The US and Israel claim to have killed Khameini. Iran says they missed. Either way it doesn’t matter much, the Iranian response of hitting US bases and Israel hasn’t been effected. They’ve also declared the Straits of Hormuz closed. If Khameini was killed, he is far more likely to be replaced by hawk than a dove. It’s his refusal to fight, over and over again, and his willingness to let Iranian proxies like Syria and Hezbollah be defeated in detail that lead to Israel and the US thinking they could keep attacking whenever they wanted because Iran was run by people who weren’t really willing to fight.
That and his refusal to get nuclear weapons, which Iran could have had years ago. If Iran had nukes, a lot of Iranians would still be alive.
That said, Iran seems (seems) to have learned their lesson. Before this war they said that if attacked they would hit everywhere the US attacked from, and not let up. They’ve started doing that.
They have hit radars, military bases and even some Trump associated businesses.
Central Israël burning pic.twitter.com/pSrwBchmJP
— Sprinter Press (@SprinterPress) February 28, 2026
This is going to be a long slog, especially if Iran has finally learned its lesson. They should not quit until they’ve destroyed every US and Israeli base in the region. During the 12 day war they quit when Israel was about a week to ten days from running out of interceptors. Iran has more missiles and drones than the US and Israel have interceptor missiles. Keep attacking till they run out, then pound them into the dirt.
It is also good to see that collaborating regimes like the UAE, Jordan, Bahrain and Kuwait getting hit. Hosting a US base in your country should come with risks.
If the Iranians don’t wimp out, my prediction is they’ll win this war, and do so decisively. The main risk is when Israel starts losing decisively they may wish to use nukes. I don’t think even Trump would allow that, and if Israel does anyway, remember that even with nukes Iran can create a dirty nuclear missile. One hit on Israel (which is postage stamp sized) and the country becomes uninhabitable.
We’ll keep an eye on this as it goes on. If the US loses decisively here, the America Empire takes a huge hit to its ability to inspire terror and compliance. Oh sure, they can still strangle weak nearby countries, but genuine middle powers with real militaries will know they can fight the US and win.
Update: Iran has confirmed Khameini is dead. Absolutely stupid of the US and Israel. He is most likely to be replaced by someone more hardline than him, and his fatwa against nuclear weapons can be revoked by his successor. Notice that his death had zero effect on the Iranian military command. Assassination doesn’t matter to real states.
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Soredemos
Iran needs to stop backing down. If they’re going to do it, do it for real. Hit them, and keep hitting them. And keep doing it until Israel and the US are begging for real talks. The government of Yemen did this and they won.
bruce wilder
Given that the U.S. has been teetering on the edge of the collapse of an ugly credit cycle, the military results may not matter very much.
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https://www.facebook.com/WIONews/posts/in-an-alarming-and-provocative-remark-mohammad-javad-larijani-a-former-top-advis/1084654493773724/
I’m still waiting for Iran to make good on this threat. Trump continues to refuse to wear his drone-proof vest much to the SS’s chagrin.
Speaking of regime change, America needs some regime change too. Please, if there is anyone out there, we need regime change. Americans clearly can’t do it, so others need to step up considering regime change is perfectly acceptable.
Mark Level
Will wait for more to happen before making substantive comment, but 2 small notes for now– Canadian PM wins the Cringing Vassal Prize, after playing that he would cut ties with US, his fidelity to Zionist Genocide led him to angrily denounce the Iranians for “aggression” (sic, self-defense) when attacked.
Per Danny Haiphong and his guests, the Neofascist Italian Georgia Meloni got her troops thrown under the bus where they are posted in the region. They haven’t been evacuated, were sitting ducks. But that’s what vassals deserve. She is pathetic, she was tripping hard on drugz at a big Globalist meeting, see the first minute & 40 seconds here if you haven’t, it’s a laugh. (Elon did the same in the Oval office, everyone knows he’s a big ketamine fiend.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZvaqmNh0ws
mago
Been following this carnage since the wee hours this morning with a lot of wheat and chaff obscurations.
It’s all wtf. Trump says we’ll continue to kill and destroy until there’s PEACE everywhere. Sounds like a plan. Keep the rabid dogs running, and we’ll follow the barbarity as best as we are able.
Btw, everyone I’ve encountered today seems pretty ho hum, but it’s a small sample. Still, they’re people who should know better and give a good goddamn.
I did run into a woman this morning who when I asked her why so serious responded by saying, we’re at war, and she’s no wanna be spiritual practitioner unlike so many I know.
Up next: flag waving, support the troops, my country right or wrong and all the rest of it. The world is on fire and the conflagration has just begun. Stay tuned and aware . . .
cc
Western establishment media is out in full force to support this unprovoked attack and attempt to overthrow the sovereign Iranian government. The word “regime” is being repeatedly endlessly throughout their coverage, including by the completely one-sided pundits they cherry-pick to have on.
Remember that every time you hear the word “regime”, you are being actively brainwashed (to subconsciously think that the government is somehow illegitimate or “evil”.) And every time you use that word to refer to a government that the West seeks to overthrow, you are, in effect, self-brainwashing.
Carney of course used this word and also obediently asserted “Israel’s right to defend itself”, reinforcing Israel’s key propaganda line. He is a servant of the Anglo-Zionist-led Western empire, actively brainwashing himself and Canadians.
What about Iran’s right to defend itself in the face of this second unprovoked attack against it by the US-Israel in less than a year? In both cases attacks made while the US was pretending to be in negotiation talks with Iran.
What about Palestinians’ right to defend themselves in Gaza and the West Bank? Carney never ever mentions their rights to defend themselves, despite the clear genocide, starvation, and ethnic cleansing by Israel. So much for Canadian values…
A large portion of the Iranian diasporas in Canada and the West seem to be thoroughly brainwashed. Are they so eager to see their country turned into another destroyed failed state like Ukraine, Iraq, Libya, and Syria?
The US-Israel manipulate and use them as a vector to, in turn, try to use their friends and families back home in Iran as their ground troops to overthrow Iran’s government, much like the foolish Ukrainians allowed themselves to be used to try to attack and weaken Russia.
BC Nurse Prof
Found on Naked Capitalism today, by “Kouros”
February 28, 2026 at 5:48 pm
My two cents delivered to PM Carney and his Foreign Affairs Minister this afternoon:
Prime Minister Carney,
You delivered a speech in Davos just six weeks ago that I am certain your communications team is enormously proud of. You invoked Václav Havel. You spoke of the courage required to “take the sign out of the window.” You lectured the world about “living within a lie” and the moral bankruptcy of performing compliance with a system one privately knows to be false.
Today, from the comfortable distance of Mumbai, while U.S. and Israeli forces bomb a sovereign nation, you put the sign straight back in the window. The ink on your Davos speech was barely dry.
Let us be specific about what you have endorsed. The United States and Israel have launched an unprovoked military attack on a sovereign state — an act of aggression that is illegal under the UN Charter, which Canada claims as a cornerstone of its “principled” foreign policy. You were, by your own admission, forewarned. You said you had “discussions over recent weeks” with Trump officials about the possibility of these strikes. You did not alert Parliament. You did not consult Canadians. You simply endorsed it, from halfway around the world, as a done deal. Is this what “living the truth” looks like?
Now, to the substance of your justifications — because they deserve to be examined rather than simply absorbed, which is apparently what you expect of Canadians.
You call Iran “the principal source of instability and terror throughout the Middle East.” This is a talking point, not an analysis. The United States’ own intelligence and security agencies have, for years running, identified Sunni extremist organizations — not Iran, not Shia militias — as responsible for the overwhelming preponderance of global terrorist attacks, consistently accounting for over 90% of casualties from international terrorism. If you are genuinely committed to ending “state-sponsored terrorism,” one wonders why you have nothing to say about the documented support Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies — with whom Canada maintains warm, commercially lucrative relationships — have historically provided to those very Sunni extremist networks. But of course, those governments buy Canadian weapons. So the sign stays in the window for them.
You insist Iran must never be permitted to enrich uranium. What you omit is that uranium enrichment for peaceful purposes is a sovereign right explicitly enshrined in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty — a treaty Iran has signed and remained within, and whose inspections regime it has operated under in ways that, according to IAEA reporting, do not confirm weaponization. Canada, incidentally, maintains its own civilian nuclear program and enriches nuclear materials. So does virtually every nation with a functioning nuclear energy sector. The objection, then, is not to enrichment per se. The objection is to Iranian sovereignty. Call it what it is.
You speak of Iran’s “authoritarian and theocratic” governance as disqualifying it from the protections of international law — a position that is legally incoherent and, frankly, embarrassing in its selectivity. Israel’s Nation-State Basic Law formally establishes that the right of national self-determination in Israel “is unique to the Jewish people” — making it, by any plain reading, an ethno-religious state enshrined in law. The ICC has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Gallant. The ICJ has found a plausible case of genocide and has issued provisional measures orders that Israel has been found to be non-compliant with. Canada has said and done essentially nothing meaningful in response, and has continued to provide political cover to a government that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians, systematically dismantled civilian infrastructure in Gaza, expanded illegal settlements in the West Bank at an accelerating pace throughout this period, and done so with impunity precisely because governments like yours refuse to apply the standards you claim to uphold.
You reaffirm Israel’s “right to defend itself” — a phrase so emptied of meaning through selective application that it has become a ritual incantation rather than a legal principle. The right of self-defence under Article 51 of the UN Charter applies to armed attacks from other states, not to the use of nuclear-capable military force against a sovereign nation’s civilian infrastructure and leadership. What is happening today is not self-defence. It is a military offensive, co-launched with the United States, against a country that has not attacked either of them in the conventional sense your legal justification would require.
And the Arab monarchies — the Gulf states whose authoritarian, gender-apartheid systems you have never once criticized with the same vigour you reserve for Iran — are not mentioned in your statement. Women in Saudi Arabia were only recently permitted to drive. Migrant workers in Qatar, where Canada recently signed a “strategic partnership,” die building infrastructure under conditions that multiple human rights bodies have described as forced labour. But these governments are transactionally useful. So again — the sign stays in the window.
Canada has had no diplomatic relations with Iran since the Harper government severed them in 2012, a decision driven substantially by a Foreign Affairs Committee whose chair was a member of the Canadian Friends of Israel — a fact that was apparently unremarkable to anyone in official Ottawa at the time. The Iranian government’s properties in Canada were seized. Sanctions were imposed. And through all of it, Canadian public broadcasting provided its audiences with a remarkably uniform, uncontested narrative about Iran — one that virtually never included the voices of Iranian scholars, legal experts, or anyone who might offer context that complicates the story. That is not journalism. That is state-adjacent information management.
You told the World Economic Forum that “the power of the less powerful starts with honesty.” You said Canada would stop exempting allies from the scrutiny it applies to rivals. You said Canada would apply “the same standards to allies and rivals.”
Mr. Carney, you have not done that. Not today, not in your statement, and not in any meaningful act of Canadian foreign policy in living memory on this file.
Canadians are not, in fact, asked their views on foreign policy. There was no debate. There was no parliamentary vote. There was no public consultation. There was a press statement issued from Mumbai endorsing an act of war, and an instruction to Canadians in the region to shelter in place — a logistical afterthought to a decision that was apparently made for us.
You quoted Havel. Let me offer you one in return. The Czech dissident also wrote that “the tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less.”
I hope this matters to you. The evidence of today suggests it does not.
A Canadian citizen who is not a sheep
Feral Finster
I hope that you prove correct, but i doubt it. The United States and Israel will not hesitate to resort to using nuclear weapons, if that is what it takes.
Note how Mark “The Toast Of Davos Resistance” Carney is back to cheering like a trained seal.
Carborundum
I suspect we’ll know more in coming days, but as of yet I haven’t seen much sign of large scale fires of MRBMs. Nothing that looks indicative, at least to me, of real attempts at saturation at range like we saw against Israel. A key indicator will be whether the Iranians can get it together enough to run the types of attacks they were running last summer.
I have seen massed fires against what I think would likely have been al Dahfra, but the vehicles didn’t seem to be moving very fast and that’s close enough that it could be ranged with SRBMs (e.g., Fateh). I think we will likely see a bunch of this, combined with Shadeeds, in coming days.
Overall, Iranian targets are very much looking like US and host-nation basing. 5th Fleet HQ ate a Shahed right at the NW edge of the building (taking out one of the big uplinks) and had another near miss into the customs warehouse to the W. The civilian structures that have been hit (notably the Burj) and another building in Bahrain look to me like fuck-ups going after other targets – Shaheds don’t have TERCOM (at least so far as we know) and I’d bet that mission planning is a bit… abbreviated.
The $64,000 question to my mind is whether the US and Israel are really aiming for regime change out of this. Reporting has the IAF saying they hit 500 aim points, supposedly mainly SEAD and counter-ballistic missile. No word on US targets other than the usual FLIR-porn, but supposedly something like 30 major Iranian decision makers were killed. To materially affect stability, I think they would have to hit a lot more than that, specifically emphasizing people associated with internal stability.
Parenthetically, the disinformation content is off the frigging charts. So, so much recycled, video game, bad AI imagery.
Feral Finster
I was going to quote Kouros’ speech.. seems you beat me to it.
Anyway, Carney knows perfectly well that he is a roaring hypocrite.
He does not care, for he cares only for power. If he were any different, he would not be where he is.
Feral Finster
@cc “What about Iran’s right to defend itself in the face of this second unprovoked attack against it by the US-Israel in less than a year? In both cases attacks made while the US was pretending to be in negotiation talks with Iran.
What about Palestinians’ right to defend themselves in Gaza and the West Bank?”
Right and justice never had anything to do with it.
This is a question of power. Nothing more.
StewartM
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Speaking of regime change, America needs some regime change too. Please, if there is anyone out there, we need regime change. Americans clearly can’t do it, so others need to step up considering regime change is perfectly acceptable.
I’ve been thinking for some time that we’re Weimar going fascist, and the only way we get good government is that one has to be externally imposed on us, just like Germany.
I saw an IG post today that explained much–we peons just got confused. We thought we had heard “No more wars!” and “Release the Epstein Files” when it really was “No more Epstein Files!” and “Release the Wars!”
Poul
Khameini is confirmed dead with a bunch of other top leaders. How dumb are they to have a big meeting with an attack imminent. Iran is probably better off with some spring cleaning of the old leaders. Better get some younger, more capable folks in charge. Darwin’s Law of survival of the fittest in action.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2026/2/28/live-israel-launches-attacks-on-iran-multiple-explosions-heard-in-tehran
Ian Welsh
Killing Khameini was STUPID. He’s far more likely to be replaced a hard liner than a capitulationist. Also his fatwa against nuclear weapons can be repealed by his succcessor.
Poul
Why a fatwa may or may not survive the death of the cleric issuing it.
The fatwa from Supreme Leader Khamenei is only an obligation to follow as long as he is alive – a Marja’.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marja%27
While it’s custom for his followers to continue to uphold a dead cleric’s fatwa, it is a choice not an obligation. And a new Supreme Leader is free to pick another path.
If the new leader issues a confirmation that Khomenei’s fatwa stands then Iran will still not seek a nuke else all doors are open.
Donald
The “ Axis of Resistance” has been incompetent and feckless the past few years. Maybe that will change, but Hezbollah was supposed to be formidable and they were humiliated and Lebanese civilians suffered vastly more than Israelis.
The Houthis did better, but mainly just in the sense that they survived. They couldn’t do enough damage to deter Israel in Gaza. The US wasted a lot of missiles accomplishing nothing, but the Houthis didn’t accomplish anything either, except for making the US wasted a lot of money.
In the 12 day war I think it is clear Iran suffered far more civilian and military deaths than Israel did.
So far it is obvious the West is better at killing both civilians and soldiers than their enemies in that part of the world and so far as I can tell, that pattern continued on the first day of this war.
As for the Canadian and European leaders, they are lapdogs. Carney told the truth in his speech, but now things are back to their hypocritical norm.
KT Chong
The U.S. and Ali Larijani are running the “Delcy Rodríguez” playbook in Iran.
Delcy Rodríguez and her brother Jorge orchestrated Maduro’s betrayal to secure their own power and survival. They sold out Nicolás Maduro to the U.S.
I strongly suspect it was Larijani who sold out Ayatollah Khamenei, feeding the intel to the U.S. and Israel to take him out.
Larijani has very recently maneuvered into a “shadow leader” role to manage the 2026 crisis — and he’s the one who’s been talking to the Americans, which makes him extremely dangerous and potentially treasonous.
Larijani is straight-up using the theatrical defiance from the Delcy Rodríguez playbook. Delcy has been been slinging revolutionary rhetoric, insisting Maduro is still president to placate the populace — but her actions scream otherwise.
The U.S. and Israel will keep decapitating every hardliner leader until Larijani is the last man standing.
Unless Khamenei’s son and/or the Revolutionary Guard stages a Red Wedding to take out Larijani and his crew, it is game over for the hardliners.
Feral Finster
Iran won’t be given a chance to develop nuclear weapons. The Americans and Israelis smell blood.
Iran will be turned into a failed state.
ventzu
It truly is stunning that Carney, Starmer et al all manage to condemn Iranian airstrikes, but not a word on Israel/US attacks, killing children, and whilst negotiations underway. Anyone can see the hypocrisy, but the media says not a word.
Apparently Khameni’s son has been chosen as his successor.
The military pundits are saying that Israel / US will soon run out of missiles.
After India’s Modi prostrated himself in Israel he essentially scuppered BRICS, and announced that India is with the collective West. If the US succeeds in Iran then they will have managed to prolong the empire for at least a bit more. If not it will accelerate the collapse.
This seems existential for not just Iran, but also US and Israel. => high chance of nukes. Hopefully Iran’s new leadership – and the other allied forces in the region – understand this.
ventzu
Oh, and backing down, agreeing to a ceasefire, would be a mistake, since they will just bide their time, tighten the screws on the economy and do it again in a year’s time.
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Feral is correct, the chance for Iran to have nuclear weapons has expired. The window has closed. Iran is a failed state, it just doesn’t know it yet.
There will be no succession in Iranian leadership with the murder of Khameini. The reign of the Mullahs has come to an end.
America and Israel are not going to use nukes. That’s fear-mongering disseminated by Russians and Russophiles.
Chas Freeman noted to Glenn Diesen that the War on Iran was approved December 29th and it was set for February 20th but it was pushed back because Russia got a hold of the initial battle plans. What? That is big news, if true. It means there is a massive leak within the Trump administration. It means there are traitors in the Trump administration and/or the Pentagon.
That brings us to another observation. Per Freeman, Russia availed Iran of the specific battle plans it absconded with, so you would think Iran would have taken the proper actions in regard to those specific battle plans and yet Khameini was executed any way. Does this indicate that there are also traitors within the Iranian regime who set Khameini up and who are willing to be Trump’s and Israel’s quislings like the faux leftist chick in Venezuela?
We’ll see.
Meanwhile, once again, America needs regime change. Where are the takers? Some MAGA nobody in Pittsburg outwits the FBI and the SS and comes to within a fraction of an inch of Kamala Harris being POTUS and those poor, innocent school girls in Tehran still being alive, but yet all these brave powerful nations like China and Russia and you name it, none of them can get to Trump in a decapitation strike? What a joke they all are. Crooks was many times braver than Putin or Xi and more honest and virtuous.
Carborundum
I am not at all certain that the decapitation strikes had no effect on Iranian response. I’ve seen reporting that the Iranian CDS and minister of defence have both been taken off the board (as well as Ahmadinejad and many other top level commanders). The scale of Iranian response, measured against baseline capability, has been fairly low and the target set looks limited compared to what’s out there (e.g., as of yet, I’ve seen no mention of strikes against oil infrastructure). Overall, the Iranian response as of yet is looking more scattered than we’ve seen previously – a basket of smaller attacks rather than focused more powerful efforts.
The big thing I haven’t seen nearly enough focus on in the coverage or associated commentary is the precedent of decapitation strikes against legitimate national leadership, without at least some covering of legal legitimacy. Yes, we’ve seen at least arguably illegitimate leaders taken off the board and we’ve seen strikes against leadership as an element of military action against the state. However, what we’re seeing now is qualitatively different – this is a small number of actors, without broad based international support, hitting legitimate paramount leadership as the number one, outbreak of hostilities, target.
I don’t see a direct replacement of Khameni as very likely. We may see someone *named* as Rahbar, but I’m skeptical that they’ll really have the heft we’re accustomed to seeing. The position is a really odd one, with demands for perceived legitimacy so high and esoteric (essentially an extremely accomplished religious scholar with deep secular realpolitik chops and Revolutionary street cred) that I don’t see how someone from a post-Revolution generation walks into it and has it be functionally the same position.
I suspect we may actually see even more factional competition in Iranian leadership and the baseline there is already very high. This would be qualitatively different from direct hardliner replacement. Essentially, we’d end up with more frequent, smaller scale, more overtly provocative action aimed at manufacturing small-stakes conflict for positional competition (a very Trumpian strategy, come to think of it, just lacking a dominant nodal personality). From the US / Israeli perspective, trading acute for chronic – the big losers there would be the regional neighbours.
I think the analytical centre of gravity may end up being what the Iranian populace does. The Iranian government has supposedly explicitly directed the populace to leave Tehran and other major centres. Does not sound like a vote of confidence on their part.
Carborundum
While I was typing the above, reporting of a hit on Beth Shemesh – notable because it would be about 10 klicks downrange from Sdot Micha (where Israeli nuclear warheads are believe to be stored).
mago
It’s early in the game and visibility is near zero thanks to all the war fog. That isn’t stopping absolutist statements from armchair pundits and commentators.
How can anyone say there won’t be a nuclear strike, or that there will be no succession of Iranian leadership? Based on what evidence? It’s just speculation. Just like Iran is doomed to be a failed state. Maybe. Who knows? I’m reading content from informed sources and even that seems uncertain and speculative.
Death and destruction are givens, and there are no winners here and no happy outcomes. I can posit that with some degree of confidence.
bruce wilder
“Killing Khameini was STUPID.”
Having a war with Iran at all from the perspective of a realistic assessment of Western or U.S. interests in the Middle East is stupid. It has been a stupid goal for going on thirty years. That it has been the “normal” default setting of U.S. foreign policy for the whole of the 21st century is frustrating for anyone capable of thought, but it shouldn’t mislead our critical faculties.
The premise that Iran was a nuclear proliferation threat was always false. (Pakistan was a nuclear proliferation threat for real and never got the hostile attention it deserved.)
The premise that Iran-qua-nuclear-proliferation-threat could and should be contained by bullying, espionage and crippling economic sanctions reflects an impoverished and ultimately self-destructive view of geopolitical persuasion and influence. Nuclear non-proliferation has a history and began from a philosophy that (correctly IMHO) identified non-proliferation as being in the mutual interest of existing, declared nuclear-weapons states and non-nuclear-weapons states with an interest in nuclear power. There was an explicit bargain embedded in the rationale tied to a sound understanding of the risks that proliferation would entail. Somehow, we have traded that balanced, thoughtful rationale for the crazy bullying of Netanyahoo.
To me, speculation on how the martyrdom of Khameini will affect the behavior of the Iranian state or its religious and ideological allies and supporters within Iran or across the region is tactical minutiae. I seriously doubt that the consequences are predictable, even by genuine experts in the state of the political culture, if there even are such.
To put it into the vernacular, this is gangster-shit.
Carborundum
On cue, reporting coming in of major *daylight* super-visible strikes on internal security targets in Tehran. Imagery of a drone flying low enough to be clearly seen over Shiraz, a couple of hundred clicks inland, etc.
Combined with public statements from US and (particularly) Israeli governments, it sure looks to me like they’re trying to sell the populace the population on the notion that overturn is possible. Not sure how that works unless there’s been one hell of a lot of groundwork lain.
Mark Level
Thank you to mago for not prematurely ejaculating (verbally) with joy that the Hegemon successfully murders non-European “untermenschen”, the first strike was on a girls’ school in Iran, initial death count was like 68, guess it was 90-some later. “So much winning.”
A lot of Debbie Downers here who barely 36 hours into the usual “Shock & Awe” shuck & jive imagine the war is over and the dying Hegemon has won. Have any of you looked at the people who are running the economy and military? Tomorrow when the Stock Markets crash and gas prices double and triple soon, will you still be so confident in your celebrations that “America’s back, baby” Bullshit that has been a Lie since Reagan’s era?
Anyway, mago inspired me to write a little ditty based on Bob Dylan’s “Satisfied Mind.”
How many times have you heard someone say
If I had his WMDs I’d exterminate my own way
Before violence they bow
They submerge their minds
So satisfying, surrender, have a colonized mind!
I watch with admiration the Epstein class’ torture and rape
Hope to emulate and not suffer, with admiration I gape
Then sudden failure
My blood was mixed, not Zio-pure
I have to retreat to my colonized mind.
Soon we’ll ALL be dead, failed country, time run out
I have no friends or loved ones
Life gets worse daily, no doubt
I have no power that’s certain
And too soon comes my time,
I surrendered in squalor, with my colonized mind.
______________________________________________________________________________________
Some initial “Shock & Awe” fireworks do not impress me. Do people here have short memories? The Zionist/Trump Axis had to beg for surcease in June after only 12 days (yeah, those idiot Iranians were too kind and human, agreed) and the Iranians are firing their oldest ordnance first, stronger stuff to follow as they build knowledge of defense gaps. And with Khamenei dead, Ian is correct, he was dead weight, good riddance, harder men and women will come in.
Certainly Yemen will join soon. There is rioting in Baghdad, and major hits across 4-5 of the collaborationists, including the Saudis. Rioting in Pakistan too, that may soon be one US “ally” totally lost.
At the start of the genocide after Oct. 7, Ali Abunimah noted that the Americans killed and maimed millions in Vietnam, poisoned the country for generations with Agent Orange and other biological agents, and still got driven out. I note this in response to “Donald.” The Japanese and Europeans are decadent and do not reproduce (nor do ‘Muricans anymore, due to the wretched economy for the young). Just because a MIC can mass slaughter doesn’t mean they win long-term. As Ian said paragraph 4, it’ll be “a long slog.”
How many US troops have died? How many will? MAGA didn’t want that, Trump-Vance ran as “the Peace ticket”, whatta (predictably) sick joke.
I saw the same Chas Freeman (former US ambassador to the Saudis) interview as LAS did, he misrepresents some aspects of it (probably through bias and ignorance, I will not accuse him of deliberate lying.) In fact, the attack was “delayed” due to the fact that Russia warned the Iranians of an earlier attack date. Nice attempt to revive Russiagate, LAS, but even Rachel Maddow is not spewing that drivel this late in the game. Russia and China are not abandoning their most powerful ally in the region, that’s your hopium again.
Oh and the US support for this attack was 23% at the start, not the 95% Bushie the Lesser had. Now yes, that doesn’t matter at the moment, but as things go South it might start to.
Dumbest comment paraphrased, “Why would people leave Tehran, this shows they are weak, scared and losing.” I heard this during the initial phase of the Bush-Cheney Iraq invasion. There was a Vietnam Vet janitor at my school, he was dying of his exposure to Agent Orange at the time (bone cancer, he lasted until about 2005) who rage-yelled at me about the Iraqi insurgents: “They’re cowards!! They need to march out in their uniforms to be bombed from the air, how dare they hide” and do traditional insurgency?
A couple other things worth mentioning– This was done right during the early phase of Ramadan. Not exactly good PR for many millions across the Islamic world. But the US doesn’t do good PR, nor the Zionists, they just do let’s murder as many as we can and the whole world will surrender to us. Has that ever worked? How did Alexander Magnus end? Dead somewhere in the far East and his spoils divided among 3 generals.
Surrender monkeys gotta surrender, what can I say? White privilege and Imperial privilege are some pretty heady drugs. But over time, like most narcotics, they stupify and even kill those who indulge.
Even were KT Chong correct and Larajani sacrificed a 78-year old fossil to gain individual power, does that mean that Trump’s “plan” (sic) that millions of Iranians will pour into the streets & demand the return of the Shah’s son, on US-Zio puppet strings, to loot all their oil, restart the Savak torture centers and make them poorer than Scotty Besent’s crashing of the rial did? Y’all are using some bad drugs if you believe that, you need to put that meth pipe down!!
Ian’s plenty smart and a New Era of Shiny White Supremacist–Epstein Class Control of the Entire World is nowhere nigh. How do you conquer the rest of the world while igniting a Civil War in your own country? (Some of you have deeply colonized minds, I look forward to your patient explanation.) I’ve heard some more knowledgeable than me about the Zionist entity say they are near Civil War also. War is all they know, a pure Death Cult.
Beyond Ian, we have Sean Paul Kelly and sometimes Nat Wilson Turner, brilliant people who have actually studied history and can think in terms longer than 2 days. I have to say, the commentariat at Moon of Alabama is far superior to those here, judged by recent defeatist drivel shared here by several. Are you satisfied ‘coz others are being raped, murdered and permanently disabled, and you’re not too near the head of the line? Wake up and grow up, look up Martin Niemoller online if you are unfamiliar.
Oh and in closing, Jeffrey Sachs is plenty smart too, at Ian Welsh levels. He predicted the Genocidal Entity has at best one or two decades left. I’ll go with Sachs over some of the whinging children commenting here.
Donald
Mark Level— Insults are irrelevant. I don’t know what is going to happen. I can observe what has happened so far.
As for Israel collapsing in the not too distant future, yes, it could easily happen. The U.S. is also in a decline— Ian is probably right that China is going to be the dominant power for the coming decades. That is not in conflict with the notion that if Iran starts displaying the ability to hurt Israel badly, Israel and the U.S. could do much worse to them.
And I think the Iranians know this. Every country in the world now knows the only real deterrent to countries with nukes is getting your own nukes. I hate that this is the lesson the U.S. and Israel are teaching the world, but there it is.
cc
Two quotes that we can probably all agree on, from a post by Peter Hanseler on Larry Johnson’s site:
“As in June 2025, the Americans lulled the Iranians into a false sense of security with negotiations that they had intended to continue on Monday, only to attack the Iranians while the negotiations were still ongoing. It is therefore fair to say that when the Americans negotiate, it is a sign that they will attack you from behind.”
– Peter Hanseler
“In my opinion, there will be no fall of the Iranian government; rather, the 12-day war, the Maidan-style unrest at the beginning of the year, and the attack on February 28, 2026, have united the people. What drives both aggressors – the US and Israel – to attack a girls’ school, resulting in the deaths of over 100 young girls, remains a mystery to any sane person. It is permissible, indeed necessary, to rightly describe the Israeli and American political and military leadership responsible for this as psychopaths.”
– Peter Hanseler
https://sonar21.com/peter-hanseler-thoughts-in-dubai/
different clue
. . . ” Some MAGA nobody in Pittsburg outwits the FBI and the SS and comes to within a fraction of an inch of Kamala Harris being POTUS and those poor, innocent school girls in Tehran still being alive” . . .
Note a key little bit of what I have just quoted . . . ” comes to within a fraction of an inch of Kamala Harris being POTUS and those poor, innocent school girls in Tehran still being alive” . . .
The Left ( and when I say “the Left” I mean the aMERican Left because that is the only Left I know anything about ) did everything it could do in its own weak marginal
way to get Harris defeated in order to get Trump elected, based on its own political-religious belief in ” the two parties are the same” and ” there is/was no difference between Harris and Trump” and etc. The Democrats themselves contributed much more to Harris’s defeat than the Left ever could have done. Still, the Left did everything it could to get Harris defeated in order to get Trump elected. “Abandon Harris” and so forth.
So . . . is the Left happy now? Is the Left satisfied?
The Leopards of Justice have bigger meatier faces than the scrawny bony faces of the Left to focus on first. Still, in the long run, is there an ” abandon Harris” Leftist face for every leopard and is there a Leopard for every “abandon Harris” Leftist face?
Time will tell.
Mark Level
Donald, if I “insulted” anyone, it was only the late Ralph Amato, who died after poisoning himself dumping Agent Orange on Vietnamese peasants. He’s in the other world, takes no offense. I simply made the point that mass-killing is and has been the US M.O. for decades, starting even before Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Your belief that killing more civilians will lead to a future “victory” is simply a category error. See CC’s comment just below yours. And thank you to cc and Mr. Haensler, yes this goes along with my thinking, the Iranian people have been united, just as the Russian people had traitors at the start of the Maidan coup, glib liberals who thought they could crumble and “join the West.” That belief was quickly belied, there’s not significant voices in Russia now calling for capitulation. At least 52% of Ukrainians want peace negotiations with Russia NOW, but they have no more “democracy” than we do, doesn’t matter. (Source– a recent “Harper’s Index.”)
“Who sows the wind reaps the whirlwind.” That’s where we are now. I don’t fear it, Dictators like Drumpf always over-reach, sometimes they last decades (Pinochet), sometimes they meet sudden ends at the hands of their victims (Ceausescu). Empires fail in the long run, Revolutions succeed in the short term, then become new tyrannies. Humans are apes, sadly the violence is not bred out of us, institutions for the most part only encourage it. I hope you weren’t cheerleading the genocidal monsters, that certainly is not a good look.
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I saw the same Chas Freeman (former US ambassador to the Saudis) interview as LAS did, he misrepresents some aspects of it (probably through bias and ignorance, I will not accuse him of deliberate lying.) In fact, the attack was “delayed” due to the fact that Russia warned the Iranians of an earlier attack date.
I will accuse you of deliberately lying because that is exactly what you have done. I understand. You live in a country that rewards lying and your leader lies like he breathes so it’s only natural you would lie with impunity too.
For the record, here is the video. It starts at the 6:44 — the commentary related to Russia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xt2e_79Rua4
Here is the transcript. This is Chas Freeman.
The main point however, Glenn, I think, is that we’re told that if the plan of attack was approved on December 29, the original date for it to take place was February 20th. There are reports that Russian intelligence managed to acquire the entire battle plan and handed it to the Iranians and the United States became aware of that or Israel became aware of it and passed that information to the United States and therefore the attack was postponed.
You lied and you lied deliberately. Why? That’s the question, isn’t it? Never mind answering, I know why.
Russian Intelligence managed to acquire THE ENTIRE BATTLE PLAN, not just the date, and passed it on to the Iranians.
Shameful. Shameless.
Carborundum
At the risk of sounding “stupiderer” my point was that if the Iranian government is truly texting people to leave the major centres, they may well be doing this because they are concerned about unrest and threats to regime stability in those urban centres. A lot of the people in the security apparatus either lived through revolution on the other side, or grew up with it as common shared experience – they understand how key the large urban centres are and how important it is to make organizing opposition there more difficult. Nothing to do with anyone being cowardly because they’re not obligingly presenting themselves for bombing.
Mark Level
LAS, you are deranged and your false accusations land a mile wide. Your Russophobia and Sinophobia blind you to reality. You have said over and over in threads here that the Russians and Chinese are NOT supporting Iran, they will hang them out to dry. Anyone who watches the video (as we both have) or reads the transcript can understand that former Ambassador Freeman said clearly that Russia had Iran’s back and were sharing Intell on potential attack dates. You are wrong, you are wrong between 50% to 100% regularly in your posts.
“Forecasting Intelligence” (scarcely seen usually on here) applauded Israel’s genocide of 200,000 minimum Guatemalans in the 80s after Reagan was prevented from doing so. Btw, Due Dissidence also covered: Matt Walsh came out and said this war will be a failure. Mike Pompeo admitted there is “no plan” and little or no chance of success long term (many analysts say US can continue war for 5 days, or a little longer), Eric Prince called this a betrayal of MAGA, Lindsay Graham said there is “no plan”, he and Trump have “no power” to do anything, the “Iranian people” must bring down their government. Dream on, I already warned people about those Meth pipes. I lost a friend to that in the 90s, never a good look.
Glad the Western press isn’t covering the 190 dead school girls and teachers, I’d bet? If that was “60 beheaded babies” in Israel we’d hear that every day for month. Hey, at least the press is on your side, killing Muslims is no problem, including babies and children. Old Testament warns against “the slaughter of innocents”, modern Zios are massively hypocritical to their “own” alleged Holy Writ.
(PS– I can read and write Hebrew; I read the entirety of Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan’s 1980s Sepher Yetzirah: in Theory and Practice, text of Hebrew alongside English translation very helpful. I have a strong interest in genuine Qabalah, not much else from Judaism. I had tutoring in the alphabet and QBLH mysticism, before working through the book. A lot of interest there.)
Mark Level
I’m not sure why the fact that I was responding to Carborundum was omitted, starting in the 2nd paragraph?
That is definitely NOT directed at LAS, it is Carborundum’s nonsense that 80% of Iranians want regime-change, straight CIA Hasbara with no basis in reality.
Carborundum
Where did I say that 80% of Iranians want regime change?
different clue
I was listening to some BBC last night and they presented some talk by a semi-prominent ‘Miami Cuban’ Iranian who had served a little while at the fringes of Presidential Administration government. His deal was that ” the Iranian people” trust the one source of a true unchanging vision for the future of Iran who has been true to his message for the last 40-some years. And that true-unchanging vision-messenger is . . . the Shah’s son, Prince Reza Pahlavi. This ‘Miami Cuban’ Iranian reminded me somehow of Ahmad Chalabi.
Most of the Iranians who came to America are ‘Miami Cuban’ Iranians. I suspect , without any knowledge, that most of the Iranians who went to Europe and elsewhere somewhat later than the Iranian wave into America, are more drawn from the liberal or leftish parts of urban Iranian society, and some are just mainstreamal normie Iranians who couldn’t take it any more.
Even if the US-Israel effort wipes out every medium and heavy weapon in Iran and the organized Army/Navy/Air Force there, the IRGC, the Baseej, and various other Pro-Islamic Republic forces will still be right there, on the ground, with their millions of smaller arms and billions of rounds of ammo for them. The “mere civilian” Iranian people understand this very well. Trump’s demand that they rise up and take over is a forlorn wish. They will have better sense than to try a direct “uprisal and overthrowal” ( in the deathless words of Spiro T. Agnew from another time and context).
Another talky voice on that same BBC show was adding up the numbers of people in the IRGC, Baseej, various police forces and militias, and etc. and it came to about 1,600,000 people under arms. The “regime” is heavily staffed, multi-layered, highly cross-linked, etc. and has at least those 1,600,000 people ready to fight for it on the ground, even if US/Israel were to achieve total and utterly Air Omnipotence.
And in the meantime, the IranGov still has all those missiles and especially drones and could use them just enough to make US/Israel/etc. launch all the interceptors and other countermeasures they have, and once all interceptors and countermeasures are totally exhausted; then the IranGov can turn big expensive warships in or near the Persian Gulf from power projection platforms into lucrative targets.