If anyone had any lingering doubts about who’s really calling shots at the White House, on 28th February 2026 Donald Trump authorised the US Air Force to help Israel bomb the hell out of Iran. Once again it pains me to admit that the conspiracy nutters have once again got it spot on, Benjamin Netanyahu and NeoCon Deep State do. The Israeli Prime Minister has been making wild claims about Iran’s nuclear weapons programme for the best part of thirty years. He has stood before the UN Assembly with maps and charts to persuade gullible delates that if we, as in Israel’s allies, do not stop Iran now, it will nuke Israel. Meanwhile the western MSM has been busy recycling the myth that the Iranian security forces killed tens of thousands of peaceful protesters unprovoked. The reality on the ground was very different. While hundreds of thousands peacefully took to the streets in January to protest the cost-of-living crisis in the wake of the steep devaluation of Iran’s currency, the rial, much smaller group of militants ran rampage setting fire to buildings, attacking vehicles and firing automatic weapons at police. These are the classic hallmarks of colour revolutions, instigated by foreign actors for the sole purpose of destabilisation before an impending invasion. In the days before Israel launched operation Roaring Lion, millions of Iranians from all walks of life and political allegiances lined the streets to oppose foreign intervention.
Some of us remember the propaganda that led to the invasion of Iraq and the destabilisation of Syria. The US supported Iraq for most of Iran-Iraq war and turned a blind eye to the infamous 1988 Halabja massacre of Kurdish peshmerga and Iranian Revolutionary Guards (aka Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or IRGC), while Iran flew in journalists to document and film the carnage before losing control. While this incident did not play a role in the propaganda for the first Gulf War, over the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, it featured prominently in the progressive media after 9/11.
Yet the violent repression narrative served to justify the onset of a war that could kill millions of innocent civilians and plunge the global economy into a deep depression with spiralling fuel prices affecting critical supply chains. Worse still, it could well go nuclear. In less than a week the whole politico-rhetorical climate has shifted dramatically. To put things into perspective, unless the US backs out immediately, which given Trump's recent pronouncements seems unlikely, they will be in it for the long haul and it will much harder to conquer 93 million Iranians with as much as 7000 years of shared history and an unforgiving mountainous terrain than occupying Iraq or Afghanistan.
In the Punch and Judy show that it is British politics, Reform have ceased to play the good guys with the best interests of the native British working classes at heart. They have gone full ZioNeoCon. You could not put a cigarette paper between Lindsay Graham and Nigel Farage. Yet In 2014, Farage observed: "In almost every country in which the West has intervened or even implied support for regime change, the situation has been made worse and not better. This is true of Libya, Syria and of course Iraq." (Declassified UK). Trump, of course, made many similar claims about draining the swamp and bringing an end to forever wars to win over his MAGA base. Alas Kemi Badenoch’s Tories are singing from the hymn sheet condemning Sir Keir Starmer for failing to join the Israeli-American military offensive. For a few short days, I began to loathe Keir Starmer less than the leaders of the alleged opposition parties. But what are they opposing, the UK government’s failure to follow Benjamin Netanyahu’s orders? Can anyone now seriously doubt that our political leaders are not in charge at all. They’re little more than teenagers in a high-school debating society recycling talking points about the dangers of antisemitism, while the people they purportedly serve face economic ruin as a result of reckless military interventionism. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the bombing of oil facilities across the Middle East and Iran only exacerbate the existing economic challenges of a small densely populated island over-reliant on imported resources. Gas and oil prices are already surging. The Gulf States, home to many affluent British expats, will become environmentally unviable with the destruction of their desalination plants.
The situation is very fluid, but I can already hear rumblings of boots on the ground from the usual suspects. With Peter Mandelson disgraced, Tony Blair has predictably come out in favour of Israeli foreign policy. We’re being primed for the prospect of a ground war, but I don’t see many youngsters volunteering, however bleak the prospect of life on the dole at home may seem. I don’t have any answers, but it’s little consolation to have one’s worst fears of societal collapse come true.