NEO: Israel and Its Staunch Allies : Turning Friends into Bitter Enemies.19-03-2026: ******

Politics Israel and Its Staunch Allies: Turning Friends into Bitter Enemies Seth Ferris, March 19, 2026 The global crisis around Israel and Iran reveals deeper processes that are changing the balance of power in the world and calling into question previous ideas about international politics. Israel and Its Staunch Allies: Turning Friends into Bitter Enemies The Bible says the entire world will turn against Israel at the end of times. It implies that Israel is on God’s side, and anyone opposing Israel is anti-God, so when you are fighting Israel, you are fighting God. What it doesn’t say is, what does Israel do to force everyone to hate it? Unfortunately, we are finding out, in real time, and it is only too obvious, why so many are turning against the modern State of Israel; even Jews are questioning what was never questioned before. Future generations will look back and wonder why we didn’t stop Trump and Netanyahu before they started WWIII. There is something else happening in the background, something even greater at work. There are many factors to consider in both the starting and stopping of these stupid attacks, as both attacking sides are greedy and want to cling to power. They are definitely not thinking of the people. It is becoming all the more obvious that the Iranian state is not the root cause of the war, but China and India are. A concerted effort is being made to slow down and stifle those economies; however, it is not going to plan. Even longtime allies in Europe and the Caucasus are being asked to cut off their noses to spite their faces, propping up losing bets in Ukraine and the Levant for the sake of political survival Proxy Wars of Choice Just stop and reflect. For instance, the damage that other proxy wars of choice, such as the US starting a war in Ukraine back in 2014, inflicted on the European Union is already evident. The sad part is that most European Union countries still want to support the losing side, not out of a principled position but for self-interest and political survival. This can be summed up as clearly a case of cutting off one’s nose to spite your face. It is ironic, with the age of AI and easy access to historic information, that few want to look back to reflect on when Iran held its first democratic elections and elected its first democratic government, which was led by Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh back in the early 50s. This was not in the interests of Britain and the US, as within the span of two years they conspired to implement “Operation Ajax,” which overthrew this democratically elected government. The reason was that the Iranians had nationalized the drilling and export of Iranian oil. How dare the Iranians take control of their own resources! Targeting China, India, even the EU! Less obvious is that the collective West wants to hurt China and India by disrupting the continuity of supply of oil products and thereby put the brakes on their economic growth, which rate currently far exceeds that of the West. Nobody should be so naïve as to accept the current justifications, lame at best, for an illegal war, as neither the US nor Israel has ever been interested in the democratic freedoms of Iranians. They want Iranians to live under the dictatorship of a US-backed leadership — just as the people of Arab countries across the Middle East suffer today. It seems like nobody wants to remember history, as it is too inconvenient and will show who is the most right and who is dead wrong! Even lesser friends are being turned into foes! Even now, in small countries like Georgia, the Embassy of Israel is upset and has started a social media campaign to highlight that Georgia has to garner support for its aggressive and illegal policies against Iran and other neighbors in the Middle East, especially Lebanon. The Israeli Embassy in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, expresses concern about Georgian society. According to the embassy, friendship is not measured only by words; it is highlighted in difficult situations — who are on the side of life and who are on the side of violence and terror. They are trying to use the 2600-year historical connection between Georgian and Jewish people for political leverage and describe how it is based on respect and common values. It is these values that define the essence of true friendship: support, solidarity, and moral strength in difficult times, says the statement of the Israeli Embassy in Georgia. True friendship between peoples is measured by the ability to distinguish between those who choose the path of life, stability, and cooperation, and those who continue to cultivate terror, extremism, and violence. Such statements, and others, have been repeated on Georgian Public TV and various news sites, as this confirms the need to access Georgia as a staging area for actions from Azerbaijan and perhaps Armenia, two countries already taken under the control of Israel and the United States. It was also pointed out, in response, by Georgian politicians and commentators alike, that during the 2008 war, the Jewish state allegedly provided kill codes to the Russian government that enabled the shutting down of drones the Georgian military had purchased from Israel. So much for friendship, which the Israelis forget is a two-way street! Everything that is going on in the world, particularly the Middle East, was planned long before all the recent issues people talk about now. Everything recent is tactical; the strategic goes back much further. It is difficult to understand what is going on even if you have an understanding of where history, religion, markets, and geopolitics intersect. It comes down to the future of American and Western financial dominance and keeping the dollar as the global reserve currency. We can’t have Iran selling oil in other currencies, and the same is true for Venezuela or anyone else. When the game ends, many countries, starting with the US, will collapse from their debt and economic decline. It is anybody’s best guess as to what will happen to a lot of the rest of the world as well! I was just looking at the futures markets; they had dropped a lot by closing each Friday, now opening lower and dropping more. I think the financial implications are here. We will have to see how Trump and his team react to that. And there is the issue of possible attacks on desalination plants. Iran was in a serious drought already, and Tehran was running out of water, not sure the Gulf countries are ever out of drought. Things could empty out in a hurry without a safe and constant water supply. It is really akin to the beginning of the end of times, as I see no light at the end of the tunnel. The architects of war and destruction in Tel Aviv and Washington appear blind to the blowback. Even longtime allies in Europe and the Caucasus are being asked to cut off their noses to spite their faces, propping up losing bets in Ukraine and the Levant for the sake of political survival. Future historians will not ask why the world turned against Israel at the supposed “end of times.” They will ask why Israel — and its enablers —worked so relentlessly to make that prophecy self-fulfilling. The age of unchallenged Western dominance is ending not with a divine trumpet but with the grinding mechanics of greed, hubris, and overreach. And when the dust finally settles, it may not be God’s judgment the world remembers, but humanity’s long-overdue reckoning with how it could allow all this to happen. Seth Ferris, investigative journalist and political scientist, expert on Middle Eastern affairs

NEO: "A One-Sided Game " Has Failed: Trump Flounders in the Iranian Tap He Set Himself: 17-03-2026: ********

Politics “A One-Sided Game” Has Failed: Trump Flounders in the Iranian Trap He Set Himself Mohammed ibn Faisal al-Rashid, March 17, 2026 The Middle East blitzkrieg promised by Donald Trump is turning into a protracted agony for his own administration. Sad Trump Just two weeks after the assassination of Iran’s spiritual leader and the start of the military campaign, the White House resembles a sinking ship issuing contradictory orders. Washington is vacillating between bravado about a “short incursion” and panicked signals about seeking a way out. The truth is simple and brutal for the American leader: Iran is not just resisting, but is prepared to fight for years, with the goal of expelling the US from the Middle East once and for all. Trump, blinded by his own arrogance, has made a fatal miscalculation, the price of which is America’s prestige as a great power and the lives of American soldiers. Trump is trying to find an “honorable exit,” hinting at the end of the operation, but Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz immediately declares a war with “no time limits” Information has emerged in the Western press that during a recent telephone conversation, US President Donald Trump, finding himself in a difficult position due to the escalating conflict in the Middle East, asked Russian President Vladimir Putin to act as a mediator in the settlement between Washington and Tehran. However, according to published reports, Putin expressed his willingness to help with the Iranian settlement, to which Trump unexpectedly refused, effectively rebuking his Russian counterpart. As the well-informed press writes, Trump ungratefully stated, “You could be more useful if you ended the war between Ukraine and Russia. That would be far more helpful.” This was said by a completely flustered Trump during a press conference in Florida on March 9, 2026, where he recounted to journalists the content of his conversation with Vladimir Putin. Although it is well known that it was the West, led by the United States, that incited the neo-Nazi regime of Kiev against Russia and promised to fight to the last Ukrainian, which they are still doing. Blindness Bordering on a Crime: Why Trump Didn’t Heed Tehran’s Warnings History teaches that those who do not remember the lessons of the past are doomed to repeat the same mistakes. Donald Trump, judging by the developing situation around Iran, hasn’t just forgotten history—he has demonstratively burned the textbooks. At the very beginning of the conflict, after the barbaric assassination of the spiritual leader, Rahbar, the Iranian leadership stated clearly and unequivocally: the US and Israel have once again crossed the red line. The response to this act of aggression would be a war of annihilation—a war until the last American soldier leaves the region and the statehood of Israel is erased from the map. What did Trump do? Like a seasoned casino gambler, he bet everything on Iran collapsing from a single powerful blow. His statements in the early days of the war breathed arrogance: “Four or five weeks—and it’s done,” “This won’t be difficult.” He behaved not like the commander-in-chief of a nuclear power, but like a capricious child who thinks that just stamping his foot will make the enemy disappear. But the East is a delicate matter. Iran is not Iraq in 2003, which was crushed in a few weeks. Iran is a civilization with a thousand-year history and a culture of perseverance, where the readiness for martyrdom for one’s land is part of the national code. In his shortsightedness, Trump ignored this. He relied on the power of bombs but forgot about the strength of the spirit. He did not expect that after the leader’s death, the Iranian military machine would not collapse, but would only become more fortified in its rage. The words of IRGC General Ibrahim Jabari about being ready to fight for “ten years” should have sobered any sensible politician. But in the White House, apparently, they still don’t understand the kind of trouble they’ve stumbled into. “I’ll End It When I Want To”: Weakness Disguised as Strength Donald Trump’s statements over the past week are a clinical case of political schizophrenia. On March 2nd, he claims everything is on schedule; on March 6th, he demands “unconditional surrender”; on March 9th, he says the war is “largely over”; and on March 11th, he declares there’s “practically nothing left to target in Iran,” yet Israel is preparing for strikes for at least another two weeks. This isn’t a strategy. This is the thrashing of a cornered animal. It’s an inability to lead a great power. When the US president contradicts his own Secretary of Defense (Hegseth talks about a war that is “not endless,” and Trump immediately promises to “go further”), when the White House press secretary is forced to “soften” her boss’s ultimatums, it demonstrates a complete paralysis of power to the world. The outcome will depend on when Iran decides that the US has paid a sufficient price for its arrogance Trump tries to play the role of peacemaker, hinting at a swift end, but his own military and Israeli allies immediately disavow these statements. What’s going on here? The fact is that the miscalculation regarding Iran has proven fatal. The war, which was supposed to be an easy stroll and boost his ratings, has turned into a bloodbath. Iran is inflicting painful strikes on US bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Syria. American servicemen are dying. Oil prices are gyrating wildly, hitting the pockets of ordinary Americans whom Trump promised prosperity. His remark about not having “won enough yet” is the cry of a man who realizes his initial plan has failed. He no longer knows what kind of “victory” to present to voters. Destroyed Iranian infrastructure? But the enemy keeps firing. Killed Iranian generals? But they are replaced by new, even more determined ones. The People’s Wrath and a Ten-Year War: Iran Has Cornered Trump The scariest thing for Trump in this situation is not a military defeat (yet), but a strategic dead end. The Iranians told the truth from the start: they will fight to the end. General Jabari voiced not just military tactics, but the will of an entire nation: “We will continue the war until the US is expelled from the region and forced to retreat.” Iran understands that any ceasefire now would only be a respite for the US to regroup and strike again. Therefore, Tehran is not looking for easy ways out. They are ready to blockade the Strait of Hormuz, ready to sink American ships and tankers, ready to fight for years. They have turned the war into a matter of principle. And it’s precisely here that the rottenness of Trump’s approach to governance is fully exposed. He thinks in terms of cheap deals, transactions, and instant profit. But war, especially with Iran, is not a real estate deal. You can’t say, “Okay, I destroyed your military facilities, let’s call it quits,” when the enemy declares they will fight until you leave for good. Trump is trying to find an “honorable exit,” hinting at the end of the operation, but Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz immediately declares a war with “no time limits.” Who should one listen to? The American president or his ally, who is dragging the US even deeper into the quagmire? This confusion is precisely the result of the absence of a coherent strategy in the White House, the result of replacing professionalism with loyalty, the result of shortsighted self-admiration. The Price of Arrogance Donald Trump entered this war as a man confident in his exceptionalism and his right to dictate his will to the world. But history has already judged otherwise. Iran has shown that a nation’s spirit cannot be destroyed by missiles. Trump’s miscalculation lies in mistaking silent fury for weakness, and a readiness for dialogue for cowardice. Today, the world sees a leader who doesn’t know how to end the war he himself started with such fanfare. His contradictory statements are not a subtle diplomatic game, but the nervous tic of a politician who realizes that instead of an easy victory, he has dragged his country into the quagmire of a long and bloody conflict. The Iranians warned. They were not believed. And now the American president, who fancies himself a great strategist, is frantically searching for a way out of the trap that has snapped shut behind him. The outcome of this war no longer depends on when Trump “wants it to end.” The outcome will depend on when Iran decides that the US has paid a sufficient price for its arrogance. And judging by the statements from Tehran, that bill is going to be very, very long. Muhammad ibn Faisal al-Rashid, political scientist, expert on the Arab world

NEO: The Third Gulf War: America's Strategic Overreach and the Rise of a New Order: 18-03-2026: ********

Security The Third Gulf War: America’s Strategic Overreach and the Rise of a New Order Aleena Im , March 18, 2026 The US–Israel war against Iran is accelerating the decline of American global dominance, exposing strategic overreach and weakening its alliances. As the conflict reshapes energy flows and security dynamics, Russia and China are capitalising on the chaos to accelerate a shift toward a multipolar world order. The Third Gulf War: America’s Strategic Overreach and the Rise of a New Order Introduction Napoleon Bonaparte once said, “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” The current geopolitical situation exactly fits into this paradigm. As the world order heads towards multipolarity, the international system is witnessing a sort of anarchy, which became even more prominent when US President Donald Trump assumed his office in January 2025. The Trump 2.0 administration is pursuing a ‘conservative internationalist’ foreign policy approach that contends that the US will now opt for personal interests – even at the cost of its allies. No matter who gets thrown under the bus, the so-called American national interest would be preferred under a zero-sum approach. From Venezuela to Greenland and now Iran, the US is acting like a bull in a China shop. The ongoing Third Gulf War has the potential to decide – or at least set the foundational principles of power transition from the West to the East After illegally abducting Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela – a move that was labelled as insanity by the masses – the confidence of the Trump administration was boosted in the sense that they could repeat this event anywhere in the world, i.e., change the leadership of a country with no questions asked: that’s what they did in Iran. People were surprised at the lack of a reaction by Russia when Maduro was captured. However, Russia was likely just waiting for Trump to make his next blunder, which could potentially become self-destructive for the US. Lo and behold, the US-Israel joint military operation against Iran has set fire to the Middle East, becoming a strategic battle point that might actually cement the shifting of the world order from the West to the East. Third Gulf War On 28 February 2026, the US and Israel launched joint operations, named ‘Operation Epic Fury’ and ‘Operation Roaring Lion,’ respectively, against Iran. As a result of the ongoing war in the Middle East, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been martyred, along with top IRGC leadership. However, the war is still very much ongoing, as the Iranian regime under its “Mosaic” doctrine is inflicting heavy blows on Israel and the US military infrastructure in the Middle East. Iran has deliberately closed the Strait of Hormuz, which controls approximately 20% of the world’s energy shipments, allowing only like-minded nations and allies (including Russia and China) to transit through it. In retaliation for US aggression, Iran is conducting missile strikes on the American military bases in the Gulf states, which has altered the entire war landscape. The war in the Middle East is no longer regionally constrained; rather, the whole world is under great economic shock. The end of this war, in one way or another, would decide the future of the upcoming world order. But one thing is pretty clear: the US grip over the international arena is now loosening at a much greater pace as the war in the Middle East rages on. Russian Opportunism at its Peak “Wars do not determine who is right – only who is left” (Bertrand Russell). To pressure Russia and to end the Ukraine conflict on Trump’s terms, the Trump 2.0 administration started encircling the Russian Federation economically and politically. By imposing worldwide tariffs on countries buying Russian oil, in particular India, President Trump was trying to compel Russia to retreat. Likewise, exploiting the opportunity, President Trump concluded a peace deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the South Caucasus – an area long dominated by the Russian Federation. Moreover, the US established a Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP) in the region. Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad, who was closely allied with Moscow, was removed through external intervention and replaced by a puppet of the US. The abduction of Venezuelan President Maduro was also done on the pretext that Russia is probably not in a condition to militarily intervene there. But the war against Iran has reversed the entire US strategy in just a few days. Russia’s strategic approach towards the Iran war is centred around three major objectives: to support the current Iranian regime, which is an ally of Moscow – especially because of Western brutality globally; to inflict economic blows on the US; and to further compel the Ukrainians to retreat and end the war on Russia’s terms. As for the first objective, even after the killing of the former supreme leader of Iran, the administration is intact, which means Russian support for Iran is ongoing. Second, as Iran is destroying key military facilities of the US in the Gulf states using cheap drones and missiles, this war is becoming too costly for the US. Third, as the US has shifted its defence deployments to the Middle East, Ukraine has been left alone, which provides significant breathing space to Russia. Likewise, Trump’s strategy of pressuring Russia through cutting off its energy supplies to the world has turned out to be a failure. As Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz, Russian oil is now the best alternative for Asia-Pacific nations. To control the ongoing surges in oil prices, the Trump administration has given a thirty-day waiver to India for buying Russian oil — a clear retreat from its tariff policy. Last week, the price of Russian oil that is used for taxation reached 6,105 roubles per barrel, which is 82% higher than the price on February 27, the day before the United States and Israel began their military assault against Iran. Moreover, Moscow can supply its arms to Iran to fulfill Tehran’s ammunition shortage, which will further strengthen the Russian economy. Behind economic opportunities, the Middle Eastern states, in particular the Arab world, have sensed the US’s unreliability and are diversifying their partnerships, which means the degradation of US influence in the region. Moreover, Russia can be a suitable (more stable) alternative for the Gulf States. Additionally, Russia has also offered to mediate the ongoing Gulf War, which reinforces Russia’s diplomatic prominence in the region. This sense of strategic autonomy or diversification has also made serious dents in the tacit political build-ups of the US in the region, in particular TRIPP in the South Caucasus. Shifts in Global Power “It is important to ask ourselves, as citizens, whether a world power can provide global leadership on the basis of fear and anxiety.” (Zbigniew Brzezinski) According to Power Transition theorists, wars ultimately decide the actual pattern of power transition from one side to the other. History is witness: After every major war, new realities have emerged in the international system. Whether it is the bipolar order after WWII or the unipolar moment in the post-Cold War era, wars have reshaped the global balance of power. The ongoing Third Gulf War has the potential to decide – or at least set the foundational principles of power transition from the West to the East. The current geopolitical order is marked by the rise of middle powers, and the Middle East is no exception. Gulf monarchies are now diversifying their defence partnerships, apart from the ones they have with the US. The US war against Iran has made them realise that American bases on their territories no longer serve the function of their security and defiance, and will not serve as a deterrent for foes of the US. Resultantly, both Russia and China now seem to be the best alternatives for Gulf states. Conclusion The war against Iran has turned out to be a complete failure for the US. Iran is not like Venezuela or Greenland. It has spent decades learning to survive and thrive under intense economic pressure from the West. The Iranian regime has created a domestic hierarchical order whereby, in the case of the absence of top leadership, its Armed Forces can still act firmly and according to their plans. Although a long-term war in Iran is not directly aligned with Russian interests, it provides imminent opportunities to be exploited and to make the West realise the mistake they have made. Both Russia and China are now gaining influence in the region and have emerged as the ‘Champions of the New World Order.’ Aleena Im is an independent researcher and writer and is interested in international relations and current affairs

NEO: "It's Impossible to cut a deal with the Bazaar". How Elementary Ignorance of Iran Led to Trump's Strategic Catastrophe. 20-03-2026: *******

Security “It’s impossible to cut a deal with the Bazaar”: How Elementary Ignorance of Iran Led to Trump’s Strategic Catastrophe Mohammed ibn Faisal al-Rashid, March 20, 2026 Suffering from a “cognitive glitch” and a dependence on politically biased experts, the U.S. President’s team attempted to apply templates that worked in Venezuela to a civilization with a 3,000-year history. Ayatollah Khamenei The result is a multi-billion dollar gamble that has turned Ramadan into a holy war. When the U.S. President’s Special Envoy for Iran, Steve Witkoff, decided to share details of a private conversation with Donald Trump with journalists, he likely didn’t realize he was creating a document for the ages. He described the sincere surprise of the Oval Office occupant: “Why, under such pressure, with the amount of naval and military power we’ve concentrated there, haven’t they come to us yet and said, ‘We declare we do not want to develop nuclear weapons, and here’s what we’re willing to do to prove it’?” This question, posed against the backdrop of a “beautiful armada” massing in the Persian Gulf and the demise of the Islamic Republic’s top leadership, will enter geopolitics textbooks as a textbook example of a superpower’s “analytical catastrophe.” Trump, thinking in the simple categories of a New York developer, genuinely believed the Iranians, as rational players on his field, would capitulate before the game even began. He failed to grasp the essential point: Tehran plays by rules written long before the U.S. appeared on the political map of the world. Trump’s Iranian gamble will go down in history as “one of America’s greatest mistakes” “Crazy but Calculated”: Why the American Establishment Only Tells Trump What He Wants to Hear The failure of Washington’s Middle East policy is not merely an intelligence mistake; it’s a systemic crisis within the expert community. The U.S. has virtually no research institutions or think tanks left capable of providing an objective picture of what’s happening in Iran while remaining independent of political bias. The few structures that could offer in-depth analysis are either marginalized or subjugated to a rigid ideological agenda. As a Bloomberg columnist noted, Trump “lacks a precise and comprehensive understanding of Iran,” a structural problem dating back to the fall of the Pahlavi regime. The President’s administration, behaving like an eastern despot punishing dissent, has created an atmosphere of fear in Washington. In such an environment, only those “think tanks” survive that are willing to supply “positive” analysis, tailoring reality to the master’s desires. An example of such bias is JINSA, a Washington propaganda outlet that explicitly called on Trump to destroy Iran, leveraging protests inside the country. These experts spoke of a “rarest strategic window” and a “finest hour” to eliminate the regime. Not a word about the cultural code, not a word about millennia of history—only a predatory reflex and pandering to the image of a “strong leader.” Trump, surrounded by sycophants, found himself trapped in an information bubble. He received reports confirming his own correctness: a little more pressure, and the “regime would fall,” as it supposedly did in Venezuela. Comparing Iran to Venezuela was a fatal error, demonstrating the fundamental ignorance of the Trump team. In Caracas, the U.S. dealt with a deep internal crisis and weak institutions. In Iran, they confronted a state possessing a “networked deterrent system” and the ability to project power from Sana’a to Beirut. Clash of Civilizations: From a Deal with the Shah to War with the Imam Trump viewed Iran as a giant bazaar where everything is for sale and everything can be bought. But as seasoned experts have long noted, “the Iranian bazaar isn’t just a place of trade. It’s also an intellectual club.” Haggling is part of the culture, but at its core lie concepts of honor, dignity, and historical memory that cannot be nullified by an ultimatum. The American administration demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of Iranian identity. For the average American, Iran’s history begins in 1979 with the embassy takeover. For an Iranian, it begins with Cyrus the Great and includes the 1953 coup (Operation Ajax), when the CIA and MI6 overthrew the popular Prime Minister Mossadegh, who dared to nationalize oil. That wound has yet to heal. That’s why, in response to the Americans’ brazen question, Iranian diplomat Abbas Araghchi replied with a dignity rooted deep in the centuries: “Because we are Iranians.” But the most terrible blasphemy Trump committed out of ignorance was the strike on religious sanctums. Experts studying Shia eschatology conclude the U.S. made an unforgivable mistake by not understanding the significance of symbols. The killing of the top religious figure occurred during the holy month of Ramadan, and the day of the attack coincided with Saturday—the day dedicated to the “hidden Imam,” Mahdi. For a Shia, the death of a leader on such days is not a defeat but a sacred event. Trump, thinking he was decapitating the state, instead created a holy martyr. In the Shia tradition, founded on the tragedy of Imam Hussein in Karbala, death for the faith is a spiritual victory, imposing upon the community a sacred duty of vengeance. The conflict instantly shifted from the geopolitical plane into the realm of apocalyptic confrontation. Washington aimed to demoralize Iran but instead got a nation prepared for the religious ecstasy of self-sacrifice. Murphy’s Law for the “Beautiful Armada” Trump, dancing on stage and extolling the beauty of his aircraft carriers, behaved like a character from a 19th-century colonial novel or a mere clown on a backwater circus runway. But “gunboat diplomacy” doesn’t work in the 21st century against a country possessing modern deterrent technologies. Iran demonstrated to the world what multidimensional defense looks like. Americans prepared for a swift victory, counting on internal divisions. However, as Iran experts state, 90% of Iran’s population, despite dissatisfaction with sanctions, identifies with their state’s 3,500-year history and is proud of their national belonging. External aggression, especially during the holy month, only consolidated society around the idea of resistance. Moreover, Iran became woven into the fabric of the new geopolitical reality. Membership in BRICS and the SCO, and strategic partnerships with Russia and China—which provided Iran with satellite data and bolstered its air defense—shattered U.S. plans for a blitzkrieg. While Trump demanded a “nice-looking picture” of surrender from his subordinates, Iran reopened old American wounds by reminding them of Operation Praying Mantis in 1988, when the U.S. Navy, faced with Iran’s asymmetric response, was forced to retreat, and the American nervous system failed, leading to the shooting down of a civilian airliner. The End of Illusions Trump’s Iranian gamble will go down in history as “one of America’s greatest mistakes.” It’s not merely a military fiasco—it’s the collapse of an arrogant approach where centuries-old culture is measured by the yardstick of short-term political gain. Washington became a hostage to its own propaganda. A system with no room for independent academic research, where associations and foundations fear contradicting the “master,” and analysis is replaced by slogans, inevitably breeds catastrophe. Trump acted like a despot, demanding flattery and reports of imminent victory from his subordinates, and he got what all despots get: a revolt of reality. Special Envoy Witkoff wasn’t wrong to call his revelation a “puzzle of defiance.” For America, Iran’s behavior truly is an enigma. But the Iranians solved this puzzle long ago: freedom and honor, for a nation that has survived millennia of wars and empires, are worth more than a deal with a foreign “merchant” who understands neither their faith nor their history. Iran is not Venezuela, and Ramadan 2026 became the month the U.S. learned that lesson too late. Muhammad ibn Faisal al-Rashid, Political Scientist, Specialist on the Arab World

NEO: The American Fantasy of Iranian Surrender: 21-03-2026: ************

Security The American Fantasy of Iranian Surrender Salman Rafi Sheikh, March 21, 2026 What if the state that claims global military supremacy is now confronting a conflict it cannot win on its own terms? The American Fantasy of Iranian Surrender President Trump’s repeated assertions that the US could defeat Iran and force it to surrender are now colliding with battlefield realities and geopolitical fissures that suggest otherwise. The very premise of a quick and decisive US victory is unravelling in real time, raising profound questions about American strategy, alliance cohesion, and power in a multipolar age. The Illusion of Swift Victory in Tehran President Trump’s pronouncements on Iran have been starkly ambitious. On multiple occasions he has touted rapid success and overwhelming military might in confronting Tehran — insisting that the US does not need British help to prevail and that Iranian forces will be “hit very hard.” Yet these claims increasingly look detached from both strategic reality and on‑the‑ground dynamics. This miscalculation is more than a tactical error; it is a strategic misstep that is reshaping global perceptions of American power The US military doctrine has traditionally relied on superior air power and technological edge to achieve rapid dominance. In early March 2026, the Pentagon publicly stated that operations against Iran’s missile, air, and naval capabilities were underway, though officials stopped short of conceding a quick end to the campaign. But the timeline Trump once floated — nominally four to five weeks — has already blurred into ambiguity, with the White House acknowledging potential extensions and evolving objectives primarily because of the failure to achieve quick objectives. They thought that the assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader would cause the regime to fall. That did not happen, forcing the US and Israel to rethink the nature and the duration of the campaign. The expectation that air campaigns alone could cripple Iran’s military infrastructure — or compel unconditional political submission — misreads Tehran’s defensive resilience and strategic depth. A recent classified report from the US National Intelligence Council found that even large‑scale US use of force is unlikely to dismantle Iran’s entrenched political and military leadership. That insight undercuts the notion that a blitz of strikes can replace the complex sociopolitical calculus of regime transformation. The council’s document, drafted late last month, builds on work by the C.I.A. that assessed that a complete change of government was unlikely even if Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, was killed in a US-led military operation. Iran’s responses have also defied Washington’s expectations. Despite extensive targeting, Iranian forces have not capitulated; they have continued missile and drone strikes on US and allied targets across the Gulf region. Rather than collapse, Tehran appears to be adapting, leveraging both conventional responses and strategic signaling to blunt American efforts and maintain a posture of deterrence. Reports in the Western media show significant Iranian success in repeatedly targeting US military bases. Taken together, these developments erode the core of the Trump administration’s confidence in quick, decisive military outcomes, thus setting the stage for a campaign that may extend far beyond initial projections without achieving strategic objectives. As such, President Trump has now stopped threatening “certain death” to Iran and its people. Eroding Alliances and Strategic Overreach A second blow to US fantasies is the fraying of Western and regional support that Trump and his advisers presumed would form the backbone of sustained operations. Trump’s suggestion that the US does not need British assistance belies deeper tensions within the transatlantic alliance over legal responsibility, operational strategy, and political backing for war. Across Europe, capitals are deeply divided over the US-led escalation. Spain has resisted aligning its military fully with Washington’s campaign, and the US leadership has grappled with legal and planning complications related to base access, epitomizing a broader transatlantic unease over the wisdom and legitimacy of war with Iran. These disagreements have reduced the coherence of NATO‑era cooperation, complicating US expectations for collective action. The US’ handling of Gulf states has also strained ties with regional partners. Officials in several Gulf kingdoms privately expressed frustration at the lack of prior notification before strikes on Iranian territory and at US reliance on Gulf air defenses to intercept Iranian missiles with limited American support. This undercuts longstanding assumptions about the reliability of regional alignments and may incentivize some states to hedge their security calculations. Domestically, American public opinion is also shifting in ways that undermine unilateralist ambitions. Polling suggests historically weak support for the operation against Iran, with a significant portion of the public expressing opposition and frustration at the perceived readiness of U.S. forces to engage in protracted conflict. This internal division complicates political sustainment of a drawn‑out campaign, particularly given the toll of casualties and financial costs that would accrue over time. Collectively, these fissures — within alliances, among regional partners, and on the home front — highlight the weakening of America’s hegemonic posture and raise questions about its ability to marshal durable coalitions in pursuit of major strategic objectives. A Crisis of America’s Own Making The deeper problem is not Iran’s resilience or the alliance falling apart; it is the strategic trap Washington has walked into. According to testimony before Congress, Pentagon officials repeatedly warned that Tehran posed no imminent threat of attacking the US directly. Yet the Trump administration chose to escalate, interpreting cautious intelligence as justification for preemptive strikes and forceful posturing. The result is a war the US did not need to fight, at a cost that will reverberate far beyond the battlefield. This miscalculation is more than a tactical error; it is a strategic misstep that is reshaping global perceptions of American power. Allies are questioning Washington’s judgment, adversaries are emboldened, and the credibility of US deterrence is being tested. The costs are not just measured in military engagements or financial outlays; they are being paid in influence, alliances, and leverage in other regions of the world. The campaign against Iran is eroding the very hegemonic posture the US has relied on since the end of the Cold War. The longer the conflict drags on, the more entrenched this erosion becomes. The US now faces a geopolitical deadlock of its own making: a situation where victory is unlikely, withdrawal risks loss of prestige, and every subsequent action is constrained by the consequences of a war initiated without necessity. What started as an assertion of American strength may ultimately be remembered as a cautionary tale of overreach, misreading intelligence, and underestimating both the limits of force and the resilience of regional actors. In short, the crisis is not just in Iran. Rather, it is in Washington itself. A nation confident in its global supremacy has stumbled into a conflict that threatens to unravel the assumptions underpinning that supremacy, leaving the US not just challenged militarily, but on a path to strategic downfall. Salman Rafi Sheikh, research analyst of international relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affair

NEO: American/Ukrainians : Caught Arming Militants in Myanmar and the U.S. Dirty War on China: 20-03-2026: ********

Security American/Ukrainians Caught Arming Militants in Myanmar and the US Dirty War on China Brian Berletic, March 20, 2026 The arrest of foreign mercenaries on the India–Myanmar border has once again drawn attention to the hidden mechanisms of external interference and the role of proxy structures in modern conflicts. American/Ukrainians Caught Arming Militants in Myanmar and the US Dirty War on China India’s national media reported the arrest by Indian security services of US mercenary Matthew VanDyke and six Ukrainians for illegally crossing the border into neighboring Myanmar to provide military training to armed groups fighting Myanmar’s central government. Indian security services have also linked the suspects to “importing huge consignments of drones from Europe to Myanmar via India” for “ethnic armed groups,” matching the established pattern of US proxy war waged around the globe throughout the 21st century. The military support provided by groups like VanDyke’s “Sons of Liberty” and other US-linked organizations like former US Special Forces operator David Eubank’s “Free Burma Rangers,” together with overt US government funding and support for political opposition groups the US seeks to install into power, have fueled decades of conflict inside Southeast Asia’s nation of Myanmar. US-Backed Militants in Myanmar The US’s dirty war in Myanmar is just one of many fronts on which the US is waging a proxy war on China itself VanDyke has gravitated toward US wars and proxy wars of aggression around the globe, including the US war on Libya in 2011, against Syria also in 2011, and in Ukraine from 2022 onward, according to Western sources like Newsweek. VanDyke’s recent operation in Myanmar involved not only training militants but also equipping them with “huge consignments” of drones, indicating a significant source of funding. Because the funding is not disclosed by VanDyke’s “non-profit security contracting firm,” it is very likely— as with all other aspects of Myanmar’s opposition — that it is funded by the US government and simply laundered through fronts like VanDyke’s. Other similarly US-backed operations training and equipping militants in Myanmar include David Eubank’s “Free Burma Rangers” (FBR). US diplomatic cables made available by WikiLeaks revealed Eubank regularly reports to US government representatives at the US consulate in neighboring Thailand (here, here, here, here, and here). While FBR poses as some sort of nongovernmental organization (NGO) that “assists ethnic resistance groups” with “humanitarian operations,” videos produced by Free Burma Rangers themselves and those by the militant groups they help train and equip depict the organization providing military training (including weapons training), as well as FBR members themselves carrying weapons on patrol with local militants. The political opposition these armed groups seek to install into power, the so-called “National Unity Government” (NUG), is itself a documented whole-cloth creation of the US government. In its earlier days it was referred to as the “National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma” (NCGUB) and was literally based in the US, just outside of Washington, D.C., in Rockville, Maryland. A 2013 “The World” article would admit the US government’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED) was the “main supporter of the NCGUB.” The NED’s website indicated an extensive list of politically invasive programs it was funding, interfering in virtually every aspect of Myanmar’s internal political affairs — everything from supposed “human rights” to media, the development of “youth leaders,” resource management, “political participation,” legal aid funds, election monitoring, labor, and information space. The 2020 NED disclosure for Myanmar — stillreferred to by the NED by its British colonial nomenclature of “Burma”— focused extensively on targeting the specific ethnic groups among which the armed militants VanDyke, his Ukrainian counterparts, and other organizations like FBR have provided military support to. The most recent iteration of the “NCGUB” is the NUG and is made up of mostly US government NED funding recipients. For example, the NUG’s so-called “Minister of Foreign Affairs,” Zin Mar Aung, whose official NUG biography openly admits, “In 2012, she was awarded the International Women of Courage award by the United States Secretary of State,” and that she was a “fellow in the Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow of the National Endowment for Democracy program.” Her profile on the NED’s official website also noted sheт“co-founded the Yangon School of Political Science, an NED-funded institution.” In other words, the US government has a long, documented history of both building up and attempting to maneuver into power the Myanmar political opposition throughout its various iterations up to and including the current “NUG,” which in turn openly presides over many of the armed groups fighting the central government. While the US government doesn’t openly supply arms and other military support to the NUG’s militant wings, Americans and now Ukrainians fighting amid America’s multiple wars and proxy wars elsewhere, clearly serve as a vector through which the US government can do so covertly. The violence these armed militants are carrying out also happens to specifically advance US geopolitical objectives in the region — not just in regard to undermining and attempting to topple Myanmar’s government, but in the encirclement, containment, and attempted toppling of China itself. America’s Dirty War against Myanmar is a War Against China Myanmar, which shares a border with both India and China, is a key partner of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). BRI infrastructure in Myanmar includes the Kyaukphyu deep-sea port in Myanmar’s Rakhine State along the Bay of Bengal and the Sino-Myanmar Oil and Gas Pipelines. Together, these projects allow hydrocarbons imported from abroad to be off-loaded along Myanmar’s coasts and piped across the country toward China’s Yunnan province along the Myanmar-Chinese border, thus bypassing the Strait of Malacca. Not only does the port and pipelines save up to 5-6 days versus transiting the Strait of Malacca toward China’s own shores, but it also hedges Chinese energy imports against the threat of a US-imposed maritime blockade either at the Strait of Malacca itself or anywhere beyond it in the Asia-Pacific, where tens of thousands of US forces are stationed specifically to encircle, contain, and, if possible, cut off China. Beijing’s concerns are far from “paranoia.” They are a direct reaction to decades-spanning US policies describing the implementation of a global maritime oil blockade on China specifically at the Strait of Malacca. These policies have driven the deployment of the US military forces into the region to potentially impose it, as well as arms and force restructuring programs to better enable their ability to do so. One such policy paper published by the US Naval War College Review in 2018 is literally titled “A Maritime Oil Blockade Against China.” It introduced the concept of a “distant blockade” designed to reduce the threat of Chinese anti-access area-denial (A2AD) systems by being imposed just beyond the range of most of China’s military capabilities, including “the Strait of Malacca and a handful of other passages that the US Navy could seal off effectively.” The purpose of the “distant blockade” would be to impose crippling pressure on China to impede, arrest, or even reverse its economic development, in addition to other forms of military, technological, and economic pressure the US has already spent years applying. The 2018 paper mentioned the Sino-Myanmar Pipeline by name, explaining, “a distant blockade also would need to interdict the Myanmar – China oil pipeline,” and that “the area could be declared an exclusion zone for the duration of a conflict, and if the Myanmar authorities failed to comply, the facility could be disabled via air strikes, aerial mining, or other kinetic action.” While the 2018 paper proposed a maritime oil blockade as a measure applied during an active conflict, the US has since used the armed militants it has backed in war against Myanmar’s central government for decades to begin carrying out attacks-by-proxy on the pipelines instead. This has resulted in years of attacks killing security personnel guarding the pipelines, damaging equipment used to operate them, and, at various periods of the ongoing conflict, US-backed militants taking over entire sections of the pipelines themselves, including just last year. Taken together with the recent US invasion and seizure of Venezuela’s government, drone strikes the New York Times admits are directed by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) deep inside Russia at its energy production, as well as the ongoing US war on Iran — all three nations counting China as their largest energy export partner — the US dirty war in Myanmar is just one of many fronts the US is waging a proxy war on China itself. Not only is a “maritime oil blockade” being imposed on China, it is being imposed on China worldwide — from Latin America to the Middle East and Eurasia — much further beyond China’s military reach than a closure at the Malacca Strait would have been. Myanmar’s military, supplied and supported by both Russia and China, has failed to restore peace and stability across the country specifically because of the hundreds of millions of dollars (or more) the US has spent over decades propping up proxy political forces and covertly arming their militant wings. The recent arrest of American and Ukrainian citizens providing these militants with additional training and modern combat drone technology is not just a war against Myanmar’s central government and the peace and stability of the nation and people of Myanmar, but also a war against China and the peace and stability of the entire Asia-Pacific region — even the world. Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer

CounterPunch: Trump's Crusade: Christian Nationalism and the Making of a Holy War: 20-03-2026: ***************

March 20, 2026 Trump’s Crusade: Christian Nationalism and the Making of a Holy War Henry GirouxFacebookTwitterRedditBlueskyEmail Photograph Source: The White House – Public Domain “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.” – Isaac Asimov Israel and the United States are now at war with Iran, a conflict framed by both leaders through a stark and self-serving moral binary. In the words of Benjamin Netanyahu, it is cast as a “necessary fight between good and evil.” For Donald Trump, the illegality of the war is beside the point. It is waged instead in the ideological spirit and cruelty of the Crusades, fueled by religious fervor and animated by what David Smith writing in The Guardian, has called a celebration of the “capacity to inflict violence.” What this religious framing obscures is the political reality that this is, in large part, Netanyahu’s war, one he has long prepared by casting Iran in apocalyptic terms as a successor to Nazism. But as Fintan O’Toole suggests, something even more disturbing is at work: in Trump’s hands, the war is severed from any coherent political or moral rationale, reduced to a hollow spectacle of destruction, a language of power emptied of meaning itself. Yet this emptiness is not benign. It signals at once a profound political weakness and an unrestrained embrace of state violence, a politics of dispossession and a logic of disposability that, if left unchecked, points toward the reemergence of camps as instruments of governance, cloaked in the moral certainties of religious dogmatism. This fusion of war, spectacle, and religious zeal is not merely a rhetorical flourish. It signals a deeper transformation in how violence is imagined and justified. Trump’s Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, gives this worldview its most chilling expression. Speaking with a zeal that echoes the language of holy war, he declares that the mission of the U.S. military is “to unleash death and destruction from the sky all day long.” In such statements, war is stripped of the language of restraint, law, or even tragic necessity. It becomes an open affirmation of annihilation as virtue. As Greg Jaffe observes in The New York Times, rhetoric of this kind signals a profound shift in the moral framework guiding American power. Instead of invoking justice or defense, it embraces vengeance. In this worldview, the enemy is not an opponent to be contained or negotiated with but a foe to be obliterated. War thus becomes not only an instrument of policy but a spectacle of righteous fury, a theater of domination in which violence is sanctified and the infliction of blood, suffering, and death is embraced as proof of strength. Yet the significance of this war culture extends far beyond the battlefield. Its logic does not remain confined to foreign policy; it migrates inward, reshaping the language, institutions, and pedagogical practices of domestic life. War has long been the most brutal expression of state power, but in the political culture surrounding Donald Trump it has taken on an even darker significance. War is no longer simply a strategic instrument of foreign policy. What is emerging instead is a war culture in which violence, white Christian nationalism, and militarized spectacle function as a form of public pedagogy, instructing citizens not to question domination but to admire it. In this register, Operation Epic Fury becomes barbarism refashioned as spectacle, draped in an aesthetic of impunity and moral annihilation. War is transformed into a form of public pedagogy, a daily lesson in domination delivered through media images, political rhetoric, and state policy, teaching that cruelty signals strength and that enemies, both foreign and domestic, are rendered disposable, unworthy of recognition or justice and instead subjected to humiliation, repression, and violence. Under such conditions, violence no longer hides behind the worn language of necessity or o making the world safe for democracy. It exposes what it has long been in American foreign policy, a ruthless instrument of imperial power. On the domestic front, this pedagogy operates not only through spectacles of military force but through laws, institutions, and cultural narratives that normalize authoritarian power. It works, as I and Will Paul have observed elsewhere, not simply through “tanks in the streets but through legislation that turns education into an arm of the security state.” Classrooms are redefined as sites of patriotic discipline, history is rewritten as nationalist myth, surveillance becomes a civic duty, and students learn that obedience is virtue while dissent marks them as suspect. In such conditions, education no longer nurtures critical judgment or democratic responsibility; it becomes a machinery for producing subjects who internalize the values of militarism, hierarchy, and unquestioned authority. This war culture reflects what political theorist Achille Mbembe calls necropolitics, a form of power organized around the capacity to decide who may live and who must die. Within such a framework, violence ceases to be simply an instrument of policy and becomes a defining feature of political identity. What is particularly alarming is that this war is increasingly framed through the language of Christian nationalism. The imagery and rhetoric of the Crusades have reentered public life, symbolized not only by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s crusader-themed tattoo but also by his repeated claims that Trump has been ordained by God to wield military power against alleged infidels. As David Smith reports, Doug Pagitt, a pastor and executive director of the progressive Christian group Vote Common Good, describes the theological logic shaping this worldview: It seems to me that Pete Hegseth has a worldview which is contorted toward thinking that this administration has a particular divine calling. He believes, because he said it, that God has uniquely ordained Donald Trump and those that he chooses to accomplish very specific purposes in the world. Pete Hegseth’s own version of Christianity is built around a certain Christian advancement that comes through the domination of the governments of nations. He believes that not only is the military at his disposal to use for his purposes but that it is there to fulfill God’s agenda for the world. War is celebrated as proof of strength, enemies are stripped of their humanity, and the destruction of entire populations is reframed as the necessary price of restoring national greatness, often invoked through the slogan “America First.” In such a necropolitical order, the state derives legitimacy not from protecting life but from demonstrating its capacity to destroy it. Moreover, we live in an era under a fascist regime in which the annihilation of morality is in full bloom. Almost nothing is reported in the mainstream press regarding the fact that “Between 600,000 and 1 million Iranian households are now temporarily displaced inside Iran as a result of the ongoing conflict [a figure that represents] up to 3.2 million people. The same moral callousness is on full display about Hegseth’s response to troop deaths in Iran. Trump’s initial response to the death of three troops was “We have three, [and] we expect casualties, but in the end it’s going to be a great deal for the world.” For Trump death makes sense only as part of a cost-benefit analysis. He later said “there will likely be more [deaths] before it ends,” before adding: “That’s the way it is. Likely be more.” Hegseth responded by “criticizing the media for supposedly focusing too much on the dead soldiers in an effort to make Trump ‘look bad.’” Militarism thus ceases to be an exception to politics and becomes one of its central organizing principles. Under such conditions, even the mass killing of civilians, including children, is absorbed into the brutal language and logic of national power and disappears behind the spectacle of military triumph. The devastation produced by the illegal Israeli-U.S. bombing campaign in Iran is rarely acknowledged with any moral seriousness. Airstrikes have struck targets across the region, including oil depots around Tehran, sending thick black smoke into the sky and spreading toxic fallout across surrounding communities. Yet the human consequences of this destruction are largely erased from official discourse, replaced by triumphant displays of technological power and nationalist rhetoric. Within the Trump administration, the suffering produced by the war is not merely ignored but openly trivialized. When asked whether Russia’s involvement in the conflict might endanger American personnel, Hegseth dismissed the concern with chilling bluntness, stating that “the only people who should be worried right now are Iranians who think they are going to live.” Such remarks reveal a political culture in which violence is no longer treated as a tragic consequence of war but as a measure of national strength. The staggering economic cost of the war further exposes the distorted priorities that sustain this militarized order. According to The Atlantic journalist Nancy Youssef, citing a congressional official, the conflict is costing the United States roughly $1 billion per day. Sarah Lazare notes that this sum could instead cover the daily cost of food assistance for the 41 million Americans who rely on food stamps, or help sustain Medicaid coverage for the 16 million people expected to lose healthcare under recent cuts. In this sense, the war does not simply devastate lives abroad; it also drains resources from the social programs that sustain life at home. Yet the consequences of this war extend beyond immediate human and financial costs. As Chris Hedges has warned, the economic consequences may extend far beyond these immediate costs. With Iran threatening shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, through which a significant portion of the world’s oil supply passes, the conflict risks triggering a global economic shock that could push the world toward recession. That such dangers are barely acknowledged by the Trump administration reveals the extraordinary recklessness with which this war has been launched, a fusion of geopolitical aggression and profound ignorance of the economic forces it has set in motion. Yet the deeper problem is that this war does not emerge in isolation. It reflects the logic of gangster capitalism, in which militarism has become normalized as a permanent feature of national policy. Nor is this pattern new. The United States has long treated war spending as a permanent feature of national policy. As Eric Morrisette observes, “We know that wars are costly. Having extricated ourselves from protracted Middle East conflicts just three years ago, we have clear reference points which are not reassuring. The Costs of War Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute estimates that from late 2001 through FY2022, the U.S. spent or obligated $8 trillion on post-9/11 wars: $5.8 trillion in direct costs and at least $2.2 trillion in future veterans’ care through 2050. Every dollar in that accounting was a dollar that did not go toward schools, bridges, or health care.” Seen in this light, the war on Iran reveals how militarism functions simultaneously as spectacle, ideology, policy, and a form of state-sanctioned extortion. It erases the suffering of those beneath the bombs while demanding enormous sacrifices from the public whose resources sustain it. Violence becomes both the language of power and the measure of political legitimacy in a necropolitical order that normalizes destruction while rendering its human costs invisible. As Primo Levi warned, fascism rarely arrives all at once; it advances through small moral accommodations that gradually normalize cruelty and erode the capacity to recognize injustice. What makes such violence politically sustainable, however, is the language that legitimizes it, a language that empties words of their moral weight while transforming brutality into the rhetoric of necessity and destiny. In the lies, deaths, and destruction unleashed by the illegal Israeli-U.S. war on Iran, we are witnessing what Toni Morrison once called the language of war. In her Nobel Prize lecture, Morrison warned that such language is the language of leaders with blood on their hands, a dead language “content to admire its own paralysis.” It is a language intoxicated with power, seduced by its own narcissism, and emptied of moral accountability. When political speech becomes saturated with this rhetoric, violence no longer requires justification. It is presented instead as destiny, necessity, or even virtue. Few figures illustrate this necropolitical imagination more starkly than Pete Hegseth. His public rhetoric celebrates unrestrained violence while dismissing the legal and moral limits that once governed modern warfare. In this worldview, war is no longer treated as a tragic necessity but as a form of purification, an arena in which nationalism, hyper-masculinity, and religious destiny converge. The result is a political culture steeped in militarism, misogyny, and a toxic cult of strength, animated by religious fundamentalism and marked by a deep ethical abyss. Hegseth’s own words make this worldview unmistakably clear. In his book The War on Warriors, he recounts dismissing the advice of a military lawyer who was explaining the rules of engagement to soldiers under his command in Iraq. According to Hegseth, he told the troops: “I will not allow that nonsense to filter into your brains.” Such remarks are revealing not only for their contempt toward the legal restraints governing modern warfare, but also for the ideological worldview they expose. The religious dimension of this rhetoric has also surfaced directly in official military messaging. During a Pentagon briefing on the Iran conflict, Hegseth concluded his remarks by quoting scripture, invoking biblical language to frame the campaign against Iran. For critics, such gestures underscore the dangerous erosion of the boundary between church and state in the conduct of American military policy. When military briefings invoke scripture and political leaders frame geopolitical conflict in biblical terms, the line between strategy and religious mission begins to dissolve. War is no longer presented simply as a matter of national security but as part of a larger theological struggle. In such circumstances, political violence risks being sanctified, and the state begins to assume the moral posture of a crusade rather than a democracy bound by law. Elsewhere in The War on Warriors, Hegseth launched a frontal attack on the laws of war. He wrote: “If our warriors are forced to follow rules arbitrarily and asked to sacrifice more lives so that international tribunals feel better about themselves, aren’t we just better off winning our wars according to our own rules?! Who cares what other countries think.” These remarks are not merely rhetorical bravado. They signal a profound rejection of the ethical framework that has governed modern warfare since the mid-twentieth century. The laws of armed conflict, codified in the Geneva Conventions after the devastation of World War II, were meant to place limits on the machinery of violence. They rested on a simple but crucial principle: even in war there must be moral boundaries. Civilians cannot be deliberately targeted, prisoners cannot be tortured, and entire communities cannot be treated as disposable. Those principles emerged from the ashes of a century that witnessed mechanized slaughter, genocidal campaigns, and cities reduced to rubble. When such limits are dismissed as inconveniences or signs of weakness, the consequences are neither abstract nor distant. They are written on the bodies of the dead and the shattered landscapes left behind. The history of modern warfare offers chilling reminders: the massacre at My Lai in Vietnam, where hundreds of unarmed civilians were slaughtered; the torture chambers of Abu Ghraib, where prisoners were humiliated and brutalized; the network of secret detention sites and “black sites” where detainees disappeared into legal voids beyond the reach of law. In the decades since the so-called war on terror began, the devastation inflicted on civilian populations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Gaza has left entire regions shattered. Cities and towns have been reduced to landscapes of rubble, grief, and enduring trauma, while millions have been displaced and whole societies forced into conditions of permanent insecurity. Against this backdrop, Donald Trump’s claim that he was an “anti-war president,” campaigning on the slogan “no new wars,” collapses under the weight of reality. In his second term, that claim quickly unraveled as the machinery of militarized power expanded rather than receded. Trump not only widened the reach of U.S. violence abroad, he also brought the language and tactics of war home, unleashing heavily armed federal forces in American cities where they operated with near impunity. The message was unmistakable: the paramilitary violence long inflicted on distant populations, especially in Latin America, could now be turned inward, dissolving the boundary between foreign battlefields and domestic life. As journalist Zachary Basu observes, “no president in the modern era has ordered more military strikes against as many different countries as Donald Trump.” With the restraints of international law increasingly cast aside, Trump’s imperial violence expands with few visible limits, reaching even to the brazen abduction of Venezuela’s president. War becomes more than a geopolitical strategy. It emerges as a necropolitical project in which entire populations are rendered disposable and destruction itself is staged as a spectacle of imperial power. Hegseth’s rhetoric gives this politics of disposability its ideological language. By casting restraint as weakness and humanitarian law as a bureaucratic nuisance imposed by distant elites, he undermines the fragile moral architecture meant to limit the violence of war. In this framework, justice gives way to raw power, and the only measure of success is victory. This normalization of lawless violence feeds the broader war culture shaping the political imagination of the MAGA movement. Military force is framed not as a tragic last resort but as proof of national vitality. Violence becomes a measure of masculinity and patriotism, while reflection or restraint is dismissed as cowardice. War is imagined as a cleansing force capable of restoring national greatness. The deeper cultural logic behind this exaltation of force was diagnosed decades ago by Walter Benjamin. Writing in the shadow of European fascism, Benjamin warned that authoritarian movements seek to “aestheticize politics.” Instead of encouraging democratic deliberation, they transform power itself into spectacle. War becomes the ultimate aesthetic experience, a dazzling display of technological force designed to overwhelm moral reflection. Benjamin’s insight helps illuminate the political culture surrounding Trump, where war is increasingly aestheticized and violence is staged as a spectacle of national power. Government propaganda celebrating bombing raids increasingly resembles the visual language of video games and action films. Explosions appear as cinematic effects, targets disappear in bursts of light, and destruction becomes a performance of technological mastery rather than a human catastrophe. Behind these carefully crafted images lies a far more brutal reality. During the recent escalation of the war with Iran, a U.S. bombing strike reportedly destroyed an elementary school building, killing more than 135 children. Such atrocities reveal the grotesque distance between the spectacle of military triumph circulating through official media and the devastating human consequences it conceals. This transformation becomes even clearer through the work of the French theorist Guy Debord, whose analysis of the “society of the spectacle” helps explain how modern warfare is transformed into a visual drama of power rather than a human catastrophe. Debord argued that modern politics increasingly operates through images that detach people from lived reality. Spectacle replaces genuine experience, encouraging citizens to consume representations of power rather than question its consequences. Bombing campaigns appear as visual events rather than human tragedies. The public is encouraged to identify with the display of national power rather than with the lives destroyed in its wake. The cultural critic Susan Sontag anticipated this danger in her reflections on war imagery. Sontag argued that repeated exposure to images of violence can produce what she called a form of moral anesthesia. Viewers become fascinated by the visual power of destruction while the suffering those images represent gradually recedes from moral consciousness. The visual culture surrounding contemporary warfare exemplifies precisely this dynamic. When bombing footage is packaged in the style of entertainment media, the boundary between war and spectacle dissolves. Violence becomes consumable. Journalist and antiwar scholar Norman Solomon has long argued that modern warfare depends on carefully managing public perception. Governments sanitize war through narratives and images that obscure the suffering inflicted on civilians. War becomes politically sustainable not because it is humane, but because its brutality is hidden from view. In the present moment, however, violence is not merely concealed. Increasingly, it is praised and nowhere is this glorification more visible than in the religious language surrounding the war. But spectacle alone cannot sustain this war culture. It must be anchored in a moral narrative that legitimates its violence, shields it from critique, and renders its brutality both righteous and necessary. This role is increasingly played by a powerful strain of religious fundamentalism circulating within parts of the MAGA movement. Several prominent figures in Trump’s orbit, including Hegseth and allied political leaders, have framed conflicts in the Middle East in explicitly biblical terms. Iran is depicted not simply as a geopolitical adversary but as a spiritual enemy within a larger cosmic struggle between good and evil. In some Christian nationalist circles, commentators openly interpret the conflict through end-times prophecy, suggesting that confrontation with Iran could fulfill biblical narratives surrounding Armageddon and the return of Christ. Several commentators have noted how openly religious this rhetoric has become. Writing in The Nation, critics of the war point out that leading figures in Trump’s political circle have increasingly framed the conflict as a civilizational struggle rooted in religious identity. Senator Lindsey Graham stated bluntly that “this is a religious war,” suggesting that the outcome of the conflict could shape the region “for a thousand years.” Such language marks a dangerous shift in political discourse, one in which geopolitical conflict is reimagined as a sacred confrontation between faiths rather than a political crisis requiring diplomacy. When militarism fuses with apocalyptic religion, the consequences are deeply troubling. War ceases to be a tragic failure of diplomacy and becomes a sacred drama instead. Violence is sanctified as the instrument through which divine destiny is said to unfold. Journalists have increasingly warned that the war is being framed in explicitly religious terms. Writing for MSNBC, Ali Velshi cautioned that Christian nationalist narratives are seeping into the Trump administration’s rhetoric on Iran, blurring the line between church and state and casting the conflict through theological imagery rather than political reasoning. In some cases the rhetoric has gone even further. Military watchdog groups report that certain commanders have described the war to troops as part of “God’s divine plan,” invoking biblical prophecy and the Book of Revelation to suggest that the conflict could usher in the end times. The philosopher Hannah Arendt warned that ideological systems of this kind erode the human capacity for moral judgment and weaken the ethical restraints that make political life possible. Her analysis of the “banality of evil” revealed how individuals can become complicit in immense violence when ethical reflection is replaced by ideological certainty. When war is framed as destiny or divine mission, the ability to question its human cost becomes dangerously weakened. The convergence of militarism, spectacle, and religious nationalism therefore produces what might best be understood as a political death drive. It is a sensibility marked by fascination with destruction, contempt for vulnerability, and deep indifference to human suffering. Critics of the war argue that the political culture surrounding it reflects something deeper than aggressive foreign policy. Writing in CounterPunch, Anthony DiMaggio and Dean Caivano describe the Iran war as part of a broader authoritarian transformation in American political life, one in which militarism, religious nationalism, and the politics of spectacle converge to produce what amounts to a new authoritarian moment. Whether one accepts that characterization in full or not, the fusion of war propaganda, religious rhetoric, and the glorification of violence undeniably signals a profound shift in the moral landscape of American politics. History offers sobering warnings about where such sensibilities can lead. Reflecting on the conditions that made fascism possible in Europe, the writer and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi observed that authoritarianism rarely arrives all at once. It emerges through gradual shifts in moral sensibility, through the normalization of cruelty and indifference. As Levi wrote, “Every age has its own fascism, and we see the warning signs wherever the concentration of power denies citizens the possibility and the means of expressing and acting on their own free will.” The danger lies precisely in these warning signs. When political leaders mock international law, celebrate lawless violence, and sanctify war through the language of religious destiny, they normalize a culture in which brutality becomes ordinary and cruelty appears as virtue. Under such conditions, the moral foundations of public life begin to erode. As the language of fascism takes hold, it strips ethical principles of their meaning and transforms morality, truth, and “the noble concept of a common humanity into a disdainful sneer.” The bombing that killed more than a hundred children in Iran should have provoked universal moral outrage. Instead it quickly disappeared beneath the spectacle of geopolitical posturing and the rhetoric of righteous power. That silence reveals how deeply the culture of war has penetrated public life, normalizing the mass killing of civilians while erasing their suffering from public memory. In this process, historical and social amnesia are reproduced through the language of theocratic fundamentalism, which frames violence not as a political crime but as part of a sacred struggle between good and evil. Under such circumstances, the war on children and those branded as infidels becomes more than an atrocity, it becomes a political alibi. Cloaked in the language of divine mission, militarized violence helps shield the brutalities of capitalism itself, allowing a system built on disposability, dispossession, exploitation, and endless war to conceal its cruelty behind the moral camouflage of religious destiny. The merging of aesthetics and violence in the Trump regime is also evident in its repeated invocation of national decline. This rhetoric functions as a coded language of disposability and racial purification, framing certain populations as signs of degeneration while promising national rebirth through the restoration of authority and force. As Anthony DiMaggio and Dean Caivano observe, such language fuses older eugenic ideas and the fascist rhetoric of “blood and soil” with appeals to social hierarchy and civilizational renewal. In their analysis of Trump’s rhetoric, they write: Trump’s rhetoric adopts the language of decline and rebirth yet departs from this classical model in a decisive way. In his second inaugural address in January 2025, he declared that “America’s decline is over.” In this week’s State of the Union, he also described the United States as “a dead country” before his return to office. These statements frame the nation in biological terms, casting it as lifeless and degraded while positioning executive authority as the animating force capable of restoring vitality. Legitimacy is measured in terms of life and death rather than institutional continuity. Seen in this light, Trump’s language of decline and rebirth is not merely rhetorical exaggeration but part of a deeper authoritarian aesthetic in which politics is defined as a drama of national resurrection. Echoing the fascist logic Walter Benjamin warned about, the nation is imagined as a living body that must be purified and revitalized through force, while those marked as disposable are cast outside the boundaries of moral concern. In such a framework, the promise of renewal becomes inseparable from the power to decide whose lives count and whose deaths are deemed acceptable, a necropolitical vision in which sovereignty is measured not by the protection of life but by the capacity to destroy it. The language of purification central to fascist politics, with its insistence that the nation must be cleansed, echoes Zygmunt Bauman’s argument that fascist ideology imagines society as something to be “gardened,” where those deemed undesirable are treated like weeds to be removed. A society that learns to watch war as spectacle risks losing the capacity to recognize the humanity that disappears behind the screen. When cruelty becomes entertainment and destruction becomes proof of strength, the moral foundations of democracy begin to erode. As Fintan O’Toole notes, under such circumstances, “fascism works by making the extreme appear normal.” Resisting this trajectory requires more than opposing particular wars or policies. It requires confronting the cultural logic and pedagogical practices that turns violence into spectacle and domination into virtue. Democracies cannot survive when political leaders sanctify cruelty in the language of destiny and divine mission. If this culture of militarized spectacle continues to expand, the danger is not only endless war abroad but the steady corrosion of democracy at home, the devastation of civilian populations and the accelerating destruction of a planet already pushed to the brink by militarism and extractive capitalism. What is crucial to grasp in the fight against neoliberal theocratic fascism is that people must come to understand their lived experiences as part of a broader system of oppression, and to recognize that making change imaginable is itself the foundation for building mass resistance. This battle extends beyond economic and institutional forms of domination to the modes of hegemony that shape consent, desire, morality, and everyday common sense. At stake is a struggle over consciousness, values, and agency itself. In that sense, any viable resistance movement must place education at the center of politics. The struggle for economic, political, and social rights is inseparable from challenging the conditions that produce and reproduce a culture of domination and exploitation. Resisting the expansion of neoliberal theocratic fascism demands the emergence of a broad democratic movement led by workers, youth, and all those rendered disposable within this necropolitical order. Such a movement depends upon a formative culture capable of nurturing critical consciousness, civic courage, and a language of possibility. This is not only a battle against war and authoritarianism; it is also a demand for a different future, one in which democracy is no longer synonymous with permanent warfare and gangster capitalism, but is reclaimed as a moral and political project rooted in justice, equality, and critical reason. At its core, this is a struggle to reclaim education as a practice of freedom and to reimagine politics as an ethical, collective commitment to building a more just world, a democratic socialist future in which life, equality, and justice prevail over profit, disposability, and war. Henry A. Giroux currently holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department and is the Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy. His most recent books include: The Terror of the Unforeseen (Los Angeles Review of books, 2019), On Critical Pedagogy, 2nd edition (Bloomsbury, 2020); Race, Politics, and Pandemic Pedagogy: Education in a Time of Crisis (Bloomsbury 2021); Pedagogy of Resistance: Against Manufactured Ignorance (Bloomsbury 2022) and Insurrections: Education in the Age of Counter-Revolutionary Politics (Bloomsbury, 2023), and coauthored with Anthony DiMaggio, Fascism on Trial: Education and the Possibility of Democracy (Bloomsbury, 2025). Giroux is also a