War on Iran: "From day one, it was obvious that this was Netanyahu’s war, and that Trump was duped, or seduced, into participating in it"

It is over three weeks now since since Israel and the United States of America launched their war on Iran, bombing and killing the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, along with many more of the country’s leaders, both on February 28, 2026 and since.

It is important to be clear from the outset about the reality of what is happening. We are witnessing a massive act of vengeful military aggression on the part of two states – Israel and the United States – working in collusion, and viciously attacking an independent sovereign nation.

The regime in Iran is a despicable one. We’ve known that for years.

No one who believes in human rights, in equality and justice, in the separation of Church and State, or in freedom of thought and expression could possibly support it, or want it to remain in power. It is a brutal theocratic dictatorship, which – earlier this year – dealt with peaceful protests by murdering tens of thousands of Iranian citizens in the streets.

Anyone with a heart would be horrified at the actions of the bloody and brutal Islamic Revolutionary Guards. And so we are, individually and collectively, perfectly entitled to abhor the regime and everything it stands for.

But that does not give any other state the right to murder the leader; embark on a bombing spree designed to inflict as much carnage as possible; kill as many of the political top brass as can be targeted; and set fire to oil depts and destroy infrastructure, as Israel and the United States have done, pursuing their own narrow aims unilaterally, without consultation with their historic allies, and blind to the damage it would inflict on the global economy and on people all over the world.

It does not give any other state the right to massacre over 3,000 Iranian citizens, of whom, it is estimated over 50% are civilians; nor to kill over 200 children. The war on Iran has been described as unprovoked, illegal and illegitimate. It is all of that and worse.

Funeral for the victims of the Minab school bombing

The fact that Israel and the US launched the attack while negotiations between the US and Iran, about placing agreed limits on Iran’s nuclear programme, were proceeding – and by all sensible accounts making progress – renders it all the more treacherous, insupportable and criminally wrong.

A COMPLETE FOOL

Over the past three weeks, I have read tens of thousands of words – in news reports, interviews and analyses – in which writers and commentators have been scrambling to gain an understanding of what the hell Donald Trump even thinks he is up to, and why he embarked on such a reckless and destructive course of action, in initiating an illegal war that, all the polls show, the vast majority of Americans oppose.

There is a lot of dancing involved in getting these articles out there. People claiming inside knowledge. Offering interpretations and counter-interpretations of Trump’s tactics and strategy. But this kind of analysis misses the point entirely, when the truth is embarrassingly simple.

From day one, it was obvious that this is Benjamin Netanyahu’s war, and that Trump was duped, or seduced, into participating in it.

The truth is that the irredeemably evil Israeli war criminal knows how to play Donald Trump like a yo-yo. And that’s what he has done. No wonder Trump looks more and more seasick every time you see him.

One of Trump’s many problems is that he employs dimwits to run departments and to represent the United States of America in matters of enormous global importance. It is a sure sign that he himself is far dimmer than he thinks.

Some of the chosen ones – for example, the psychotic Secretary for Defence Peter Hegseth – are more thoroughly dangerous, prejudiced and unhinged than others. But is there a single one that, hand on heart, you could say is genuinely up to the job?

The US was represented at the talks with Iran by a real estate agent Steve Witkoff and Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

Witkoff, not to put too fine a point on it, is as quick on his feet and just about as intelligent as a three-toed sloth. In the context of ‘negotiating’ with Russia to end its war on Ukraine, Witkoff has been particularly gullible, effectively accepting and regurgitating all of Moscow’s talking points as if they are gospel – effectively conceding ground in Trump’s solo attempt to make money out of the misery inflicted on Kyiv. On more than one occasion, in all seriousness, he has reassured the world that we can take what Vladimir Putin says at face value and accept that it’s true.

He gets a one out of 10 and that’s being kind.

Kushner, meanwhile, is the genius who worked with Israeli interests on the idea of building a new Dubai where Gaza is, or in their minds used to be – completely ignoring the fact that the place is home to 2.5 million Palestinians. This is still the end-game he is pursuing, since he and Trump figure there’s a load of money to be made out of it. He gets a big fat zero.

It hardly comes as a surprise then, as indicated in a report in The Guardian, that the Two Stooges were seen by other independent negotiators at the US-Iran talks as Israeli assets, who would support whatever Netanyahu and his thugs wanted to sell to Trump. And so they went to war. It was the U.S. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, who first publicly admitted that it was Israel’s decision to attack. That they had told the Americans that they were going to do it one way or another. That the US were bounced into bombing Iran by Netanyahu.

“We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action,” Rubio told reporters. “We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t pre-emptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.”

For his part, Netanyahu gloated that the attacks on Iran were being conducted with “the assistance of the United States, my friend, US President Donald Trump, and the US military.”

With the assistance of the United States. So who is the big boy here, then? Which is the dog and which is the tail?

The fact is that, whether via The Two Stooges or otherwise, Netanyahu got into Trump’s ear. Whispered that this was the opportunity of a lifetime.

“They’ll all be together. In one fell swoop, we’ll not only get Khamenei himself, we’ll eliminate their entire leader class. We can’t miss this opportunity. If you’re not with us, we’re doing it anyway. Much better for you to be able to claim the credit for the biggest, bestest, most beautiful multiple assassination mission ever in the whole world.

“Just think of it Mr. President. It’ll be something you can be so proud of, killing all these losers. These Islamic scum. Very bad people.

“All you have to do is say that they were within a fortnight of being able to launch a nuclear missile into America. If we hadn’t done this, our country would be up in flames. Israel would be gone. Half of America would be wiped out.

“That isn’t true? Who cares, Mr. President? We’ll get a load of stooges in the media to repeat it. We’ll put a billion dollars into social posts and boosts and boasts – and bingo. By the time we’re finished all of America will be hailing you as the man who saved the US from a nuclear attack orchestrated by the Ayatollah. You’ll be a folk hero. Next stop, the Nobel Peace Prize!”

Dumb Donald Trump took the bait. And now, as the saga unfolds, with enormously damaging consequences for the US, for the gulf region and for the world at large, he is looking far more exposed, inept and clueless than at any other time.

Benjamin Netanyahu has made a complete fool of Donald Trump. And everyone else is paying the price.

Benjamin Netanyahu. Photo: Jack Sanders

PREVIOUSLY UNCHARTED DEPTHS

It is clear that Donald Trump has no idea what the supposed war aims in Iran were, are or might be.

He wants regime change. Then, when it is obvious that this is not on the cards, it’s not important. He wants to completely degrade Iran’s military. But that isn’t working either. He says the war is won – but not won enough. He seems to have assumed that Iran would just crumple and die – instead they escalated. And guess what?

“They (Iran) weren’t supposed to go after all these other countries in the Middle East,” President Trump said. “Nobody expected that. We were shocked.”

You’d have to ask: if that’s true, how stupid and out of touch is US intelligence? But, of course, the word from within the intelligence community is different. Trump was warned, they say, that Iran was likely to retaliate against US allies in the Persian Gulf. And why wouldn’t they? American bases in the Gulf are a platform for launching strikes against Tehran. They’re an obvious target.

Trump also seems not to have anticipated that Iran would put the squeeze on the Strait of Hormuz.

The Iranians may not be able to match the brute air power of the Israeli war machine and its US backers – but they know how to inflict maximum pain. About 20% of the world’s Liquified Natural Gas and 25% of its seaborne oil normally passes through the Strait of Hormuz. The Iranians have cut that off completely. The price of oil has soared. Production has also been reduced because storage is rapidly reaching capacity. The downstream effects are going to last a long time. It is a diabolical mess.

With petrol prices accelerating even in the US, Trump is flailing. He demanded that Nato countries help to escort oil tankers through the Strait only to be rebuffed. No one is queueing up to join an illegal war. He didn’t consult with anyone in Nato before starting the war. Why should they now put themselves or their troops in the firing line? In fact, you can sense a growing feeling that the more this war damages Trump the better.

Typically, again without consultation with historic allies, Trump lifted sanctions on Russia, in an effort to reduce the ballooning price of oil, and cosy up to the Kremlin. For Europe, the law of unintended consequences is biting hard.

In the US, the Maga fanbase is screaming blue murder. Tucker Carson has described the Iran war as absolutely disgusting and evil. Former Trump fan Marjorie Taylor Greene has asked “Why would an American President lead his party into the mid-terms waging a full-scale, major war, completely unprovoked, on Iran on behalf of Israel? And that’s the way most Americans see it. A war that there is no end to in sight. That is not de-escalating, but is escalating. It just doesn’t make sense.

“The American people did not vote for this. This is not what we campaigned for.”

Maga is turning in on itself – and against Israel. Announcing his resignation, the Trump-appointed far right director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Joe Kent, denounced the war. “I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran,” he said. “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”

Kent went further, claiming that high ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media deployed a misinformation campaign that wholly undermined the America First platform and sowed pro-war sentiments. “This echo chamber was used,” Kent told Trump in his resignation statement, “to deceive you into believing that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States and you should strike now, there was a clear path to victory. This was a lie and is the same tactic the Israelis use to draw us into the disastrous Iraq war.”

It would almost be entertaining if thousands weren’t being killed. But even in that regard, this US regime is sinking to previously uncharted depths. It is a refection of just how rotten-to-the-core he is personally that Donald Trump spoke about killing Iranians for fun. But that is the nastily puerile level at which this American regime operates.

“This was never meant to be a fair fight,” Pete ‘loose screws showing’ Hegseth – described by his own mother as an abuser of women –  said at a press briefing, “and it is not a fair fight. We are punching them while they are down, which is exactly how it should be.”

And he had this to say about Iranian leaders. “They are toast and they know it… America is winning – decisively, devastatingly and without mercy.”

Winning – at a cost of nearly $30billion dollars as we speak, and rising, rising, rising. And with oil prices soaring. And American lives being lost.

Janessa Goldbeck, CEO of Vet Voice Foundation, a non-profit organisation was not impressed. “Pete Hegseth is a very dangerous person,” she said. “He’s a white Christian nationalist and has the arsenal of the United States government at his disposal and a permission slip from President Trump to deploy carnage wherever he wishes against whoever he wishes.”

YEARS TO RECOVER

So who really is winning? Well, there is Vladimir Putin, who is laughing all the way to the Central Bank of Russia and buying more hardware to attack Ukraine.

But even more so, there is the vile criminal murderer of tens of thousands of children, Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel’s perpetual war is designed to keep him out of jail. Plus, he gets to exercise his genocidal viciousness in Lebanon now, as well as in Gaza. And with Trump’s blessing, and the spineless acquiescence of the rest of the world, he facilitates further land-theft in the West Bank and Lebanon, pushing for an enlarged Israel whose aim it is to dominate the region with endless brute force and treat Palestinians and their supporters like vermin, crushing and killing them at every faked opportunity.

What the rest of the world has to ask, as a matter of the gravest urgency, is this: how much are we willing to pay to support this terrorist, genocidal, rogue Israeli regime for which no horror is too great to inflict, nor crime too grisly to commit?

The war on Iran confirms that Israel is out of control. Netanyahu drew the narcissist Trump in, attacked Iran, miscalculated the risks, caused hundreds of billions worth of damage – and now expects the citizens of the world to foot the bill on his and Israel’s behalf. What happened in Gaza should never have been allowed. What is happening in Lebanon – and it will get worse, much worse – should never be allowed. And Israel’s war on Iran was, and is, a con job from which it will take years to recover.

All sensible governments must unite against the sickening abuse of utterly amoral military might. The world has to tell Israel that it is over, that no one will trade with them, that every economic weapon available will be unleashed against them. And with Sweden’s V-Dem institute concluding that the U.S. is hurtling towards autocracy, they should be accorded pariah status too. As we can see all too clearly now, appeasing Donald Trump makes no sense at all.