America's War On Iran Is Not Over
The American-Israeli empire has already made the decision to destroy Iran. It's only a matter of time before the next episode begins.
The American-Israeli empire is proceeding to devour its next victim in its multi-decade pursuit of dominating the Middle East, subjecting its people to neocolonial rule, and completing the project of Zionist fascism.
Iran has been the chosen prey of America for decades, ever since it became a stronghold of resistance against imperialism. America initially installed the Shah monarchy in a 1953 coup to de facto control the country. In 1979, the Shah was overthrown in the Islamic Revolution, which elevated the Ayatollah to power, founding the modern-day hostility. Iran has bravely dared to oppose the hegemony of the American-Israeli empire and has paid for it severely over the past four decades.
Starting with the revolution, America lost one of its most loyal allies in the region, and it immediately went to work supporting its proxy, Saddam Hussein, with Iraq invading Iran the following year. After eight brutal years of fighting, Iran survived at the devastating cost of about half a million dead, a 40% GDP shrink, and a 92% currency devaluation. This destroyed Iraq’s economy and set off a series of events leading to the Iraq invasion in 2003, regime change, and the exploitation of the country for oil and military hegemony today. Iran resiliently staved off this aggression, established its sovereignty, and legitimized itself as an enduring resistance to American imperialism. Both America and Israel have since conducted many covert and overt attacks on Iran through cross-border raids, assassinations, cyberwarfare, and crippling sanctions. The US has also gone so far as to support designated terrorist groups to help attack Iran, such as Jundallah from 2005 to 2010, Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi separatist groups in 2007, and the MEK from 2010 to 2012, along with other less significant opposition factions like the Kurds.
As the primary oppositional force to American-Israeli hegemony in the region, Iran has established direct military allies such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis government of Yemen, the PMF in Iraq, the Afghan Fatemiyoun Brigade, and supported the Assad regime in Syria until it was toppled last year. As for soft economic allies, Iran has joined the BRICS coalition and OPEC to oppose the American imperial bloc. During the past four decades of crushing sanctions from the US, nations like Russia and China have slowly aligned closer with Iran as trade partners to hedge against America.
Despite being predominantly self-sufficient, Iran has emerged as the most powerful nation in the region, boasting a significant military presence and a strong economy. Their position threatens the American-Israel empire’s ambition of holding complete military and economic domination over the Middle East. For decades, the US has desperately coveted ‘regime change’ in Iran, just like they did in Iraq, achieved in 2003 by overthrowing Saddam Hussein. American neocon warhawks aggressively lobbied this policy in parallel with the Israeli strategic interest of ridding all factions that prevent their insatiable expansion.
Now that Iran’s most consistent ally, Assad, has been overthrown and that Syria is now a shell ready to bow down to the West, that presented the perfect opportunity for Israel and America to attack. But the pretext for this attack is not new; it was generated decades ago.
Decades of False Pretext
In 1991, a piece was published in the Los Angeles Times called ‘Iran’s Nuclear Plans Worry US Officials’ where they suggest that Iran was rapidly advancing toward acquiring a nuclear weapon, being just a few years away. In it, they quote, “‘It looks like there’s a really active program in Iran,’ said Leonard S. Spector, a nuclear specialist… ‘It picked up over the past eight or 10 months, after they saw and read about what was going on in Iraq.’” They contrasted those who feared Iran could develop a nuke in a few years and those who believed their program is a decade away.
According to a Global Security report, they outline how the CIA intelligence keeps changing the timescale for Iran’s capability. They write, “In 1992, the CIA estimated that Iran would have the bomb by the year 2000. In 1995, John Holum testified that Iran could have the bomb by 2003. In 1997, after two years in which Iran might have made progress, he testified that Iran could have the bomb by 2005- 2007. In 1999, the NIE on proliferation estimated that Iran could test a missile that could reach the US by 2010, but did not change the 1997 estimate or when Iran might acquire a bomb.”
In 2000, the CIA carried out Operation Merlin, where they attempted to fake a leak to Iran containing a flawed version of nuclear bomb blueprints to set back their program. The New York Times acquired the details of this covert operation in 2003 but was barred from publishing the story by the US government, which was later revealed in the author’s book. The source for the information, CIA officer Jeffrey Alexander Sterling, was brazenly convicted of espionage in 2015 and sentenced to three years in prison for leaking that.
In 2001, American and Israeli intelligence spread rumors to the press that Iran was “only three to five years away from having launchable warheads.”
Around this time, neocon warhawks and liberals alike began a campaign of writing countless op-eds calling for all-out war with Iran over their alleged pursuit of nuclear capabilities.
In 2006, Bill Kristol, Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff, wrote an article in the Weekly Standard magazine saying, “We might consider countering this act of Iranian aggression with a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Why wait?” Kristol outright refused the possibility that Iran would negotiate, even though they ended up coming to a nuclear agreement less than a decade later.
In 2007, Norman Podhoretz published ‘The Case for Bombing Iran,’ fear-mongering about the coming ‘Islamofascism’ if America didn’t initiate what he calls ‘World War IV.’
In 2008, America Magazine put out an editorial titled, ‘Iran and the Bomb,’ where they invoked the idea of brinksmanship with Iran, citing their missile and enrichment activities as evidence of a nuclear arms trajectory, thus justifying preemptive attacks.
In 2009, in a New York Times op-ed, Alan J. Kuperman wrote an article ‘There’s Only One Way to Stop Iran’ which concludes that diplomacy is impossible and the US must preemptively bomb Iran.
In 2010, the Washington Times released an editorial titled ‘Nuclear Iran’ where they ominously declared, “The United States should begin planning for the inevitable. Conflict is coming; it won’t be managed away.”
In 2010, Daniel Pipes wrote a piece called ‘How to Save the Obama Presidency: Bomb Iran’, citing “the apocalyptic-minded leaders in Tehran” and opinion polls showing Americans’ supposed support for preemptively attacking Iran.
In 2013, again, Podhoretz wrote in the Wall Street Journal, ‘Strike Iran Now to Avert Disaster Later’ saying, “If Israel fails to strike now, Iran will get the bomb.”
In 2015, the American Foreign Policy Magazine put out a piece titled ‘Iran Already Has Nuclear Weapons Capability,’ suggesting Iran was just months away from developing a nuclear fission bomb.
That same year, John Bolton, who was Bush’s former UN ambassador, published an op-ed in the New York Times titled ‘To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran’ where he dismisses diplomatic solutions and demands aggressive action.
In 2019, it was reported that “US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made comments on Thursday, after Iran stepped up activity at its underground Fordow nuclear plant. He warned against Tehran’s ‘violence and terror’ and urged the international community to take immediate action.”
With countless more comments and pieces written, it would be impossible to compile all of them. For the US, this is a consistent and systematic effort to initiate imperial war with another sovereign nation to protect the Israeli colony in the region. The motivation underlying it all is economic, as the more control the US has over other resource-rich countries, the slower capitalism disintegrates. This is also in line with efforts to help fight their primary world opponent, China, which is the leading importer of Iranian oil.
Israel and ideological Zionism are also a central component of this aggression. For Israel, it does not want peace; it wants complete hegemony to protect its project of creating an ethnically pure society. As a nation that has descended into fascism, Israel must keep rapidly expanding and fighting wars to justify its existence. Once Israel has decided to carry out its long-awaited genocide to ethnically cleanse Palestine, it has reached a point where its only option is to fight indefinitely. Israel, now more than ever, necessitates that every state surrounding it is either an unambiguous ally or a weak, fractured country that cannot serve as a resistance to its ethnic cleansing.
Iran’s Pacifism
Iran has, to its own detriment, never concretely pursued a nuclear weapon in its 46-year history. It has endured crippling sanctions and proxy attacks because of it, yet it still cannot create a nuclear weapon. Nowhere in the rhetoric of Iranian leaders have they seriously suggested they will not follow the concept of mutually assured destruction; quite the opposite.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has been known to be a moderate, especially when it comes to the subject of nuclear weapons, saying, “We consider the use of such weapons as haraam and believe that it is everyone’s duty to make efforts to secure humanity against this great disaster.” As the spiritual leader of Iran, it is his belief that obtaining nuclear weapons is fundamentally immoral, and this belief is shared by much of the Muslim population. Khamenei also said outright the regime’s intentions in 2015, saying in a speech, “We are not after nuclear weapons… we do not need a nuclear weapon either in the present time or in the future. A nuclear weapon is a source of trouble for a country like ours.”
Statements like these have prompted frustration from others in the regime who rightly believe that nuclear capabilities are the only thing that will rebalance power in the Middle East. Some also question Khamenei’s reasoning since refusing to pursue and failing to achieve nuclear weapons has led to more conflict. Nuclear weapons for a country like North Korea have prevented all aggression toward it from the US, besides occasional flare-ups. Iran had about six months to nuclearize after Hamas’ October 7th attack, which disrupted the confidence of the Israeli military, but no such effort was made.
With Khamenei now 86 years old, a new Ayatollah in Iran could mean a more pragmatic pursuit of nuclear capabilities to stave off American-Israeli aggression just for their own survival. One could venture to guess that Israel has refrained from assassinating Khamenei to make sure a more radical Ayatollah doesn’t take his place, something Israel has been exploiting with the Palestinian leadership for decades. However, recent reporting states that Israel drew up plans to assassinate Khamenei, but the US didn’t let them carry it out, suggesting that it wasn’t part of their calculation.
The current regime has been historically very weak when it comes to proportional counterattacks against Israel. They have failed to take out any significant figures in Israel, yet have lost tens of important leaders to targeted assassinations. Khamenei has deliberately chosen the path of ‘strategic patience,’ which has only led to a weaker position and invited more Israeli aggression.
Deterrence Theory
Internet commentator who goes by the name Zei Squirrel, whose analysis helped form the basis of this essay, wrote extensively about the desperate need for Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon for their own survival. Through their analyses using a materialist framework, they have accurately predicted many of the current events months in advance. Their conclusions outline a grim future for Iran if they do not achieve deterrence. Ultimately, if Iran is not able to serve consequences to Israel and the US while failing to honor their red lines, conflict will continue and escalate dramatically. The next stage of escalation, if not prevented, could possibly result in Israel’s ultimate goal of regime change and the fracturing of Iran into weak, conflicting factions, like what happened in Syria.
An honest understanding of political science and material analysis can settle the case for a nuclear Iran. The theory of deterrence posits that an aggressor, such as the state of Israel, can only be stopped when there is a credible and severe threat of retaliation. The highest form of deterrent is achieving nuclear capabilities. Only once that is achieved will Israel be forced to stop attacking Iran directly, and then it must rely on flimsy proxy wars. So long as the United States, the hegemonic world power, and Israel, its ethnostate colony, keep their nuclear weapons, acquiring nuclear weapons is the only reliable path to sovereignty. Peace through nuclear de-proliferation can only happen when the US gives up its nukes, something that will never happen.
The contrasting cases of Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya and Kim Jong Il’s North Korea give insight into the validity of this theory. As opponents of the US, both these nations were not secure in their sovereignty and were targets of a forced overthrow. For Gaddafi, his country’s nationalized control over oil and rejection of foreign direct investment threatened the West’s control over the oil market. For various reasons, Libya under Gaddafi was not able to achieve nuclear weapons and gave up its nuclear ambitions in 2003. This eventually resulted in his overthrow by a NATO-backed rebellion in 2011, where he was raped to death and shot. Libya has still not recovered after that civil war.
North Korea, however, had the explicit goal of achieving a nuclear weapon going back decades to resist attempts by South Korea and the West to invade and reignite the Korean War. In the 90s, North Korea exploited nuclear treaties while still developing its nuclear program until it withdrew from the NPT in 2002. Just three years later, in 2005, they announced they had nuclear weapons and conducted their first test in 2006. Despite tensions flaring up occasionally, it’s nothing but empty threats. South Korea and the US have maintained sanctions but have taken no military action against North Korea.
Deterrence can be established in multiple ways, and the mere presence of a threat is not enough to deter. Red lines must be drawn and consequences must be served when crossed. Iran has relied on deterrence through its many proxies in the region, which are protecting it by directing any counterattacks away from the core. Since Iran has not sufficiently retaliated when Israel has brazenly violated its red lines, that only convinced Israel to take a mile when given an inch. Now that Israel has eroded those proxies, it seems that war is becoming increasingly more imminent.
Escalating Proxy War
The Israel-Iran conflict has many episodes; however, the recurring theme is the disproportionate aggression by the Israeli military and intelligence. The justification, of course, is the false notion of ‘preemptive’ strikes against threats that are manufactured, grossly exaggerated, or outright lies. Notable events include:
June 2010 — A covert American-Israeli worm cyberattack called Stuxnet is discovered, which would be used to sabotage Iranian nuclear facilities for many years following. The program cost an estimated $1 billion to develop and is regarded as one of the most infamous cyberattacks in history.
July 2015 — Iran agrees to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), abandoning its capability to acquire nuclear weapons in exchange for lifting international sanctions.
January 2017 — Israel, after four years of covert operations and occasional precision airstrikes against Iranian proxies in Syria, was by now openly engaged in near daily airstrikes throughout 2017 and 2018 as Iran attempted to prop up the Assad regime, Iranian proxies sometimes successfully shot down drones and aircraft, in one instance the Quads Force in the Golan Heights fired rockets at the Israeli occupied territory prompting a significant overreaction.
May 2018 — After Israeli PM Netanyahu claimed undercover Mossad agents obtained an Iranian 100,000 document secret nuclear archive, which allegedly proved that Iran ‘lied’ about their nuclear capabilities in the past. Although the documents were reported to contain no new information unknown to the IAEA, this prompted President Donald Trump to withdraw from the JCPOA deal.
January 2020 — The US asked Iraq’s PM to mediate a deal with Iran’s Major General Qasem Soleimani after the nuclear withdrawal, which was really a setup for President Donald Trump to order a covert drone strike assassination on Soleimani in Baghdad while he was traveling. Iran responded with an ineffective attack on the American Al-Asad airbase.
June 2020 — A series of sabotage explosions and cyberattacks on eleven Iranian nuclear sites, unconfirmed but likely by Israel.
November 2020 — A covert attack with a remote-controlled machine gun in Tehran assassinates Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, an Iranian military nuclear scientist.
April 2021 — A new iteration of the Stuxnet worm strikes the Iranian Natanz nuclear facility, damaging centrifuges and the local electrical grid.
March 2022 — Iran’s IRGC launches twelve ballistic missiles at Mossad undercover intelligence centers in Erbil, Iraq.
Throughout the late 2010s and 2020s, both Iran and Israel engaged in tit-for-tat drone strikes, attacks on cargo vessels, and proxy attacks. Since 2010, Israel has successfully carried out at least 26 confirmed assassinations on Iranian political leaders, military leaders, engineers, and nuclear scientists. Besides plotting and a few foiled attempts, Iran has never successfully carried out an assassination of an Israeli leader to this day.
Iran’s Collapsing Deterrence
The year 2024, in particular, set the stage for the events unfolding now. Zei specifically cites Hezbollah taking losses throughout the year, then suffering a final major defeat in November, along with Assad’s regime falling in December, as a loss of Iran’s deterrence.
Other moves by the US and Israel signaled their preparations to initiate war with Iran. The US attack on Yemen in early 2025 is connected to this. It allowed the US to test how Yemen would respond while damaging major ports to put pressure on a government that is loyal to Iran. Even in Iraq, America has also recently been pressuring its government to crack down on Iran-connected Shia militias within its borders.
Iran Loses Hezbollah
While Israel carried out its genocide in Gaza, Iran’s proxy Hezbollah supported the Palestinian resistance via rocket attacks starting in October 2023 and continuing into 2024 until Hezbollah was forced to a ceasefire in November 2024.
The rockets were too weak without the support of Iran, which has the missile capability to break through Israel’s Iron Dome. Rather than supporting their ally, Iran decided not to escalate the situation beyond a regional proxy conflict. Iran is so afraid to escalate conflict that it has been known to downplay and even cover up assassinations of their leaders. The results have been devastating, and Hezbollah paid the price:
April 1st, 2024 — Israel bombed Iran’s embassy in Baghdad, killing tens of people, prompting Iran to respond with a show of force called “Operation True Promise,” which was merely a show of force that killed no one in retaliation.
May 19th, 2024 — Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Abdollahian were killed in a helicopter crash under suspicious circumstances. Iran claims it was due to poor weather conditions.
July 30th, 2024 — Israel assassinates Hezbollah’s military leader, Fuad Shukr, in Lebanon.
July 31st, 2024 — Israeli Mossad agents assassinate Hamas’ Political Leader Ismail Haniyeh, who was the leading ceasefire negotiator at the time, with a bomb planted in his guesthouse. Iran vowed retaliation but never carried out any attack.
September 17th, 2024 — Israel carries out a massive two-day terrorist attack using thousands of sabotaged pagers and walkie-talkies used by politicians and military members of Hezbollah in Lebanon, killing 42 and injuring more than 3,500 people, including civilians and children, many of whom sustained life-altering injuries.
September 20th, 2024 — Israel initiates ‘rampage of airstrikes’ on Lebanon, consisting of over 1,600 strikes in just three days, which killed 558 people, injuring 1,835, the majority of whom were civilians.
Iran did not retaliate to this attack, even though it made verbal threats that an attack on Hezbollah would result in significant punishment. It was undoubtedly at this point that Iran’s deterrence was shattered entirely. Iran had no credibility left by this point; their red lines were exposed, and their vulnerability invited the genocidal Israeli military to continue their onslaught in Lebanon. Zei notes that “Israel saw all this as confirmation that there would be no retaliation by Iran and Hezbollah of the same kind,” which meant that they could target Iranian leaders with impunity. They go on to say, “This was the green light to go ahead with the assassination of Nasrallah.”
September 27th, 2024 — Israel assassinates Shia religious cleric and leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, in a massive air bombardment on the underground Hezbollah headquarters in Dahieh, the strike also assassinated two other top commanders, two Iranian commanders, and 33 civilians.
October 1st, 2024 — Iran responded in support of Hezbollah with “Operation True Promise II,” where over 200 ballistic missiles were launched at Israel, though most were intercepted, two airbases were damaged, and some missiles hit around the Mossad headquarters in Tel Aviv. No Israelis were killed in the attack.
October 1st, 2024 — The same day, Israel launches a ground invasion of Lebanon and begins a ruthless bombing campaign across the South and the capital, Beirut. Hezbollah was unable to fend off the IDF’s air superiority but inflicted over a thousand casualties, causing Israel to lose momentum. In the end, 2,720 Lebanese civilians were killed and thousands more injured, mostly due to airstrikes.
November 27th, 2024 — A ceasefire agreement is reached and the IDF retreats from Southern Lebanon.
Iran’s retaliation for their best ally suffering a fatal decapitation strike, one that killed two of their top commanders, was pitiful. The response was limited and was merely a show of force. Hezbollah and the Lebanese people ultimately paid the consequences for this ‘strategic’ weakness. Though the group is very much alive, the invasion was a crushing blow to the leadership structure and killed at least 500 fighters. The airstrikes on Lebanon cost an estimated $2.8 billion in damages, an estimated 100,000 housing units were destroyed or damaged, over 886,000 people were displaced, and Hezbollah was dramatically weakened.
For Israel, the casualties being taken at such a high rate were likely enough to force them to the negotiating table. The calculation was made that Hezbollah was set back enough not to be a serious threat if Israel were to attack Iran directly. They were just one more fallen domino, leading to the all-out destruction of Iran.
Iran Loses Syria
In December of 2024, in a rapid development, the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) rebel force in Syria toppled the Assad regime in a blitz offensive. It lasted just eleven days, spreading to major cities held by the government and taking all of Assad’s territory, forcing him to flee to Russia. This new interim government, led by the rebel Ahmed al-Sharaa, has called for a democracy that incorporates all minorities within Syria, although significant hurdles and questions lie ahead. Al-Sharaa has already met with Western leaders and the Gulf states, signaling which side of the alliance this New Syria will be on. President Trump was quick to express his optimism for al-Sharaa as a leader, calling him a “young, tough, attractive guy.” It’s too early to tell whether this government will fulfill its promises, but as past examples have shown, a ‘democratic’ Western-allied government doesn’t guarantee peace. The new government has already made the unilateral decision to privatize parts of the economy, with the worst aspect being the oil sector, which would only make the country more dependent on foreign support.
The downfall of the Bashar Al-Assad government was a major blow to Iran, as Syria acted as a land corridor between Iran and its proxy Lebanon. Additionally, it served as a political buffer. Iran and Assad’s Syria have maintained friendly economic relations for some time, an essential partnership for two countries that were opposed to the West. With Assad’s oppressive regime in shambles for the past fourteen years, its ability to support Iran was already waning, but it at least provided refuge for paramilitary groups, the land for transferring weapons, and intel.
This one-two punch of Hezbollah admitting defeat and Assad’s fall has left Iran in its most vulnerable position in decades.
War Planning and Deception
In early 2025, when Trump took the Presidency, plans were already drawn up alongside Israel to attack Iran. This was confirmed by an Axios report stating that Israel’s plan to strike Iran was eight months in the making. A different report in The Washington Post stated that, based on accounts from Israeli government officials, the decision to proceed with this plan was already made in March of this year. Reporting from The Times of Israel also stated that the US and Israel carried out joint drills for an offensive strike on Iran in spring of last year under the Biden administration. This attack was indeed a cross-administration effort and was only carried out when the timing was optimal. On the campaign trail, Kamala Harris clearly signaled that she would not be diverting from the then-Biden administration’s foreign policy, and even made sure to say in an interview that Iran was America’s “greatest adversary.” Whether the optimal time fell under Biden, Harris, or Trump, an American attack on Iran was inevitable regardless of who was in charge.
Fake Negotiations
Before Trump was even President, he met with Netanyahu to discuss an end to the ‘war’ in Gaza, a meeting that should’ve been considered illegal according to existing US law. On January 19th, that came true, just hours before Trump would be inaugurated, Israel suddenly agreed to a ceasefire with Hamas. Initially, this appeared to be a way for Trump to be seen as the ‘pro-peace’ President, which was probably a desirable effect, but it was simply a strategic move.
At the time, it was reported that on Saturday, January 11th, Trump’s envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, met with Netanyahu to pressure him to agree to an immediate ceasefire. Netanyahu initially declined due to it being the Jewish Sabbath, but Trump’s team, in a ‘power move,’ forced him to come to the table. That reporting is something Zei suggests was just a show for the media, and that they were on the same page the whole time.
One doesn’t need to look far to see how Witkoff is the bridge that connects Netanyahu with Trump. As a long-time real estate friend of Trump, Witkoff is known as the real Secretary of State who leads negotiations, while Rubio is sidelined to a subservient mouthpiece role. Witkoff is also very good friends with Netanyahu and received a pager gift from him after a meeting this year, engraved with the inscription ‘OTJ,’ meaning ‘One Tough Jew.’ Witkoff is undoubtedly a rabid Zionist who last year helped Trump collect a seven-figure sum of donations from genocide-supporting voters after Biden temporarily paused a shipment of bombs to Israel.
Zei explains that there were no long-term plans for a ceasefire and that it was essentially a strategic pause. For Israel, this would release some hostages, relieving some domestic pressure, which was the only internal threat. Half or so of the Israeli public is only opposed to the ‘war’ because the hostages aren’t the focus. In contrast, almost all of the Israeli public is indifferent to the genocide of Palestinians. Another reason is that Israel would be able to track Hamas fighters and gain a greater intelligence advantage. It was reported that Israel tried to do this by setting up secret cameras and using drone surveillance to find out more about how Hamas keeps hostages and where their hiding places are. Ironically, through this effort, the Palestinian resistance has gained, not lost, the advantage, as many of the cameras were destroyed or manipulated, and fighters staged their movements to give Israel false intelligence.
This ceasefire was never meant to be permanent; no material pressure was applied to Israel to force it to stop. Israel’s goal has already been clear: to ethnically cleanse Gaza and claim the territory for its ethnostate. Ultimately, the only real pressure that can stop this would come from within Israel itself, through serious protest or economic collapse, serious military intervention by another country, or the United States withholding military aid, none of which seems likely in the near future.
The overarching reason for this ceasefire was also to craft the false narrative that Netanyahu and Trump had fundamental disagreements that they were keeping from the press. The goal was to spin the idea that Trump actually wants to be an isolationist (even though his first term was anything but).
In February, Trump and Netanyahu met in the White House to discuss the ceasefire and the future of Gaza. Trump openly called for the removal of all Palestinians from Gaza and their expulsion to surrounding Arab countries as refugees. Trump followed up on this open support for ethnic cleansing with an AI-generated video depicting the ‘Gaza Rivera,’ a rebuilt, westernized version of the Gaza Strip. This sort of rhetoric lent to the idea that Trump was expressing a ‘power move’ over Netanyahu.
As mentioned prior, Trump threw out the JCPOA in 2018 and then, on last year’s campaign trail, used forceful rhetoric, sometimes promising the annihilation of Iran if it were to get nuclear weapons. Many times he tried to frame dealing with Iran in ‘peace through strength’ terms and then days after the election a Trump official told the Wall Street Journal, “I think you are going to see the sanctions go back on.” Despite this stance, Trump sent a personal letter to Ayatollah Khamenei on March 7th, expressing a desire to restart nuclear negotiations. Though Western media presented this as a hypocritical rehashing of the JCPOA, it really was just a stern threat with impossible terms, especially as the US and Trump had little credibility left.
Iranian diplomats still heard the offer out by meeting with the US in Oman on April 12th. A second round of talks was held on April 19th, and a third round of ‘high-level’ talks was held on April 26th. These were bilateral talks without Israel involved at all, which was on purpose to sell the diversion. These negotiations were completely fake, really being the backbone of the whole scheme for Iran to let its guard down. It’s unknown what every word shared at these meetings was, but certainly Steve Witkoff’s envoy manipulated them enough to create a false sense of security for Iran.
The paradox is why these fake negotiations worked. Israeli leaders talked openly for months about regime change and killing Khamenei, which should’ve set off red alarms for Iranian leadership never to trust the American-Israeli imperialist regime. The assassination of Qasem Soleimani, which was carried out at Trump’s order in 2020, should have made any talks this year a complete non-starter, especially after he bragged about it multiple times. The lethal misunderstanding for the Iranians was trusting Witkoff (a rabid Zionist), saying that Trump (who was elected with the help of millions of AIPAC dollars) was falling out of favor with Israel.
Gaza Genocide Resumes
After nine hostage exchanges spanning over two months, Israel ended the ceasefire agreement on March 18th, carrying out a massive bombing campaign while reinvading Gaza. Analysts counted that Israel violated the ceasefire 265 times during the two months with airstrikes, drone strikes, shooting civilians, blocking medical aid, and blocking food shipments.
Since then, Israel has executed what has been described as the ‘final solution’ as the genocide has reached a new level of depravity. All the feeble humanitarian demands from the Biden administration are gone; Israel has prevented all food shipments from entering, causing dozens of documented cases of children who have starved to death, while the overwhelming majority of the Gaza population is malnourished. Let alone all the instances that go unreported, a conservative estimate reported that 15% of the children in Gaza are now considered severely malnourished. While that is going on, the only aid allowed to enter is no longer through trucks, but a fenced-off site where Palestinians have to travel on foot and wait in long lines in the hot sun for pitiful amounts of food. At these sites (concentration camps), the IDF and US troops have fired into crowds and killed these aid seekers, so many that the UN reported at least 798 such killings in just 6 weeks, an average of 19 per day. This is a deliberate campaign of starvation and murder that has only accelerated under Trump.
Trump and his administration, since the ceasefire has resumed, have provided no sympathy for Palestinians or made any statement that would pressure Israel to stop in any way. The only pressure from the right wing on the issue has been from libertarians who complain about the money being sent to support the IDF. The Trump administration is and always has been ideologically committed to Zionism. Along with that, the administration’s geopolitical interests are perfectly aligned with Israel, so there is no material or ideological reason for Trump to be against the continuation of the genocide. In fact, the US contractors have provided support to the IDF at the aid distribution points, and an Associated Press video reported two whistleblowers who provided proof that American soldiers were shooting Palestinians and celebrating it.
The ceasefire had nothing to do with ‘peace’ or humanitarian concerns; it was purely part of the deception ploy.
Failed Attempt to Crush Yemen
In response to Israel ramping up to resume the genocide in Gaza, Yemen, which was not party to but abided by the ceasefire anyway, threatened to resume its blockade of the Red Sea. The Yemeni government, also known as the Houthis, is an ally of Iran and the Palestinian resistance but is limited in its ability to attack Israel, being so far away and not having a robust arsenal of ballistic missiles. The blockade of the Red Sea certainly concerned the US, as it was a significant burden on global trade in 2024. This prompted the US to attack Yemen with sweeping airstrikes on March 14th, four days before Israel’s big reinvasion of Gaza. When that happened, Yemen retaliated by firing a missile at Israel the day the ceasefire was broken, a series of drone strikes days later, and then a few days after that, their first successful strike that hit Ben-Gurion airport.
As mentioned in a previous essay, American “air attacks on Yemen recurred every single day since March 14th on factories, military installations, government facilities, airports, and residential areas.” For 53 days straight, there were relentless strikes on the country, killing at least 224 civilians, crippling a major civilian port, and even precision bombing a religious ceremony. The offensive blew through a reported $1 billion in military equipment in the first three weeks. On May 6th, President Trump announced a ceasefire with the condition that Yemen stop attacking American ships, but didn’t say not to strike Israel or ships going to Israel. Ending it in this way made it seem as though the US made ‘peace’ on their terms; however, it was planned specifically to play into the ‘break with Netanyahu’ narrative.
Deception Campaign
Around this time, Trump made efforts internally to distance himself rhetorically from hardline neocons like Marco Rubio and Mike Waltz. On May 1st, Trump even fired Waltz from his position as National Security Advisor and moved him to a UN ambassador role. It was reported throughout May that Trump wanted to pursue a ‘peace through strength’ policy as the Trump loyalists scolded neocons for their hawkishness.
There were also no in-person meetings between Trump and Netanyahu after that February visit, which was notable because Trump took a trip to the Middle East in May, meeting with the Gulf states of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE, but not Israel. Zei concludes that the primary purpose of this trip to the Middle East was to shore up support from the subservient Gulf countries before initiating war with Iran.
A fourth round of the fake ‘high-level’ negotiations took place on May 11th, again mediated by Oman, which lasted for three hours. Both sides described the talks as difficult but constructive. In the days that followed, the US would impose new sanctions on Iran’s nuclear program and defense industry.
On May 12th, the US conducted unilateral talks with Hamas to release the one last remaining American hostage, adding to the fake portrayal that Trump and Netanyahu were having a falling out.
A fifth round took place on May 23rd, and this is where the reporting on the Trump-Netanyahu ‘rift’ really began taking off. It was said that Netanyahu was not happy with being shut out of the negotiations. The idea that Trump was ideologically shifting and was annoyed dealing with Israel became more and more prevalent, even though there was no evidence backing it. Left-wing anti-Zionist media were especially prone to this, with the effect of wishful thinking overpowering fair reasoning. At this time, Netanyahu was making statements that subtly criticized the US for its negotiations. The media ate up all of this. Reporting in May frequently referenced their shifting ‘alignment’ that wasn’t really happening. Reporters were going as far back as the 2020 election, where Netanyahu congratulated Biden, to find examples of Netanyahu being disloyal to Trump.
Much of this information is conveyed semi-publicly, a combination of subtle public statements to reporters, controlled private statements to the press, and false leaks to present a certain image to the press. This sort of strategy is targeted at those conducting in-depth analysis, such as Iranian foreign policy strategists who want to understand the US administration’s goals.
For example, one major lie that Zei points out is the idea disseminated by Israeli media, and by extension American media; the claim “that Israel actually managed to destroy most if not all of Iran’s air defenses and rocket building capacities in its pathetic irrelevant attack that in reality had zero effect on anything,” referring to the October 26th 2024 strikes. This narrative was used to convince people like Trump that Iran was actually far weaker than it really was. The constant downplaying of Iran’s strength is key to this, as, although their resolve is weak, their actual defense capabilities are among the best in the world. Taking down Iran would be absolutely nothing like Iraq; it’s a country that is over 3.5 times the population size, far more developed, and has much more difficult terrain. Fighting a united Iran in a ground invasion would be near impossible.
On June 9th, an attempt by the US to initiate a sixth round was made, but Iran, understandably frustrated with the process of being handed threats disguised as ‘deals,’ rejected the offer outright. The next day, in an interview, Donald Trump described Iran as ‘hostile’ in the negotiations.
It was also reported that after every negotiation with Iran, envoy Steve Witkoff was meeting with Israeli Mossad agents. That blatantly suggests they were coordinating how to keep pushing the goalposts to prevent a deal from being reached. Witkoff changed his demands in every negotiation, at first requesting Iran go from 60% to 3% enrichment, then requesting 0% enrichment, then requesting the entire program be dismantled, and finally requesting that Iran give up all its ballistic missiles.
As Zei puts it, all of these events— the fake feud with Netanyahu, the fake ceasefire, and the fake negotiations—were just deliberate efforts to establish the element of surprise on Iran. Zei said in May that “there is no ‘Trump turn on Netanyahu,’ just like there wasn’t a real permanent ceasefire in January. This is all bullshit pretense ahead of the joint US-Israeli war on Iran that is now imminent, and will be done at the latest by the end of the year.” It turns out that entire prediction would be proven true.
As we know now, on June 11th, Israel and the United States started making open military arrangements to prepare for an offensive attack by restricting ambassador movement, initiating evacuations, and repositioning troops. Zei wrote a lengthy ‘I told you so’ post, restating the events that clearly demonstrated the US and Israel were never diverting strategically.
The next day, on June 12th, the global nuclear watchdog IAEA, in coordination with the US and Israel, reported that Iran had fallen out of compliance. To release that resolution, a majority of countries in the agency had to vote in favor of it, which they did obediently, as the Western bloc holds a majority, revealing the gross double standard of international law. In the past, the IAEA has been known to give critical information directly to Israel about Iran’s nuclear program by, at best, doxxing the locations and details of secret sites, and at worst, acting as a coordinated spy network for Israel. This was by no means an organic conclusion; it was a coordinated, deliberate cover for an offensive attack.
Israel Attacks Iran
After midnight on June 13th, Israel would launch a massive multi-pronged surprise strike on Iran. This consisted of spike missiles fired from inside Iran, car bombs, drones, along with F-16s and F-35s firing long-range standoff missiles. This was not possible without dozens of infiltrated Mossad spy agents planted within Iran who set up these assassinations. Following the surprise attack, Iran briefly cut the internet. It launched a massive campaign to find Mossad agents, where they found entire storage facilities and make-shift factories for these drones. These covert attacks were not spontaneous; they were extensively planned and required significant resources to execute.
In a rather wicked act of taunting, The Times of Israel immediately published a piece titled, “How an Israeli-American deception campaign lulled Iran into a false sense of security,” outright revealing that all of this was acting, just as Zei had predicted. Zei also made the point to implicate the American media apparatus that, in many ways, is extremely pro-Zionist and was either knowingly lying to put out this false information or too uncritical to care that this was contributing to an illegal war with Iran. Many prominent war correspondents in liberal and right-wing media are either Israeli citizens, former Israeli intelligence agents, or have served in the IDF. Recently, the anti-Zionist media project known as ‘The New York War Crimes’ published a scathing dossier exposing the extreme bias of New York Times journalists and how they lie to benefit the fascist Israeli government.
In the surprise attack, seven top Iranian generals and twenty-three commanders were assassinated along with nine nuclear scientists in their homes, also killing dozens of civilians. Israel targeted nuclear facilities, missile sites, and military bases as well. The damage was initially overestimated by the media when, in reality, Iran still had the full capability to respond. In the afternoon, Israel struck again, targeting an airbase and nuclear facilities.
Iran promised “harsh punishment” and then responded the next night with ‘Operation True Promise III.’ Under international law outlined in the UN charter, a country in Iran’s position has the full right to defend itself and retaliate. The counterattack began with over a hundred drones, likely as a distraction to drain the Iron Dome’s defenses, and then a wave of dozens of ballistic missiles, at least seven of which hit their target in Tel Aviv and one that hit the Kirya military headquarters. As video of the strikes came out, Zei posted advising that Iran must deal enough damage to prevent ongoing Israeli aggression, “deterrence must be re-established now.”
Another note was that the Western media was ignoring Israel’s blatant war crimes of not only assassinating leaders of another country, but also doing so in a civilian building where civilians were killed. Simultaneously, Zei points out how the media will amplify Israeli civilian deaths even though the Israeli government deliberately put its major military and intelligence facilities in the middle of its crowded capital city. The infuriating irony, of course, is how Western media constantly used the excuse of Hamas using the Palestinian population as ‘human shields’ for operating in civilian areas to justify blatant indiscriminate bombing.
The conflict escalated in the following week, with Iran suffering more damage as their air defense capabilities were less advanced, and since Israel had missile defense support from the US. Iran was able to break through this defense on multiple occasions, especially with a hypersonic missile that struck Haifa’s power station, causing blackouts. In one attack, Israel falsely alleged there were military members inside the Iranian news studio and struck it while it was broadcasting live.
Iran Fights Back & Israel’s Mission Fails
Around the seventh and eighth day of the conflict, the tide began to turn in favor of Iran. The Iron Dome, meant to protect Israeli cities and military facilities, was drained, and they started having less success at intercepting missiles. Iran also decreased the number of missiles they were firing to anticipate a much longer, drawn-out conflict and preserve their stockpile. With pressure mounting and more successful strikes hitting within Israel, the US was ‘forced’ to step in. Even if the US didn’t want to get involved, it was now in a position where it was either the decimation of Israel or to strike Iran.
As we know, this was all planned. Israel planned for two outcomes: one where their surprise attack worked and Iran was unable to respond, and the other where Iran would be able to strike them continuously, necessitating help from the US. It was later confirmed that Israel only planned for this conflict to last about 14 days, after which their anti-air defenses would be depleted or Iran would run out of missiles.
This was never just an Israeli war; it was a joint American-Israeli effort to do regime change. As the attack was being carried out, Netanyahu sent out a video in English telling the Iranian people to rise up against the regime. At the same time, Reza Pahlavi, the son of the overthrown Iranian Shah dynasty, also put out a video essentially urging Iranians to overthrow the Ayatollah and reinstall him as monarch. It’s almost satirical to tell another people to reinstall the monarchy they liberated themselves from 45 years ago. In this aspect, Israel completely failed embarrassingly. Despite Netanyahu declaring the regime “the weakest it’s ever been,” the Iranian citizens held rallies across the country in support of their country being attacked. The leadership that was decapitated was replaced quickly, and regular citizens even helped capture people suspected of being Mossad agents. The video of the television studio being attacked live was seen as a symbol of bravery, and people mourned the civilians killed as martyrs. Arguably, this had the opposite effect, supporting the government’s legitimacy.
Iran’s parliament on June 22nd approved a resolution to close the Strait of Hormuz, which would affect oil shipping from southern Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, and eastern Saudi Arabia. This measure, if implemented, would block 20% of global oil shipments, having a catastrophic impact on oil prices and, consequently, the rest of the global stock market. The possibility of Iran taking this measure alone is a significant deterrent that Iran can use.
It is unclear yet whether these unprecedented assassinations, among the worst in history, will convince Khamenei to seriously pursue nuclear weapons or continue taking worse and worse losses. One thing is for sure: Israel failed in this aspect, only increasing pressure to achieve a nuke, with one parliament advisor famously saying, “you cannot bomb knowledge.”
America Bombs Iran
The Trump administration completely fumbled the pretense for the attack. The media began running coverage questioning if Trump would get involved to which he gave Iran a ‘two week timeline’ to agree to a deal. Back in March, Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard testified to Congress that the intelligence community, “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.” When reporters pressed Trump about this testimony, he said bluntly, “She’s wrong.” Then the next day, Gabbard changed her statement, saying that Iran was now only ‘weeks away’ from acquiring a nuke. This new statement is despite the overwhelming consensus among the open-source intelligence community that Iran is not a nuclear threat.
Despite that embarrassment, the Trump administration pushed forward with the attacks on June 22nd. Sightings were reported of B-2 stealth bombers leaving their airbase in Missouri, the only aircraft capable of carrying 30,000lb bunker-buster bombs without radar detection. After the fact, we now know that there were two convoys: one traveling over the Pacific Ocean as a diversion and a second crossing the Atlantic Ocean across Europe, which was the real operation. After a continuous 18-hour flight, seven B-2s bombed three of Iran’s nuclear sites, Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan, with the help of submarine-launched Tomahawk missiles. In total, that single attack alone cost the US military approximately $132 million, and the entire country’s economy upwards of $2 billion due to the resulting market shock.
Assessments made afterward from the ISW reasonably estimated that the centrifuge halls have been completely destroyed but that the enriched uranium was moved out of the facility before the attack. The Defense Department certainly exaggerated the effects of the attacks with unqualified sex pest Pete Hegseth clownishly describing, “you better go there and get a big shovel, because no one’s under there right now.” Real intelligence assessments explain that the facilities were still intact and merely set back the Iranian nuclear program by months.
Insider reporting from Michael Wolff explained that Trump was very anxious about the attack and was worried about an extended conflict. Wolff explained how Trump wanted to enter the war quickly and exit as fast as possible with a big headline proclaiming victory.
According to satellite images, trucks moved the remaining fissile material from the facilities, and Iranian leadership said they stopped work in March in preparation for war. Later on, Iran confirmed that the sites suffered severe damage, though less damage than anticipated. The attack was a success for the United States in the short term, but it provided a significant incentive for Iran to develop nukes. Iran has already abandoned all pretense in their ambitions, “The Iranian parliament moved to stop further cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), as well as reportedly banning surveillance cameras required by international monitoring agreements from its existing facilities.”
Another Weak Iranian Response
Counterattacks against the US were launched the next day, on June 23rd. Iran targeted US military bases in the region, which are essentially unprotected, especially those in Iraq and Syria, though they already underwent troop evacuation in preparation. In the event of an attack on these bases, they would have no protection against ballistic missiles.
Instead of targeting these exposed bases, Iran instead opted for an intentionally ineffective option of targeting Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. Iran even notified Qatar before the attack. The base was protected by Qatari anti-air defenses, which are similar to Israel’s Iron Dome defenses. This resulted in minimal damage, as most of the missiles were intercepted, and the ones that did get through missed their intended target. No one was killed or injured. Only one piece of equipment was destroyed, a radar worth $15 million.
In the event any US troops were killed, though, Trump would’ve been forced to escalate dramatically, and Iran knows this. The problem is that Iran’s sovereignty has already been completely violated in this war, and they’ve only deterred Israel so far; they aren’t treating this as a joint war where the US is simply using Israel as a colonial proxy. Zei comments that the retaliation “doesn’t fall in the category of establishing deterrence.” Iran was looking for an easy out even as they were gaining the advantage in the back-and-forth strikes with Israel.
The next day at 6:02pm, President Trump declared on social media that a ceasefire ‘agreement’ had been reached and that the conflict was over. Immediately, Iran disputed that they had not agreed to a ceasefire, displaying Trump’s skittishness in getting out of the conflict. In that statement, Iran also said that if Israel were not to bomb after 4:00am on June 24th, they too would stop firing. One more exchange of missiles from Israel and Iran happened early in the morning before that deadline. Israel violated the agreement by firing missiles at 9am to which Iran responded with just two missiles which were both intercepted, thus officially ending the conflict.
In total, Iran suffered 1,054 deaths and 4,476 injuries compared to Israel suffering 28 deaths and 3,238 injuries.
This War Is Not Over
As commentators Zei, John Mearsheimer, Propaganda & Co., and others have discussed, this war is not over. There is nothing that has materially changed between the two sides; neither side has been permanently deterred. The American-Israeli empire just tried to force ‘regime change,’ also known as decimating a nation and its people, while lambasting the whole time that Iran is an evil nation that cannot be reasoned with. Leaders of the empire have said they wanted the people of Iran to rise up against their government while openly saying they would assassinate Ayatollah Khamenei. Intentions do not get any clearer than that. The empire is dead set on destroying the Iranian state, its culture, and its people.
The only silver lining could be forming a nuclear alliance with Russia, China, or Pakistan by extending their nuclear umbrella over Iran. Already, weapons deals are being made with China and Russia. Something strange is how China is so apathetic to react, especially since if Iran is allowed to be destroyed, China would then become the next target of the American empire.
A possible path to disrupt, but not completely derail, the next phase of the Iran war is a domestic political battle in Israel. Netanyahu almost suffered a catastrophe the day before this war started on June 12th, with a no-confidence motion failing by one vote. The far-right bloc was then broken up on July 16th when the Shas ultra-orthodox party left the coalition, suggesting that there’s a possibility of elections happening before the scheduled October 2026. For now, the expiration date on the Netanyahu reign of terror remains far in the future, not that a different government would necessarily conduct the genocide any differently, as 82% of the Israeli public supports it, but it could lead to more internal political turmoil and less focus on constant war.
America, too, has to be concerned with its public as well. The fascist Trump administration is juggling its ethnic cleansing project, one that, unlike Israel, is very unpopular domestically. America is already going through many ongoing crises of affordability and housing, which make the political situation a tight rope that cannot be easily fixed by violently expelling thousands of innocent people or starting a senseless war with Iran. Trump does not currently have the immense mandate that Bush had with Iraq to carry out an adventurist war, so it must be carried out incrementally or until a mandate (false or real) arises.
Unfortunately, Iran’s only guaranteed option is to achieve a nuclear weapon for deterrence. Due to some of the pacifist instincts found in Iran’s Islamic culture, most of the public does not support the government having nuclear weapons. As mentioned earlier, the Ayatollah has the final say on whether nuclear weapons can be pursued, as it is considered a religious and moral matter. Many Iranians find pride in their society, which rejects owning such a cruel and barbaric weapon. The caveat is that the Ayatollah has said a nuke will only be pursued if there is an existential threat made against Iran, something one would think has already unmistakably happened.
How It Ends
Though Iran has stood up to the strongest hegemonic force on Earth, they have only bought time for itself. Israel needed the US to support them as they faced down some of the worst military punishment in its history, which wasn’t much, I might add. The project of destroying Iran will inevitably resume once Israel can restock its defense capacity and formulate a new plan of attack with a new false pretense. Israel is in far too deep with its genocide in Gaza to stop now, and it will destroy itself if it means continuing the offensive war.
Chris Hedges published a beautifully written piece that describes the horrifying but sober reality that what we’re seeing is Israel’s barbaric end. Hedges writes,
❝ You cannot decimate a people, carry out saturation bombing over 20 months to obliterate their homes, villages and cities, massacre tens of thousands of innocent people, set up a siege to ensure mass starvation, drive them from land where they have lived for centuries and not expect blowback. The genocide will end. The response to the reign of state terror will begin. If you think it won’t you know nothing about human nature or history. ❞
Israel has been committing a genocide for 652 days, and it cannot go back now. Once the world finds out this obvious truth, when it can no longer be suppressed in Western liberal media, the justification for the Jewish ethnostate will be impossible to uphold. This truth cannot be suppressed forever, and that’s what necessitates the constant war; the need to destroy and silence everyone who demands accountability and peace. Domestically, Israel is built on internal press suppression, aggressive propaganda, war, and a robust intertwining with its colonial metropole— the United States. Fascism cannot sustain itself without an enemy, without something to attack outward against to justify its authoritarianism. Israel has spent all its political capital; it’s clear to the world that Zionism is a fascist ethnosupremacist ideology. The only way that such a state ends is in a violent implosion: a murder-suicide.