The Liquidation of ‘FOB Israel’
For decades, Washington has not treated Israel merely as an ally, but as a Forward Operating Base, an unsinkable aircraft carrier, an intelligence nerve center, and the technological anchor of U.S. power projection in the Middle East.
A war with Iran inverts this logic.
Iran’s response would not be symbolic or theatrical. It would be functional. Through what Tehran describes as the Unity of Arenas, a coordinated strategy of simultaneous pressure across multiple fronts, retaliation would be applied with a singular objective: rendering Israel operationally unreliable as a base.
This doctrine is not a myth. It was first operationalized in 2021 during the Saif al-Quds war, when a joint command structure coordinated operations between Hamas, Hezbollah, and other Iranian-aligned groups. The concept matured through 2023 and 2024, expanding the geography of confrontation to encircle Israel from Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.
If airports are disrupted, ports degraded, and civilian life in Israel’s economic and technological core placed under persistent stress, the asset ceases to function as an anchor. The United States would no longer project power from Israel, it would divert power into Israel merely to keep it viable.
At the moment of maximum strategic need, Washington loses its most valuable regional platform.
And then the anchor chain is cut.
The Trap of Strategic Overstretch
The U.S. military is built for dominance through speed, precision, and overwhelming force. Iran is built for endurance.
It will not fight where the United States is strongest. It will fight in time, depth, and dispersion, and force escalation without resolution.
The June 2025 strikes exposed this dynamic. Iran acknowledged extensive damage to its nuclear infrastructure. But within months, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi was claiming that Iran had “reconstructed everything that was damaged.” Whether true or not, the statement illustrated Iran’s strategy: absorb the blow, reconstitute, and wait.
Once engaged, Washington faces a structural dilemma: it cannot disengage without reputational collapse, yet it cannot remain without accelerating exhaustion. Every escalation deepens commitment. Every deployment degrades readiness. Every month consumes forces needed elsewhere.
The U.S. military currently maintains approximately 50,000 troops across bases in the Middle East. The USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group has just been diverted from the South China Sea, the very theater where America’s strategic future will be decided, and is now steaming toward the Gulf.
Iran seeks defeat by entropy—the slow erosion of capacity through overuse.
This is how empires bleed.
Economic Hemorrhage
A war with Iran would not be financed through shared sacrifice. It would be financed through monetary expansion and debt.
The consequences are predictable: inflationary pressure, rising energy costs, and the diversion of capital away from domestic resilience. Infrastructure, innovation, and social cohesion would erode as resources are consumed by a conflict offering no strategic return.
The Strait of Hormuz remains the world’s most critical energy chokepoint. Roughly one-fifth of global oil consumption passes through its narrow waters. Iran has long threatened to mine or close the strait in the event of war, and this threat grows more credible as conflict intensifies.
Tehran could also target energy infrastructure across Gulf states: pipelines, terminals, refineries. The resulting supply disruptions would send shockwaves through global markets, punishing American allies in Europe and Asia far more than the United States itself.
The empire would stabilize its periphery by hollowing out its core. History is unforgiving to systems that consume their own interior to preserve external dominance.
The China Dividend
The greatest beneficiary of a U.S.–Iran war would not be Iran. It would be China.
While Washington’s strategic nervous system is absorbed by escalation management in the Middle East, Beijing gains freedom of maneuver. The Indo-Pacific becomes secondary. Influence expands. Partnerships deepen. American deterrence thins.
This calculus is openly acknowledged in Beijing. As one prominent Chinese scholar at Renmin University recently observed: “Washington’s deeper involvement in the Middle East is favorable to Beijing, reducing Washington’s ability to place focused attention and pressure on China.”
The arithmetic is brutal. If the United States deploys two carrier strike groups off the coast of Iran, and it can only maintain three on station globally at any given time, that leaves one for the entire Pacific theater. Taiwan. The Philippines. Japan. All left with diminished coverage.
Every missile expended in the Gulf is one unavailable in East Asia. Every carrier tied down is one removed from Pacific balance.
In a zero-sum system, China collects the dividend without firing a shot.
Unconventional Retaliation
Perhaps the most underestimated consequence of attacking Iran is retaliation by actors who are not Iranian at all.
A U.S. strike would not be perceived globally as a bilateral conflict. It would be read as a hegemonic act and a signal that force remains Washington’s primary language. This perception would activate a diffuse ecosystem of anti-hegemony actors: ideological extremists, decentralized cells, and radicalized individuals scattered across continents.
They require no coordination, no command structure, and no attribution. The danger is not scale, but diffusion. American embassies, corporations, logistics nodes, and symbolic targets would face persistent, low-intensity pressure worldwide. Deterrence fails when the enemy is not a state but an environment.
This is the empire’s nightmare: a world where American presence itself becomes the trigger.
The Collapse of Credibility
Power ultimately rests on belief.
If the United States initiates a war it cannot conclude, fails to secure trade routes, exports inflation to allies, and generates instability rather than order, confidence erodes. Allies will hedge, partners will diversify, and rivals will start to probe.
The June 2025 campaign was supposed to demonstrate resolve. Instead, it demonstrated limitations. Six months later, western-backed protests have erupted across all 31 Iranian provinces, and the regime still stands. The strikes did not produce regime change. They did not eliminate the nuclear program. They did not deter reconstruction.
If the most powerful navy in history cannot impose decisive control over critical chokepoints, if it cannot translate kinetic superiority into political outcomes, the myth dissolves.
The emperor is revealed, not as weak, but overextended.
The Self-Inflicted Defeat
The final assessment is brutally simple. The greatest threat to American power is not Iran’s missile program. It is the American decision to attack it.
By doing so, the United States would neutralize its forward base, exhaust its military, hollow out its economy, accelerate China’s rise, and globalize resistance to its presence.
Empires do not collapse only when defeated. They collapse when they choose wars that consume them faster than their rivals.
In the case of Iran, this would not be miscalculation, it would be strategic suicide.
The Gratuitous Barbarity of Trump’s So-Called ‘Board of Peace’
Like Bush and Blair planning the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Trump is planning to systematically violate the UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions, and especially the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention, which guarantees protection for civilians in war zones or under military occupation.
It is perhaps no wonder that Trump and Blair see eye to eye on Palestine, as they share the same ignorance, egotism and inhumanity, and the same disdain for international law.
In the fantasy being pushed by Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, and Jared Kushner, Palestinians appear only as an absence, buried beneath the rubble of the real Gaza.
Medea Benjamin, Nicolas J.S. Davies, Jan 23, 2026, Common Dreams
At the opening ceremony for Donald Trump’s so-called Board of Peace in Davos, Jared Kushner unveiled glossy images of his vision for a “new Gaza”: shining apartment towers, luxury developments, and sweeping views of the Mediterranean. There were no Palestinians at the ceremony—and none on the Board of Peace itself. In Kushner’s fantasy, Palestinians appear only as an absence, buried beneath the rubble of the real Gaza.
But how, exactly, are Palestinians to be “demilitarized” and pacified to make way for this Riviera of the Middle East? The assassination of Gaza’s Khan Younis police chief in a drive-by shooting this January offers a chilling clue. It was not an isolated act of lawlessness, but an ominous signal of what lies ahead. As Israeli-backed Palestinian militias openly take credit for targeted killings, the United States is reviving a familiar, deadly—and thoroughly discredited—playbook from Iraq and Afghanistan, in which death squads, night raids, and “kill or capture” missions are cynically repackaged as stabilization and peace.
Gaza is now being positioned as the next laboratory for this model, under the banner of Donald Trump’s so-called “peace plan,” with consequences that history has already shown to be catastrophic.
That strategy was laid bare on January 12th, 2026, when Lieutenant-Colonel Mahmoud al-Astal, the police chief of Khan Younis in Gaza, was assassinated by a death squad based in the Israeli-occupied part of Gaza beyond the “yellow line.” A militia leader known as Abu Safin immediately took credit for the killing, which he said was ordered by Shin Beit, Israel’s anti-Palestinian spy agency.
Another Israeli-backed militia, reputedly linked to ISIS, killed a well-known Gaza journalist, Saleh Al-Jafarawi, in October. That militia’s leader, Yasser Abu Shabab, was disowned by his family for running a pro-Israel death squad and was killed on November 4th, reportedly by one of his own gang.
These Israeli-run death squad operations follow a similar pattern to the targeted killings of Iraqi civil society leaders as resistance grew to the hostile US military occupation of Iraq in 2003 and 2004. But as they did in Iraq and Afghanistan, these targeted killings are likely to grow into a much more systematic and widespread use of death squads and military “kill or capture” night raids in the next phase of Trump’s “peace” plan.
President Trump has announced that the so-called “International Stabilization Force” (ISF) in Gaza will be under the command of US Major General Jasper Jeffers, who was, until recently, the head of US Special Operations Command. Jeffers is a veteran of “special operations” in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the US occupation responded to widespread armed resistance with death squad operations, thousands of airstrikes, and night raids by special operations forces that peaked at over a thousand night raids per month in Afghanistan by 2011.
But like Israel’s Palestinian death squads during the first stage of Trump’s “peace” plan, the US mass killing machines in Afghanistan and Iraq began on a smaller scale.
For an article in the New Statesman, published on March 15, 2004, British journalist Stephen Grey investigated the assassination of Abdul-Latif al-Mayah, the director of the Baghdad Centre for Human Rights and the fourth professor from al-Mustansariya University to be killed. Professor al-Mayah was dragged out of his car on his way to work, shot 20 times and left dead in the street. A senior US military spokesman blamed his death on “the guerrillas,” and told Grey, “Silencing urban professionals… works against everything we’re trying to do here.”
On further investigation, Grey discovered that it was forces within the occupation government, not the resistance, that killed Professor Al-Mayah. An Iraqi police officer eventually told him, “Dr. Abdul-Latif was becoming more and more popular because he spoke for people on the street here… There are political parties in this city who are systematically killing people. They are politicians that are backed by the Americans and who arrived in Iraq from exile with a list of their enemies. I’ve seen these lists. They are killing people one by one.”
A few months later, retired Colonel James Steele, a veteran of the Phoenix program in Vietnam, the US war in El Salvador and the Iran-Contra scandal, arrived in Iraq to oversee the recruitment and training of new Special Police Commandos (SPC), who were then unleashed as death squads in Mosul, Baghdad and other cities, under command of the Iraqi Interior Ministry.
Steven Casteel, who ran the Iraqi Interior Ministry after the US invasion, was the former intelligence chief for the US Drug Enforcement Agency in Latin America, where it worked with the Los Pepes death squad to hunt down and kill Pepe Escobar, the leader of the Medellin drug cartel.
In Iraq, Steele and Casteel both reported directly to US Ambassador John Negroponte, another veteran of US covert operations in Vietnam and Latin America.
Just as John Negroponte, James Steele and Steven Casteel brought the methods they learned and used in Vietnam and Latin America to Iraq, Jasper Jeffers brings his training and experience from Iraq and Afghanistan to Gaza, and will clearly bring other special operations and CIA officers with similar backgrounds into the leadership of the so-called International Stabilization Force (ISF).
The ISF, as described in Trump’s “Peace Plan,” is supposed to be an international force that would provide security, support a new Palestinian police force, and oversee the demilitarization and redevelopment of the Gaza Strip. But the Arab and Muslim countries that originally showed an interest in contributing forces to the ISF all changed their minds once they understood that this would not be a peacekeeping mission, but a force to hunt down and “disarm” Hamas and impose a new form of foreign occupation in Gaza.
Turkey wants to send troops, but so far, Israel has objected, and the other countries that have expressed interest, such as Indonesia, say there is no clear mandate or rules of engagement. And what Muslim country will send forces to Gaza while Israel controls over half of the territory and moves the “Yellow Line” even deeper into Gaza?
Even if some Arab and Muslim countries are persuaded to join the ISF, the most difficult and politically explosive job of actually destroying Hamas will most likely be in the hands of the US and Israeli Special Ops commanders, the mercenaries they bring in and the death squads they recruit.
We can expect to see General Jeffers and his team provide more training and direction to Palestinians already collaborating with Israel in death squad operations, and try to recruit more militia members from current and former Palestinian Authority security forces in the West Bank and from the Palestinian diaspora.
CIA and JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command) officers with experience in death squad operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are likely to oversee these operations from the shadows, using the same “disguised, quiet, media-free approach” that senior US military officers hailed as a success in Central America as they adapted it to the “war on terror” and the “war on drugs.”
For political reasons, Jeffers will probably use JSOC officers mainly for training and planning, and employ private military contractors to conduct night raids and other combat operations. Along with the huge expansion of US and allied special operations forces in recent US wars, there has been a proliferation of for-profit military contractors that employ former special operations officers from US and allied countries as unaccountable mercenaries.
These privatized forces have already been deployed in Gaza, notably by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Its food distribution sites became death traps for desperate, hungry people forced to risk their lives just to try to feed their families. Israeli forces and mercenaries killed at least a thousand people at and around these sites.
The tens of thousands of Americans and others who took part in night raids in Iraq or Afghanistan and special operations in other US wars have created a huge pool of experienced assassins and shock troops that Jeffers can draw on, with for-profit military and “security” firms serving as cut-outs to shield decision-makers from accountability. More routine functions, such as manning checkpoints, can be delegated to other ISF forces, military police veterans and less specialized mercenaries.
The appointment of General Jeffers to command Trump’s ISF, and Israel’s formation and deployment of Palestinian death squads during the first phase of Trump’s phony peace plan, should be all the red flags the world needs to see what is coming—and to categorically reject Trump’s obscene plan before it goes any farther.
Like Bush and Blair planning the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Trump is planning to systematically violate the UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions, and especially the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention, which guarantees protection for civilians in war zones or under military occupation.
Tony Blair’s role in Trump’s plan is further evidence that the plan has nothing to do with peace and everything to do with the Western imperialism that keeps rearing its ugly head around the world, and which has bedevilled Palestine for more than a century.
Appointing Blair to any role in governing Gaza ignores not only his role in US and British aggression against Iraq, but also his lead role in the U.K. and EU’s decision, in 2003, to abandon earlier efforts to bring Palestinian factions together in the interest of Palestinian unity. Instead, they adopted a militarized, “counterinsurgency” strategy toward Hamas and other Palestinian resistance groups. Blair’s failed policy helped pave the way for Hamas’s election victory in 2006, and for the endless, US-backed Israeli violence against Gaza ever since.
It is perhaps no wonder that Trump and Blair see eye to eye on Palestine, as they share the same ignorance, egotism and inhumanity, and the same disdain for international law. But the savage methods used by US special operations forces and US-trained death squads to kill hundreds of thousands of people in Afghanistan and Iraq only fueled broader resistance, which ultimately drove U.S occupation forces out of both countries.
The same tactics will lead to the same failure in Gaza. But unleashing such horrific violence on the already desperate, starving, unhoused, captive people of Gaza is a policy of such gratuitous barbarity and injustice that it should compel the whole world to come together to put a stop to it.
The Magic System Of Zionism
Caitlin Johnstone, Jan 24, 2026, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-magic-system-of-zionism?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=185598042&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
If I spoke critically of something abusive that India was doing in Kashmir, would you expect me to be accused of an anti-Hindu hate crime?
If you criticized an Indian military operation, would you have to preface it with “I don’t hate Hindus or their religion and am not the slightest bit Hinduphobic”?
If there was worldwide opposition to something that Indian military forces were doing, would you expect western governments to start frantically churning out laws to ban that opposition because it was making members of the Hindu community feel unsafe?
Would it ever in your wildest imaginings occur to you that a criticism of the violent actions of the government of India could in any way be interpreted as an attack on the Hindu faith and the membership of that religion?
You can probably see where I’m going with this.
You don’t expect to see criticisms of the state of India framed as an attack on its majority religion because people in your society haven’t been conditioned to have that expectation. But we have been conditioned to have that expectation about Israel.
The association between antisemitism and criticism of the state of Israel isn’t natural. It’s not something that would organically occur to an untrained mind.
If a man who’d never heard of Israel or Palestine were shown footage of the genocide in Gaza, he would reflexively recoil in horror and say what he was looking at was a bad thing. If somebody then ran up and explained to him that what he just said was actually a hateful act of religious persecution, he would be very surprised and confused. Because he hadn’t been indoctrinated into making that association, in the same way you haven’t been indoctrinated into associating criticism of the Indian government with an attack on the religion of Hinduism.
It’s a completely counterintuitive association. There’s nothing about it that that you could find your way into through your own observation and reasoning. It’s something you’d need to be taught by others. You need it to be explained to you.
That’s the literal translation of the Hebrew word “hasbara”. It means “explaining”. Israel and its supporters have spent decades “explaining” to the world that criticism of the state of Israel is actually a terrible hate crime against Jews and their religion, because otherwise it would never occur to a normal person that that is the case.
It’s actually astonishingly impressive. The political ideology of support for this tiny apartheid state has been so effective at explaining to the world what thoughts they should think about it that those efforts touch all our lives. It’s so effective that you could be at a social gathering all the way across the sea in the United States and, unless you are very familiar with the people around you, if the subject of Israel comes up you’ll immediately understand that you could be in for a very uncomfortable evening.
It’s stunning how much influence this ideology has had throughout our society’s culture and institutions. It’s almost magical.
There was a segment in last year’s Louis Theroux documentary The Settlers that stuck with me where Israeli settler leader Daniella Weiss refers to Zionism as a “magic system”.
“Jewish settlements in Gaza is a very difficult step that demands a lot of work,” Weiss told Theroux. “You have to influence the leftists, the government, the nations of the world, using the magic system: Zionism.”
It isn’t surprising to learn that Weiss views her operations as a kind of magic. On paper she and her ilk shouldn’t be able to do what they do. Forcefully dropping a foreign ethnostate on top of a pre-existing civilization and violently hammering it into place against every organic impulse of the region is freakish enough, but then convincing the rest of the world to support this? To the point that it actually affects our interpersonal relationships and interactions on the other side of the planet? It shouldn’t work. But it does.
I don’t really know what magic is, but it makes sense that some Zionists would see it that way. Because from the outside looking in all that mass-scale psychosocial manipulation kind of does look like an inexplicable sort of wizardry.
Luckily, the magic seems to be wearing off. The old tricks just aren’t working anymore. Calling someone who criticizes Israel an “antisemite” is widely recognized for the fraudulent manipulation that it is. Pro-Palestine politicians are winning elections despite highly coordinated smear campaigns saying their candidacy makes Jews feel unsafe. Everyone knows Israel lies about everything all the time. Trust in the media is at an all-time low, while awareness of the pro-Israel bias of the mainstream press is at an all-time high.
People are still showing up for protests and pro-Palestine events. The public is turning against Israel in unprecedented numbers. Nobody’s buying the old song and dance anymore.
Maybe the people are finding a little magic of their own.
3 Myths About the Shah of Iran — “Dictator, CIA Puppet, Brutal”
Quick article debunking Cold War-era propaganda that’s still being repeated
SL Kanthan, Jan 22, 2026, https://slkanthan.substack.com/p/3-myths-about-the-shah-of-iran-dictator?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=844398&post_id=185383071&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=ln98x&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Now that Iran is experiencing the biggest protests since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, there is renewed interest in the history of the country during the Shah era. This is a short article to debunk three myths about the Shah of Iran. I have written a much longer article on this topic — here is the link. Okay, let’s look at the myths and debunk/clarify them.
The three talking points to demonize Mohammad Reza Pahlavi are:
- He was a dictator
- He was a puppet of the US, since he was installed by the CIA in the 1953 coup
- He ran a brutal secret police known as the SAVA
All of these accusations have some truths and some lies. The claims are exaggerated and miss the context.
Shah being a Dictator
First, the Shah was a monarch and would be considered a “dictator” by today’s Western standards. But, in those years, most countries in the world were under dictatorships — left or right. From the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc to China and the Middle East to Latin America and even Spain and South Korea, dictators ruled the world!
What matters is this: Iranians had incomparably more political freedom, more economic freedom and more social freedom under the Shah than under the current theocratic regime in Iran.
Below [on original] is a photo of protesters — in Tehran from 1978 — with a sign that says, “Down with the Shah, the blood-sucker.” Can you imagine a similar sign today that says, “Down with Khamenei, the blood-sucker”? The protesters will be hanged from a crane.
Anti-Shah groups such as liberal university students, communists (like the Tudeh Party), and Islamic extremists thrived in Iran under the Shah. A terrorist group named as Fedayeen of Islam tried to assassinate the Shah — they fired five bullets, of which 4 narrowly missed, and one hit him in the shoulder.
Ironically, all the anti-Shah groups were brutally suppressed and eliminated by their former ally, Khomeini, after the revolution.
Within a month after coming to power, Khomeini denounced leftist Iranians as “non-Muslims” who “are at war with the philosophical beliefs of Islam.”
One year later, the Ayatollah openly declared a jihad on Iran’s liberals, Marxists and communists.
During the Shah’s rule, Iran had a parliament (majlis) which was freely elected by the people. In fact, one of the Prime Ministers — Mossadegh — was so powerful that the Shah had to flee the country for a couple of days in 1953!
The simple fact is that, if the Shah were a true dictator, there would have been no revolution in 1979!
Shah was a Puppet of the USA
This is a Soviet-era propaganda that is still being repeated today — remember that during the Cold War, both the US and the USSR were fighting over control of Iran, a very strategic country in terms of resources, influence and location.
The USSR was funding communist groups within Iran to destabilize the Shah’s government. And from radio stations near the Iranian border, the Soviets were blasting anti-Shah propaganda 7 hours a day.
The Shah was a very Westernized man who gravitated towards the US/Europe. But, of course, in such relations, the US would naturally have more power.
But he was not a “puppet.” In fact, the CIA complained in a classified psychological profile that the Shah was a “megalomaniac” who followed his “own plans, while disregarding US interests.” Not the description of a subservient leader.
The Shah also met with Soviet leaders in an act of extraordinary diplomacy during the intense Cold War. Here he is [on original] in Moscow with his wife Soraya in 1956:
About that infamous 1953 CIA coup: It was a coup to stop a coup
Contrary to the popular myth, the Shah was NOT installed by the CIA in a 1953 coup. He had actually come to power in 1941– that was 12 years before the coup and even 6 years before the CIA was created!
But… here is the nuance. The CIA certainly carried out the coup and helped the Shah, who had left/fled the country for 3–4 days.
Here is what happened:
Iranian Prime Minister Mossadegh was an influential and ambitious populist, who nationalized the oil sector in 1951. But it was a total disaster — Iran’s oil production fell a staggering 95% over the next two years, as the British withdrew all their technicians, and Iranians did not have the skill to operate the refineries.
At that point, the Shah tried to fire Mossadegh, but couldn’t. (So much for being a brutal dictator). Afraid of a coup or worse (assassination), the Shah fled to Italy for a couple of days.
At the same time, powerful Western oil interests and the deep state (MI6/CIA) were waiting for an opportunity to get rid of Mossadegh. Hence the CIA coup of 1953.
It was a coup to stop a coup.
SAVAK — The Shah’s Brutal Secret Police
After the 1953 coup discussed above, the Shah sought help from the West. That’s why SAVAK was created in 1957 with help from the CIA and MI6. Yes, SAVAK was ruthless, operated outside the law, and engaged in spying, arrests, torture etc.
But guess what happened after the Islamic Revolution? SAVAK was not dismantled, but simply renamed as SAVAMA! In fact, the deputy chief of SAVAK — General Hossein Fardoust — became the head of SAVAMA. All the infrastructure, files, intelligence, torture methods, along with most intel agents continued under Khomeini.
The anti-Shah people never talk about this inconvenient fact.
Conclusion
For ideologues on the far left, a good dictator is an anti-American dictator. So, they worship Stalin, Fidel Castro, Islamic regime in Iran etc., while hating on the Shah.
This is a short summary. You can read my much longer article on Substack:
Kushner Reveals Dystopic Plan to Build Data Centers on Ruins of Gaza Genocide.
“This is a plan to erase Gaza’s indigenous character, turn what remains of her people into a cheap labor force to manage their ‘industrial zones’ and create an exclusive coastline for ‘tourism,’”
The plan appears to be to finish Israel’s bulldozing of Gaza to make real estate opportunities for investors.
“This is a plan to erase Gaza’s indigenous character, turn what remains of her people into a cheap labor force to manage their ‘industrial zones’ and create an exclusive coastline for ‘tourism,’”
The plan appears to be to finish Israel’s bulldozing of Gaza to make real estate opportunities for investors.
By Sharon Zhang , Truthout, January 22, 2026, https://truthout.org/articles/kushner-reveals-dystopic-plan-to-build-data-centers-on-ruins-of-gaza-genocide/
White House Adviser Jared Kushner revealed a neocolonial plan to transform Gaza into a home for luxury tourist resorts and data centers at the World Economic Forum on Thursday.
The plan has been widely condemned by human rights advocates, who say it is an an attempt to erase Palestinians by building a capitalist dystopia on the ruins of Israel’s genocide.
At the signing ceremony for President Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace,” Kushner shared a set of slides depicting a colonialist fantasy of the Gaza Strip under a hypothetical “demilitarization” of Hamas — despite the group’s repeated refusal to disarm, saying it would leave them defenseless against further attacks by Israel or otherwise.
The slides show computer-generated photos of high rise buildings along the coast and rows of residential buildings elsewhere.
The presentation includes a blueprint of Gaza divided into sections, which Kushner says is the U.S.’s plan for “catastrophic success” in the event of demilitarization of Hamas. The blueprint, labelled as the “Master Plan,” shows the entirety of the coast — where Palestinians have long fished for sustenance — dedicated to “coastal tourism,” with a sea port and an airport. There are large swaths dedicated to “parks, agriculture, and sports facilities.”
Tellingly, numerous parts of the map located next to residential areas are dedicated to industry and “data centers.” Ruinous technology like AI, reports have said, are slated to be a major part of the White House’s plan for Gaza, with other slides in the pitch deck reported by The Wall Street Journal showing a transformation of the Strip into a “smart city” with “tech driven governance.”
Nowhere is there a designation for cultural sites, nor does the map seem to be built around keeping or restoring any parts of Gaza that retain Palestinian heritage or life. The plan appears to be to finish Israel’s razing of the territory, clear the rubble in which thousands of Palestinians’ bodies are thought to be trapped, and replace it with real estate opportunities for investors.
“Gaza, as President Trump has been saying, has amazing potential,” said Kushner.
At the signing ceremony, Trump said that Gaza, home to millions of Palestinians, is “a great location” that should be viewed as a “big real estate site,” and expressed his interest in the region as a “real estate person at heart.”
“I said, look at this location on the sea, look at this beautiful piece of property — what it could be for so many people, it’ll be so great, people that are living so poorly are gonna be living so well,” Trump said.
Kushner touted the White House’s goal of applying “free market economy principles” to the razing and redevelopment of Gaza. He also expressed a desire to replace the humanitarian aid system for Palestinians in the region using those principles.
Palestinians have strongly condemned the plan.
“This is a plan to erase Gaza’s indigenous character, turn what remains of her people into a cheap labor force to manage their ‘industrial zones’ and create an exclusive coastline for ‘tourism,’” wrote Palestinian American writer Susan Abulhawa. “Palestinians will be pushed behind walls and gates, retrained in ‘technical schools’ to serve Israel’s supremacists ideology. The indigenous traditions and social fabric of this land will be obliterated utterly.”
“If the goal is truly peace, then the path is simple: end the occupation and help restore the rights that have been taken from Palestinians since 1948,” said Mosab Abu Toha, a Palestinian writer from Gaza. “We, the Palestinian people, are the ones who must determine our own future. Peace cannot be imposed while our land is occupied, our lives controlled, and our voices ignored.”
A Board of Peace built on the rubble of Gaza
22 January 2026 Michael Taylor, https://theaimn.net/a-board-of-peace-built-on-the-rubble-of-gaza/
There are moments in politics when language becomes so detached from reality that it tips from cynicism into a farce. Appointing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Donald Trump’s so-called “Board of Peace” for Gaza is one such moment.
Netanyahu is not a neutral stakeholder. He is not a reluctant participant dragged into a tragic conflict. He is the leader who has overseen the systematic destruction of Gaza: tens of thousands of civilians killed, entire neighbourhoods erased, hospitals flattened, universities bombed, and a population deliberately deprived of food, water, shelter, and hope. He is also the subject of an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.
That Israel has rejected those charges or dismissed them as political is beside the point. Courts exist precisely because perpetrators rarely accept responsibility for their own actions. The question is not whether Netanyahu agrees with the accusations – it is whether the facts on the ground support them.
They do.
International law defines genocide not by slogans or historical analogies, but by actions and intent. Killing members of a protected group. Causing serious bodily or mental harm. Deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about a group’s destruction, in whole or in part. Gaza today bears the unmistakable imprint of each of these elements.
Add to this the repeated, dehumanising rhetoric from senior Israeli officials – Palestinians described as “human animals”, Gaza spoken of as something to be “flattened”, “erased”, or emptied – and the claim that this is merely an unfortunate but lawful military campaign collapses under its own weight.
Legal processes move slowly. They always do. Genocide is almost never recognised as such while it is unfolding. Rwanda was denied until the machetes were put down. Srebrenica was minimised until the mass graves were opened. History shows that moral clarity arrives long before judicial finality.
Which is precisely why Netanyahu’s elevation to a “Board of Peace” is so grotesque. Peace is not brokered by those actively prosecuting a war of annihilation. Reconstruction is not overseen by those who created the ruins. And justice is not served by rehabilitating leaders while the bodies are still being pulled from the rubble.
Trump’s board is not a peace initiative. It is a branding exercise – one that launders responsibility, flattens moral distinctions, and asks the world to accept Orwellian doublespeak as diplomacy.
Calling this arrangement a farce is not rhetorical excess. It is an accurate description. When an alleged war criminal is recast as a peacemaker, language itself has been bombed into submission.
And Gaza, once again, is expected to pay the price.
It wasn’t Trump’s mind or morality that stopped his Iran attack.
Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition, 21 Jan 26
A week ago President Trump was posturing about an imminent attack to overthrow the Iranian regime embroiled in massive protests. His declared motive was to save the Iranian protesters seeking internal regime change who were being slaughtered by the regime.
Then Trump pivoted, declaring since the regime was no longer planning to execute protesters, he wouldn’t attack.
But it wasn’t Iranian government benevolence that persuaded Trump to stand down. The two reasons Trump’s explanation was covering up were reality on the ground and a phone call.
The massive but failed protests were not solely a spontaneous internal revolt. They were fomented and supported by both the US and Israel to complete their long sought dream of regime change to destabilize Iran, Israel’s last hegemonic rival in the region. Israel’s Mossad was definitely on the ground and likely the CIA as well. Trump was cheering on the protests from the sidelines.
Trump was poised to attack to complete the regime change operation when protest success appeared imminent. But Iran’s government quickly and decisively snuffed out the protests, ending Trump’s dream of adding more thousands to his massive, murderous death toll bombing 7 countries in his first year of term two.
Trump also got a call from the real boss of US Middle East policy….Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu. He told Trump that with the regime intact, Israel would be decimated by thousands of Iranian missiles once Trump attacked.
Iran’s government may be secure for now but Israeli, US dream of Iranian regime change will never cease.
Trump lied to the New York Times when he said the only thing that can stop him from foreign intervention is “my own mind, my own morality.” What stopped Trump from attacking Iran again, as he did in June, is what stopped him then… failure on the ground and a call from the guy giving Trump his orders on Middle East foreign policy.
Welcome to the Peace IPO: Gaza, Rebranded as a Prospectus
In a February 2024 bull-session at Harvard, Kushner gazed at Gaza and saw—not a besieged enclave packed with families and memory – but “very valuable” waterfront property, and he floated the idea of moving civilians out so Israel could “clean it up.” As you do.
21 January 2026 David Tyler, https://theaimn.net/welcome-to-the-peace-ipo-gaza-rebranded-as-a-prospectus/
Trump’s so‑called “Board of Peace” looks less like a new deal than Jared Kushner’s “Peace to Prosperity” 2019 plan re-branded. It’s as flash as a rat with a gold tooth in a new suit and a limited‑edition Speedmaster, but woefully vapid. It’s a real‑estate pitch pimped as an opportunity to the canny. Palestinians appear merely as background labour: extras, porters, shoeshine boys and waiters in a production where they’re expected to serve, not share.
While Israel’s Likud‑led far‑right coalition continues its military actions, attacks and land grabs that UN experts and human‑rights organisations describe as genocidal in effect.
The difference is not the logic. The difference is the volume. And a crass vulgarity meter off the scale. But nothing can distract from the monumental inhumanity and asinine stupidity of the whole project.
Not to mention calculated cruelty. In 2019, the sales pitch was polite. It spoke in the soothing language of workshops and investment frameworks; a $50 billion vision to “unlock” Palestinian potential, as if the West Bank and Gaza were a start-up stuck in beta because it hadn’t embraced enough deregulation. Palestinians boycotted it because the plan put money in the driver’s seat and rights in the boot.
In 2026, the pitch is blunt: join the Board, bring capital, buy a seat at the table, said to be a US$1 billion buy-in for “permanent” membership, while the souls whose land is now an upscale reno, get “technocratic committees,” “transition governance,” and the home comforts of Israeli management.
Peace, in other words, has gone subscription-tier.
How we got this Frankenstein
The Frankenstein story begins with another colour-coded Excel spreadsheet. As so many other, modern horrors do.
Kushner’s original “Peace to Prosperity” treated Palestine as an underperforming asset. The cure was foreign capital, investment corridors, industrial parks, tax-free zones, economic carrots without a match-stick of political liberation. The occupation, the siege, the “asymmetry” or inequality of power was left intact, politely ignored, like rust and dried blood, under a quick new paint-job.
Of course, the plan didn’t just sideline Palestinians’ political agency, the elephant in the room. It shut them out. Local and global fat cats would use Palestinians as a labour pool and a “stability problem,” while sovereignty, restitution and justice sat outside, like poor, uninvited relatives at a wedding.
Then came the moment where the whole philosophy slipped its tie and revealed the raw instinct underneath it.
In a February 2024 bull-session at Harvard, Kushner gazed at Gaza and saw—not a besieged enclave packed with families and memory – but “very valuable” waterfront property, and he floated the idea of moving civilians out so Israel could “clean it up.” As you do. That is not a diplomatic remark. It is a hard-nosed developer’s call. It is the real-estate gaze: people only get in the way, land is your opportunity.
Fast-forward to Trump’s “Board of Peace,” and you can see the same gaze. Formulated.
The language is a sales brochure parody. The White House frames the Board as part of a “Comprehensive Plan” and celebrates the creation of a Gaza administrative committee as a “vital step” in a multi-phase roadmap for “peace, stability, reconstruction, and prosperity.” Al Jazeera notes a three-tier structure that puts Trump and pro-Israel officials at the top while Palestinians get to take out the garbage. The landowners are relegated to municipal duties. ABC says invitation mail-outs are thick and fast. It worries that Trump is setting up as an alternative, $uperior, model to UN mechanisms.
Satire is writing itself by the time we get to the seat price. Bloomberg reports Trump wants nations to pay $1 billion for permanent membership, with renewable term options for non-paying participants.
This is not diplomacy. This is a club. It is peace by buy-in. A moral authority with an admission fee?
Why it could be proposed at all
Something this offensive to Gaza’s actual inhabitants only makes sense once Palestine is reclassified, from homeland to high-yield opportunity zone.
That reclassification didn’t happen overnight. It took decades of a broader architecture of policy and language to reduce Palestinian rights to “final status issues”; treat their political claims as a negotiating inconvenience, and normalise de facto control on the ground as an unchangeable reality.
Once you perform that trick; once you turn rights into “issues,” and a people into an “administrative challenge”, then the next step becomes conceivable: the coastline becomes an asset; the survivors become “human resources”; and peace becomes a portfolio strategy.
Trump’s political brand fits perfectly. He fuses branding with foreign policy. He doesn’t ask, “What is just?” He asks, “What sells?” He doesn’t ask, “What do people consent to?” He asks, “Who’s paying?”
CounterPunch repeatedly frames the Trump approach to “peace” as chaotic, self-interested statecraft where the prize is not justice but leverage, contracts, and strategic positioning; the kind of diplomacy that behaves like a market raid.
So the Board of Peace is not an aberration. It is the system, finally saying the quiet part out loud.
Satire interlude: Peace, now with equity options
There is, apparently, a new path to peace in Gaza: an Initial Public Offering.
The prospectus is glossy. The board is illustrious. Only one thing missing from the term sheet is the consent of the people who actually live there.
Trump, now moonlighting as Chair of Global Serenity LLC, has got up a committee that includes himself, Kushner, and Tony Blair: a trio whose track record is a museum of modern hubris. It’s less a diplomatic team than a support group for men who believe history is a distressed asset they were born to privatise.
The sales pitch is an elegantly simple Levantine Walz:
One. Label Gaza “valuable waterfront property”; a phrase typically intoned just before someone proposes a golf course over a mass grave.
Two. Announce that peace comes with tiers. A “permanent seat”? $1 billion, thank you. Peace, but make it premium.
Three. Invite governments and investors to bid for moral authority while Palestinians are quietly sidelined into the business plan as “local capacity.”
Kushner, once tasked with making peace by people who confused “son-in-law” with “diplomat,” returns as the visionary architect. The same man who dismissed political claims as obstacles and mused that Gazans could be moved out so someone could finally do something tasteful with the shoreline.
Having failed at “Peace to Prosperity,” he has now moved on to “Peace to Portfolio Diversification.”
What it really represents
Strip away the PR turd-polish and the Board of Peace represents three deeper trends:
Neoliberal occupation
Economic-first “solutions” that treat Palestinians as an economic population to be “developed” rather than a political people to be free. This was the Bahrain model: investment theatre without dismantling the structures that make normal economic life impossible.
Financialisation of justice
A $1 billion buy-in doesn’t just raise governance questions; it changes the moral architecture. It says legitimacy can be bought. It says peace is an asset class. It says the right to influence the future of Gaza belongs to whoever can wire the funds.
Erasure by technocracy
National claims, refugees, restitution, the right of return are all swept aside and replaced with “governance development,” “capacity building,” “administrative transition.” The jargon fog in which an occupied people are recoded as an admin problem consultants can solve.
The real genius is euphemism density. Layer upon layer. Occupation becomes “security architecture.” Siege becomes “border management.” External control becomes “oversight.” And the bombed-out landscape becomes “an opportunity corridor.”
What’s likely to happen next
Here the satire ends and the stakes bite. Legitimacy will be radioactive so long as Palestinians remain excluded from real sovereignty while the conditions of coercion persist. A structure unveiled about them, without them, is not peace, it’s administration.
Those positioned to profit will circle early. Reconstruction is always where politics, contracts, and influence meet. A pay-to-play architecture is an engraved invitation to opportunists and aligned states seeking leverage.
Civil society backlash will grow precisely because the moral inversion is so blatant: catastrophe monetised; rights treated as optional add-ons.
And the core problem, the one no amount of branding can fix, remains brutally simple:
If you build “peace” on the denial of self-determination, on the absence of accountability, and on the conversion of a people’s catastrophe into a capital project, you won’t get peace.
You’ll get a prospectus. You’ll get a boardroom. You’ll get a beachfront brochure printed on the ashes.
The Debt That Cannot Be Traded
The “Board of Peace” is a gamble that history can be treated as a distressed asset, and that a people’s identity can be diluted into a dividend. It assumes that if you make the brochure glossy enough, the ghosts of the past and the demands of the present will simply vanish into the “transition committees.”
But there is a flaw in the real-estate gaze: it mistakes silence for consent and rubble for a blank slate.
True peace is not a subscription service, and it certainly isn’t a premium tier accessible only to those with a billion dollars to burn. If we have learned anything from the century that birthed this Frankenstein, it is that human dignity is the one currency that cannot be devalued by an Excel spreadsheet. The “Board” may try to privatise the future, but they cannot buy the air, the memory, or the sheer, stubborn persistence of fifteen million people who refuse to be “extras” in their own story.
The old truth remains: you can build a boardroom on a shoreline, and you can print a prospectus on the ashes, but you cannot govern a people who haven’t been seen, only managed. In the end, the most “valuable property” in Gaza isn’t the waterfront; it is the unyielding agency of those who live there.
That is the debt that eventually comes due, and it is the only one that can’t be settled at a discount and the only one we keep turning away from at incalculable cost to our collective humanity.
This article was originally published on URBAN WRONSKI WRITES
IAEA chief warns Iran nuclear standoff ‘cannot go on forever’
The UN nuclear watchdog’s chief warned Tuesday that a standoff with Iran over inspections and its near-bomb-grade uranium stockpiles cannot continue indefinitely, raising the prospect that Tehran could be declared in non-compliance with its obligations.
“This cannot go on forever because at some point I will have to say, ‘I don’t have any idea where this material is,’” International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi said.
“This cannot go on like this for a long time without me having to declare them in non-compliance.”
Grossi said he was exercising diplomatic restraint but stressed that Iran, as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, does not have the option to pick and choose which obligations to meet.
Iran said in December last year it will not yield to international pressure to allow renewed inspections of nuclear sites hit by the United States in June.
Grossi also acknowledged parallel diplomatic efforts aimed at easing tensions between Iran and the United States, saying he hoped they would avert renewed military confrontation.
The IAEA has long sought answers from Iran over past nuclear activities and the whereabouts of undeclared nuclear material, issues Grossi has said cannot be resolved without access to relevant sites.
Iran International 21st Jan 2026, https://www.iranintl.com/en/202601205064
1 This Month
of the week – Shut Down Drone Warfare!
Tell the Ukrainian Government to Drop Prosecution of Peace Activist Yurii Sheliazhenko
Petition to revoke the licensing of the Near Surface Nuclear Disposal Facility (NSDF) at Chalk River. https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-7247
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