Dramatic high-risk US Delta Force plan to snatch Iran’s nuclear stocks revealed
Chris Hughes Defence and Security Editor, 25 Mar 2026, https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/dramatic-high-risk-delta-force-36921080
American special forces could be used to smash Iran’s nuclear ambitions as war-chiefs weigh up high-risk mission amid fears of casualties and a repeat of 1980 ‘Op’ Eagle Claw’ disaster
American military chiefs are considering one of the biggest special forces raids ever-launched in a bid to cripple Iran’s nuclear programme.
The massive helicopter-borne insertion of thousands of assault troops supporting a large number of Delta Force specialists could take at least 24 hours to conduct.
It would try to seize 450kg of 60% enriched uranium believed still to be hidden deep beneath one of Tehran’s nuclear facilities and is an immensely high-risk operation.
Although below the ‘weapons grade’ 90% of enriched uranium needed to make a nuclear weapon some US intelligence experts fear Iran could use it in the future.
Two British military sources have told the Mirror the operation plan has been drawn up, although both said it has been assessed as “very high-risk, with high probability of casualties and low probability of absolute mission success since the exact location of the uranium is uncertain.”
After fighting their way into the complex, the elite Delta Force soldiers would secure the site for specialist engineers to drill and blast their way into the underground complex.
The immensely complex operation would involve scores of spy planes and fighter jets helping to secure the approach to the mission targets.
Ground troops would form a vast perimeter around the site to fight off attacks from the IRGC. Plans were drawn up by Joint Special Operations Command which has a poignant link to Iran as it was set up in 1980 following the disastrous Operation Eagle Claw whose aim was to rescue US hostages from Tehran.
Then eight US Navy Sea Stallion helicopters took off from the deck of an American aircraft carrier for a 600-mile trip to rendezvous in the Iranian desert with six C-130 transport aircrafts.
They were hit by a violent wind-driven sand storm common in the desert which damaged the aircrafts and President Carter abandoned the mission.
As the force prepared to depart, a RH-53D helicopter crashed into a C-130 plane carrying extra fuel for refueling, igniting a fire that killed five Airmen and three Marines.
America vowed it would never happen again and sought to bring its special forces and intelligence elites together for better mission planning and execution.
In 1980 JSOC was launched forming combined units from the Army Delta Force, Navy SEAL Team Six, and the Air Force’s 24th Special Tactics Squadron to ensure they could operate seamlessly together, a key failing during the Iran hostage crisis.
One source, from the intelligence community, told the Mirror: “The plan does exist but the risks of failure are very high and it may have been discounted as too difficult.
“However it is known that President Trump is extremely belligerent and not exactly risk-cognisant so there is always the possibility he could still give the go-ahead for it to happen.
“Certainly the US military has given the President options, along with their risk assessment and the uranium seizure is top of his list. Troops movements we are seeing towards the Gulf indicate something bigger than, or as well as, a Strait of Hormuz -specific operation.”
The operational planning includes crack paratroopers entering Iranian airspace in fast-moving Chinook troop carrier helicopters and uniquely-adapted special forces planes for an unusually large number of elite Delta Force special forces soldiers.
A second, military source, told the Mirror: “If it goes ahead this could be the biggest Special Forces operations ever launched, with diversions elsewhere in Iran and major air-raids to cast confusion into the ranks of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. It has been looked into for some time but it is exceptionally high risk.
“The final word will go to Commander-in-Chief Donald Trump with input from Pete Hegseth, his so-called Secretary of War, who has been extremely enthusiastic about this war. It is a major decision as a lot can go wrong in an operation of this size but US administration may see it as the only way to secure the enriched uranium. The question is whether Trump is prepared to give it the go-ahead.”
Earlier this month the Mirror revealed exclusively how US forces had sent a number of uniquely adapted MC-130J Commando II special forces planes from RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk to the Middle East, indicating a major covert operation was being planned.
The Lockheed Martin US Air Force Special Operations Command planes are for clandestine, low-visibility infiltration, exfiltration, and resupply of special operations forces.
They perform high-speed, low-level air refueling, cargo airdrops, and air to land missions in hostile or sensitive areas. It comes amid reports President Trump has now ordered thousands of elite US paratroopers to the Middle East, perhaps to invade Kharg Island, the oil-exporting hub on which the Iranian economy relies.
Based at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, the Immediate Response Force is a brigade of about 3,000 troops from the 82nd Airborne Division that can deploy anywhere in the world within 18 hours.
But at least 5,000 marines are also en route for the Gulf, supposedly also to support an operation to secure Kharg Island, despite Trump’s claims peace negotiations are underway.
These claims have been vehemently denied by Iran’s foreign ministry. The first of two marine expeditionary units is due to arrive in the Middle East on Friday, comprising the USS Tripoli, an amphibious assault ship carrying 2,200 troops, the USS New Orleans, an amphibious docking ship, F-35B Lightning II stealth fighters and MV-22B Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft.
Our sources told the Mirror the two operations against Kharg Island and the site of the hidden nuclear facility, which we have chosen not to identify, may yet happen simultaneously.
A War Built on Lies, Sold by Lobbyists, with Innocent Children as its Price
23 March 2026 David Tyler, Australian Independent Media
On 27 February 2026, the night before the bombs fell, Oman’s foreign minister, Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi, announced that a breakthrough had been reached. After months of back-channel diplomacy, Iran had agreed to never stockpile enriched uranium, to full IAEA verification, and to irreversibly downgrade its existing stock to the lowest possible level. Peace, he said, was “within reach”. Technical talks were scheduled to continue in Vienna the following week.
Fourteen hours later, at 7:00 AM Tehran time on 28 February, the first wave of missiles arrived. China had been working to improve Iran’s situational awareness. It did not matter. The attack came without warning. Reports from Arab media, undenied by Tehran, claimed that Esmail Qaani, commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force, had been arrested and executed as a Mossad agent.
Within twelve hours, the United States and Israel had conducted more than 900 strikes. Two hundred Israeli aircraft, the largest combat sortie in its history, dropped over 1,200 bombs on 500 sites across western and central Iran. US Tomahawk missiles, launched from destroyers in the Arabian Sea, hit leadership compounds, missile factories, naval installations, and the National Security Council offices where Ali Khamenei was meeting his senior advisers. They knew he was there. Netanyahu had personally briefed Trump on the location days earlier. Khamenei was above ground, in daylight, when the strike came. He was dead before midday.
Forty-eight hours later, US forces had flown more than 1,700 sorties and struck over 1,250 targets across 29 of Iran’s 31 provinces. The first six days of Operation Epic Fury cost the United States more than $11 billion.
In that same period, Amnesty International confirmed that a US Tomahawk missile struck a girls’ primary school in Minab. Debris bearing the inscription “Made in USA” and the name “Globe Motors, Ohio” was recovered at the site. At least 170 people were killed. Most were children aged seven to twelve.
Then Donald Trump, in the second year of his second term, appeared on Truth Social to claim the war was about freedom.
The Lobbyists and the Lie
The question corporate media has avoided is simple. Who wanted this war, and how did they get it?
The Washington Post reports that Trump acted after sustained lobbying from Israel and Saudi Arabia. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman urged him to strike. Netanyahu’s government pressed the case repeatedly. Their interests converged. Israel sought to restore deterrence and reshape a regional order drifting beyond its control. Saudi Arabia saw an opportunity to weaken a rival it had failed to contain by other means. Together, they found a willing president.
The deeper breach was internal. Pentagon briefers told congressional staff on 1 March that Iran was not preparing to attack US forces or bases unless Israel struck first. The intelligence did not support the war. It was set aside. This was not a failure of information. It was a decision to ignore it.
US intelligence had already assessed that Iran was not pursuing nuclear weapons and would not have the capacity to build one before the end of the decade, even if it chose to do so. The IAEA had affirmed it. At the same time, Badr Al Busaidi was moving between delegations, and Iran’s chief negotiator was describing the talks as the most substantive in years. A framework for Vienna was in place. Technical teams were on standby.
Inside the administration, advisers discussed the advantages of letting Israel strike first to create a cleaner pretext for US entry after Iranian retaliation. That is not strategy. It is sequencing. Diplomacy was not the alternative to war. It was its cover.
Behind the push stood the familiar architecture of American intervention. Senator Lindsey Graham. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies. The American Enterprise Institute. Donor networks that have spent decades advocating regime change in Iran. They did not invent the policy. They sustained it, funded it, and waited for a president prepared to act on it.
Trump supplied the rest. On different days he has offered regime change, nuclear prevention, Iranian freedom, mineral security, and the Venezuela model as justification. None align. That is because the rationale followed the decision, not the other way around.
Congress, meanwhile, has largely abdicated its role. War powers have withered into ritual complaint. Democratic leadership has offered little more than procedural discomfort. The constitutional check on executive war-making is now
political theatre, observed and ignored.
Illegal, Immoral and Known to Be Both
The legal position is clear. The UN Charter permits the use of force only with Security Council authorisation or in self-defence against an armed attack. Neither condition applied. Iran had not attacked the United States or Israel. The Security Council had authorised nothing. The strikes began during active negotiations.
Ben Saul, the UN special rapporteur on counterterrorism, called it what it is: a crime of aggression. Oona Hathaway described it as “blatantly illegal”. The European Council on Foreign Relations reported broad consensus among legal scholars that no valid justification exists. This was not a contested case. It was an unambiguous one.
Within the United States, dissent has come from the margins of power. Rashida Tlaib. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Bernie Sanders. They are not describing a grey area. They are describing what the law already recognises.
What the Bombs Actually Did……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
The Catastrophe in Progress
………………………….This is not a regional disruption. It is a global economic shock. Energy prices feed directly into inflation, into transport, into food. The cost of this war will not be confined to the battlefield. It will be paid at petrol stations, in grocery aisles, and in central bank decisions across the world.
………..Senator Thom Tillis has asked the only question that matters. What are we trying to accomplish?
There is no coherent answer because coherence was never the point. This is the Venezuela model applied to a country four times larger, with a military doctrine built to resist precisely this kind of intervention, and a political system shaped by decades of confrontation with the United States. The architects of this war designed Iraq. The pattern is familiar. The outcome will be too. https://theaimn.net/a-war-built-on-lies-sold-by-lobbyists-with-innocent-children-as-its-price/
US moves to approve more than $16 billion in air defense sales to Middle East
The United States is moving to bolster air defenses across the Middle East, notifying Congress of more than $16.5 billion in potential weapons sales aimed primarily at countering missile and drone threats.
The packages include systems for the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Jordan, and range from advanced radar and air defense sensors to counter-drone technology and aircraft munitions, according to several statements released Thursday by the U.S. Department of State.
The notifications come as missile and drone attacks have intensified across the Middle East during the war with Iran, putting pressure on air defense systems used to protect U.S. forces and regional allies.
The State Department said the secretary of state determined that an emergency justified the immediate sale, allowing the administration to bypass the typical congressional review process under the Arms Export Control Act.
Among the proposed sales is a long-range radar for the UAE that is designed to integrate with its Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, or THAAD, for $4.5 billion.
The UAE package also includes a $2.1 billion fixed-site system designed to counter small drones, as well as $1.22 billion in air-to-air missiles and a $644 million set of F-16 munitions and upgrades to support its fighter aircraft.
Separately, Kuwait would receive $8 billion in lower tier air and missile defense radars designed to detect shorter-range threats, while Jordan’s $70.5 million package focuses on aircraft repair and parts to maintain its existing fleet.
Together, the sales point to a broader effort to build layered air defenses that are capable of detecting and intercepting threats at different ranges.
The demand comes as U.S. air defense systems are being used at a rate analysts worry exceeds the pace at which stockpiles can be replenished.
Switzerland Just Exposed Project Ranger’s Weakness
(Project Ranger, a 1,000-acre hypersonic manufacturing campus in Sandoval County, designed to support high-cadence production of hypersonic strike systems. )
Elaine Cimino, 23 Mar 26
Switzerland’s halt on weapons-related exports to the United States is not symbolic. It is a disruption—and it lands directly on projects like Project Ranger.
This facility is being built on the assumption that a complex, global weapons supply chain will function without interruption. That assumption is now broken.
Advanced weapons manufacturing depends on precision components, machine systems, and specialized inputs that cannot be swapped out overnight. When a country like Switzerland shuts off supply, timelines don’t “adjust”—they fail. Production stalls. Certification resets. Entire sequences of manufacturing have to be reworked.
That means one thing for Rio Rancho:
Project Ranger will not meet its LEDA job timelines as promised as long as the supply chain is disruptied.
LEDA agreements are performance-based. Jobs are supposed to materialize on a defined schedule. That schedule is now tied to a disrupted international supply chain. No amount of local approval, zoning, or political messaging can override that reality.
If the components aren’t there, the jobs aren’t there.
And when the jobs don’t show up on time, the public is left holding the bag.
Because the costs are already locked in.
Rio Rancho has approved development while operating with a water deficit. Return flow credits are not being met. Infrastructure is being expanded. Rates are rising. Nearly 40% of residents are low- or fixed-income—and they are being forced to subsidize a project whose economic return is now uncertain.
Water rates were locked designed for developers and project Ranger build out on the residents dollars.
At the same time, the broader economy is unstable. If the economy contracts—and all indicators say that risk is real—projects dependent on fragile, globalized supply chains are the first to break. Delays compound. Costs escalate. Public subsidies become sunk losses.
This is the predictable outcome of building a local economy around a volatile defense supply system.
And yet, construction continues. Question for how long—Until they stopped cold.
Steel is going up. Concrete is being poured. Commitments are being made in real time, while the underlying conditions that justified those commitments are collapsing. Now from the governor to the Castelion excuses to city dodging questions. Don’t count on the fascist tech bros to let their bomb factory to got to rust.
Switzerland didn’t just halt exports.
It exposed the truth: Project Ranger is not in control of its own timeline.And Rio Rancho is not in control of the consequences. The public pays
Trump’s battle plan for Iran
Bruce Gagnon, Mar 26, 2026, https://brucegagnon177089.substack.com/p/trumps-battle-plan-for-iran?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3720343&post_id=192096004&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=ln98x&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Europe key to US ops in Iran
Another very interesting piece from the WSJ. These details have been available through OSINT sources but it’s a good roundup showing how key Europe is to US operations against Iran:
- The central command center for US operations against Iran is within Ramstein Air Base in Germany (unsurprising)
- US drone operations are conducted from there as well
- Ramstein is increasingly being used as a hub by the Americans. Military transport aircraft, in particular, land there and took off for the Middle East, including several Boeing C-17 Globemaster III (77.5 tons of load) and Lockheed C-130 aircraft (20 tons).
- American media reported that F-16 fighter jets had been transferred from US Spangdahlem AFB, Germany to the Middle East. According to the trade magazine Air and Space Forces, they are to be used in Iran to combat air defenses. BBC reported that the base is now operating “around the clock.”
- American aircraft stationed in Spain have been relocated to France and Germany after the Spanish government denied the use of the Morón and Rota air bases for attacks on Iran
- Bomber aircraft sorties out of bases in the UK like RAF Fairford
- Refueling operations are based out of Aviano Air Base in Italy and Tubé Air Base in France
- Lajes Air Base in the Azores (Portugal) is serving as a major logistical hub, with dozens of aircraft stationed there at various times during the conflict
- RC-135 Rivet Joint spy planes are operating out of Souda Bay in Crete
- Unspecified “logistics and intelligence assets” are being hosted by Romania
- The piece paints an amusing picture of European attitudes towards this. Keir Starmer’s justification for overcoming his reticence to allow the US to base out of British facilities in the initial wave of strikes is that bomber operations are now “defensive” in nature.
- Merz has said publicly that this “isn’t [Germany’s] war,” but he has no choice but to allow US operations out of German air bases due to pre-existing legal agreements.
- Meloni has spun Italian involvement as minor because only refueling missions are flown out of Aviano. Similarly, French defense minister Vautrin said, “a refueling aircraft is a gas station, not a fighter jet.”
- These technicalities may work on the European public, but it’s difficult to imagine they’ll work on the Iranians.
Let’s focus not on what Trump says, but on what he does.
These are the U.S. military units recently deployed to the Middle East against Iran.
- 160th SOAR (Night Hunters): An elite helicopter unit that secretly inserts and extracts special forces, often at night, using skilled pilots and modified aircraft.
- 75th Airborne Brigade: A light infantry force for rapid raids, airfield seizures, and close-quarters combat missions against high-value targets.
- Delta Force (1st SFOD-D): A top-tier counterterrorism and hostage rescue unit focused on high-risk, precision missions targeting high-value individuals.
- 1st Special Forces Group (1st SFG): Operates primarily in the Asia-Pacific; trains allied forces, conducts unconventional warfare, and supports insurgencies or partner militaries.
- 5th Special Forces Group (5th SFG): Focused on the Middle East; It specializes in counterterrorism, unconventional warfare, and advising local forces.
- US Navy SEALs: Special operations focused on the sea—raids, reconnaissance, direct action, and covert missions from the sea, air, or land.
- But for what mission?
- Islands within or near the Strait of Hormuz—Small but strategically important islands used by Iran to control shipping lanes. US special forces could quickly seize them to reopen the strait.
- An island outside—Iran’s main oil export terminal. Seizing or destroying it would cripple Iranian oil revenues.
- Iranian nuclear facilities or other high-value sites—Potential raids to destroy stockpiles of enriched uranium or related infrastructure.
The war against Iran: Lessons still unlearned
By William Briggs | 26 March 2026, https://independentaustralia.net/life/life-display/the-war-against-iran-lessons-still-unlearned,20853
The dreams of the U.S. President, that it would all be over in days – that the Iranian people would rise against their tyrannical regime – is now a nightmare that Trump has visited upon the world.
The global economy is on the brink of disaster as oil dries up. America and Israel have further isolated themselves from world public opinion and, apart from an ever- shrinking clique of semi-vassal states like Australia, Trump appears to be alone and increasingly dangerous.
The war offers a great many lessons, but while life and history can be great teachers, there seem to be precious few pupils ready to learn those lessons. This applies equally to apologists for U.S. power, to governments of all stripes and to many of those who inhabit the Left and lay claim to Marxist credentials.
The war was never about “liberating” the Iranian people from the right-wing theocracy. It was about securing a compliant regime that would ensure the flow of oil and to make sure that the USA, as a fading imperial power, maintained global hegemony — both politically and economically.
The slogan that accompanied the wars of aggression against Iraq, that tore Libya apart and which laid waste to so much of the Middle East was simply, No Blood for Oil! The years have slipped by, and yet the same foul motivation for despoiling the globe and destroying a people remains.
Our mainstream media know this to be true, even as the “story” turns its focus to the retaliation by Iran and to the oil pressure that the blocking of the Straits of Hormuz entails. The same media focuses on potential oil shortages, and rightly so, but seems less keen to link that invasion to the fact that people are paying stupid prices for petrol and diesel.
Fewer voices can be heard that would remind the people of how the war started and who is responsible. That has become largely the responsibility of the Left — the Marxists, the campaigners against war and imperialism.
This is as it should be, but something is very wrong. Marxism is quite clear that economics is the defining factor and that politics works with and responds to economic demands. The war, then, can only be understood from an economic perspective. But is it being understood in this way? Sadly, no.
Some see it as a political gamble by a beleaguered and dangerously unhinged U.S. President. Some portray it as a means, by Israel, of destroying any potential risk to its domination of the region. Some come a step closer by recognising the strategic desire to weaken China, as it is a principal customer for Iranian oil.
Any and all of these considerations are enough to allow blame to be sheeted home to the USA and Israel, but there is a deeper, more worrying aspect to this. The United States has been and remains the single biggest military force and greatest economic power that the world has seen. It is, as the Marxist Left will say, an imperialist power. It is also a declining power.
For decades, its main preoccupation has been how to hold back the rising tide of its one great rival. China’s rise, accompanied by a global capitalist economy that has run out of ideas and resilience, ensures that wars are either finishing, beginning, or in the planning stage. A failing economic structure is driving the world to the point of no return. The war against Iran is one battle in this endless spiral into decay. The USA, as the central power in the capitalist global economy, is more than willing to destroy entire nations in its quest to keep the sinking ship afloat.
No crime is too much. The U.S. bombing the girls’ school in Iran, the Israeli destruction of oil facilities on the edge of Tehran that have led to acid rain and an unimaginable civilian health disaster, sicken all reasonable people. But those who plan such actions are not among the reasonable.
These acts need to be condemned. Governments need to show at least a modicum of decency. Our Prime Minister needs to stop slinking in the shadows and act. He needs to denounce such actions. He needs to find the courage to say “No!” and to work to secure the natural resources needed to keep Australia functioning. This is unlikely. Our political structures are such that we remain totally subservient to the demands and interests of the USA..
Those whose anger compels them to take to the streets deserve better than the Babel that has become the protest movement. The most recent action in Melbourne, which was dominated by ever more shrill denunciations of Israel, while mention of the USA and its causal responsibility for the war was at best an afterthought. Protest has merit, it is necessary and has purpose. It also needs focus, if it is to have either merit or purpose.
Protest is also about winning the hearts and minds of people. Sound and fury might be a therapy for some, but numbers count and numbers must grow, people must be educated, encouraged to talk to others, to build a movement that can go beyond noise.
Part of that building process must include the raising of collective consciousness. It must be able to show and convince people that this or that crime of the USA, of Israel, of imperialism, is not isolated, or in any way an aberrant thing, but is a symptom of a deeper, structural crisis. It is not enough for the ideologues to make demands that cannot be achieved. The protest movement, the anti-war movement, should aim at providing a vehicle, a voice for those who want something better than news screens full of war stories and a Federal Government pathetically marching to the fifes and drums of a fading U.S. empire.
European Union leaders have been prepared to stand back a little; to say that the war is not their war. It is hard to imagine an Australian government being daring enough to question anything that comes from Washington. As the sun sinks on U.S. hegemony, Australia seems ready to go down with the American ship.
Trump’s $200 billion Iran spending request reveals scale of US war plans.
In reality, the administration is planning the most endless of all endless wars—an open-ended invasion aimed at subjugating or destroying a country of 90 million people.
The $200 billion is a supplemental—on top of the $839 billion defense bill Congress already passed for fiscal year 2026, the largest military budget in American history. If approved, direct military spending this year will exceed $1 trillion. US President Donald Trump has called for a $1.5 trillion military budget for fiscal year 2027—a 50 percent increase.
Andre Damon, 19 March 2026, https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/03/20/iuck-m20.html
The Washington Post reported Wednesday that the Trump administration is seeking more than $200 billion to fund the war against Iran.
At a press briefing Thursday, a reporter asked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “why a package this large is necessary?” Hegseth not only confirmed the $200 billion figure but suggested it could grow. “I think that number could move,” he said. “It takes money to kill bad guys. So we’re going back to Congress to ensure that we’re properly funded for what’s been done, for what we may have to do in the future.”
And what, exactly, are these unspecified things the administration “may have to do”?
In 2003, when 150,000 American soldiers invaded and occupied Iraq, Congress appropriated $51 billion—a quarter of what the Trump administration is requesting before a single ground soldier has entered Iran. At the height of the 2007-2008 surge, when nearly 170,000 American soldiers occupied the country, the war cost roughly $144 billion a year.
In reality, the $200 billion is not about “what we may have to do in the future” but about what the White House is actively conspiring to do in the present. The budget request comes as the administration prepares a ground invasion of Iran, deploying 5,000 Marines from the Pacific to the Middle East amid demands by the Wall Street Journal and leading Republicans for the seizure of Kharg Island and the Strait of Hormuz.
Reuters reported Wednesday that the Trump administration has discussed sending ground forces to seize Kharg Island, the hub for 90 percent of Iran’s oil exports, and has separately discussed deploying US forces to secure Iran’s stocks of highly enriched uranium. They are operational plans for the invasion and occupation of Iranian territory—and they explain why the administration is demanding more money than was appropriated for any single year of the Iraq invasion.
Just as with the months and years of planning that preceded the US-Israeli attack on Iran, the ground invasion is being prepared behind the backs of the American people, who overwhelmingly oppose the war. Trump called the war an “excursion.” Vice President JD Vance promised it would not become a “quagmire.” At the same briefing where he confirmed the $200 billion request, Hegseth told reporters: “The media wants you to think, just 19 days into this conflict, that we’re somehow spinning toward an endless abyss or a Forever War or a quagmire. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
In reality, the administration is planning the most endless of all endless wars—an open-ended invasion aimed at subjugating or destroying a country of 90 million people.
The administration sees the Iran war as a prelude to an effort to subjugate China, the world’s largest economy by purchasing power parity. As former Republican Congressman Patrick McHenry put it on ABC’s This Week, the wars in Venezuela and Iran are “targets of opportunity to reshape the world.” He added: “Venezuela was in service to American energy dominance. The issue with Iran was a target of opportunity… The results here will mean that, with China, the president’s hand will be enhanced.”
The $200 billion is a supplemental—on top of the $839 billion defense bill Congress already passed for fiscal year 2026, the largest military budget in American history. If approved, direct military spending this year will exceed $1 trillion. US President Donald Trump has called for a $1.5 trillion military budget for fiscal year 2027—a 50 percent increase.
And $200 billion is only what the administration will admit to. In 2002, Bush’s chief economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey was fired for estimating the Iraq war would cost $100 to $200 billion. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld put the figure at “something under $50 billion.” When told outside estimates ran to $300 billion, Rumsfeld replied: “Baloney.” Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz assured Congress that Iraqi oil revenues would pay for reconstruction. The actual cost, including veterans’ care, disability payments and interest on the debt, is now estimated by Brown University’s Costs of War Project at more than $8 trillion.
The waging of continuous wars, combined with the 2008 and 2020 bank bailouts, has produced an explosion of US debt. In 2000, before the Iraq war, the national debt stood at $5.7 trillion. By 2010, after the Iraq surge and the $700 billion TARP bank bailout, it had reached $12.3 trillion. By 2020, after $4.6 trillion in COVID bailouts, it hit $27 trillion. It now stands at $39 trillion—nearly seven times what it was a quarter century ago.
The United States credit rating has been downgraded three times—by Standard & Poor’s in 2011, Fitch in 2023 and Moody’s in 2025—each time because of military spending and the refusal of either party to cut the military budget. The Vietnam War destroyed Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs and produced the inflation of the 1970s, which the ruling class broke through the Volcker shock—mass unemployment to crush wages. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars were waged alongside tax cuts for the wealthy and the gutting of public services.
Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” signed last July, imposed $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid over the next decade, $536 billion in cuts to Medicare and $186 billion in cuts to food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)—the largest cut to food aid in American history. The fiscal year 2026 budget slashed domestic spending by 22.6 percent—cutting the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) by 44 percent, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) by 44 percent and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) by $18 billion—while increasing the military budget by 13 percent.
Within 24 hours of the administration confirming it is seeking $200 billion for the war, the Postmaster General testified to Congress that the United States Postal Service (USPS) could run out of cash as soon as October—with just $8.2 billion in reserves, enough to cover 33 days of operations. The USPS employs more than 500,000 workers and holds billions in pension and retirement obligations. The manufactured insolvency is a pretext for raiding those funds—taking workers’ pension money and spending it on the war.
Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security represent trillions more. The ruling class sees these programs as money to be seized. The administration does not see pensions and healthcare as social programs. It sees them as collateral.
Trump has promised the economic pain will be a temporary “blip.” This will not pass in weeks. It will mean a permanent reduction in working-class living standards, just as the Iraq war did.
The struggle to defend Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, pensions and public services cannot be separated from the struggle against war. They are the same struggle. The $200 billion the administration demands is money taken from the programs working people depend on to survive.
The Democrats have systematically enabled Trump’s wars. In January, as Trump declared that a massive armada was steaming toward Iran, every leading Democrat in Congress voted for the $839 billion military budget—Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Minority Whip Katherine Clark, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Minority Whip Dick Durbin all voted in favor. Their criticism of the war has centered on procedural issues, along with demands that US imperialism direct its fire at Russia and China.
Opposition must come from below—from workers in the United States, in Iran, across the Middle East and around the world—organized independently of both capitalist parties, armed with a socialist and internationalist program, and fighting to build the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) as the revolutionary leadership of the working class. The fight against imperialist war is the fight against the capitalist system that produces it.
Nuclear Deregulation – DOGE Goes Nuclear: How Trump Invited Silicon Valley Into America’s Nuclear Power Regulator
ProPublica, by Avi Asher-Schapiro, March 20, 2026
Reporting Highlights
- Fast Nuclear Buildout: The Trump administration is rapidly rewriting rules to support the development of nuclear power plants.
- Aligning With Industry: Staffers from DOGE are revamping rules in ways to ease regulations and provide financial breaks for industry.
- “No Longer Independent”: Nuclear Regulatory Commission veterans say the administration is limiting oversight in dangerous ways.
Last summer, a group of officials from the Department of Energy gathered at the Idaho National Laboratory, a sprawling 890-square-mile complex in the eastern desert of Idaho where the U.S. government built its first rudimentary nuclear power plant in 1951 and continues to test cutting-edge technology.
On the agenda that day: the future of nuclear energy in the Trump era. The meeting was convened by 31-year-old lawyer Seth Cohen. Just five years out of law school, Cohen brought no significant experience in nuclear law or policy; he had just entered government through Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team.
As Cohen led the group through a technical conversation about licensing nuclear reactor designs, he repeatedly downplayed health and safety concerns. When staff brought up the topic of radiation exposure from nuclear test sites, Cohen broke in.
“They are testing in Utah. … I don’t know, like 70 people live there,” he said.
“But … there’s lots of babies,” one staffer pushed back. Babies, pregnant women and other vulnerable groups are thought to be potentially more susceptible to cancers brought on by low-level radiation exposure, and they are usually afforded greater protections.
“They’ve been downwind before,” another staffer joked.
“This is why we don’t use AI transcription in meetings,” another added.
ProPublica reviewed records of that meeting, providing a rare look at a dramatic shift underway in one of the most sensitive domains of public policy. The Trump administration is upending the way nuclear energy is regulated, driven by a desire to dramatically increase the amount of energy available to power artificial intelligence.
Career experts have been forced out and thousands of pages of regulations are being rewritten at a sprint. A new generation of nuclear energy companies — flush with Silicon Valley cash and boasting strong political connections — wield increasing influence over policy. Figures like Cohen are forcing a “move fast and break things” Silicon Valley ethos on one of the country’s most important regulators.
The Trump administration has been particularly aggressive in its attacks on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the bipartisan independent regulator that approves commercial nuclear power plants and monitors their safety. The agency is not a household name. But it’s considered the international gold standard, often influencing safety rules around the world.
The NRC has critics, especially in Silicon Valley, where the often-cautious commission is portrayed as an impediment to innovation. In an early salvo, President Donald Trump fired NRC Commissioner Christopher Hanson last June after Hanson spoke out about the importance of agency independence. It was the first time an NRC commissioner had been fired.
During that Idaho meeting, Cohen shot down any notion of NRC independence in the new era.
“Assume the NRC is going to do whatever we tell the NRC to do,” he said, records reviewed by ProPublica show. In November, Cohen was made chief counsel for nuclear policy at the Department of Energy, where he oversees a broad nuclear portfolio.
The aggressive moves have sent shock waves through the nuclear energy world. Many longtime promoters of the industry say they worry recklessness from the Trump administration could discredit responsible nuclear energy initiatives.
“The regulator is no longer an independent regulator — we do not know whose interests it is serving,” warned Allison Macfarlane, who served as NRC chair during the Obama administration. “The safety culture is under threat.”
A ProPublica analysis of staffing data from the NRC and the Office of Personnel Management shows a rush to the exits: Over 400 people have left the agency since Trump took office. The losses are particularly pronounced in the teams that handle reactor and nuclear materials safety and among veteran staffers with 10 or more years of experience. Meanwhile, hiring of new staff has proceeded at a snail’s pace, with nearly 60 new arrivals in the first year of the Trump administration compared with nearly 350 in the last year of the Biden administration…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Meanwhile, some staff members, other career officials say, are afraid to voice dissenting views for fear of being fired. “It feels like being a lobster in a slowly boiling pot,” one NRC official who has been working on the rule changes told ProPublica, describing the erosion of independence.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. “Nuke Bros” in Silicon Valley
One Trump administration priority has been making it easier for so-called advanced reactor companies to navigate the regulatory process. These firms, mostly backed by Silicon Valley tech and venture money, are often working on designs for much smaller reactors that they hope to mass produce in factories.
“There are two nuclear industries,” said Macfarlane, the former NRC chair. “There are the actual people who use nuclear reactors to produce power and put it on the grid … and then there are the ‘nuke bros’” in Silicon Valley.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………… https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-nuclear-power-nrc-safety-doge-vought
No Good Exit
21 March 2026 David Tyler, Australian Independent Media
John Mearsheimer sees war with Iran as a strategic folly, arguing it is unwinnable, will not destroy Iran’s nuclear knowledge, and could, instead, boost Iran’s interest in acquiring nuclear weapons.
No stranger to irony, or paradox, Dr Mearsheimer does not mince words. The West Point graduate and former Air Force Captain, now a distinguished scholar at Cornell, has spent two decades documenting exactly how an American Eagle could get sucked into the vortex of wars that serve its bovver-boy, or Middle-East proxy, Israel, and its bellicose aspirations at enormous cost.
When Mearsheimer speaks about a US military adventure in Iran, he is not waffling. He is quoting from the autopsy he wrote in advance. And Mearsheimer’s verdict on Operation Epic Fury, is that Trump has dug himself into a deep hole; an opinion all the more damning for its formal, almost courteous understatement:
“I think President Trump has put himself in a situation where he really doesn’t have a good exit strategy.”
Trump’s catastrophe may be complex and irretrievable, but it was not inevitable. It was predicted, in detail, by experts whose job it was to predict it, and who were systematically ignored, discredited or sacked for saying so. Trump ignored the experts. This is how he can always snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
The pretext for the attack doesn’t bear scrutiny. Before the first double-tap Tomahawk missile crushed and burned alive 168 schoolchildren on 28 February, Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr Al-Busaidi was announcing what could have been a diplomatic coup: Iran had agreed to never stockpile enriched uranium, had accepted full IAEA verification, and was prepared to irreversibly downgrade its enriched uranium to the lowest level possible.
Peace, he said, was “within reach.” Further talks were due to resume on 2 March.
Iran now says that the US President never intended to avoid war and that the talks were a ruse to get more time to set up a military attack. It’s true. It’s also true that Trump and Netanyahu are driven by the need to stay out of court. Both are hell-bent in quest of a more enduring diversion-and both would have always pulled the trigger anyway. Even without Saudi encouragement……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Iran now says that the US President never intended to avoid war and that the talks were a ruse to get more time to set up a military attack. It’s true. It’s also true that Trump and Netanyahu are driven by the need to stay out of court. Both are hell-bent in quest of a more enduring diversion-and both would have always pulled the trigger anyway. Even without Saudi encouragement.
……………………………………….. Many missile strikes in the war’s opening phase are seen by UN human rights experts as potential war crimes under the Rome Statute. At least a million Lebanese people have been displaced.
https://googleads.g.doubleclick.net/pagead/ads?gdpr=0&client=ca-pub-3072351457465524&output=html&h=280&adk=2235633406&adf=387799125&w=678&fwrn=4&fwrnh=100&lmt=1774125889&rafmt=1&armr=3&sem=mc&pwprc=5956714339&ad_type=text_image&format=678×280&url=https%3A%2F%2Ftheaimn.net%2Fno-good-exit%2F&host=ca-host-pub-2644536267352236&fwr=0&pra=3&rh=170&rw=678&rpe=1&resp_fmts=3&fa=27&uach=WyJXaW5kb3dzIiwiMTkuMC4wIiwieDg2IiwiIiwiMTQ2LjAuNzY4MC44MCIsbnVsbCwwLG51bGwsIjY0IixbWyJDaHJvbWl1bSIsIjE0Ni4wLjc2ODAuODAiXSxbIk5vdC1BLkJyYW5kIiwiMjQuMC4wLjAiXSxbIkdvb2dsZSBDaHJvbWUiLCIxNDYuMC43NjgwLjgwIl1dLDBd&abgtt=7&dt=1774125788538&bpp=1&bdt=3727&idt=0&shv=r20260318&mjsv=m202603170101&ptt=9&saldr=aa&abxe=1&cookie=ID%3Dd85616c6c9bd2a6c%3AT%3D1770448449%3ART%3D1774125788%3AS%3DALNI_MbtaAxRxG9MqgIcWMShV7avYd9mzg&gpic=UID%3D000011f58c2d07ec%3AT%3D1770448449%3ART%3D1774125788%3AS%3DALNI_MasvLU7CXh2jEp0EwTeqK932dwU3A&eo_id_str=ID%3D1b13a2c219278375%3AT%3D1770448449%3ART%3D1774125788%3AS%3DAA-AfjYkqjLrM9kIjGmfRgvZ6J5n&prev_fmts=0x0%2C678x280%2C678x280%2C1265x585%2C1265x122%2C678x280%2C678x280%2C678x280%2C678x280&nras=10&correlator=6552144162929&frm=20&pv=1&u_tz=660&u_his=2&u_h=720&u_w=1280&u_ah=672&u_aw=1280&u_cd=32&u_sd=1.5&dmc=8&adx=117&ady=5250&biw=1265&bih=585&scr_x=0&scr_y=2914&eid=95378429%2C95384535%2C42533294%2C95383746%2C95386039%2C95379823&oid=2&psts=AOrYGslFnD4MCobWfWWaTnZO58i7aVt7D29MIFScmcewoQBVZjRgX1f3b9NwGtVkwcGa5Z-1eoPb2VtruRZFG8PO7KJlApj9H8fZyI5zqVkCG4CmXvZmwQ3Box5rCHMTD73x%2CAOrYGslqDhuWvVFLDi_GZC5QcWZeq0_skU9KxspMCRk4eB7tugVH2yaIxi5G3F9O2Lf92rq8U8mMNGoqiazmp1b23UZ4BdLvnwQ3WxWxgRykEZSB%2CAOrYGskeRH4aNaTYW0JyG3hzeADf9iRr0p5FcMslU9tcjQOmsfMxJqNzQgBma4wHaEq5_EyPCfryTvgRCXzrdNA6zXpsYzi2aGa6YBEEsIrD4jk%2CAOrYGsnZlMGylK-NV6L01yQbFeOM_0OyuT3kK6KdRWPAa0ZJ-_fUiqW2vcAZvsE7G9PHnZ_OKbVa1uJ56Zi1H-BaO31G2fiS7gxE7wk%2CAOrYGskrNVCKFAP1enIxqXLvS3enuTJ1vSXSpDKMa_FTU_LIa3i733aUFije2OhcKHUesjN9G6616z_zZ30fUvobJwp9R63Myz8XDtyBjjQdpDmpSw%2CAOrYGsnrFCx6HaDRyuw7FJgzshe7poT_x7bpz6edsQFJsiawAUvVj1cdcmwj8C0dhnUgTtbxVbGZiUsGMRomL8AnScaaQ9jMiTGt-38YWkcIDhQ%2CAOrYGsmGx2dhmzE4w3QV-X9NmiFCpDNgjknMYKowrNLwx0eLRev6mAN_VRDxDLeClYOlXHDvSoaiEQKey8wTUJbgVV1DbfGqHw1h5d1Wiu7sDg&pvsid=5130612622751585&tmod=1337930814&uas=1&nvt=1&fc=1408&brdim=0%2C0%2C0%2C0%2C1280%2C0%2C1280%2C672%2C1280%2C585&vis=1&rsz=%7C%7Cs%7C&abl=NS&fu=128&bc=31&bz=1&pgls=CAEaBTYuOS40~CAEQBBoHMS4xNzQuMA..&num_ads=1&ifi=8&uci=a!8&btvi=8&fsb=1&dtd=M
Meanwhile, Donald Trump, on his Truth Social, calls Iran “militarily ineffective and weak.”…………………………………………………………………………………..
Trump is demanding NATO allies help secure the Strait of Hormuz. NATO is, to put it charitably, otherwise engaged.
Retreat? Mearsheimer is equally clear-eyed. Declare victory and withdraw, and it will be “perceived as a humiliating defeat for the US.” And that assumes Iran cooperates. “They have many cards to play,” he notes. “They can inflict significant losses. Therefore, even if we retreat, it’s unclear whether this will solve the problem.”
Trump promised a generation of winning. He has delivered a generation’s worth of losing, compressed into twenty days. And let’s not forget his Latin American fiasco. El Presidente, who endeared himself to millions south of the border with his talk of “shithole” countries, has rather a lot of Venezuelans on the warpath after his regime change curdled almost on contact into a neocolonial farce, with Maduro gone, sovereignty shredded and the gringos already with their fingers in the till.
Cuba could be next on Hegseth’s hit-list? Trump does need to keep the distractions going. Meanwhile disinformation is being pumped as vigorously as the Ford plumbing. And with similar effect.
Fox News cheerleaders and the Netanyahu communications office have been carefully not telling the American public: Iran is not the isolated, backward, sanction-crippled military of the pre-war briefings.
It is fighting with Russian eyes and Chinese precision. Together, those two contributions have changed the strategic calculus in ways that neither Washington nor Tel Aviv appear to have seriously gamed………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
The Netanyahu Factor: Closing Every Window
Mearsheimer’s analysis cuts deepest on the question of diplomacy.
On Day 19, Israeli strikes killed two of Iran’s most consequential figures: security chief Ali Larijani and Basij commander Gholamreza Soleimani. Larijani’s death was not a military decapitation strike in the conventional sense. It was the targeted elimination of Iran’s most experienced nuclear negotiator; a pragmatic, sophisticated operator whom analysts had consistently identified as one of the few figures capable of opening a negotiated exit.
Israel killed the man who could have brokered the ceasefire Netanyahu claims to want.
Netanyahu told Sean Hannity that Operation Epic Fury “will usher in an era of peace that we haven’t even dreamed of” and create conditions for Iranians to form “their own democratically elected government.” He said something substantially similar about Iraq in 2003. About Libya in 2011. The script is laminated. The outcomes are identical. The lesson is never drawn.
He is currently in a bunker, hinting with characteristic coyness that perhaps the Iranian regime survives after all. Of course it does. The Islamic Republic has outlasted everything the West has thrown at it: the Iran-Iraq war, decades of sanctions, assassination campaigns, Stuxnet, and the twelve-day bombing campaign of last June………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
The Intelligence Scandal Underneath It All
One more thread demands to be pulled. Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence, has been accused of altering her Senate testimony on Iran; specifically, of omitting intelligence details that contradicted Trump’s claim that Tehran posed an imminent threat. The IAEA had found no evidence Iran was moving toward a nuclear weapon. Oman had just brokered what its foreign minister described as a breakthrough agreement……………………………….
What Australia Needs to Ask
An Iranian projectile struck near Australia’s military headquarters in the UAE this week. Anthony Albanese confirmed it. Then said nothing else useful.
Pine Gap is almost certainly providing targeting intelligence that has enabled strikes now characterised by UN human rights experts as potential war crimes. Under laws amended by the Howard government in 2001 and never restored, the Prime Minister can take Australia to war on Cabinet agreement alone, no parliamentary debate, no public mandate, no vote. Nobody in the national media is asking whether that authority has been invoked. Nobody is asking whether it should be.
The question Mearsheimer asks about Washington; what’s the exit, and who owns the consequences, deserves to be asked in Canberra. With the same urgency. And considerably more honesty than we are currently getting.
……………………. Trump got his war with Iran, on the urging of a foreign government, on the basis of intelligence his own Director of National Intelligence allegedly falsified, over a diplomatic resolution that was days from signature.
History won’t be interested in who did the urging. He owns this. Every schoolgirl in Minab. Every barrel at Ras Laffan. Every day the Hormuz stays closed.
It has, as Mearsheimer warned, no good exit. https://theaimn.net/no-good-exit/
Trump ready to put boots on the ground in Iran
Pentagon draws up plans to seize strategic Kharg Island after US president calls Nato allies ‘cowards’
Benedict Smith US Reporter, in Washington. Henry Bodkin Jerusalem Correspondent, 21 Mar 26
Donald Trump is considering putting American troops on the ground in Iran.
The Pentagon has drawn up plans that could involve seizing Kharg Island,
Iran’s key oil terminal in the Persian Gulf. Mr Trump’s top spokeswoman
confirmed the details to The Telegraph but cautioned that the president had
not made a final decision.
Telegraph 21st March 2026,
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/03/20/us-launch-offensive-reopen-strait-of-hormuz-iran-war-drones/
Tremors in MAGA: Joe Kent, the Iran War and the Antisemitism Smear
21 March 2026 Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.net/tremors-in-maga-joe-kent-the-iran-war-and-the-antisemitism-smear/
Joe Kent, the now former US Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, always seemed a bit off, especially to liberals. As a combat veteran of MAGA pedigree, he found favour with President Donald J. Trump, who rewarded him for his conspiracy blustering in a manner befitting other nominees baptised in the truth repelling River of Fox News. But the mindless adventurism in attacking Iran in league with Israel was a step too far.
In his resignation letter, Kent asserted that he could not “in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.” Till June 2025, the President had “understood that the wars in the Middle East were a trap that robbed America of the precious lives of our patriots and depleted the wealth and prosperity of our nation.”
Then came the machinations of “high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media” with their “misinformation campaign that wholly undermined your America First platform and sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage a war with Iran.” From there came the “echo chamber” that deceived Trump “into believing Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States, and that should you strike now, there was a clear path to a swift victory.” The same tactics had been used by Israel in drawing the US “into the disastrous Iraq War that cost our nation the lives of thousands of our best men and women.”
Israel comes in for a further lashing for having left its personal mark on Kent’s life. “As a veteran who deployed to combat 11 times and as a Gold Star husband who lost my beloved wife Shannon in a war manufactured by Israel, I cannot support sending the next generation off to die in a war that serves no benefit to the American people nor justifies the cost of American lives.”
The portrait of Kent is an unremittingly spiky and jarring one. Even before the resignation, he was already under investigation by the FBI’s criminal division for alleged leaks of classified information, which should commend him to the fifth estate. (Such leaks in any administration, and most certainly one like the Trump administration, should be treasured, not abominated.) Former deputy White House chief of staff Taylor Budowich was of the view that Kent was “often at the centre of national security leaks” and “spent all his time working to subvert the chain of command and undermine the President of the United States.”
The language of the resignation note was also bound to stir the blood of those willing to see antisemitism rearing its vast, deformed head. This was made easier given Kent’s checkered history, a point made by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) during last year’s confirmation hearings on Capitol Hill. In a February 2025 statement, the ADL noted his tendency to promote “multiple conspiracy theories” and forge links “with individuals who have extremist ties, including to groups such as the Proud Boys, Groypers and Three Percenters, some of which have a history of violence.”
In a June 2025 joint letter authored with the Western States Center, the SPLC similarly noted a past heavily salted with conspiracy theorising and links to right wing extremism and white supremacists. Kent had not only “embraced discredited anti-government conspiracy theories – including that the FBI and the intelligence community were involved in the January 6, 2021 deadly attacks at the US Capitol” but had “connections with bigoted individuals, far right violent extremists, and anti-democratic movements.” He had, for instance, discussed social media strategy with the white nationalist and antisemite Nick Fuentes and conducted an interview with Greyson Arnold, a live streamer who thought Hitler “a complicated historical figure which many people misunderstand.”
The ADL and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) who nakedly operate as open fronts of Israeli opinion, were bound to play the ad hominem game in attacking the man over opinion. According to the ADL, Kent’s letter trafficked “in old-age antisemitic tropes.” It was hardly a “surprise that he would blame Israel and the media for pushing the President into war against the Iranian regime.” Refusing to consider the pathological lunacy underlying the pre-emptive war on Iran, Ilan Goldenberg of the liberal pro-Israel advocacy group J Street could only see “ugly stuff that plays on the worst antisemitic tropes.”
These inane airings are unsurprising. The ADL refuses to acknowledge the sheer depth of Israeli involvement and support in the US
political and religious establishment, much of it unhealthy and a good deal of it undemocratic. Suggestions that Israel might be distorting the perspective of US strategists and policy makers are shouted down in frothing fury. The organisation can barely stomach the term “Israel lobby,” something evidenced in the organisation’s travesty of a review of a work bearing that name by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt. Here was, in the words of the ADL’s unlettered hatchet job, “a classical conspiratorial anti-Semitic analysis invoking the canards of Jewish power and Jewish control.” Unmissable here is that Mearsheimer and Walt had, like Kent, also noted the poisonous hold Israel had exerted over the Washington establishment in encouraging the pre-emptive, illegal war waged against Iraq in 2003. The lie of the imminent threat has some form.
Kent also had another handicap from the past that was bound to be exploited by the administration. On that platform of handy bile and venom called Truth Social, Trump posted a tweet from January 2020 in which Kent encouraged attacking Iran. “We should not sit and wait for the next attack, wipe Iran’s ballistic capability out and get our troops out of Iraq – they are only targets now.” The post on what was then Twitter was made in the aftermath of Trump’s order to assassinate the Iranian commander of the Quds force, General Qassem Soleimani. “No US WIA/KIA is a tribute to the professionalism of our military and intel professionals not Iranian restraint.”
As the letter itself indicates, Kent may have changed his mind. He even acknowledged that Soleimani’s assassination was a decisive application “of military power without getting us drawn into never ending wars.” (MAGA is for slaying foreign officials, as long as the operation is scrupulously limited.) For the dogmatist followers of the Trump MAGA brand, something deeper is underfoot. The prospects for conscientious objections to the war by service members reluctant to serve in the conflict have also improved. Prolonging the absurd, illegal, and increasingly catastrophic war against Iran will prove telling in that regard. And just because it is deemed such by a person as sketchy as Kent is hardly a reason to ignore the premise.
The Warmongers Will Never Admit They Were Wrong And Will Never Learn From Their Mistakes
Cait;in Johnstone, 20 Mar 26, https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=rm&ogbl#inbox/WhctKLcDqcPgHJwXCXxhJgcDpJZFXpkgKlZRLMBbTfNgLndgLLjFjSMrWXffFBwHrWcdXkb
| Trump’s former national security advisor John Bolton has a tweet that’s got me absolutely fuming right now.“In 2018–2019, I made the case for regime change in Iran as often as I could. Voices in Trump’s orbit often cited Iran’s capacity to close the Strait of Hormuz as a reason against regime change. Trump has been fully aware this is a possibility, and yet did not prepare,” Bolton posted. |
Can you believe this shit? Dude’s like “Hey, Trump should have known this war would be hard because people tried to warn him not to listen to me!”
Motherfucker THIS WAS YOUR WAR. You were THE “bomb Iran” guy! You made it your entire personality for DECADES. Over the years I’ve used your name God knows how many times whenever I needed an example of a Beltway swamp monster who’s got a throbbing hard-on for war with Iran. Now you’ve finally got it and it’s going exactly as badly as everyone said it would, and you’re like “Yeah well he should’ve known better, people tried to warn him about the Strait of Hormuz”? Fuck you.
These professional warmongers never, ever learn from their errors. Many years after the Iraq invasion turned out to be a disaster, John Bolton was still out there telling the media he believed it was a “resounding success,” conceding only “mistakes that were made subsequently” to the ousting of Saddam Hussein.
They never admit they were wrong. They never admit that their war was a bad idea. They only ever acknowledge that it didn’t happen in exactly the way they imagined it happening in their minds. They live in this fantasy world where all their war agendas would unfold beautifully so long as they could personally control every molecule of matter involved in how it happens, completely ignoring that this is impossible and any war is always going to have an unfathomable number of moving parts you can’t control.
In their eyes the wars are never wrong, they’re only ever executed incorrectly. US military interventionism can never fail, it can only be failed.
Bolton doesn’t even seem to have any idea what Trump could have done differently to stop Iran from closing the Strait of Hormuz. I listened to an NPR interview the other day where he slammed Trump for not having “done the planning in advance” to prevent the Iranian blockade, but he never at any time outlined what Trump could have done to accomplish this. He just said there was “a huge hole in the planning” and that “they apparently didn’t take as seriously as they should have the potential to mine the Strait of Hormuz,” without ever saying what they could have done.
These are the kinds of minds they have spearheading the US empire’s wars.
All the worst people are getting exactly what they want, and it turns out they don’t even want it, like Elon Musk tweeting “Whoever said ‘money can’t buy happiness’ really knew what they were talking about” last month. They’re getting everything they asked for and it’s making everyone miserable, and it’s not even making THEM happy.
The imperial status quo elevates the worst among us. The least wise. The least insightful. The least compassionate. The least deserving. The least qualified.
We need drastic revolutionary change, and we need it now.e doesn’t know. He himself, Mister Iran War, had no plan for how to carry out this war without disastrous consequences for the US and its allies. He’s spent his entire blood-soaked career pushing for a war he never had any idea how to actually carry out.
What a recent court win reveals about the Trump administration’s unlawful attacks on climate science
Bulletin, By Rachel Cleetus | Opinion | March 18, 2026
The second Trump administration is taking its hostility to climate science to new levels. In addition to its rhetoric dismissing climate change as a con or scam, recently released government documents show how the administration is seeking to replace scientific facts with propaganda and disinformation.
The Environmental Defense Fund and the Union of Concerned Scientists recently won a court case against the administration which forced it to release of a trove of government documents related to a secretive “Climate Working Group” illegally convened by Energy Secretary Chris Wright. These documents show that the Trump administration secretly enlisted a handpicked group of climate contrarians to write a biased climate report specifically designed to undermine the EPA’s Endangerment Finding. This science-based finding establishes the known harms to human health and well-being from global warming pollution, facts that were clear in 2009 and even more so today, as affirmed by a recent National Academies report……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Propaganda and disinformation about climate science are now the official position of the US government. Meanwhile, scientists confirm that the world is on the verge of overshooting 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming within the next few years. Costly and deadly climate impacts—extreme heatwaves, record-breaking floods, intensified storms, catastrophic wildfires—are worsening, and the risks of irreversible, multi-century harms are growing. And yet this deeply anti-science administration continues to prop up fossil fuel interests rather than protecting people’s safety and the health of the planet.
The successful Federal Advisory Committee Act lawsuit has resulted in some crucial wins, including shining a light on the Trump administration’s deceptive tactics to undermine climate science. . And the administration’s harmful actions will continue to be challenged in court. The Union of Concerned Scientists and the Environmental Defense Fund, together with many other groups, have recently joined a lawsuit challenging the unlawful repeal of the endangerment finding. Try as it might, this administration cannot bury the evidence of climate harms so readily apparent to communities across the nation. The American people deserve genuine solutions to the climate crisis, not more self-serving lies.https://thebulletin.org/2026/03/what-a-recent-court-win-reveals-about-the-trump-administrations-unlawful-attacks-on-climate-science/
Pete Hegseth’s War on Journalists (and Iran Too)
Pete Tucker, March 20, 2026, https://fair.org/home/pete-hegseths-war-on-journalists-and-iran-too/
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth appears to be in the midst of two conflicts, one…in Iran, and the other with the American free press over its coverage of the widening Middle East war.
—MS NOW‘s Sydney Carruth (3/13/26)
Last fall, nearly the entire Pentagon press corps was banned from the Pentagon after refusing to sign Pete Hegseth’s loyalty oath, which would have bound them to only report information “authorized” by the government (FAIR.org, 9/23/25). They were quickly replaced by pundits from Hegseth-approved outlets like One America News, Gateway Pundit and Lindell TV, which is “Pillow Guy” Mike Lindell’s pet project.
But once the Iran War got underway, it dawned on Hegseth that a Defense secretary needs to communicate with the whole country, not just the narrow slice of it reached by his favorite right-wing pundits. So Hegseth reversed course, asking the major networks to bring their cameras back to the Pentagon. They agreed, but on one condition: Some of their reporters had to be allowed to return to the press briefing room, too.
So back they came, albeit now at the back of the room. Few of these reporters—who represent outlets you’ve actually heard of, like ABC, NBC and the New York Times—are called on. Hegseth, a former Fox News weekend host, instead fields questions almost exclusively from handpicked media personalities seated in the front rows. (I’d call them reporters, but if they signed Hegseth’s 2025 oath, as most did, they’re anything but.)
‘Typical gotcha-type question’
When Hegseth stepped to the podium for his first Iran War press briefing on March 2, there was a lot on the line. A skeptical American public wanted to know why President Trump had just launched another regime-change war, the very thing he’d railed against on the campaign trail. But Hegseth had little to offer, aside from “lots of chest-thumping,” a Pentagon reporter told CNN.
For the Q&A, Hegseth “only answered questions from his chosen outlets,” reported CNN’s Brian Stelter (3/4/26), until a journalist in the back lobbed a question about Trump’s changing timeline for the war’s duration. Hegseth initially ignored the interruption, but his anger got the best of him, and he returned to the matter.
“I heard the question about ‘four weeks,’” Hegseth sneered. “It’s the typical NBC sort of gotcha-type question.”
Having veered away from his friendly questioners, Hegseth was off script and had to think on his feet, not exactly a strength.
“President Trump has all the latitude in the world to talk about how long it may or may not take—four weeks, two weeks, six weeks. It could move up, it could move back,” Hegseth said at the opening of a rant that somehow included the word “aperture” and the observation that, “well, I mean, Joe Biden didn’t even know what he was doing.”
‘Only favorable images’
After face-planting at his first Iran War press briefing, Hegseth knew change was needed—only not by him, but with his enemies in the press.
If Hegseth couldn’t kick out any more reporters, who could he get rid of? Scanning the room, he fixed on the photographers.
The Pentagon’s stated reason for banning press photographers after the March 2 briefing was because of space restrictions. But the real reason, the Washington Post (3/11/26) reported, was they took “unflattering” photos of Hegseth.
Now only Pentagon photographers are allowed into briefings, and they are happy to provide the media with approved photos of their boss. Alex Garcia, president of the National Press Photographers Association, told the Post:
Excluding photographers from Pentagon briefings because officials did not like how published images portrayed them shows an astonishingly poor sense of priorities in the midst of a war and is, for a public servant, not a good look…. A free press cannot function if government officials decide that only favorable images of public officials may be created or distributed.
In Hegseth’s March 4 press briefing—without those pesky photographers—he stuck again to his preferred outlets, like the Daily Caller, Daily Wire, Lindell TV and the Washington Times. He also took one question from a mainstream journalist, Tom Bateman of the BBC, who pressed Hegseth on the US bombing of an elementary school in Minab. “We’re investigating it,” Hegseth replied curtly.
‘A snowflake behind a military shield’
Among the many reporters who didn’t get called on was the Atlantic’s Nancy Youssef, although in her case it was because she wasn’t allowed in. “I, along with print photographers, have been denied entry to cover today’s Pentagon briefing,” Youssef wrote on X. “All other media were allowed in.”
By Hegseth’s next briefing, March 19, his banned list had expanded again. “The Pentagon’s own publication, Stars and Stripes, was disinvited from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s latest Iran War press conference—as he continues to clamp down on press coverage,” the Independent (3/19/26) reported.
This came less than two weeks after the Pentagon announced it was taking greater control of Stars and Stripes, a paper Hegseth previously claimed had gone “woke” (Daily Beast, 3/19/26). As former Stars and Stripes reporter Kevin Baron (X, 3/19/26) pointed out, the paper’s
employees are US Army civilians. Their editorial independence is protected by Congress specifically to prevent political leaders from feeding troops propaganda.
“Hegseth spent years on a comfortable Fox News couch building a brand around contempt for the thin-skinned and the easily offended,” wrote Status’s Jon Passantino (3/14/26). “But in office, Hegseth has revealed himself to be exactly that—a snowflake behind a military shield.”
‘An actual patriotic press’
As the US and Israel’s war on Iran continues to worsen, Hegseth’s attacks on the media have also escalated. At his March 13 briefing, Hegseth insisted that “an actual patriotic press” wouldn’t write headlines stating the war is expanding, even as the war has sprawled from an initial three countries—Israel, the US and Iran—to over a dozen.
“Allow me to make a few suggestions,” Hegseth offered. “People look up at the TV and they see banners, they see headlines [like]… ‘Mideast War Intensifies,’” he said. “What should the banner read instead? How about, ‘Iran Increasingly Desperate.’”
Hegseth also singled out a CNN story (3/13/26), headlined “Trump Administration Underestimated Iran War’s Impact on Strait of Hormuz.” That story is “patently ridiculous, of course,” Hegseth said, blithely dismissing the strait’s closure, saying we “don’t need to worry about it.”
Hegseth’s worries were directed elsewhere—at CNN. “The sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better,” Hegseth said.
Ellison is the 43-year-old nepo baby of billionaire Larry Ellison, a close Trump ally. Having already purchased Paramount, and with it CBS, Ellison is on the verge of closing a $110 billion deal for Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns, among other media and film properties, CNN.
Hegseth’s comments about Ellison taking over CNN “should be a major scandal,” wrote Craig Aaron (Pressing Issues, 3/17/26), co-CEO of Free Press (the media advocacy group, not the right-wing, Ellison-owned outlet of the same name). “But in the chaos of the Trump administration, he’s just a warm-up act.”
‘Sick and demented people’
Indeed, as Trump’s historically unpopular war continues to sour, he’s sought to place blame on a familiar target: news media. Outlets critically covering the war, Trump posted on Truth Social (3/14/26), “are truly sick and demented people that have no idea the damage they cause the United States of America.” The next day (3/15/26), he declared they “should be brought up on Charges for TREASON for the dissemination of false information!” Treason is punishable by death.
Trump’s censorious FCC chair, Brendan Carr, backed up his boss: “The law is clear,” he tweeted (3/14/26). “Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not.”
Hegseth succinctly outlined what “operating in the public interest” looks like at his March 19 briefing. The press need only say “one thing to President Trump,” he said. “Thank you.”
Israel’s Manipulation of Trump on Iran
The public has noticed who is in charge. According to a soon-to-be-released poll from IMEU Policy Project and Demand Progress, conducted by Data for Progress, voters believe the war is being conducted for Israel’s benefit over America’s by a nearly 2-to-1 margin.
Today on TAP: The worse the Iran war goes, the more blame is likely to be directed at Israel, and by association the Jews.
by Robert KuttnerMarch 18, 2026, https://prospect.org/2026/03/18/iran-israel-joe-kent-trump-netanyahu-antisemitism/
On Tuesday, Joe Kent, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, became the first senior administration official to resign over the Iran war. He resigned not because the war is a debacle, but because of Israel’s role in triggering U.S. involvement.
“I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran,” he wrote in a letter to President Trump. “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”
Kent has a history of association with far-right white nationalist and antisemitic groups, according to the Associated Press. At the time of his confirmation hearing last February, Rep. Seth Magaziner (D-RI) pointed out, “During his two failed campaigns for Congress, we learned that Kent has ties to white nationalists … [and] sought political support from a Holocaust denier.”
Administration officials and allies spent a frantic 24 hours trying to do damage control, stepping around the question of why a well-documented antisemite should have been given the sensitive post in the first place. The question is doubly awkward, given Trump’s supposed love for the Jews when that posture is convenient to assault universities.
Quite apart from Kent’s record and motives, the issue of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s manipulation of Trump should be taken seriously. Early in the war, on March 2, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a press briefing, “We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action. We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.” That’s about right.
Rubio has repeatedly tried to walk that back, but he can’t unsay it. The Israeli attack of February 28, which assassinated top Iranian leaders and effectively set off the war, was reportedly aided by U.S. intelligence, but Netanyahu was determined to launch it whether or not Trump concurred.
Just to rub Washington’s nose in Israel’s habit of escalating war without asking Trump’s permission, on Tuesday of this week top Israeli officials made clear that Trump learned about Israel’s latest assassinations only after the fact. The Wall Street Journal reported, “Israel killed Iran’s security chief, Ali Larijani, in airstrikes Monday night, according to Israel’s defense minister. President Trump would be informed of Larijani’s death, Israel Katz said. ‘Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and I directed the IDF to continue to hunt down the leadership of the terror and oppression regime in Iran and cut off the head of the octopus again and again and prevent it from regrowing,’ Katz said in a statement.”
Let me repeat that, in italics: President Trump would be informed of Larijani’s death, Israel Katz said. Not only was Trump not informed or asked to concur before the assassination. The Israeli defense minister, speaking for himself and Netanyahu, informed Trump via a statement to The Wall Street Journal. That’s even more contemptuous than announcing it on social media, Trump-style. The fact that it was in a deliberate prepared statement means that this was no accidental off-the-cuff blunder. Just yesterday, Israel continued targeting Iran’s leaders, killing the country’s intelligence minister, Esmail Khatib.
The public has noticed who is in charge. According to a soon-to-be-released poll from IMEU Policy Project and Demand Progress, conducted by Data for Progress, voters believe the war is being conducted for Israel’s benefit over America’s by a nearly 2-to-1 margin………..
As the odds increase against Trump finding some kind of exit with dignity, the risk is that he will widen and deepen the war. While Trump is ambivalent, Netanyahu has made it clear that he wants the war to continue, and he acts accordingly. He is just as reckless as Trump, but more strategic.
When a wider war turns into an even bigger crisis, more people who did not start out as antisemites will be inclined to blame history’s favorite all-purpose scapegoats, the Jews. Only in this case, Bibi has provided plenty of ammunition.
1 This Month
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560
of the week–London Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Tell the Ukrainian Government to Drop Prosecution of Peace Activist Yurii Sheliazhenko
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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