Decapitation Strikes

With the President openly bragging about targeted assassinations against Iranian government leaders, it’s worth remembering that it’s not a new idea. And it has always been a dubious one, at best.

Robert Pape, who has been giving lots of interviews in the first month-plus of the Iran War, is an authority on the history of aerial bombing. In his 2014 book Bombing To Win, he writes about bombing in the Gulf War, i.e, the war of 1990-1991 in which the US intervened under legitimate and specific United Nations authority to push Iraq’s armies under Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait, which Iraq had illegally occupied. (There was no formal Congressional declaration of war, of course.)

The goals of bombing

Pape uses the conventional distinction between tactical and strategic bombing. Tactical bombing employed in direct support of land and/or sea forces. Strategic bombing is used to attack civilian and military infrastructure such as factories or key transportation facilities, which are often found in urban areas far from the front lines. There is a long-standing controversy going back to the First World War as to whether it is legitimate to deliberately target civilian areas for the purpose of undermining civilian morale. The latter even in its most sanitized expressions, sounds awfully like a sanitized excuse, i.e., we’re not trying to bomb civilians to kill them, only to kill their war morale.

What was once called “morale bombing” is now more often referred to as “punishment campaigns.” Although that term can also be used (a bit fuzzily) to include targeting infrastructure to convince the other side to give up or come to terms. Some confusion comes in here derived from classical 19th century military concepts, especially those identified with Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831), which stressed that the real political goal of any war was to destroy the enemy’s will to fight. This is sometimes taken as a deep psychological insight. But what it really means is convincing the enemy side that they no longer consider continuing the fight to be less onerous than making a peace agreement.

When combined with the notion of “total war” that has developed since the Napoleonic wars, which stressed that notion that wars are between whole societies, not just the formal armed forces, we wind up with the notion that undermining the civilian public’s “war morale.” The idea that such a goal can be achieved by bombing cities and driving civilian into mass panic and even a revolution (“regime change”) against their own government. The First World War experience of both Britain and Germany showed clearly that this assumption was wrong.

And the experience has been repeated many times since then, most recently by the Iranian people’s unwillingness to overthrow their own government on behalf of a two hostile powers, the US and Israel, which are bombing their country in a war of aggression and killing large numbers of civilians. But the fact that such expectations have been disappointed for over a century won’t stop a meathead like white Christian nationalist Secretary of “War” Pete Hegseth from praying to God to help him inflict death on the heathen hordes as send them all to Hell for eternity.

Decapitation strategies

The concept of “decapitation” can refer to both targeted assassinations of senior leaders and to the effort to interference with the enemy country’s military command and control functions.

Times have changed since the Gulf War, because back then public acknowledgment that assassination of leaders was a deliberate goal was considered at least bad form, even among Republicans. The Bush Senior Administration actually fired a general who spoke too bluntly in public about what Bush and his Defense Secretary Dick Cheney were planning to do. Time magazine adopted a diplomatic tone in describing what happened:

Last week [in November 1990] Cheney fired the highly decorated Air Force Chief of Staff, General Michael Dugan, for “poor judgment at a sensitive time” in speaking indiscreetly on secret and diplomatically touchy issues relating to the gulf crisis. Dugan was the first member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to be dismissed since President Harry Truman in 1949 sacked Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Louis Denfeld and the first military commander to be dismissed since Truman ousted General Douglas MacArthur in 1951.

Cheney blew up after reading on-the-record comments that Dugan, in office only 79 days, made to Washington Post and Los Angeles Times correspondents accompanying him on a week-long trip through the Middle East. Dugan, a West Point graduate, talked in considerable detail about classified operational plans, including the use of Saudi bases for American B-52 flights in wartime and training routines for the supersecret F-117A Stealth fighters. In comments deeply distressing to America’s allies, Dugan advocated bombing Iraqi cities –including downtown Baghdad – and said, “I don’t expect to be concerned” about political constraints. [my emphasis] (1)

The New York Times was a bit more clear:

General Dugan, in articles published on Sunday by The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times, said the Joint Chiefs of Staff had concluded that the only effective military option for driving Iraqi forces out of Kuwait was heavy bombing of Baghdad to “decapitate“ the senior Iraqi leadership, making President Saddam Hussein of Iraq, his family and senior commanders primary targets.

“The cutting edge would be in downtown Baghdad," General Dugan was quoted by The Post as saying. “If I want to hurt you, it would be at home, not out in the woods someplace.“ (2)

Back then, it was too much even for Dick Cheney that a US general would describe war plans so bluntly! He was the first senior general at that level to be fired since Douglas MacArthur in 1951. Four decades later, it was still considered a big deal. Today “War” Secretary Pete Hegseth firs generals if they seem to be too little sympathetic to his Christian nationalist Crusader mentality.

Michael Dugan

The Gulf War decapitation plan was in line with a goal of introducing what its proponents called strategic paralysis. That term probably had slightly more nuance than “killing a bunch of senior officials and hope everything falls apart.” But that was the core idea.

Robert Pape was blunt in a 1997 assessment: “a strategic bombing strategy, designed by [John] Warden and aimed at decapitating the Iraqi leadership, was executed during the opening days of the air war against Iraq, and failed completely.” (3)

Pape also wrote:

The decapitation campaign, known as Instant Thunder, pursued victory solely through strategic bombing of a small number of political and economic targets in the hope of isolating Saddam Hussein's regime from its political and military control structures, thus leading to its overthrow or strategic paralysis, either of which would force Iraq to abandon Kuwait. (4)

Pape emphasizes that air power was critical to pushing back the Iraqi army in the Gulf War because of its tactical role: “Air power did succeed in coercing Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait, but it did so by undermining its ability to defend against the Coalition's ground threat.” (p. 212) He refers to this as the use of “theater air power” (a similar concept to tactical air power). He also points out that the Gulf War saw “the first major use of strategic bombing to decapitate an opponent's leadership in order to achieve victory by changing or paralyzing the enemy government.” He also takes it as an example showing that tactical air power has become even more effective compared to “strategic air campaigns against an enemy’s political and economic centers,” i.e., strategic bombing.

Robert Farley in 2021 also speculated on what might have happened had the initial decapitation strike in Iraq had succeeded:

In the early days of the air campaign of the 1991 Gulf War, the United States undertook a concerted effort to track and strike Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. The effort was predicated on the belief that eliminating Saddam Hussein would have two effects; it would throw the Iraqi military hierarchy into chaos, and it would make the surviving Iraqi leadership more amenable to a negotiated solution.

The effort to kill Hussein was only one episode in the U.S. pursuit of “decapitation” as a politico-military strategy. In the post-Cold War era, the United States has faced a variety of tyrants and terrorists. U.S. leaders reasoned that steps to crush the head of the snake might make it unnecessary to kill the entire body, thus sparing much destruction and civilian death.

The 1991 decapitation attacks, and similar attacks launched in 2003, failed. [my emphasis] (5)

Notes:

(1) Ready, Aim, Fired. Time 10/01/1990. <https://time.com/archive/6716028/ready-aim-fired/> (Accessed: 2026-04-04).

(2) Schmitt, Eric (1990): Confrontation in the Gulf: Air Force Chief Is Dismissed for Remarks on Gulf Plan: Cheney Cites Bad Judgment. New York Times 09/18/2026. l (Accessed: 2026-04-04).

(3) Pape, Robert (1997): The Air Force Strikes Back: A Reply to Barry Watts and John Warden. Security Studies 7:2, 213. <https://doi.org/10.1080/09636419708429346>

(4) Pape, Robert (2014): Bombing To Win: Air Power and Coercion in War, 211-214. Ithica and London: Cornell University Press.

(5) Farley, Robert (2021): Counterfactual: What If Saddam Hussein Had Died in the First Gulf War? The National Interest 11/14/2021. <https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/counterfactual-what-if-saddam-hussein-had-died-first-gulf-war-196220> (Accessed: 2026-04-04).

(6) Naegele, Tobias (2022): Chiefs, Part 10: The Invisible Chief’. Air & Space Forces Magazine 11/09/2022. <https://www.airandspaceforces.com/chiefs-part-10-dugan-the-invisible-chief/> (Accessed: 2026-10-04).

Dying at sea for European xenophobia and the parties that promote it

Rightwing Italien Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s sometimes pragmatic-sounding public rhetoric on immigration and refugees doesn’t match her government’s actual policies:

At the same time [as European news was reporting on the plight of a stranded whale on the shore of the Baltic Sea], about 80 people were drifting between Libya and the Italian island of Lampedusa in the Mediterranean. It looks like the reconnaissance aircraft IAM4101 the Italian Air Force flew over the sea area very close to the rubber boat on Monday. The Frontex aircraft "Eagle 2" provided information twice on the same day about a rubber boat in distress. But it was not until more than 24 hours later, on Tuesday, that the Italian coast guard came to the aid of the people. By then, 19 of the occupants were dead, apparently frozen, five were in critical condition. (1)

This is deliberate neglect on the part of Meloni’s government to communicate to her core far-right voting base that she shares their murderous hatred for immigrants and refugees. But Italy isn’t alone in such criminal neglect: “A day later, on Wednesday, 20 migrants died in a boat accident off the coast of Bodrum in Turkey. On Sunday, at least 40 people drowned eleven miles off the coast of Sfax in Tunisia.”

Experts dealing with immigration and rescue operations have been saying for years to anyone who will listen to them that there are well-established ways to humanely and practically manage refugee flows, save people in immediate danger of drowning at sea, and reducing illegal people-smuggling operations.

But the politics of xenophobia that has been the main cause pushed by the anti-democracy rightwing parties in Europe and the US is not about practical policy ideas. It’s about fear- and hate-mongering driven by lies and cruelty. Trump’s ICE Gestapo goons have been one of the most dramatic cases of this in the last two years, but it’s only a variant of the common xenophobic political playbook.

The rightwingers are not going to give up on this until it starts completely wrecking their political appeal. When (non-rightwing-radical) conservative parties like the Christian Democrats in Germany and center-left policies like the Democrats in the US try to pander to the nationalist xenophobia by some version of “we hate the foreigners as much as the rightwingers if not more” – and that was the point Kamala Harris stressed in her 2024 Presidential campaign – that approach has been remarkably successful in strengthening the rightwing parties.

Xenophobic politics is based on hatred, fear, and lies. Democratic parties should offer practical and non-xenophobic policies as an alternative. But xenophobia politics is not primarily about policy issues, often not really at all about policy issues. Unless the pro-democracy parties are willing to fight directly against the lies and hysteria from the xenophobes and call them out as such, the rational talk about sensible policies will never be heard in the way they need to be.

We’ve seen that in a dramatic way the last 14 months or so in the US in the grassroots opposition to the Trump ICE Gestapo, which has primarily been a grassroots movement, not one led by the Democratic Party. There are certainly real exceptions like Sen. Chris Van Hollen, Mike Walz and other Democratic leaders – even Gavin Newsom. But having Democratic leaders like Chuck Schumer groaning that they will push back against Trump’s racist and xenophobic actions some way, somehow, someday, will never be enough.

Meloni speaking to CPAC 2022

Notes:

(1) Jakob. Christian (2026): Als Wal wäre ihnen das nicht passiert. taz 04/04/2026. <https://taz.de/Todeszone-Mittelmeer/!6164508/> (Accessed: 2026-04-04). My translation from German.

(2) 19 dead after hours without help: New evidence incriminates European authorities. Sea-Watch 04/02/2026. <https://sea-watch.org/en/19-dead-after-hours-without-help-new-evidence-incriminates-european-authorities/> (Accessed: 2026-09-04).

Canada and … EU membership?

BNN Bloomberg reports on polling results showing that many Canadians view the idea of joining the European Union favorably. And gives some background on the issue:

The prospect of Canada joining the European bloc — despite the obvious geographical barriers — has come up recently on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

Speaking at the Europe 2026 conference in Berlin in March, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said the European Union is attracting more candidate countries, such as Iceland, and suggested “maybe Canada at some point” will sign up.

Barrot smiled while mentioning Canada and his comments generated some laughter from a panel moderator and applause from the audience.

The European Parliament adopted a report last month calling on the EU to deepen ties with Canada. Members said in an accompanying statement that Canada is “perhaps the most European country outside Europe.” (1)

Canada in the 1990s and 2000s was generally very favorable to eastward expansion of the EU because many Canadian diplomats saw this as an opportunity for deeper engagement with Europe.

And there are political initiatives to increase the ties between Canada and the EU: (2)

This is important issue that is very complex in practice. The EU is very resourceful at creating partnerships and associations with countries not formally part of the Union. But it’s important to remember that the European Union treaty includes a mutual defense obligation, which on its face is more binding than the NATO Treaty version. In practice, NATO has been far more prominent as a defense organization because it’s primarily directed at defending against Russia. And European NATO countries’ strategy actual military planning and organization have been closely tied in with American weapons, intelligence, and military organization. It’s a major priority right now for European NATO members to rearrange their defense planning and their own military-industrial capabilities to get out of the current level of dependence of the US.

They will of course make their own mistakes in the process, and war profiteers will play the dubious role they always do. European leaders may not agree on exactly what adjustments will be needed and how fast they can and should be achieved. But they clearly see that the security situation has radically changed under Trump 2.0.

But this also creates real complications for Canada actually joining the EU. Canada is a current NATO member. But if NATO is formally abolished, or if the US formally leaves it, that means that Canada joining the EU with a full mutual-defense commitment would be an extremely touchy issue. It might not flip out the American foreign policy establishment as much as, say, a mutual-defense treaty between China and Mexico. But they also wouldn’t be likely to swallow it without pushing back hard.

But it would be hard to overstate the seriousness of the situation we had within the last year in which Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and even Poland publicly stated when the US was seriously threatening Denmark with invading and seizing Greenland, that that took seriously their mutual-defense obligation under NATO to defend Denmark against any illegal foreign attack. It seems that a lot of American commentators, though, blipped right past that as though it was just another daily episode of the Trump Reality-TV Show. The EU countries are presumably relieved (maybe with the exception of Hungary!) that Trump TACOed out on that particular threat for the time being.

And it’s understandable that the EU and Canada seem to be treading lightly on this issue. But it’s still one to watch.

Notes:

(1) Canada in the European Union? Poll suggests broad openness to the idea. The Canadian Press 04/06/2026. <https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/business/economics/2026/04/06/canada-in-the-european-union-poll-suggests-broad-openness-to-the-idea/> (Accessed: 2026-07-04).

(2) 'The case almost makes itself': Should Canada and the EU develop closer ties? CBC News YouTube channel 05/22/2026. <https://youtu.be/pptSbsUbR9I?si=GB0sKFfb53m3NOU8> (Accessed: 2026-09-04).

Peace President Trump's new mess after his Iran War ... ceasefire (?)

Newsweek published a list of Members of Congress who have called J.D. Vance and the Cabinet use the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office. As of the time of its publication midday Tuesday, the list includes only Democrats. The list does not include Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer who supports the Iran War and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. Former Democrats House Leader Nancy Pelosi is on the list. (1)

After supposedly agreeing to a two-week ceasefire, the United States’ co-belligerent Israel is staging a new round of attacks on Lebanon, which it wants to keep in a failed-state condition which it will periodically strike with what it calls mowing-the-lawn attacks. It is obviously also trying to annex part of Lebanon’s territory.

Ryan Cooper reports:

Donald Trump is setting records. His war on Iran is certainly the stupidest war in American history - and that’s saying something - and Trump has now lost it more quickly than any previous war. It took 20 years to lose in Afghanistan, about ten years to lose in Vietnam, and two and a half years to lose the War of 1812, but Trump managed to get utterly dog-walked in a mere six weeks.

That’s the only possible conclusion from Trump’s announcement on Tuesday evening—after threatening to obliterate Iran’s entire civilization - that he had reached a deal with Iran based on an Iranian proposal. The ten-point plan includes acceptance of Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz and the country’s continued uranium enrichment, an end to all primary and secondary sanctions, war reparations, withdrawal of all American forces from the region, and an end to the Israeli bombing of Lebanon. (The last one is already being violated right now with a huge barrage by the Israelis, leading Iran to close the strait again, so the durability of this cease-fire is in deep question.) [my emphasis] (2)

Trump is so erratic and demented that the war could go on for much longer. But Iran still has the escalation dominance. And Israel is entirely unreliable as a partner for doing anything other than turning Iran into a failed state.

Jeremy Scahill reports on the Iranian negotiating position in this report, including comments on China’s role in the diplomacy over the war: (3)

Juan Cole speculates on the implications of the US-Israeli war on Iran for the world standing of the US:

Going into the war, the Iranian government had just committed a massacre of thousands of protesters and was without a friend in the world. Trump and Netanyahu committed breathtaking war crimes on Iran and acted and spoke so monstrously that many countries ended up at least rhetorically supporting Iran, or at least opposing the war on it. Israel comes out of the war a pariah. The US is too rich, big and powerful to be a pariah but its standing has certainly plummeted and it can expect much less cooperation going forward. [my emphasis] (4)

It’s always important to remember that there are real issues about violations of international law at stake in this war. (5)

John Feffer reminds us what a militarized foreign policy the Trump regime is running:

The United States has long operated in these two registers: deploying overwhelming military force and using its diplomatic skills to broker peace deals. The two strategies have often gone hand in hand, as they did with [Henry] Kissinger [during the Nixon Administration].

But what was once a matter of some sophistication — if often wrapped in secret violence — has now simply become heavy-handed and transparently brutal. The Trump administration has touted a series of peace deals that, at least in their sheer quantity, rival the successes of Henry Kissinger. Examined more carefully, however, those deals are either premature, non-existent, or largely a function of showmanship. The “peace deal” in Gaza, for instance, was hastily assembled and poorly thought through; it’s no wonder that it hasn’t gotten to its second stage. [my emphasis] (6)

Notes:

(1) Lawmakers Demand 25th Amendment Be Invoked Against Trump: Full List. Newsweek 04/07/2026 1:08PM EDT. <https://www.newsweek.com/invoke-25th-amendment-donald-trump-officials-list-1179479191> (Accessed: 2026-08-04).

(2) Cooper, Ryan (2026): Donald Trump, Wrecker of American Empire. The American Prospect 04/08/2026. <https://prospect.org/2026/04/08/donald-trump-wrecker-of-american-empire-iran-war/> (Accessed: 2026-08-04).

(3) Iran READY FOR WAR To Resume ANY DAY. Breaking Points YouTube channel 04/08/2026. <https://youtu.be/iehAHCZrrnM?si=Yk48AOaIEb1BcKEm> (Accessed: 2026-08-04).

(4) Cole, Juan (2026): How Iran won the Iran War. Informed Comment 04/08/2026. <https://www.juancole.com/2026/04/how-iran-won.html> (Accessed: 2026-08-04).

(5) Lieblich, Eliav (2026): Reprisals and the Paradox of Trust: Why Threats of Retaliation in the Iran War are Unlikely to Work. Just Security 04/07/2026. <https://www.justsecurity.org/135894/reprisals-paradox-trust-iran-war/> (Accessed: 2026-08-04).

(6) Feffer, John (2026): Negotiating with bombs. Hankyoreh [South Korea] 04/08/2026. <https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/english_editorials/1252900.html> (Accessed: 2026-08-04).

The new Trump-Netanyahu escalation - and new TACO (for the moment) - in the Iran War

Trump’s completely deranged public threat to wipe out all of Iranian civilization is further evidence of his unfitness for any position of responsibility, much less President of the United States in command of its nuclear arsenal.

Zeteo provided this early reaction to the latest TACO, including the Quincy Institute’s Trita Parsi: (1)



Peter Beaumont explains the key problem with Trump’s and Netanyahu’s regime-change-by-bombing approach to regime change in Iran this way:

Will the national humanitarian disaster visited on millions of Iranians make them love the United States? Israel has already learned a lesson or two from imposing horrifying humanitarian sanctions on Gaza residents, only to realize too late that they lead to no strategic gains and merely turn it into a pariah. (1)

Zvi Bar'el elaborates on the same theme:

Even if Trump pushes back his deadline once again, recent history does not suggest that strikes on infrastructure – widely seen as war crime – are likely to force Iran on to a new path.

More recent than Lebanon is the experience of Ukraine under four years of sustained Russian bombardment, after Moscow’s own illegal war of aggression. That culminated this year in Kyiv’s worst winter of blackouts as Russia hammered the country’s heating and power plants, but failed to force Ukraine to concede. (2)

Wajahat Ali interviews Robert Pape on the state of affairs after Trump’s latest TACO – however long or short of a time it may last. Pape is the historian of strategic bombing who has been warning that Iran has had “escalation dominance” in the current war against the US and Israel. Among other things, Pape warns that Israel may very well be a “spoiler” once again on the new two-week ceasefire. (4)



Notes:

(1) Mehdi Hasan and Experts REACT to Trump's Iran Decision. Zeteo YouTube channel 03/07/2026. <https://www.youtube.com/live/X-6Li9Az7Yk?si=zDNq5Gq1_gQhcnkO> (Accessed: 2026-08-04).

(2) Beaumont, Peter (2026): Will bombing Iran back to the ‘stone ages’ achieve any war objectives? Guardian 04/07/2026. <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/07/will-bombing-iran-back-to-the-stone-ages-achieve-any-war-objectives> (Accessed: 2026-07-04).

(3) Bar'el, Zvi (2026): Will bombing Iran back to the ‘stone ages’ achieve any war objectives? Haaretz 04/07/2026. <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-security/2026-04-03/ty-article/.premium/no-matter-which-path-he-chooses-trump-will-pay-a-heavy-price-for-the-iran-war/0000019d-4f5a-d257-a5dd-6fdb0cb50000?gift=7dff37e4654d499ea8646c3a4df5a1a3> (Accessed: 2026-07-04).

(4) BREAKING NEWS! Trump and Iran Agree to a Ceasefire Deal: Will It Hold and What's the Blowback? Wahahat Ali YouTube channel 04/08/2026. <https://youtu.be/ZjOMfGrFc-c?si=tU53Qmelqhh9Tb4r> (Accessed: 2026-08-04).

How did Trump get convinced to start the Iran War?

Peter Beaumont summarizes a number of the ways in which the Netanyahu government in Israel enticed Trump with the idea that attacking Iran as the US and Israel did on February 28 was a grand idea. (1)

• When Netanyahu visited Trump in Washington in late December, he gave him the Israel Prize for Trunp’s alleged “tremendous contributions to Israel and the Jewish people.” Trump is notoriously interested in getting such honorary awards.
• The Israeli intelligence service Mossad presented an evaluation that the Iranian regime was on the verge of collapse in the face of mass protests.
• Netanyahu promised the Orange Sucker that it would be a quick and easy war.
• The decapitation strategy of assassinating top Iranian leaders that Israel successfully carried out as part of its joint war effort with the US failed to cripple the regime and to instigate new instigate moves for regime change.
• Trump got a big boost in his confidence in winning wars quickly by his kidnapping operation against Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro and his wife.
• “Axios, quoting a US source using Netanyahu’s nickname, reported last week: ‘Before the war, Bibi really sold it to the president as being easy, as regime change being a lot likelier than it was. And the VP was clear-eyed about some of those statements’.”

It’s not clear on that last point if J.D. Vance was conned by that pitch as much as Trump appears to have been.

In the end, of course, the US is responsible for its own foreign policy decisions. They don’t get to use “But Bibi told me it would be easy!” as an excuse for disastrously bad decisions.

But there’s no question that Israel’s view of the Middle East has won a lot of support among American officials over the decades, with the active help of the Israel Lobby. And Netanyahu in his recent actions in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, and now Iran is pursuing a policy of seeking to illegally annex further territories while carrying out ethnic cleansing against Palestinians with a goal of making itself the Mideast’s superpower.

The catch is that Israel still is in no position to carry out these ambitions without the diplomatic and material support of the US.

Beaumont also reports:

What is clear from what has subsequently emerged is that Netanyahu – a self-styled “expert” on Iran – and the wider Israeli military establishment were fully invested in their pitch of an easy war. …

When viewed as a discrete conflict, it is as much owned by the US as Israel, but it is part of Israel’s war; the latest front in Netanyahu’s state of permanent conflict that has raged since Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October 2023.

That attack altered the country’s strategic calculations. And in the expanding regional conflicts that have followed in Gaza, Lebanon and now Iran, with the Houthis in Yemen and in the Syrian hinterland, a common theme has emerged: Netanyahu has promised and declared victories of which the realities are always more ephemeral and hubristic.

Semafor is taking a pretty dim view of the prospects for success in the war by the US-Israeli side:

The conflict looks set to batter allies’ economies by driving inflation up and hitting economic growth, while analysts have questioned the feasibility of Washington’s goals — whether regime change, or destruction of Tehran’s nuclear program or its missile stockpiles. Instead, “the war has empowered Iranian hardliners, blocked a vital shipping lane, and handed a windfall to Russia,” Fareed Zakaria wrote in The Washington Post.

At best, the political scientist Dan Drezner argued, US President Donald Trump is “stuck trying to sell a strategic defeat as a tactical victory,” while The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof said: “We’ve botched our way into an Iran cul-de-sac.” (2)

Owen Jones just did an informative interview with Stephen Wertheim on the developing Iran War disaster: (3)

We’ll soon see what happens with Trump’s latest obscene deadline, whether it sets off a new level of escalation by Iran – which currently has the escalation dominance in the situation – or it turns out to be another TACO moment.

Trump also announced on April 6:

US President Donald Trump said on Monday that Iranians are "animals," therefore bombing their civilian infrastructure like power plants would not be considered a war crime.

"How would it not be a war crime to strike Iran’s bridges and power plants?" A reporter asked Trump.

"Because they killed 45,000 people in the last month...they are animals," Trump said, referring to casualty numbers from a brutal crackdown on demonstrations earlier this year. (4)

Notes:

(1) Beaumont, Peter (2026): Was Trump oblivious to the realities of Netanyahu’s promised ‘easy’ war on Iran? Guardian 04/06/2026. <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/06/trump-iran-war-netanyahu-israel> (Accessed: 2026-06-04).

(2) Critics say the US war in Iran is a ‘strategic defeat’. Semafor 04/06/2026. <https://www.semafor.com/article/04/06/2026/washingtons-iran-strategy-questioned> (Accessed: 2026-06-04).

(3) Trump's Disturbed MELTDOWN Over Iran - w/. Stephen Wertheim. Owen Jones YouTube channel 04/05/2026. <https://youtu.be/dKNmHFi0c2w?si=xNzKYJxZrCR-tAax> (Accessed: 2026-06-04).

(4) Trump says Iranians 'animals' when asked why he would bomb power plants. Middle East Eye 04/06/2026. <https://www.middleeasteye.net/live-blog/live-blog-update/trump-says-iranians-animals-when-asked-why-he-would-bomb-power-plants> (Accessed: 2026-06-04).

Europe and the Iran War

Even European commentators still often use the tired old line about how disunited Europe is. But what looks like disunity can also be tag-team diplomacy.

Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski was publicly critical of the US-Israeli war against Iran a couple of weeks after they attacked Iran. (1) When a foreign minister says there was no “direct threat” in this context as Sikorski did, he’s saying that it’s an illegal war of aggression. The US State Department doesn’t seem very keen these days on this boring “diplomacy” business. But most of the rest of the world is still practicing it.

Poland has also “rejected calls from the United States to deploy an MIM-104 Patriot air defense system to the Middle East, where it could be used to counter Iranian missiles and drones. Warsaw has said that the weapons are needed to deter Russian aggression in Europe.” (2)

As a country sharing a border with Russia, Poland has to take seriously the kind of standard, routine military games that go on there:

Poland sits on the border with Ukraine, and Russian drones attacking targets in western Ukraine have come perilously close to detonating across the border. Poland also borders Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave, the hub of its Baltic Fleet. Poland and Lithuania have each played a significant role in preparing for war in the “Suwalki Gap,” the narrow strip of land between Poland and Lithuania separating Kaliningrad from Russian-allied Belarus and a likely flashpoint for a future land war in Europe. In preparation for such a conflict, Poland and the three Baltic states have also withdrawn from the Ottawa Convention banning anti-personnel landmines.

Last September, NATO and Polish forces intercepted multiple Russian drones that had violated Polish airspace. At the time, a German-operated Patriot system was even placed on high alert. However, Polish F-16 Fighting Falcons and Dutch F-35 Lightning IIs were credited with downing the Russian unmanned aerial systems (UAS).

With European NATO countries concerned about their own borders as well as those of Ukraine, they are also diplomatically stressing the importance of international law, especially as regarding borders and wars of aggression. And there are at least a lot of international law experts who say bluntly:

“The initiation of the campaign was a clear violation of the United Nations Charter, and the conduct of United States forces since, as well as statements made by senior government officials, raise serious concerns about violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law, including potential war crimes,” said the letter.

While the letter is focused on the conduct of the US government, it also denounced the Iranian government’s crackdown on dissent and its “ongoing unlawful strikes on civilian infrastructure using explosive weapons in densely populated areas”. (3)

The legal experts highlighted the loose lips of the US Secretary of “War” Pete Hegseth, too:

We collectively affirm the importance of equal application of international law to all, including countries that hold themselves out as global leaders. Recent statements from senior U.S. government officials describing the rules governing military engagement as “stupid” and prioritizing “lethality” over “legality” are profoundly alarming and dangerously short-sighted. These claims, particularly in combination with the observable conduct of U.S. forces, are harming the international legal order and the system of international law that we have devoted our lives to promoting. (4)

Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and Portugal are currently playing major roles in the transition to what is looking more and more like a coming post-NATO future, not least because they have the six largest armies of the current NATO members. And Britain and France are both nuclear powers who will have to play a more prominent role now in the nuclear deterrence system in relation to Russia, especially as the Trump regime follows such a Russia-friendly direction as it is now doing.

Britain as the long-tine staunch ally of the US, even on the Iraq War, has been taking a cuatious position on the Iran War. They are sending military assistance to various oil monarchies being directly attacked by Iran, i.e., Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said on Monday the UK is "not going to get dragged into this war" but would continue to defend its interests and allies in the region.

The defence secretary [John Healey] has been visiting Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Bahrain as the government announced the deployment of further systems, and associated teams, for the nations and for Kuwait. …

Speaking on Monday, Starmer reiterated that UK troops will not be deployed on the ground in Iran.

"This is not our war and we're not going to get drawn into it," he said while responding to a question from reporters.

The UK previously gave permission for the US to use British military bases for "defensive" strikes on Iranian missile sites after Starmer denied a request for the use of UK bases for the initial US-Israeli strikes against Iran in February. (5)

France: President Emmanuel Macron told the Orange US President that he was bonkers if he thought opening the Strait of Hormuz with military operations is feasible. Although he phrased it more diplomatically: “it is never the option we have chosen and we consider it unrealistic.”

Macron said such an operation would take excessive time and expose those crossing the strait to "coastal threats," particularly from Iran's Revolutionary Guards, "who possess significant resources as well as ballistic missiles." "This can only be done in concert with Iran," the French leader added, calling first for a ceasefire and a return to negotiations. (6)

But Macron also announced that France was sending a nuclear aircraft carrier to the eastern Mediterranean declaring it was for defensive purposes. And it has been participating in some defensive operations as a way to get up-to-date on drone warfare: “French warplanes and air defense systems are currently deployed in countries such as the United Arab Emirates to fend off Iranian drone counterattacks.” (7)

Now that the US has all but formally bailed on its NATO commitments, the European powers have to concentrate more on a new credible defensive posture against possible Russian aggression – although there is no real sign that Russia has any such intentions for the immediate future.

Germany: Germany has spent decades diplomatically investing itself in having good relations with Israel. But that goal is in conflict with their official commitment to international law, which they take far more seriously than either the Biden or Trump Administration did, especially when it came to the Gaza genocide. In practice, it is diplomatically very awkward for Germany to take a direct position of opposition to Israel, although in this case Israel and the US are engaged are engaged in an illegal “aggressive war” in the sense of the Nuremburg Trials.

Spain: Spain’s Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has been more blunt in his rejection of any part in the US-Israeli war on Iran. His government has refused to use US bases in Spain to conduct acts of war against Iran, and later expanded that the banning even US overflights for war missions. (9)

Italy: Italy’s current rightwing government under Georgia Meloni does not take the pro-Russian tilt that various other European rightwing parties – including her own coalition partner party, the Liga – have been taking. And Italy also seems to be taking very seriously the current challenge of building a European deterrent not dependent on the US.

Italy has denied the use of an airbase in Sicily to US military planes carrying weapons for the war in Iran after the US did not follow the required authorisation procedure.

A source at the Italian defence ministry confirmed a report in Corriere della Sera that “some US bombers” had been due to land at Sigonella – one of seven US navy bases in Italy – before heading to the Middle East, but that use of the base had been denied because the US sought authorisation to land only while the aircraft were already en route to Sicily. …

In Italy, where there is a deep-rooted anti-war culture, opinion polls consistently show very strong opposition to the conflict and strong dislike towards Trump. The unpopularity of Trump in Italy has also started to erode the popularity of Meloni, who is ideologically in tune with the US president and has established good working relations with him.

Opposition parties have for weeks been urging the government to block the US from using Italy’s bases for involvement in the Middle East conflict. (10)

This may look like confusion. But for countries that practice more complicated diplomacy than the Incredible Hulk version - “Me drop big bombs. Big bombs go boom,” they can coordinate the national position in ways that maximize their collective political influence on US and Russian policy.

Apologies to the Incredible Hulk, btw. The Big Green Guy may have a limited vocabulary. But he has a much better grasp on reality than the Big Orange Guy.

Cover of Hulk: Smash Everything #1 (2025) Image by Adam Kubert.

Notes:

(1) Knapp, Ferdinand (2026): No ‘direct threat’ from Iran to Europe, US before war, Polish foreign minister says. Politico EU 03/12/2026. <https://www.politico.eu/article/no-direct-threat-from-iran-eu-europe-us-before-war-began-poland-foreign-minister/> (Accessed: 2026-03-04).

(2) Suciu, Peter (2026): This NATO Member Won’t Send Patriot Launchers to Help America Against Iran. The National Interest 04/03/2026 <https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/this-nato-member-wont-send-patriot-launchers-help-america-against-iran-ps-040326> (Accessed: 2026-03-04).

(3) Asem, Sondos (2026): Over 100 US-based legal experts declare Trump's strikes on Iran as possible war crimes. Middle East Eye 04/03/20206. <https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/over-100-us-based-legal-experts-say-trumps-war-iran-may-amount-war-crimes> (Accessed: 2026-03-04).

(4) Letter of over 100 international law experts on Iran war. Just Security 04/02/2026. <https://www.justsecurity.org/135423/professors-letter-international-law-iran-war/> (Accessed: 2026-03-04).

(5) Smith, Cachella et al (2026): More UK troops to be sent to Middle East, defence secretary announces. BBC News 03/31/2026. <https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c7vq76g45rvo> (Accessed: 2026-03-04).

(6) Macron says military operation to liberate Strait of Hormuz 'unrealistic'. Le Monde/AFP 04/02/2026. <https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2026/04/02/macron-says-military-operation-to-liberate-strait-of-hormuz-unrealistic_6752051_4.html> (Accessed: 2026-03-04).

(7) Kavali, Laura (2026): Politico EU 03/30/2026). <https://www.politico.eu/article/how-the-war-ukraine-iran-made-france-rethink-military-plans/> (Accessed: 2026-03-04).

(8) More, Rache & Mackenzie, James (2026): German Chancellor Merz says he has doubts over Iran war aims. Reuters 03/27/2026. (Accessed: 2026-03-04).

(9) Brugen, Stephen (2026): Spain closes airspace to US military over Iran war, widening rift with US. Guardian 03/30/2026. <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/30/spain-closes-airspace-to-us-military-over-iran-war-widening-rift-with-us> (Accessed: 2026-03-04).

(10) Giuffrida, Angela (2026): Italy denies use of Sicily airbase to US planes carrying weapons for Iran war. Guardian 03/31/2026. <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/31/italy-denies-sicily-airbase-us-planes-carrying-weapons-iran-war> (Accessed: 2026-03-04).

What’s up in post-Maduro Venezuela these days?

This is a helpful conference discussion about Venezuela from the Quincy Institute, founded by Andrew Bacevich and an excellent cite for foreign policy information and analysis. (1)

The participants talk about the fact that Venezuela has been reasonably stable since the US kidnapped Venezuela’s then-President Nicolas Maduro and his wife in January.

Fracisco Rodriguez of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) notes that US sanctions have been rolled back. But Venezuelan revenue for oil sales still have to go through the Venezuela Government Deposit Fund the Trump regime set up after kidnapping Maduro. But the national state-owned oil company PDVSA (Petróleos de Venezuela) has a lot of flexibility in transactions, which Rodriguez expects will likely to provide new investment inside Venezuela that will strengthen the economy.

The sanctions on Interim President Delcy Rodriguez have also been lifted. From the BBC:

Rodríguez, a close ally of Maduro who served as his vice-president, had been placed on the sanctions list in 2018, with the US accusing her of undermining democracy.

She was sworn in as interim president by Venezuela's National Assembly, which is dominated by Maduro loyalists, days after the US raid and has been described by US President Donald Trump as "a terrific person". (2)

Having Donald Trump describe you as "a terrific person" is a real stigma!

Julia Buxton of Oxford Analytica on the panel suggests the current government is looking to reinvigorate the politics of Chavismo, which she distinguishes from Madurismo. She also notes the cocaine traffic, which the Trump regime used as an excuse for his mini-invasion, is actually cheap these days, unlike the 1970s when many of US popular impression on narcotrafficking were established. The Forever War On Drugs that the Nixon Administration began will surely be remembered as on of the more destructive delusions in which the US has indulged.

But Orlando Perez emphasizes that the basic structure of Maduro’s regime seems to be stable. He notes that some of the most senior military leaders have been removed. But their replacements were figures that apparently support the basic structure of Maduro’s government, so that it’s “continuity, not really reform.” He also notes that Trump’s general policies in Latin America are creating new political opportunities for left populists in the region going forward.

Venezuela has the longtime blessing and curse of being a petrostate with a huge part of its economic directly dependent on the vagaries of the world oil market. Thanks to the Trump regime’s Iran War, Venezuela stands go get a big boost in its national income, as Fracisco Rodriguez noted. I expect there will be some very interesting developments with the Venezuela Government Deposit Fund Trump’s government controls. The grift always has the highest priority with the Orange Man and his cronies. It unimaginable that this crew will be scrupulous in managing that fund for the benefit of Venezuela and its people. As Trump himself periodically blurts out, the points of wars and “military operations” against petrostates is to take the oil. By which he mainly means, take the money.

As Trump himself said just this week in the speech about the Iran War that sent oil prices soaring: “We could just take their oil. But, you know, I’m not sure that the people in our country have the patience to do that, which is unfortunate. You know, they want to see it end. If we stayed there, I, you know, I’d prefer just to take the oil. We could do it so easily.” (3)

As the BBC reports:

In the months since Maduro's removal from office, several high-level US delegations have travelled to Venezuela to discuss how the US could expand its access to Venezuela's oil and mineral wealth.

Critics of Rodríguez have, however, bemoaned the fact that there has been little talk of democratic elections.

Opposition leader María Corina Machado, who has been living in exile since leaving Venezuela to collect the Nobel Peace Prize she was awarded in December, met Rubio on Tuesday.

Despite having been sidelined by Trump in favour of Rodríguez, Machado struck an optimistic note, calling the meeting "excellent" and praising the US secretary of state's "dedication to democracy, freedom and Venezuelans' well-being".

An obvious question that corporate media will be reluctant to ask is, if Marco Rubio and other advocates for the rightwing, anti-Cuba and anti-Venezuela voting bloc are okay with Delcy Rodriguez’ regime, which is actually a direct continuation of Maduro’s regime, just how bad could Maduro’s regime have been?

And, more to the point on the international law front, how much of a security threat to the US can Venezuela really be, if the US was able to conspire with senior members of Maduro’s government who were willing to have the US kidnap and imprison him with minimal military resistance? Compare that to Iran’s preparations for the current US-Israel war against them, in which they are able to do massive damage to the world economy and directly to Israel, US bases in the regions, and other Middle Eastern governments who allied with the US and Israel.

Notes:

(1) What is the New Paradigm of US-Venezuela Relations Post-Maduro? Quincy Institute YouTube channel 04/02/2026. <https://www.youtube.com/live/KDErgdUE_PE> (Accessed: 2026-04-03).

(2) Buschschlüter, Vanessa (2026): US lifts sanctions on Venezuelan interim leader Delcy Rodríguez. BBC News 07/02/2026. <https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cje4l9de0d1o> (Accessed: 2026-03-04).

(3) Breaking News. The New Republic 04/02/2026. <https://newrepublic.com/post/208535/white-house-accidentally-easter-lunch-trump-speech> (Accessed: 2026-03-04).

Cesar Chavez reconsidered

The recent stories about alleged abuse sexual conduct on the part of United Farm Workers (UFW) Cesar Chavez provide yet another reminder that the political and moral symbolism that attaches to figures like Chavez is not identical to sanctification of heroes in the Catholic Church. In Chavez' case, it's a fact that he was a pioneering farm labor organizer in the US, a persuasive spokesperson and activist for social justice, and an important figure in promoting equal treatment for Latinos and for Latino pride in the US.

But certainly the charges by Dolores Huerta, Ana Murguia and Debra Rojas deserve to be taken seriously, as well. It's also the case that claims of such crimes that emerge decades later are more difficult to evaluate than ones formally investigated immediately after the event. Murguia and Rojas were minors at the time they report the abuse began. (1)

It’s worth remembering that Chavez teamed up in the late 1970s with the authoritarian Synanon cult headed by Charles Dederich, which was known for encouraging psychological and physical abuse. Not that it diminishes Chavez’ responsibility for his own actions, but it would be interesting to know if the claimed sexual assaults occurred before or after Chavez teamed up with the Synanon cult.

Chavez’ association with Synanon doesn’t seem to have been often mentioned in the years since his passing, although it became well known at the time. Jeffrey Rubin reports on an experience he had in 1978 as a teacher who held English classes for the UFW. What he describes took place around 1978, when the Synanon effects had become very evident. He describes an incident at a graduation ceremony for students successfully complete their courses. Note that Huerta was also part of this process:

At the end of the show, photos of Cesar Chavez, [the union headquarters] La Paz, and a farm worker in the fields came onscreen with a voiceover saying, “The Union is not Cesar Chavez, the Union is not La Paz, the Union is the farmworkers.”

In the bright sun, families strolled from the school building to the dining room, congratulating the graduates and helping themselves heartily to the cafeteria-style buffet. Soon after lunch began, however, Huerta stood up to denounce an act of treason. “There are traitors here who want to destroy Cesar,” she said with characteristic fierceness. These covert enemies, Huerta explained, had inserted the words “The Union is not Cesar Chavez” in the slideshow as part of an effort to usurp the leader’s authority, and they needed to be named and expelled from the movement.

Huerta demanded that the teachers identify the authors of the subversive phrase. The teacher of the advanced class refused, as did the rest of us. The meal ended quickly and awkwardly, the families dispersed, and the teachers from all three classes were ushered to a small table in a backroom office. Confronted there by Huerta, Richard Chavez, and Cesar Chavez himself, we were accused of being part of a subversive plot, railed at, called “chicken shit” by Cesar, and thrown out of La Paz and the union. (2) [my emphasis]

Rubin also describes some of the qualities of Chavez’ union work that did achieve real successes at the time. He also gives a glimpse of the Catholic version of nonviolent action that Chavez’ and his movement practiced. And he also writes some about how that large vision of a social movement may have eventually detracted Chavez from the essentials of union-building:

From the first strikes, Chavez infused the UFW with a religious sense of mission, embodied in his fasts and in visions of a self-sustaining, quasi-religious order to nurture the movement at its core and expand the struggle. As soon as the early grape contracts were signed, Chavez began to speak of a Poor People’s Union and farm worker cooperatives ...

So far as I’m aware, Chavez never used his position as a movement leader for personal financial gain. His notion of a Catholic poor people’s non-violent revolution obviously eventually led him to practice abusive behavior in his role as a union and movement leader. But running financial scams does not seem to have been one of his failings.

I would highly recommend the book Why David Sometimes Wins: Strategy, Leadership, and the California Agricultural Movement (2099) by Marshall Ganz, a veteran of the civil rights movement who was a longtime senior organizer for the UFW and its political efforts. In 2008 headed the Obama campaign’s grassroots mobilization group that applied Ganz’ community-organizing methods. Unfortunately for the health of the Democratic Party, Obama after his election folded that group’s function into the Democratic Party organization – which of course dumped the community-organizing model right away.

It’s also worth noting that Cesar Chavez was training as a community organizer by Fred Ross in Chicago, who had been himself trained by Saul Alinsky. The Republicans used this as one of their favorite insults against Obama, using the idea that Obama was an “Alinskyist” organizer as a synonym for leftwing black Communist Kenyan Muslim. There’s a real irony there, because the “Alinsky” style of community organizing, which Alinsky described in his 1945 book Reveille for Radicals.

The accusation that Alinsky-type organizing represented some kind of crackpot left radicalism is ironic, because Alinsky himself promoted a non-ideological brand of community organizing through house meetings, protests, fundraisers, and door-to-door recruiting. It focused heavily on scoring small but visible wins – getting a park renovated or traffic lights installed, improving the sewage system, clearing out some community eyesore, organizing neighborhood watches, getting streets repaired, demanding actions against landords who don’t keep their building properly repaired, and so on.

It’s obvious why such organizing techniques could be attractive for left-leaning causes. If you were promoting a campaign for No Taxes On Billionaires, for instance, you would hold a million-dollar-per-plate dinner at Mar-a-Lago or sponsor a Toby Keith concert at the Davos Economic Forum, or something similar. You wouldn’t be organizing house meetings in working class neighborhoods.

But left-leaning critics did criticize the Alinsky style for not emphasizing larger social issues like the maldistribution of wealth. Foreign policy issues, health insurance, public school funding, emergency preparedness are all issues that require action by Congress or state legislatures. And effectiveness on that level means having political parties that can gain representation in state and federal governments. And that requires a wider political ideology and/or partisan identity than demanding better street-cleaning service from city hall.

Cesar Chavez had a much broader ideological vision of a poor people’s movement. That he wound up obsessed with wielding his personal authority and allegedly acting in a sexually abusive way not a matter of political ideology as such but of personal failings. But he was neither the first nor the last to use his personal position and charisma for unworthy purposes.

Ganz in a 2009 paper also analyzed the experience of organizers in the 2008 Obama campaign, drawing this distinction which reminds us that techniquest of community organizing can be adapted to larger and more ideological causes than the Alinsky vision represented:

Unlike political "marketers" who sell causes, candidates, or commodities by appealing to the preferences of their customers; unlike philanthropic "providers" who dispense services to needy clients; and unlike social ―entrepreneurs‖ who devise technical solutions to challenging public problems; organizers identify, recruit and develop leaders who can mobilize constituents to  - stand together‖ to learn, collaborate, and act on behalf of common purposes. (3)

Notes:

(1) Brangham, William et al (2026): Investigation uncovers sexual abuse allegations against Cesar Chavez. PBS Newshour 03/18/2026. (Accessed: 2026-01-04). <https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/investigation-uncovers-sexual-abuse-allegations-against-cesar-chavez>

Saad, Nardine (2026): US civil rights leader Cesar Chavez accused of sexual abuse. BBC News 03/19/2026. <https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp8r8rggxmmo> (Accessed: 2026-01-04

Rainey, James (2026): A cult of personality around Cesar Chavez shatters with sexual assault allegations. Los Angeles Times 03/19/2026. <https://www.latimes.com/california/newsletter/2026-03-19/essential-california-cesar-chavez-sexual-assault-long-secret> (Accessed: 2026-01-04).

(2) Rubin, Jeffrey (2010): Shattered Dreams. Dissent Spring 2010. 91-95. <https://dissentmagazine.org/article/shattered-dreams/>

(3) Ganz, Marshall (2009): Organizing Obama: Campaign, Organizing, Movement. Harvard Kennedy School Aug 2009. <http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:27306258> (Accessed: 2026-01-04).

The Peace President's wars and assorted military interventions

I see that the Orange Anomaly in the White House has announced what is at least supposed to sound like a policy statement on the Iraq War, an illegal war of aggression he and Benjamin Netanyahu initiated. He may change his mind several times between now and then. And probably once or twice during his speech, or more if he’s not reading from a teleprompter.

This is worth keeping in mind:

During his two terms in office, Trump has overseen armed interventions and military operations — including drone strikes, ground raids, proxy wars, 127e programs, and full-scale conflicts — in Afghanistan , Central African Republic, Cameroon, Ecuador, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Kenya, Lebanon, Libya, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, the Philippines, Somalia, Syria, Tunisia, Venezuela, Yemen, and an unspecified country in the Indo-Pacific region, as well as attacks on civilians in boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean. More than 6,500 U.S. Special Operations forces’ “operators and enablers” are currently deployed in more than 80 countries around the world. And during its second term, the Trump administration has also bullied Panama and threatened Canada, Colombia, Cuba, Greenland (perhaps also Iceland), and Mexico. (1)

Of course, not every military intervention of any kind is a war. The sinking of various Venezuelan and Colombian fishing boats wasn’t a war, it was “only” murder. Mass murder, actually, if we applied the common standards used when reporting on murders inside the US. Obviously, the current major war against Iran by the US and Israel is very much a real war with huge risks for all involved.

Turse’s examples also include “military operations,” which one assumes could include things like reconnaissance flights undertaken with the permission of the government over whose countries it is taking place. Or training missions in cooperation with the local government.

There’s nothing inherently wrong about such examples. The United States is one of the three most powerful countries that are currently at the center of the international power system. It does have a global military presence, and it is certainly worth questioning whether it is too broad and worth understanding the real risks involved with it. We see right now the risks involved with US military bases in Middle Eastern nations that are part of the US-Israel anti-Iranian positions. Those bases are a tool of US power projection, just as in the case of US bases in NATO countries. But their existence is not totally free of risk to the United States or to friendly countries willingly hosting them. And by any reasonable standard, there are way too many of them.

Turse’s link in the quote above to the more than 80 countries with US Special Operations forces is to this recent video from the House Armed Services Committee: (2)

Special Operations include forces from the Army and the Navy and are of course being employed during the current Iran War. There’s a very good chance that some of them already have “boots on the ground” in Iran, to use the popular phrase for “Us soldiers participating directly in military action in a foreign country.” By “very good chance” I mean “unthinkable that they are not.” (2)

Turse adds this important reminder:

Due to a lack of government transparency, obscure security cooperation, and carveouts baked into the U.S. Code — like the 127e authority enacted in the wake of the September 11 attacks, and the covert action statute that enables the CIA to conduct secret wars — the actual number could be markedly higher.

He also reminds us that the Peace President started using the opportunity of this massive military presence to conduct secret military missions even early in his first term in 2017:

[T]he bid to keep Trump’s other African wars secret imploded during a May 2017 AAA mission when Navy SEAL Kyle Milliken was killed and two other Americans were wounded in a raid on an al-Shabab camp in Somalia. The Pentagon initially claimed that Somali forces were out ahead of Milliken — U.S. troops are supposed to remain at the last position of cover and concealment where they remain out of sight and protected — but that fiction fell apart, and the truth emerged that he was, in fact, alongside them. [my emphasis]

Trump has recently been explicitly threatening to go to war with Cuba. The US obsession with Cuba since 1960 is a classic case of irrational obsession. Not every foreign policy calculation is based on some kind of rational national-interest calculation. Some of them are political responses to domestic political constituencies or just plain emotional reactions that make no practical sense even in terms of narrowly-conceived national interests.

Notes:

(1) Turse, Nick (2026): Trumps Secret Wars on the World Keep Expanding. The Intercept 03/30/2026. <https://theintercept.com/2026/03/30/trump-secret-wars/> (Accessed: 2026-31-03).

(2) Intelligence & Special Operations Hearing 03/18/2026. <https://www.youtube.com/live/7N1rh7YwMQU?si=TbHrG4RnQbK_mh6J> (Accessed: 2026-31-03).

Iran War Monthly Summaries: Month 1 (March 2026)

The current Iran War began on Febuary 28, a month ago, with the military attack by the US and Israel on Iran.

Trump, 10/09/2025 on the cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas: “I think it’s going to be a lasting peace, hopefully an everlasting peace.” (1) [my emphasis]

Since then, Netanyahu’s government has continued to bomb, shoot and displace Palestinians in Gaza pretty much on a daily basis and is supporting a violent, murderous campaign of stealing land from Palestinians in the illegally occupied West Bank. And now driving out 700,000 or more Lebanese from their homes in what looks very much like a plan to annex a big piece of southern Lebanon. (2) Israel occupied southern Lebanon from 1982-2000, a period also known as the First Lebanon War. It was not a happy experience for either side.

Trump, March 12:

The US president made the comments before a speech and press conference in Florida where he sought to emphasise that the US military campaign would be ending soon amid mounting concerns from Republican allies. “I think the war is very complete, pretty much,” he said in a phone call with CBS News. “They have no navy, no communications, they’ve got no air force.”

During the press conference, in which he delivered a contradictory and confusing forecast for the war, he evaded a reporter’s question about whether that meant the war could end this week. “No, but soon. I think soon. Very soon.”

When reporters asked him to clarify whether the war was “very complete”, or, as the US defense secretary said, “this is just the beginning”, Trump told reporters: “I think you could say both … It’s the beginning of building a new country.” [my emphasis] (3)

So the war then was very complete – kinda, sorta. It wasn’t going to end that week but sometime very soon. Now wait, it was both very complete and also just the beginning.

The current Iran War began in February 28 with the US and Israeli bombing of Iran, thus beginning an illegal war of aggression whose end is not likely to come soon.

Western views tend to stereotype Iran’s clerical regime as a fanatical theocracy. They do have a theocracy. But it has shown itself to be capable of some adroit pragmatic diplomacy.

The US and Israel are both operating on reckless aspirations that are cheered on by serious Jewish-Zionist extremists in Israel and Christian nationalists in America.

Scott Lucas gave this assessment of how clueless the initial US-Israeli assumptions looked to be as of March 9, just over a week into the war, reflecting on how clueless the goal of regime change seemed to be: (4)

This is an update from Mr. Establishment-Foreign-Policy-Figure Richard Haass from March 13, expressing astonishment about how unprepared the Trump regime seemed to have been for the very foreseeable negative consequences of the US-Israel attack. He also talks with his interviewer Katie Couric about the surprising lack of preparation of US public opinion by the regime for this invasion. (5)

It continues to be one of the most surprising things about this war that their was no visible surge in support for it in the US at the start. Before now, even the dumbest and most illegitimate wars got an initial upward blip. Not this one.

Netanyahu’s authoritarian regime in Israel doesn’t seem to have any problem with public support for the war. The well-informed gadfly Israeli journalist Gideon Levy wrote on March 12:

The media is not only in the service of the Israel Defense Forces spokesperson but also in the service of the military censor.

With this kind of media, there's no point in fighting for a free press, because the media itself is not on the side of freedom. The fact is that no one ordered it to hide what was really happening in the Gaza Strip for 2 1/2 years, and no one ordered it to be proudly obedient. [my emphasis] (6)

In an earlier column during this war’s first week, Levy reflected on how Israeli society, in his view, has become essentially a state constantly at war:

It's wartime again, with the war, yet again, coming to solve Israel's existential problems once and for all.

It will again be declared a stunning victory at first, with everyone applauding, with [even opposition leader] Yair Lapid writing that we are a strong and united nation and with analysts competing over who can laud Israel's brave feats more, all of this until the next satisfying venture.

Again, almost all Israelis are convinced that there is no war more justified or successful than this one, and "what choice did we have?" and "what do you propose?" as in all of Israel's wars. This cheering could already be heard in TV panels on Friday evening, with salivating panelists eagerly waiting for this moment as if they were waiting for the Messiah. The release came Saturday, lasting only until the next round of pleasure, which will arrive earlier than expected. (7)

Israel is clearly aiming to turn Iran into a fragmented “failed state,” a decades-long ambition of Bibi Netanyahu’s. Lubna Masarwa wrote during the war’s first week:

Many Israeli media sites have also wondered whether history was repeating itself. Avri Gilad, a veteran television personality on Channel 12 News, hosted his programme on Tuesday dressed as a pilot.

Gilad said a new chapter was being written in the Book of Esther: “It’s amazing that it comes after 2,000 years, and it’s really the same thing… the whole story closing on an astonishing historical scale.”

Bit by bit, Israel is changing the narrative that it exists because of the Holocaust. A new language is emerging that uses biblical stories to justify a vision of Greater Israel. ...

To western audiences, Israel still manages to present itself as a western democracy. It claims the religious fanatics are Hamas and Iran. But increasingly, Israel itself is fighting a religious war. [my emphasis] (8)

The war opened with a “decapitation strike” against Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. This is a highly dubious practice, both in terms of international law – which the Trump regime despises – and practicality. There’s never a guarantee that the new leader that comes to power after the one assassinated will be preferably for the attacking parties.

As David Ignatius observed in Foreign Policy:

“Decapitation” is emerging as the American way of war, after two frustrating decades of unsuccessful “nation building” in Iraq and Afghanistan. A week into the Iran campaign with Israel, the United States’ goal seems to be destruction of Iran’s leadership and military infrastructure—with an ill-defined hope that a better regime will rise from the rubble.

It’s the strategic equivalent of a “fire and forget” missile. The goal is to destroy the Iranian regime’s leadership and structure of repression. Building a new Iran is an afterthought. “Maybe we’ll get lucky,” one key member of Congress mused to me. But U.S. intelligence analysts have assessed that this campaign has a low likelihood of creating a stable, modernizing government, according to people who have read the intelligence reports. (9)

Also from Juan Cole’s Informed Comment blog: Exit Strategy? We ain’t got no exit strategy! We don’t need no *stinking* exit strategy!! (10)

Jianlu Bi warned on the war’s fourth day:

… Washington has signaled a total divorce from the rules-based international order it once claimed to lead. The war in Iran is no not about preventing a nuclear breakout. Rather, it is about the systematic dismantling of a sovereign state’s leadership. However, the tactical success of these strikes may mask a strategic catastrophe. Although the United States hopes that striking the head will kill the snake, history suggests that in the Middle East, such vacuums are filled not by democratic reformers but by the most radicalized elements of the mid-level military cadre, now unmoored from any rational centralized control. [my emphasis] (11)

Two weeks into the war, Dahlia Scheindlin observed a sharp diversion of public opinion in Israel and the US:

Unlike the Gaza war, which was catastrophic for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's image, the majority of Israelis give him high marks over Iran. Over 60 percent of Israelis in the Israel Democracy Institute poll say they trust his handling of the war.

Americans, by contrast, have been asking themselves just why America is going to war, and the lack of clear answers has left the majority skeptical. A poll by NPR, PBS news and Marist last week (March 2-4) found that 56 percent of Americans were against the U.S. military action in Iran (as per the question wording), with just 44 percent for it. (12)

And she made this comment on the militarization of Israeli public opinion: “In the Israeli view, diplomacy is for amateurs and bleeding hearts – the only solution is war.”

She also calls attention to this opinion phenomenon among the supposed “isolationist” and “antiwar” Trump cult:

An NBC poll found 77 percent support for the U.S. military action in Iran, but the kicker there was that among self-identified MAGA Republicans (as opposed to conservatives or neoconservatives), support was highest, at 90 percent. Only 5 percent of MAGA respondents were opposed.

This is no MAGA split. Rather, it's a transnational convergence of support between U.S. Republicans, Israeli Jews and, surely, many in pro-Israel communities and their leaders around the world. [my emphasis]

Meron Rappoport at the end of the war’s first week made an interesting comparison of the present to 1956, when Israel, Britain, and France teamed up to try to seize the Suez Canal from Egypt:

[I]t marked the beginning of a war that Israel launched together with Britain and France, the major imperial powers of the time. As Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion put it just before the assault, the aim was to “reorganize the Middle East” and bring about the downfall of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, whose policies threatened British, French, and Israeli interests alike. (13)

He links that to the February war of aggression by the US and Israel against Iran: “ For the first time since 1956, Israel has gone to war alongside a major Western power — indeed, the world’s largest — whose secretary of state recently lauded the West’s imperial legacy at the Munich Security Conference.”

US President Dwight Eisenhower blew the whistle on that stunt. It had a long-lasting impact on Britain, which has tried hard not to find itself on the opposite side of an international conflict with the US. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s somewhat dodgy stance on the current Iran War is a reflection of that lasting reorientation.

This time, the US doesn’t look nearly so cautious as it did in the Suez crisis back then:

The Israeli army has described the joint assault with the U.S. military [against Iran] as a “preemptive strike,” but, as in 1956, this too is a lie. Few seriously believe Iran was on the verge of attacking. The current war is a war of choice, initiated by the United States and Israel, just as the Sinai campaign was decided in advance by Israeli, French, and British leaders.

 In the fourth week of the war, Mouin Rabbani did this nearly hour-long interview with Middle East Monitor on the situation with the Iran War and how the toxic relationship between Israel and the US under the Trump regime has developed into a real mess for the US and the Middle East. (14)

Although he’s being too generous to the Trump regime when he comments, “Yes, this is an Israeli war. Let’s not pretend the Israelis haven’t done everything within their power for decades to bring about precisely the situation we’re in today. And they bear full responsibility for it.” But he does go on to talk about US responsibility, as well.

Israel does bear full responsibility for their actions which Rabbani describes correctly there. But let’s not let the US and the current regime off the hook for our major responsibility. This is an illegal war of aggression initiated by Israel and the United States. The US also bears full responsibility for its actions, too.

Ilan Pappé noted on March 12 that he current war, Israel is “a power not acting according to a ‘Western’ rational and humanist approach to politics but a fanatical ideology. Those determining the present Israeli strategy are explicit about its roots in the teaching of messianic Zionism and their vision of the present war as divine fulfilment.” (15)

Notes:

(1) Taft, Robert (2025): Trump dreams of ‘everlasting peace’ as acolytes drop heavy hints to Nobel committee. Guardian 10/09/2025. <https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/09/trump-nobel-peace-prize-gaza> (Accessed: 2026-25-03).

(2) Israel’s renewed war on Lebanon is about more than just Hezbollah. +972 Magazine 03/11/2026. <https://www.972mag.com/israels-renewed-war-on-lebanon-is-about-more-than-just-hezbollah/> (Accessed: 2026-252-03).

Kubovich, Yaniv(2026): Israel to Hold Southern Lebanon, Block Residents' Return, Defense Minister Says. Haaretz 03/24/2026. Full link: <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-security/2026-03-24/ty-article/israel-to-hold-southern-lebanon-block-residents-return-defense-minister-says/0000019d-1f6a-d7c1-a59f-df7b2cd60000?gift=884f5b6bb20949a1b844a5d0fcbf4074> (Accessed: 2026-252-03).

(3) Skopeliti, Clea (2026): Trump says Iran war is ‘very complete, pretty much’ as economic toll rises. Guardian 03/12/2026. <https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/10/first-thing-trump-iran-war-very-complete-pretty-much-economic-toll> (Accessed: 2026-17-03).

(4) Trump is ‘panicking’ - and now risking his own demise - Scott Lucas. The Trump Report YouTube channel 03/09/2026. <https://youtu.be/Q1B1Biwpge0?si=slFYtesQwVr4DFaC> (Accessed: 2026-09-03).

(5) War of Choice: Iran Latest. Katie Couric YouTube channel 03/13/2026. <https://youtu.be/o42Sh6MgCJk?si=4gRET4Aux2xbPYRs> (Accessed: 2026-29-03).

(6) Levy, Gideon (2026): The Israeli Media Are First and Foremost IDF Soldiers. Haaretz 03/04/2026. Full link: <https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2026-03-12/ty-article-opinion/.premium/the-israeli-media-are-first-and-foremost-idf-soldiers/0000019c-de91-d3d8-afdf-ffbb61590000> (Accessed: 2026-14-03).

(7) Levy, Gideon (2026): War Is the Opiate of the Israeli Masses. Haaretz 03/01/2026. Full link: <https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2026-03-01/ty-article-opinion/.premium/war-is-the-opiate-of-the-israeli-masses/0000019c-a5ed-db6a-a7bc-efff7e690000> (Accessed: 2026-14-03).

(9) Ignatius, David (2026): The Dangerous Rise of Decapitation Warfare. Foreign Policy online 03/06/2026. <https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/03/06/iran-war-united-states-military-decapitation-warfare-middle-east/> (Accessed: 2026-09-03).

(10) Benjamin, Medea and Davies, Nicholas (2026); The War on Iran - and Washington’s Missing Exit Strategy. Informed Comment 03/08/2026. <https://www.juancole.com/2026/03/washingtons-missing-strategy.html> (Accessed: 2026-26-03).

(11) Bi, Jianlu (2026): Tehran’s Decapitation and the End of an Era. Foreign Policy in Focus 03/04/2026. <https://fpif.org/tehrans-decapitation-and-the-end-of-an-era/> (Accessed: 2026-11-03).

(12) Sheindlin, Dahlia (2026): Israelis and Americans Have Wildly Different Opinions on the Iran War. Does It Matter? Haaretz 03/10/2026. <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2026-03-10/ty-article/.premium/israelis-and-americans-disagree-wildly-on-the-iran-war-does-it-matter/0000019c-d7a4-db40-abbd-f7fd4d750000> (Accessed: 2026-11-03).

(13) Rappaport, Meron (2026): Israel’s last war alongside an imperial power backfired. This one could, too. +972 Magazine 03/05/2026. <https://www.972mag.com/israels-last-regime-change-war-backfired-this-one-could-too/> (Accessed: 2026-29-03).

(14) Trump, Iran and Israel’s War Without End. Middle East Monitor YouTube channel 03/25/2026. <https://youtu.be/z4yKFu_A6Ic?si=qOA8FLbFmAj1G75f> (Accessed: 2026-25-03).

(15) Pappé, Ilan (2026): On the Warpath. Savage Minds 03/12/2026. <https://savageminds.substack.com/p/on-the-warpath> (Accessed: 2026-29-03).