THE-IRAN FIRST-BLOG

In the West, discussions about Iran often begin in 1979: the Islamic Revolution, the hostage crisis, chants of “Death to America,” nuclear tensions, and decades of hostility between Tehran and Washington and Tel Aviv. Much of this “Death to America” rhetoric is contrived, financed and perpetuated by forces inside and outside Iran to foment division, distrust and precipitate war; however, for many Iranians, grievances start much earlier.

Iran has literally been chewed up and spat out numerous times by the West for over a century.

Long before the Islamic Republic existed, Iran experienced foreign interference, economic exploitation, wartime occupation, major famines, coups, sanctions, and repeated violations of sovereignty by outside powers. These events became embedded in Iranian historical memory across generations.

This does not justify every action of this Iranian government, nor does it erase the repression many Iranians feel under their own rulers. But understanding Iranian grudges against the West requires understanding the history that produced it.

For many Iranians, anti-Western sentiment is not simply ideology. It is historical accumulation. And added to this legacy, now, is the recent disastrous Israeli-Trump attacks -that besides killing Khamenei, led to the deaths of 167 school girls; serious damage to one of the oldest historic monuments in the capital and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Golestan Palace – to name a few (and the rise of more hardline elements of the regime). A total utter destructive and political failure to add value! And with this, a continuous barrage of humiliation against Iranians, with threats of permanent destruction of Iranian civilization. Iranians are fully aware that this regime was flown in by the West on a French government-chartered Air France 747! And were secretly in bed with the US for decades, supporting the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Iranians are fully aware of how the west provided and commercially sold billions of dollars of nuclear plants to Iran, and then used a false nuclear pretext to sanction, contain, and impoverish Iranians (to help its Arab allies and Israel prosper at Iran’s expense). But this is all recent, there is a century of pain, abuse and exploitation to a nation that was once America’s strongest, best positioned and staunchest regional ally.  

To help readers understand, here is an incomplete list of major grudges Iranians hold against the West. And, Trump just added to this list.

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1. The Reuter Concession: When Iran Nearly Signed Away Its Economy

One of the earliest grievances dates back to the 19th century.

In 1872, the Qajar monarchy granted British businessman Baron Julius de Reuter an astonishingly broad concession over Iran’s economy. The agreement handed foreign interests extensive control over railways, mines, forests, canals, roads, factories, and other infrastructure projects.

Even some Europeans at the time considered the deal excessive.

To many Iranians, it symbolized a humiliating reality: weak rulers, under financial pressure, surrendering national sovereignty to foreign powers.

Although the concession was eventually cancelled, it left behind a deep suspicion that Western powers did not merely seek commerce with Iran — they sought domination over Iran itself.

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2. World War I: Neutrality Ignored, Famine Unleashed

Iran declared neutrality during World War I.

It did not matter.

British, Russian, Ottoman, and other military forces operated across Iranian territory anyway, turning the country into a geopolitical corridor. Agricultural production collapsed, trade routes were disrupted, disease spread, and governance broke down.

The result was catastrophe.

Iran suffered one of the worst humanitarian crises in its modern history, with famine, displacement, and mass civilian suffering devastating the population. Estimates of deaths vary, but the trauma remained deeply etched into Iranian memory.

For many Iranians, the lesson was clear: great powers spoke of law and sovereignty, but ignored both when strategic interests were involved.

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3. World War II: Occupation Again

History repeated itself during World War II.

Despite declaring neutrality once more, Iran was invaded in 1941 by British and Soviet forces seeking to secure oil supplies and wartime transport routes into the Soviet Union.

The occupation forced Reza Shah from power and placed Iran under foreign military control once again.

Food shortages, inflation, instability, and economic hardship followed.

To many Iranians, the repeated invasions reinforced a painful belief: Iran’s sovereignty existed only when larger powers found it convenient.

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4. The Anglo-Persian Oil Concession

If one grievance became central to modern Iranian nationalism, it was oil.

The Anglo-Persian Oil Company secured highly favorable rights to Iranian oil while Iran itself received only a fraction of the profits generated from its own natural wealth.

The arrangement became symbolic of foreign exploitation:

• Britain accumulated enormous strategic wealth
• Iranian workers often lived in poor conditions
• Iran remained underdeveloped despite vast oil revenues

The anger surrounding oil was not simply economic. It became tied to national dignity.

Many Iranians concluded that Western powers preferred Iran weak, dependent, and controllable.

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5. The 1953 Coup Against Mosaddegh

For many Iranians, this remains the defining betrayal.

Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh sought to nationalize Iranian oil and reclaim control over the country’s resources.

In response, the United States and Britain backed the 1953 Iranian coup d’état, removing Mosaddegh from power and restoring the Shah’s authority.

The message many Iranians took from the coup was devastating:

• democracy was tolerated only when it aligned with Western interests
• national sovereignty could be overridden for oil and geopolitics
• Iran’s political future was subject to foreign manipulation

The coup fundamentally altered Iranian perceptions of the United States and Britain.

Even today, it remains central to Iran’s political consciousness.

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6. Western Support for the Shah

After the coup, the West strongly backed Mohammad Reza Pahlavi for decades.

The Shah modernized parts of Iran and pursued ambitious development projects, but his rule also became associated with:

• authoritarian governance
• censorship
• political imprisonment
• torture by SAVAK
• widening inequality
• aggressive cultural westernization

Because the United States became closely associated with the Shah’s regime, many Iranians came to view American influence not as support for freedom, but support for dictatorship.

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7. 1979: The Revolution, Khomeini, and Western Ambiguity

Another lasting grievance concerns the fall of the Shah and the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini.

Khomeini spent his final months of exile in France before returning to Iran aboard an Air France Boeing 747 in February 1979. Western journalists amplified his message globally as the Shah’s government collapsed.

What remains debated is the extent to which Western governments merely miscalculated events, abandoned the Shah when he became politically unsustainable, or actively facilitated the rise of the Islamic Republic as an alternative to nationalist or leftist revolutionary forces.

Many Iranians — especially secular opponents of the Islamic Republic — believe the West helped create the conditions that empowered the very regime it later spent decades condemning.

To them, the contradiction is bitter:

• the West supported the Shah
• then appeared to abandon him
• then spent decades confronting the regime that replaced him

This sequence reinforced a broader Iranian suspicion that foreign powers treat Iran primarily as a strategic chessboard rather than a sovereign nation.

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8. The Iran-Iraq War and Support for Saddam Hussein

The Iran–Iraq War remains one of the deepest traumas in modern Iranian history.

When Saddam Hussein invaded Iran in 1980, many Iranians believed much of the world sided against them.

Western governments, Gulf monarchies, and others provided Iraq with intelligence, financing, military equipment, and strategic support.

Particularly painful was Iraq’s widespread use of chemical weapons against Iranian troops and civilians.

Many Iranians believe the international response remained muted because revolutionary Iran was seen as the greater geopolitical threat.

The war killed hundreds of thousands and permanently shaped Iranian national identity.

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9. Iran Air Flight 655

In 1988, the U.S. Navy cruiser USS Vincennes shot down Iran Air Flight 655 over the Persian Gulf, killing all 290 civilians aboard.

The United States said the civilian aircraft was mistaken for a hostile military plane.

Inside Iran, however, the incident became a symbol of impunity:

• civilians died
• no formal apology came
• the ship’s captain later received military recognition

For many Iranians, it reinforced the belief that Iranian lives were treated as expendable within larger geopolitical struggles.

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10. Sanctions and Economic Warfare

Modern sanctions became another major grievance.

The United States and its allies imposed sweeping restrictions on Iran’s:

• banking system
• oil exports
• shipping
• technology access
• financial networks

Supporters argue sanctions pressure the Iranian government and nuclear program.

Critics argue ordinary civilians bear the greatest burden through:

• inflation
• medicine shortages
• currency collapse
• unemployment
• declining living standards

Many Iranians distinguish sharply between opposition to their own government and resentment toward policies they believe collectively punish the population.

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11. The Nuclear Deal and the Collapse of Trust

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action briefly created hope for normalized relations.

Iran accepted extensive nuclear restrictions and inspections in exchange for sanctions relief.

But after the United States withdrew from the agreement in 2018 under Donald Trump, many Iranians concluded:

• agreements with the West are temporary
• diplomatic concessions may not survive American political changes
• Iran cannot rely on negotiated guarantees

Even many Iranians critical of their own government viewed the withdrawal as evidence that Western commitments could disappear overnight.

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12. Assassinations, Covert Operations, and Endless Pressure

Iran has also experienced decades of:

• cyberattacks
• sabotage
• assassinations
• covert operations
• proxy wars
• targeted killings

The killing of Qasem Soleimani in 2020 intensified nationalist anger even among some Iranians opposed to the regime itself.

Many Iranians perceive a broader pattern: regardless of who governs Iran, outside powers continue attempting to isolate, weaken, pressure, or destabilize the country.

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13. Cultural Disrespect and National Identity

For many Iranians, the grievances are not purely political.

Iran sees itself as one of the world’s oldest civilizations, with great pride in Persian culture, literature, science, and history.

Actions such as:

• referring to the Persian Gulf as the “Arabian Gulf.”
• broad portrayals of Iran as uniquely irrational or uncivilized
• rhetoric implying collective punishment or regime collapse

are often experienced not simply as political disagreement, but as attacks on national dignity itself.

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Conclusion: History Did Not Begin in 1979

None of this erases the abuses of the Islamic Republic.

None of it eliminates the suffering many Iranians experience under their own government.

But understanding Iranian distrust of the West requires acknowledging that history did not begin with the hostage crisis.

For many Iranians, the grievances stretch across:

• concessions
• occupations
• famines
• coups
• dictatorships
• wars
• sanctions
• broken agreements
• covert conflict

This accumulated memory shapes how millions of Iranians interpret modern events.

And until that history is honestly confronted, distrust between Iran and the West is unlikely to disappear — no matter how many negotiations, sanctions, threats, or temporary agreements come and go.

Ever wondered how Trump can wage war on Iran without any congressional oversight? Ever wondered how Netanyahu – leader of a small arid country (with minimal natural resources) and population of 7 million – has Trump’s ear?

Every year, the United States sends Israel roughly $3.8 billion in military assistance under a long-term aid agreement negotiated during the Obama administration. That includes approximately $3.3 billion in Foreign Military Financing, plus another $500 million annually for missile defense systems such as Iron Dome.

Over a decade, that becomes $38 billion.

That is not symbolic support. That is industrial-scale geopolitical financing.

And here is the part increasingly infuriating Americans across the political spectrum:

A significant portion of that money ultimately flows straight back into the American political and defense ecosystem.

Under the current agreement, most of the military aid must be spent purchasing American weapons, systems, and services. In 2026, roughly 92% of security assistance must be spent in the United States.

So, the system works like this:

American taxpayers fund Israel. Israel purchases American weapons. Defense contractors’ profit. Lobbying networks expand dramatically because they are funded by both Defense Companies and Israeli political money. And this money floods Washington. Then Congress approves more aid and follows Israel’s edicts.

And the cycle repeats itself almost automatically.

Meanwhile, organizations aligned with maintaining strong U.S.-Israel relations have become some of the most powerful financial forces in American politics.

American Israel Public Affairs Committee and affiliated groups publicly stated they spent more than $53 million directly supporting 361 congressional candidates in the 2024 election cycle alone.

Other trackers and campaign finance analyses estimated the broader ecosystem of pro-Israel political spending exceeded $95 million, with some progressive critics claiming totals surpassed $100 million once super PACs and outside expenditures were fully counted.

Step back and think about the ratio for a moment.

Washington sends Israel $3.8 billion every year. Political influence operations tied to maintaining that relationship may cost under $100 million during an election cycle.

From a purely transactional perspective, critics argue that may be one of the best political investments on earth.

Spend tens of millions influencing Congress… preserve tens of billions in aid, weapons transfers, intelligence cooperation, and diplomatic protection. Indeed, Netanyahu recently declared Israel may stop taking military aid from America soon! Of course, because they have figured out very cheap ways to buy our politicians.

Whether one supports the alliance or opposes it, the financial asymmetry is astonishing.

And everybody in Washington understands it.

Politicians know crossing powerful pro-Israel lobbying groups can trigger massive campaign spending against them. Primary challengers suddenly appear. Advertising floods districts. Donor networks mobilize overnight.

This is no longer whispered about quietly in back rooms. Even mainstream publications now openly discuss the growing fear many Democrats have of being targeted by AIPAC-backed spending campaigns if they criticize Israeli policy too aggressively.

That fear shapes behavior.

Members of Congress who might privately question settlement expansion, civilian casualties, or escalation with Iran often remain publicly silent because they understand the political consequences can be severe.

And that is where the entire arrangement begins to smell corrosive to democracy itself.

Because Americans are effectively told:

“Yes, billions of your tax dollars go overseas every year.”

“Yes, lobbying groups spend enormous sums to shape your elections and congressional behavior.”

“Yes, politicians openly fear crossing those networks.”

“But don’t you dare question whether money influences policy.”

At that point, public trust begins to collapse.

To be clear, supporters of the alliance argue the relationship provides enormous strategic benefits to the United States: military cooperation, intelligence sharing, regional influence, technology partnerships, and a democratic influence in a volatile region (which is patent nonsense).

And organizations like AIPAC explicitly state they are funded by American donors and advocate for what they believe are shared U.S.-Israel interests.

But the deeper issue is no longer merely Israel itself.

It is whether American democracy can survive the perception that foreign policy has become financially self-reinforcing — where taxpayer money, lobbying money, campaign money, and defense-industry money all circulate within the same closed political ecosystem.

Because once citizens begin to believe that Congress responds faster to donor pressure than to public opinion, cynicism hardens into something much darker.

And that is the real danger.

No disagreement over Israel.

But a growing belief among Americans is that Washington has become a marketplace where foreign policy is auctioned to the highest and most organized bidder.

There is something deeply rotten in the way Washington talks about Iran. Not simply disagreement. Not strategic competition. Hypocrisy.

The same officials who lecture the world about sovereignty, how we need to protect our southern borders from Mexican invasion, casually discuss bombing another country’s infrastructure on television. The same politicians who invoke “international law”, “treaties” whenever it suits them suddenly discover legal gray zones when military force becomes politically convenient. The same commentators who denounce authoritarian rhetoric abroad cheer censorship, intimidation, and war hysteria at home and with our allies (especially in the Persian Gulf region).

And perhaps worst of all: every failure gets repackaged as moral superiority.

For two decades, American foreign policy elites have insisted Iran is uniquely deceptive, uniquely aggressive, uniquely destabilizing. Yet the record is filled with contradictions so glaring that even allies increasingly struggle to repeat them with a straight face.

Washington says diplomacy is the preferred path — while repeatedly threatening regime collapse during negotiations.

Washington says it seeks regional stability — while tolerating escalation after escalation that pushes the entire Middle East toward economic and military catastrophe.

Washington says it respects international law — while legal scholars across the world openly question the legitimacy of military action and collective punishment strategies surrounding Iran.

The hypocrisy becomes unbearable when intelligence itself enters the picture.

Every conflict with Iran seems to follow the same script:
Anonymous officials promise imminent collapse. Then television pundits celebrate “decisive blows.” And then political leaders declare victory before facts are verified.

Then reality arrives later, quietly, inconveniently.

Recent reporting has already challenged triumphant claims about the destruction of Iran’s military infrastructure, with intelligence assessments suggesting substantial capabilities remained intact despite public declarations of overwhelming success.

This should sound familiar to Americans old enough to remember Iraq.

There were weapons of mass destruction. And then we had shock and awe. And our president landed on an aircraft carrier and declared: mission accomplished.

Each era invents new language, but the machinery remains the same: exaggerate the threat, compress the timeline, marginalize skepticism, then accuse critics of disloyalty.

Meanwhile, Washington demands that the world believe every statement it issues at face value — even after decades of intelligence failures, catastrophic interventions, and shifting narratives.

The hypocrisy is not merely strategic. It is cultural.

American officials condemn Iranian slogans while casually discussing “obliteration,” “maximum pressure,” or the destruction of entire systems essential to civilian life. Iran’s inflammatory rhetoric is treated as proof of barbarism; America’s inflammatory rhetoric is treated as strength.

When Iran suppresses dissent, it is evidence of dictatorship. When American protesters are dismissed as extremists or radicals, it becomes law and order.

When Iran expands regional influence, it is called imperial ambition. When the United States stations forces across half the planet, it is called global security.

The double standard is visible to nearly everyone now — allies, rivals, and ordinary citizens alike.

Even the language surrounding negotiations reeks of contradiction. American leaders insist Iran must negotiate “in good faith” while openly discussing military pressure as leverage. At times, Washington simultaneously claims diplomacy is progressing and that war may be inevitable.

What exactly is the message?

Negotiate sincerely — while a gun is pointed at your head?
Trust the rules-based order — except when exceptions are required?
Believe intelligence agencies — except when prior claims collapse?

The tragedy is that none of this makes genuine peace more likely.

Humiliation is not diplomacy.
Propaganda is not a strategy.
Contradiction is not credibility.

And credibility is the one resource superpowers cannot afford to waste. Because eventually, the world stops listening. You become the “boy who cried wolf”!

Not because Iran is innocent. Not because Tehran lacks its own hypocrisies, propaganda, repression, or regional ambitions. But because Washington increasingly sounds like an empire demanding moral exemption from standards it imposes on everyone else. In effect, it creates a scenario where even ordinary Iranians cannot trust the US and will not take on the regime (i.e., become our allies) because they simply know the truth.

The reality is that the Shah was toppled and the Mullahs were put in power by the US and its allies. Iranians know that. The Mullahs had secret relations (later openly revealed as the Iran-Contra matter) with the Reagan administration for over a decade. And the Mullahs assisted the US in both the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions and subsequent stabilization efforts in a very direct and serious way. To then stand on a podium and say for 47 years the Mullahs have been a problem and somehow remained in power without indirect Western support is simply nonsense. Everyone knows the truth – especially Iranians.

That is the real stench of hypocrisy hanging over the whole Iran debate.

It’s not merely conflict. It’s not merely rivalry.

But the suffocating odor of a political establishment that still believes the world cannot smell its contradictions anymore.

There is an old and unresolved ghost hanging over American politics: the 1980 “October Surprise.”

For decades, allegations have circulated that figures connected to Ronald Reagan’s campaign worked behind the scenes to encourage Iran to delay releasing the American embassy hostages until after Jimmy Carter lost the election. The theory has never been conclusively proven, and congressional investigations ultimately found insufficient evidence to substantiate the claims. But the suspicions never fully disappeared — largely because the hostages were released literally minutes after Reagan took office, and because later scandals like Iran-Contra made secret dealings with Tehran no longer seem unimaginable.

Whether true, partly true, or permanently unknowable, the political lesson many Democrats took from the era was brutally simple:

Republicans play for keeps. Jimmy Carter tried to behave like a statesman. Reagan’s world behaved like a knife fight.

And Democrats have spent forty years acting shocked that ruthlessness defeats etiquette in modern American politics.

Which raises an uncomfortable question in the Trump era:

If Democrats thought the way Republicans are accused of thinking in 1980, what would they do with Iran now?

The cynical answer is obvious.

They would understand that the Achilles heel of every populist nationalist administration is not ideology — it is gasoline prices.

Inflation.
Fuel costs.
Consumer panic.
Supply chain disruption.
Financial market fear.

American presidencies often survive scandals.
They rarely survive economic pain.

The Strait of Hormuz remains one of the most strategically important chokepoints on Earth, through which a large share of global oil shipments pass. Any serious disruption there sends immediate shockwaves through energy markets and political systems alike. Even fears of instability can move oil prices sharply upward.

A truly ruthless political machine would immediately and quietly recognize this reality.

Not by openly advocating chaos. Not by publicly supporting escalation. But by understanding that geopolitical pressure can become domestic political pressure astonishingly fast.

And that is precisely why the entire situation becomes morally dangerous.

Because once politics becomes purely transactional, foreign crises stop being international emergencies and start becoming electoral opportunities.

The temptation becomes obvious:
A weakened economy hurts incumbents.
Rising fuel prices create public anger.
Voters blame the president.
The opposition benefits.

That logic is toxic. But it is also very real.

Washington has spent decades accusing foreign powers of manipulating American politics through economic disruption, energy leverage, cyber pressure, and strategic timing. Yet Americans rarely confront the darker mirror image: the possibility that domestic political actors can become quietly tempted by international instability when it serves their electoral interests.

That is the lesson lurking beneath every discussion of the October Surprise allegations.

If the Democrats were shrewd, they could very quietly send a message to the Mullahs to ‘keep negotiating’ until after the elections in November.

Much like Jimmy Carter, Trump would become toast! Much like Jimmy Carter, the press could start a countdown: day 67 of the Iran Conflict, Day 72 of the Iran Conflict – and hammer home Trump’s humiliation daily, in the same way as Ted Koppel ran ABC’s daily Nightline updates on the Iran Hostage crisis.  

Every negotiation then becomes political theater. Every intelligence leak becomes campaign ammunition. Every military escalation becomes entangled with polling data.

The real danger for Democrats is not that they are too ruthless. It is almost the opposite. For years, many Democratic strategists convinced themselves that institutions, norms, and procedural restraint were enough to preserve political legitimacy, even while Republicans increasingly treated politics as asymmetric warfare.

That imbalance produced enormous frustration among Democratic voters, who watched Republicans fight emotionally, culturally, legally, and strategically — while Democrats often responded with white papers, procedural objections, and appeals to decorum.

The October Surprise allegations continue to haunt American political memory precisely because they symbolize the moment many Americans began to suspect that electoral warfare had become more important than the national interest itself.  But perhaps the national interest here does require a massive electoral gain by the Democrats – enough to repeal Republican overreach, and enough votes to impeach the President. The truth is the Iran Conflict is the biggest strategic loss for the United States ever and will lead to a total transformation of global affairs – with the US being the primary loser. It is imperative that the political dynamic in Washington changes quickly. Trump is leading the country to ruin.

If Democrats were truly “shrewd” in the coldest possible sense, they might carefully study what happened in 1980 with the October Surprise. And then act. It should not be forgotten that the Supreme Leader in Iran lost his father, mother, wife, and daughter due to actions taken by Trump and Netanyahu. He wants nothing more than to hang them by their balls – literally! Democrats will find no better ally.

Washington is making a quiet but consequential mistake in the war with Iran. It isn’t a shortage of firepower or a lack of access. It’s a failure of independent judgment—an increasing willingness to let an ally’s urgency, intelligence framing, and timelines substitute for America’s own.

That isn’t an alliance. It’s drift.

The distinction matters because the United States and Israel are not fighting the same war, even when they share targets. Israel’s doctrine compresses time: neutralize threats quickly, accept escalation risk, and prioritize immediate security. The U.S., by design, is supposed to balance a wider ledger—regional stability, global energy flows, alliance cohesion beyond the Middle East, and long-term deterrence. One system thinks in weeks and months; the other is meant to think in years.

Yet in practice, Washington has begun to import Israel’s clock.

That shows up in how decisions are made. Israeli intelligence—built on decades of human networks inside Iran—naturally carries weight in a theater where U.S. HUMINT is thin. But weight has turned into a substitute. Israeli assessments increasingly set the tempo, define urgency, and shape targeting narratives. American collection—world-leading in space and signals—is then used to fill in, rather than to challenge, those frames.

That inversion is subtle. It is also dangerous.

The United States has paid for this mistake before. In 2002–03, Washington leaned on a mix of sources and assumptions about Iraqi WMD that were not sufficiently contested. The lesson was not merely that intelligence can be wrong; it was that unverified consensus becomes policy. In 2006, Israel’s own campaign in Lebanon showed how confidence in airpower and intelligence can outpace battlefield reality. More recently, across multiple conflicts, early predictions about rapid collapse—of regimes of capabilities—have routinely failed.

These are not historical curiosities. There are warnings about the process.

Good intelligence is adversarial. It is cross-checked across independent streams. It tolerates dissent. It forces policymakers to confront uncertainty rather than smoothing it over. When one partner’s picture becomes the default picture—especially under pressure to act—the discipline erodes.

Washington’s answer has been to cite the obvious: Israel has sources on the ground; the U.S. does not. That is true. It is also beside the point. A lack of independent access should slow decisions and raise the bar for corroboration. Instead, it has lowered it. The absence of U.S. HUMINT has become a reason to accept rather than test allied reporting—particularly when it aligns with a push toward action.

That is not intelligence tradecraft. It is convenient.

The timing problem makes it worse. Israeli urgency is not purely strategic; it is also political. Benjamin Netanyahu operates within a volatile domestic landscape—fragile coalitions, legal pressures, and an electorate that rewards visible action against external threats. Acting quickly can consolidate support; delaying can carry costs. That doesn’t make Israeli decisions irrational. It makes them time compressed.

The U.S. system is supposed to absorb such inputs and then decompress them—placing immediate threats in a longer arc of consequences. When Washington instead adopts that compression, it inherits not just Israeli intelligence but Israeli urgency. Urgency is not a neutral variable. It biases interpretation toward action.

There is a recent counterexample that shows what independent discipline looks like. In operations against Venezuela, Washington defined its own objectives, built its own intelligence picture, and executed without outsourcing the frame. The results were not perfect—no operation is—but they were owned. The U.S. decided, verified, and acted on its own assessment.

That clarity is missing in Iran.

Here, the pattern is different. U.S. policymakers face a denied area for HUMINT, accept allied sourcing as the primary source, and move on timelines that reflect external urgency. The consequence is not just a higher risk of error. It is a subtle transfer of authorship: a strategy that is adopted rather than built.

The costs are concrete. First, targeting risk rises when assumptions are not stress-tested across independent channels. Second, escalation control weakens when decisions are made under compressed timelines, leaving less room for alternative courses. Third, policy ownership blurs; when outcomes diverge from expectations, it is harder to identify where judgment failed because the chain of reasoning was never fully American to begin with.

This is not an argument against alliance. Israel is a critical partner with capabilities the U.S. lacks in that theater. Nor is it an argument that Israeli intelligence is unreliable. It is often excellent. The argument is simpler: excellence is not a substitute for verification. Allies bring perspective and access. A superpower must bring independence.

That independence is currently underused.

The symptom is a familiar one in large institutions: drift. Not a single bad decision, but a sequence of small concessions—accept this framing, move on this timeline, treat this source as sufficient—that accumulate into a strategy no one fully authored. In such environments, momentum replaces judgment. Decisions feel inevitable because the alternatives were never fully developed.

Washington has the tools to correct courses. It can demand dual-track intelligence, requiring that key claims be supported by at least one independent collection stream before driving action. It can institutionalize red-teaming, empowering it to challenge allied assumptions without penalty. It can slow decision cycles just enough to allow dissent to surface. And it can reassert that U.S. objectives—not borrowed urgency—set the pace.

None of this requires new capabilities. It requires discipline.

US leadership MUST clearly understand that US strategic interests are completely different from Israel’s interests. Israeli leadership is primarily interested in their own re-election, expanding Israel’s oil and gas fields in the Mediterranean, and splintering Iran to render Iran impotent (i.e., not a threat or potential threat to Israel). The US, on the other hand, could use Iran as a regional strategic base (as it did in the past), a significant market and market hub to serve Central Asia, a strategic ally against China, and an industrial and business partner in major regional opportunities. For the US, a transformation of Iran is an opportunity, but for Israel, Iran represents a threat. It assigns different priorities and timelines to the entire effort.

The stakes are not abstract. A war with Iran sits at the intersection of global energy markets, regional stability, and great-power competition. Decisions made on incomplete or unchallenged assumptions don’t just risk tactical error; they shape escalation paths that are hard to unwind.

The United States does not lack power in this conflict. It risks lacking something more basic: the habit of using that power based on its own verified judgment.

A superpower that won’t think for itself does not become stronger through alliance. It becomes easier to move.

And in a war defined by timing, that may be the most consequential vulnerability of all.

In the opening months of the 2026 Iran conflict, U.S. forces deployed some of their most advanced precision weapons at scale. In doing so, they did more than strike targets. They seeded the battlefield with some of the most sophisticated military technology ever built—systems shaped by decades of research, billions of dollars in investment, and generations of engineering refinement.

And much of it did not disappear on impact.

Across modern battlefields, recovery is as important as destruction. Iranian teams, long experienced in collecting foreign military debris, are not searching for pristine, intact weapons. They are looking for something more common and often more useful: partially intact components, unexploded ordnance, guidance assemblies, fragments of composite materials, sensor housings, and control mechanisms. In contemporary reverse engineering, a single circuit board can be as valuable as an entire weapon. A fragment of casing can reveal materials science decisions. A damaged actuator can expose mechanical design philosophy. Each piece, however small, reduces uncertainty.

Among the systems now believed to be yielding such fragments are the Tomahawk missile, the AGM-158 JASSM, the GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb, and, in cases where platforms have been lost, components from the MQ-9 Reaper. None of these need to be recovered intact to be useful. Enough fragments, combined with careful observation of how these systems behave in combat, can yield a surprisingly coherent picture.

This is not theoretical. Iran has demonstrated this capability before. In 2011, it captured a U.S. RQ-170 Sentinel and later revealed drones that clearly reflected elements of its design. Those aircraft were not perfect replicas of American technology. They did not need to be. What mattered was that Iran had learned enough to alter its own development path. The lesson was not that reverse engineering produces parity. It was that it produces progress.

That process is now unfolding again, but under very different conditions. The scale of deployment, the sophistication of the systems involved, and the presence of other technologically capable actors all combine to create a far more consequential environment for learning.

Public discussion of the war has focused, understandably, on its financial cost. By late April 2026, direct U.S. military expenditures had reached roughly $25 billion. At the same time, American consumers were absorbing a parallel burden through higher energy and food prices. In the first month of the conflict alone, gasoline costs rose sharply, adding approximately $8.4 billion to national spending at the pump. The average household is now paying roughly $80 to $90 more each month for fuel, while grocery prices—driven in part by transportation and fertilizer costs tied to energy markets—have climbed between three and eight percent.

Taken together, the visible cost of the war has already exceeded $33 billion in its opening phase.

Yet even that substantial figure captures only what can be measured directly. It reflects money spent, prices paid, and inventories depleted. It does not capture what is being learned.

Because modern wars do not simply destroy assets. It transfers knowledge.

To understand the magnitude of that transfer, it is necessary to look beyond unit costs and consider what these systems represent in developmental terms. A Tomahawk missile may cost a few million dollars to produce, but the program itself spans decades. Originating in the Cold War, it has evolved through successive “blocks,” incorporating advances in terrain-following navigation, GPS integration, communications, survivability, and targeting. Over time, the United States has invested tens of billions of dollars in the broader ecosystem of cruise missile technology. What is launched in a modern conflict is not merely a munition. It is the accumulated output of half a century of innovation.

When hundreds of Tomahawks are fired in a matter of months, that accumulated knowledge is not just being used. It is being exposed. Adversaries observing these strikes can begin to infer patterns: how the missiles route themselves through terrain, how they integrate navigation systems, how they behave in the final moments before impact. Even without recovering a complete system, fragments can reveal materials, mechanical structures, and aspects of internal design. Combined with external observation—radar tracking, infrared signatures, electronic emissions—these fragments contribute to a growing understanding.

The same dynamic applies, perhaps even more sensitively, to the AGM-158 JASSM. Unlike the Tomahawk, JASSM derives much of its value from its ability to survive. It is designed to penetrate defended airspace, relying on low-observable shaping, specialized materials, and carefully planned flight paths. The United States has invested well over a billion dollars in the development and refinement of this system, with continuous upgrades aimed at extending range and improving survivability.

But stealth is not invisibility. It is a reduction in detectability, and the reduction can be measured. When a stealth system is used repeatedly in a contested environment, it generates data. Adversaries can study which radar frequencies are more effective at detection, how signatures vary with angle or altitude, and where vulnerabilities emerge during flight. If fragments are recovered, even in degraded form, they can provide additional insight into materials and construction. The objective is not to replicate the system in full. It is to understand it well enough to counter it.

Even smaller systems, such as the GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb, contribute to this process. Designed to enable high-volume precision strikes, the GBU-39 reflects a broader philosophy of warfare that prioritizes accuracy, efficiency, and scalability. Yet its very proliferation creates opportunity. Each deployment increases the likelihood that components will be recovered. From those components, adversaries can learn about guidance mechanisms, aerodynamic behavior, and detonation logic. These insights, in turn, inform the design of hardened targets, decoys, and countermeasures.

Platforms like the MQ-9 Reaper introduce an even richer set of possibilities. Unlike munitions, which are designed to be expended, drones persist. When they are lost—through mechanical failure, interception, or accident—they can yield a wide range of recoverable elements, from sensor systems to communications hardware. These components are not incidental. They define how the system sees, how it communicates, and how it integrates into larger operational networks. Understanding them can provide adversaries with insight not just into a single platform, but into the broader architecture of American military operations.

What makes the current environment particularly consequential is that this learning does not occur in isolation. Russia brings decades of experience in missile technology and electronic warfare. China contributes advanced manufacturing capabilities, extensive electronics supply chains, and increasingly sophisticated analytical tools. Iran provides access to the battlefield itself, along with the recovered materials and observational data that originate there.

This is not a centralized, coordinated effort in the traditional sense. It is something more diffuse and, in many ways, more effective. Knowledge moves. Insights are shared, compared, and refined across different contexts. A fragment recovered in one theater can influence design decisions in another. An observed vulnerability can inform countermeasures developed thousands of miles away.

Within this environment, a powerful asymmetry emerges. The United States invests billions of dollars and decades of effort to develop advanced systems, and millions more each time one is deployed. Its adversaries, by contrast, can often extract meaningful insights at a fraction of that cost. They do not need to replicate their full capability. They need only to reduce its effectiveness.

This does not mean that the United States is losing its technological edge overnight. It continues to lead in integration, reliability, and the ability to conduct complex, large-scale operations. Reverse engineering remains difficult, and reproducing American manufacturing quality is a significant challenge.

But war does not require perfect replication to alter the balance. It requires only incremental gains. If adversaries can improve their ability to detect a stealth system, disrupt a guidance signal, or anticipate a deployment pattern, then the effectiveness of U.S. systems is diminished at the margin. And in modern warfare, those margins matter.

Over time, this dynamic creates a feedback loop. As systems are deployed and observed, adversaries adapt. In response, the United States must upgrade its capabilities by introducing new variants, protections, and approaches. These upgrades come at a cost, both financial and temporal. Development cycles accelerate. Technological lifespans shorten. What was once a durable advantage is becoming a moving target.

This is the cost curve for exposure. Weapons must now be designed not only to perform, but to withstand the consequences of being studied. That requirement adds complexity, increases expense, and places new demands on the defense industrial base.

The financial cost of the war is therefore only part of the story. The deeper cost lies in the gradual erosion of what was once unknown. Each use of an advanced system reveals something about how it works, how it is used, and how it might be countered. These revelations do not appear in budget documents or economic indicators, but they accumulate, nonetheless.

War, in this sense, has become as much a contest of learning as of destruction. Every engagement contributes to a growing body of knowledge, not just for those conducting operations, but for those observing them. The battlefield is no longer just a site of conflict. It is a laboratory.

The United States is not merely expending resources in this war. It is exposing the results of decades of investment—its design philosophies, its operational patterns, and its technical assumptions. Some degrees of exposure is unavoidable. Advanced systems cannot be used without being seen. But that does not make the cost any less real.

Because, unlike financial expenditures, which can be replenished, knowledge once revealed cannot be reclaimed. It spreads, it is analyzed, and it is built upon. What begins as a fragmentary understanding can evolve into effective countermeasures and, eventually, into new systems.

The longer this war continues, the more opportunities exist for that process to unfold. Each additional deployment generates more data. Each additional strike creates more fragments. Each additional engagement adds to the pool of knowledge available to those who seek to understand and counter American capabilities.

And that knowledge does not remain static.

It accelerates.

The United States can rebuild its stockpiles. It can fund new programs. It can design the next generation of weapons. What it cannot do is undo what has already been revealed.

Because in modern conflict, every strike carries a second effect. Not just destruction—but transfer. And the longer the war goes on, the more of that transfer takes place.

This exposure is not limited to American systems. Israeli precision weapons—particularly stand-off munitions and guidance kits—are also part of the same battlespace and therefore part of the same learning environment. Systems such as the SPICE-guided bomb, the Delilah missile, and the Rampage missile reflect a distinct design philosophy: heavy reliance on electro-optical targeting, resilience in GPS-denied environments, and highly flexible standoff strike capability. While there is little credible public evidence that intact versions of these systems have been captured, the recovery of fragments—guidance sections, sensor housings, fin assemblies, and propulsion remnants—is both plausible and consistent with how modern strike environments operate.

What makes these systems particularly valuable to study is not just their hardware, but their logic. Israeli munitions often incorporate scene-matching and image-based targeting, allowing them to identify and strike targets based on pre-programmed visual signatures rather than relying solely on satellite navigation. Even partial recovery, combined with observation of strike patterns, can help adversaries understand how targets are recognized, how guidance transitions under electronic interference, and how precision is maintained when GPS signals are degraded or denied. In effect, Israeli systems expand the dataset. They do not simply add more of the same information; they introduce different approaches to the same problem, broadening the range of techniques available for analysis.

The strategic effect of this cumulative exposure is not only technical. It is psychological and political. The ability to absorb advanced strikes—American and Israeli alike—recover what remains, and extract usable insight reinforces a narrative inside Iran that it is not merely enduring pressure but learning from it. Each recovered fragment, each analyzed guidance system, each observed strike pattern contributes incrementally to that perception. Over time, survival begins to look like progress.

And as that transfer compounds—not just of American systems, but Israeli ones as well—it does more than narrow technological gaps. It reinforces a belief inside Iran that survival is success, and that each round of conflict leaves it not weakened, but more capable and more confident.  should be noted that Iranians fully appreciate this concept and have not employed their most advanced systems so far. Yet, we now know from congressional testimony (for budgets) that the US has, in fact, used its most advanced systems – because all its missile inventory has been depleted. This is so embarrassing. This is simply incompetent.

When the US engages in war, it is best for actions to be swift, focused, and successful. If the war drags on, the US loses. This war has been badly mismanaged. And the losses go beyond the financial cost so far, including increases in commodity prices (driven by global shortages), massive losses in critical technologies, and the resulting acceleration in technology development (i.e., timelines handed to others). And both China and Russia (and others) are watching, learning about US capabilities and weaknesses.

The decision to go to war cannot be taken casually. The downside – the losses – are huge for the United States.  This administration is useless and incompetent.

The financial and technological costs of the war are compounded by something less tangible but equally consequential: the distortion of the information environment. As the conflict has intensified, attacks on U.S. facilities in the region—such as the reported strikes on Camp Buehring—have been real, damaging, and part of a broader cycle of escalation. Satellite imagery and field reports suggest that Iranian drone and missile strikes caused significant disruption to operations, forcing adjustments in posture and prompting additional U.S. troop deployments to the region.

At the same time, the narrative surrounding these events has become increasingly fragmented. Claims that such attacks were orchestrated or “baited” to manufacture public support for war have circulated widely, even as more grounded reporting indicates they were part of an ongoing exchange of strikes following earlier U.S.-Israeli operations. Complicating matters further, analysts have pointed to a surge in AI-generated and state-linked misinformation that has polluted the information space, making it difficult to separate verified developments from exaggeration or fabrication.

This matters because perception is not a side effect of modern war—it is a domain of it. When events are misinterpreted, amplified, or reframed, they influence public opinion, alliance cohesion, and strategic signaling. For adversaries, this confusion can be advantageous. It obscures intent, complicates response, and creates space for narratives that portray the United States not as a decisive actor, but as reactive, divided, or manipulative.

In that sense, the information environment becomes another layer of hidden cost. Just as fragments of weapons are recovered and studied, fragments of narrative are captured and repurposed. The same conflict that is exposing American and allied military systems is also exposing American decision-making to reinterpretation and distortion. Both forms of exposure—technical and informational—feed into the same broader dynamic: they provide adversaries with material, whether physical or perceptual, that can be analyzed, adapted, and used.

And like technological exposure, informational distortion compounds over time. The longer the conflict continues, the more events there are to reinterpret, the more narratives take hold, and the harder it becomes to maintain a clear, consistent understanding of what is actually happening. In modern war, uncertainty is not just a byproduct. It is a resource.

When Iranian drones and missiles struck Camp Buehring and nearby U.S. facilities in Kuwait in early March 2026, the headlines focused on escalation. Iran had struck American forces. U.S. personnel were dead. The conflict had crossed a threshold.

But beneath the headlines, the facts tell a more uncomfortable story.

This was not a surprise attack in the traditional sense. It was a predictable one.

Within days of U.S.–Israeli strikes on Iran, retaliation began. Iranian drones and missiles targeted multiple U.S. installations across the Gulf, including Kuwait, one of the most densely concentrated hubs of American military presence in the region.

At a tactical operations center near Kuwait’s Port Shuaiba, six U.S. service members were killed, and more than 30 were wounded when an Iranian one-way attack drone struck a makeshift facility described as relatively unprotected.

Other strikes across Kuwait killed additional personnel and injured dozens more.

These were not isolated incidents. They were part of a pattern.

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A Base Within Reach

Geography matters. Kuwait sits just across the Persian Gulf from Iran—roughly 100 to 200 miles at its closest points, well within the operational range of Iranian drones, cruise missiles, and even legacy aircraft.

Bases like Camp Buehring are not hidden. They are fixed, known, and mapped long before any conflict begins. Their coordinates are not secrets. Their function—as staging and logistics hubs—is well understood.

In any escalation scenario, they are obvious targets. That is not hindsight. That is baseline planning.

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The Defense That Wasn’t There

What makes the Kuwait strikes so difficult to dismiss as unavoidable is not simply that they happened—but how they happened.

The drone strike that killed six American personnel did not penetrate a hardened bunker. It struck a trailer-style tactical operations center with no overhead protection—a structure vulnerable to precisely the type of aerial attack Iran had already demonstrated in prior conflicts.

The defenses in place were oriented toward ground threats—barriers, perimeter security—not toward low-cost, one-way drones descending from above.

This mismatch was not theoretical. It had already been observed in earlier attacks in the region. The vulnerability was known.

And yet, the posture remained.

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Known Risk, Real Consequences

Military planners do not lack imagination. They model adversaries, simulate responses, and war-game escalation pathways. In the case of Iran, the threat profile was not ambiguous. Iran had demonstrated:

• drone swarms
• precision strikes
• willingness to target U.S. facilities

Retaliation was not just possible. It was expected.

Which raises the central question: If the attack was predictable, and the vulnerability was known, why were personnel still operating in exposed structures inside a strike envelope measured in minutes?

Because once that question is asked, the explanations narrow.

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The Uncomfortable Possibilities

There are only a few ways to interpret what happened.

One is that planners underestimated the timing or scale of retaliation—that they believed they had more time to adjust defenses than they did.

Another is that defensive adaptation lagged behind offensive escalation—those operations moved faster than protection.

And then there is a third, more unsettling interpretation—not of deliberate sacrifice, but of accepted exposure.

Not that anyone intended for soldiers to die. But the risk of that outcome was known and ultimately tolerated.

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The Line Between Risk and Exposure

Every military deployment involves risk. Forward bases exist precisely because proximity matters—for logistics, for speed, for deterrence. But there is a difference between risk and exposure. Risk is unavoidable. Exposure is situational.

When personnel are placed inside a known strike radius, in structures that do not meet the threat profile of the adversary, in a moment when retaliation is expected, not hypothetical, the distinction begins to blur.

At that point, the question is no longer whether danger existed. It is whether it was adequately mitigated.

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What Happened Next

After the strikes, the narrative hardened quickly. Iran had attacked American forces. U.S. casualties were real. The conflict had escalated.

All true.

But something else happened at the same time. The attack clarified the enemy. It simplified the story. It created a moment that was easy to understand, communicate, and react to. And in war, those moments matter. Because they shape public perception as much as battlefield reality.

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Dark Realism

There is a temptation to explain events like this in absolute terms—to assume either perfect competence or deliberate intent.

Reality is more uncomfortable than either.

Because what emerges from the Kuwait strikes is something more familiar, and in some ways more troubling:

A system that understood the risk but did not move fast enough to eliminate it.

A posture that reflected confidence in escalation control that did not hold.

And a set of decisions in which exposure was not created deliberately but was not avoided either.

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The Question That Remains

The deaths at these bases were not inevitable in the abstract. They occurred in a specific context: a known adversary, a known capability, a known escalation cycle, and a known vulnerability.

Which leaves a question that does not go away: Not whether the United States intended for these strikes to happen. But whether it accepted conditions under which they were likely to.

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Conclusion: Predictable Still Counts

War is chaotic. Not everything can be prevented. But some things can be anticipated.

The strikes on U.S. bases in Kuwait were not random acts of violence emerging from nowhere. They were the foreseeable response of a capable adversary operating within range against fixed targets.

The casualties that followed were real. The damage was real. And the conditions that made both possible were, to a significant degree, understood in advance.

That is what makes the episode difficult. Because the most unsettling possibility is not that anyone planned it.

It is that it did not have to unfold the way it did—and yet it did anyway. The case for a nefarious conspiracy by the Trump administration to manufacture a scenario to pull the American public’s heartstrings is very strong. I really would not put this beyond the ‘Christian-backed’ Trump administration and Hegseth. This is pure evil.

Putting lipstick on a pig is the only way to describe the Trump administration’s systematic failures in dealing with the fallout from a failed Iran War!

This article is part of a five-part series detailing the Trump administration’s total, systemic failures in its Iran campaign. From (1) trying to decapitate Iran, only to engineer Mojtaba Khamenei’s rise, and the emergence of hardline IRGC leadership into key roles governing Iran, to (2) a failed attempt to capture Iran’s Uranium that now, in retrospect, looks more like a Jimmy Carter’s failed desert hostage rescue mission, to (3) the obliteration of US bases in the region with not only billions of dollars of damage but also – more importantly – the serious loss of electronic surveillance and guidance systems which will take years to restore. And then (4) we look at Trump’s failure to blockade the Straits of Hormuz and his aborted series of negotiations.

Trump has made the situation inside Iran much worse. He has added no value to the US or its allies. In a final, (5), conclusive article we explore how, without a visible or viable off-ramp, and a near total collapse of the world (and regional) economies, Trump may choose (or has already chosen) to either – directly or indirectly – nuke Iran, causing devastation on a scale never seen by mankind, leading to the death of over 10 million Iranians and large parts of Iran rendered totally uninhabitable for centuries – and precipitating the start of World War III, and the end of the American empire.

For me, with the evidence so blatant and openly available, what is incredibly baffling is the total lack of congressional oversight and control. How can a rogue President conduct such an expensive, failed campaign for over 60 days without challenge? This is not only a systematic failure of the Trump administration to conduct a campaign against Iran, but also a systematic failure of governance in America – and the whole world (with no real oversight by the UN Security Council, or other allied leadership). It is a failure on an unprecedented scale.

I implore you to read all 5 articles and decide for yourself.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

The current crisis with Iran has entered its most dangerous phase: not because nuclear use is certain, but because the assumptions that normally prevent it are eroding.

The U.S. blockade has not restored confidence in the Strait of Hormuz. Mine-clearing could take months, and the psychological impact of the possibility of mines is still deterring commercial shipping, even where passage is technically possible. Meanwhile, Iran-linked shadow fleet vessels have reportedly continued to transit the strait despite sanctions and interdictions, weakening the blockade’s credibility.

That is the strategic trap: Washington is applying pressure but has not yet achieved submission. Tehran is absorbing punishment but not yet collapsing. Israel sees time working against it. And global markets are paying the price.

This is how wars move toward the unthinkable.

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The First Rung: A Failed Blockade Becomes a Test of Will

The blockade was supposed to force Iran to bend. Instead, it has created a stalemate.

The United States can stop some ships. It can redirect vessels. It can interdict sanctioned cargo. But it cannot make commercial shippers believe the Strait of Hormuz is safe. France has already emphasized the need to restore unrestricted navigation, while TotalEnergies warned that a prolonged disruption could produce severe energy shortages, especially in Asia.

That means the blockade is becoming politically dangerous for Washington. If oil stays high, shipping remains frozen, and Iran continues moving some oil through shadow channels, the strategy begins to look less like coercion and more like self-inflicted economic damage.

The blockade has failed and will continue to fail. At this point, pressure builds for escalation.

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The Second Rung: A Failed Attempt to Capture Iran’s Nuclear Stockpile Blows Up

The core issue is not only shipping. It is the uranium itself that is in storage.

The IAEA has reported that Iran is the only non-nuclear-weapon state under the NPT to have produced and accumulated uranium enriched up to 60%. SIS has warned that the crucial question is the location of Iran’s 60% stockpile, with reporting indicating material may be in underground complexes at Isfahan and Natanz.

That creates the nightmare scenario for Israel and the United States: Iran may not need to win the war. It only needs to preserve enough material, expertise, and infrastructure to reconstitute a weapon pathway later. So the conflict shifts from “stop Iranian shipping” to “find and neutralize the uranium.”

The attempt to capture Iran’s Nuclear Stockpile has failed dramatically. And at this point, pressure builds for further escalation.

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The Third Rung: Total Inability to Negotiate, and Trump’s Failure to Decapitate the Regime

Iran’s leadership now operates from a siege mentality.

A wounded successor, a hardline security state, a naval blockade, attacks on nuclear facilities, and attempts to isolate its oil trade all reinforce the same conclusion inside Tehran: this is no longer a dispute over enrichment. It is a war for regime survival.

That makes Iran more dangerous, not less.

A regime that believes surrender means death may choose r,etaliation over compromise. It may use proxies, mines, missiles, cyberattacks, and ship seizures not because these tools can defeat the United States, but because they can make the cost of victory unbearable.

The darkest possibility is that Tehran uses the nuclear shadow as a shield: not necessarily a deliverable weapon, but enough ambiguity around fissile material, radiological devices, or hidden stockpiles to deter invasion or regime collapse.

Trump failed miserably at decapitating the regime and has engineered the rise of the most potent, most motivated regime at war with the US/Israel. There can be no negotiations at this point. This, too, will increase pressure for escalation.

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The Fourth Rung: Total Loss of US bases and Ability to Conduct a Conventional War

There is a view held in Washington that the US has the capacity to destroy Iran using conventional weapons. But this is a false assessment.

Had this been true, US bases in the region would have been protected, and key US assets would have been preserved. Had this been true, Iran would not have penetrated Israel’s Iron Dome defensive system.

It really doesn’t matter if the US and Israel can bomb Iran; the point is, Iran can attack critical US, Israeli, and Arab assets. This would be devastating and should be factored.

There is an adage in military analysis: if you hit a guy at a bar, you really don’t want the guy to get up and punch back. Because you could get hit – not only hard – but end up on the floor for a long time. The punch has to be devastating.  Iran has survived and can (and will) punch back.

Trump has failed to calculate the impact of Iran’s asymmetric defense. He picked a fight with the wrong guy. And many people had warned Trump. Many presidents before him had declined this fight. Indeed, Netanyahu – a small guy – had persuaded the big guy to take on their foe. And Trump got suckered in.

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How the Ladder Could Break

The path to nuclear use would likely not begin with a clean decision. It would begin with a chain reaction.

First, the blockade continues to fail. Oil stays above crisis levels. Shipping remains frozen. Iran keeps some shadow exports moving. Iran further expands interdictions and strikes with further mining of more waters, seizing more vessels, or hitting allied infrastructure.

Second, the U.S. fails to capture Iran’s nuclear inventory, resulting in an embarrassing mission outcome.

Third, all efforts to negotiate a resolution to the conflict fail, and Iran’s regime becomes increasingly hardline and militant.

Fourth, Iran successfully obliterates US conventional assets and demonstrates the capability to obliterate critical infrastructure and assets in the region, at US allies.  

None of this analysis is lost on US allies – especially Israel. And, more than the Arab states on the Persian Gulf, Israel’s doctrine is built around preventing existential threats before they fully mature. Indeed, Israel’s defense minister threatened Iran this past week with “devastation” and “restoration” to the Stone Age, meaning Nuclear attack.

The “Samson Option” is commonly used to describe Israel’s presumed last-resort nuclear retaliation doctrine if the state faces destruction. It is not an ordinary war plan; it is a deterrent concept rooted in survival.

But the danger in this crisis is that the line between last resort and preemption can blur. If Israeli intelligence believes Iran is assembling a device, preparing missile delivery systems, or moving nuclear material beyond reach, Israeli leaders may conclude that conventional options are no longer enough. Analysts have long described Israel’s nuclear posture as one of deliberate ambiguity, with estimates often placing its arsenal around several dozen warheads.

In that environment, Israel’s fear would be simple: wait too long, and Iran crosses a threshold that cannot be reversed. Israel would hit Iran if the US doesn’t.

The demand then becomes: end this now.

That is where the nuclear threshold becomes vulnerable—not because anyone wants nuclear war, but because each side convinces itself that the next escalation is the only way to prevent something worse.

Despite Trump’s denials this past week – declaring that the U.S. had plenty of lethal options beyond employing nukes, there are many indications of the U.S. and Israel preparing for a nuclear attack.

First, only a few weeks ago, Trump declared that the US would use bombs 25 times the power of the bombs used to date in Iran. Given what was used in destroying Iran’s underground bases (Bunker Busters), this clearly would put the US in the small strategic nuclear bomb arena. This was backed up by a message Trump sent on his Truth Social feed, saying he would completely destroy Iranian civilization. Again, this is code for a nuclear attack. Nothing else would do that.

Then, there are persistent online reports claiming that President Trump attempted to use nuclear codes against Iran but was stopped by a high-ranking military official. This was originally reported by former CIA analyst Larry Johnson during an April 20 appearance on the Judging Freedom podcast. 

Johnson alleged that during an emergency White House meeting on Saturday, April 18, 2026, President Trump attempted to “invoke the nuclear codes” as a deterrence against Iran. According to the claim, Air Force General Dan Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, refused the directive and “stormed out” of the meeting. Johnson suggested that Caine may have invoked the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) or questioned the order’s legality. 

On April 23, President Trump publicly ruled out using nuclear weapons, calling the idea “stupid” and arguing that conventional strikes have already “decimated” the Iranian military. He explicitly stated, “A nuclear weapon should never be allowed to be used by anybody”. But do you believe him – when his actions have patently declared otherwise?

Legally, the U.S. President has the exclusive authority to order a nuclear strike. While the Secretary of Defense must verify the order, neither the Secretary of Defense nor the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs has a legal “veto” if the order is deemed lawful. Military officers are required to follow only lawful orders. If a strike were deemed “unnecessary” or “disproportionate” under international law, a general might theoretically refuse, creating a constitutional crisis. 

Russia and China: The Wider War Risk

If nuclear weapons were used in the Middle East, Russia and China would almost certainly respond politically, militarily, and economically.

China would treat nuclear use near the Gulf as a direct threat to its energy security. Beijing depends heavily on Middle Eastern energy flows and has already benefited from Iranian-linked shadow trade networks. A nuclear strike or radiological event near shipping lanes would force China to respond diplomatically and possibly militarily through naval deployments.

Russia would likely exploit the crisis to weaken U.S. legitimacy. Moscow would portray any Western nuclear use as proof that the United States applies one standard to itself and another to everyone else. It could increase military support to Iran, escalate elsewhere, or use the crisis to fracture NATO and the broader Western coalition.

The result would not simply be a localized war. It would become a global legitimacy crisis around the nuclear order itself.

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The Real Bottom Line

The danger is not that nuclear use is inevitable. The danger is that the normal brakes are failing.

Diplomacy has lost credibility. The blockade has not delivered decisive results. Iran has not collapsed. Israel sees existential risk. The United States faces economic and military pressure. Russia and China are waiting for Washington to overreach.

This is how the unthinkable becomes thinkable.

Not all at once. But as everyone climbs the escalation ladder, the world traverses through a sequence of failed strategies and retaliatory moves. Leaders convince themselves that escalation is the only remaining way out. Crossing the nuclear taboo, which has been in place since 1945, is the only choice left.

Two nuclear powers have attacked non-nuclear Iran without provocation. Two nuclear powers have threatened Iran – directly – with nuclear anihilation. And the great irony: these acts alone justify Iran having a nuclear program for deterrence! How can they threaten and attack and at the same time expect anyone not to defend themselves with every means possible?

There is an inevitable conclusion to all this, and the urgent question now is whether the world will survive Trump.

Putting lipstick on a pig is the only way to describe the Trump administration’s systematic failures in dealing with the fallout from a failed Iran War!

This article is part of a five-part series detailing the Trump administration’s total, systemic failures in its Iran campaign. From (1) trying to decapitate Iran, only to engineer Mojtaba Khamenei’s rise, and the emergence of hardline IRGC leadership into key roles governing Iran, to (2) a failed attempt to capture Iran’s Uranium that now, in retrospect, looks more like a Jimmy Carter’s failed desert hostage rescue mission, to (3) the obliteration of US bases in the region with not only billions of dollars of damage but also – more importantly – the serious loss of electronic surveillance and guidance systems which will take years to restore. And then (4) we look at Trump’s failure to blockade the Straits of Hormuz and his aborted series of negotiations.

Trump has made the situation inside Iran much worse. He has added no value to the US or its allies. In a final, (5), conclusive article we explore how, without a visible or viable off-ramp, and a near total collapse of the world (and regional) economies, Trump may choose (or has already chosen) to either – directly or indirectly – nuke Iran, causing devastation on a scale never seen by mankind, leading to the death of over 10 million Iranians and large parts of Iran rendered totally uninhabitable for centuries – and precipitating the start of World War III, and the end of the American empire.

For me, with the evidence so blatant and openly available, what is incredibly baffling is the total lack of congressional oversight and control. How can a rogue President conduct such an expensive, failed campaign for over 60 days without challenge? This is not only a systematic failure of the Trump administration to conduct a campaign against Iran, but also a systematic failure of governance in America – and the whole world (with no real oversight by the UN Security Council, or other allied leadership). It is a failure on an unprecedented scale.

I implore you to read all 5 articles and decide for yourself.

On February 28, 2026, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the longtime Supreme Leader of Iran, was assassinated in a high-precision joint operation by Israel and the United States. His son, Mojtaba Khamenei, has since been named the new Supreme Leader and was gravely injured in the same attack and remains in a critical and disfigured state. 

The mission relied on strategic location data from the CIA and other US intelligence services. US military cyber-attacks reportedly paved the way for the Israeli aircraft.

The operation was a coordinated strike aimed at decapitating the Iranian regime’s top leadership while Khamenei and senior security officials were meeting at a compound in central Tehran that houses the offices and residence of the supreme leader, Iran’s president, and the country’s National Security Council. Israeli jets launched approximately 30 precision-guided munitions.

The air strikes, which targeted Khamenei and his top defense officials, took place on Saturday at around 9:40 am in Tehran (06:10 GMT). Ali Khamenei was killed within 60 seconds along with several top security leaders and family members. His death was confirmed by the Iranian government on March 1. 

According to The New York Times, citing anonymous sources familiar with the operation, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had gathered information about a Saturday morning meeting there that would include Khamenei and the country’s senior military cadre. The CIA then shared the information with Israel. CBS, also citing an anonymous official, reported that the CIA shared Khamenei’s location data with Israel.

In US President Donald Trump’s Truth Social statement in the wake of Khamenei’s killing, he wrote that the late leader “was unable to avoid our Intelligence and Highly Sophisticated Tracking Systems and, working closely with Israel, there was not a thing he, or the other leaders that have been killed along with him, could do”.

It is unclear if the US intercepted phone or other digital communications, used satellite imagery, or used covert human agents to obtain this information.

It is also unclear why the country’s most senior military leaders decided to gather in a predictable location while threats of a US-Israel attack were imminent.

It is known, however, that Israel has long recruited covert operatives in Iran and was watching Khamenei’s circle for years, gathering information as mundane as how and where they get food, an unnamed ex-CIA official told The Guardian. During the 12-day war last June, six Iranian nuclear scientists were killed, some in their homes.

Analyst Rosemary Kelanic, speaking to Canadian public broadcaster CBC, said the US probably used a “combination of human intelligence on the ground, potentially through Israeli assets, as well as signals intelligence and the ability of the United States to use over-the-horizon and, in this case, local assets to target pretty much anywhere on the planet that it wants to hit”.

The CIA had also been tracking Khamenei’s location for months, according to The Times, even before the 12-day war. Since that conflict, the US has intensified its surveillance of Khamenei, as well as of the IRGC, in general, monitoring how officials communicated and moved during stress periods, the Times reported.

Trump had also referred to US intelligence regarding the supreme leader’s location last year.

“We know exactly where the so-called ‘Supreme Leader’ is hiding,” Trump said on June 17, posting on his Truth Social platform amid the Iran-Israel conflict that lasted from June 13 to 24.

“He is an easy target but is safe there – We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now. But we don’t want missiles shot at civilians or American soldiers. Our patience is wearing thin,” Trump posted.

At the time, Israel presented a plan to kill Khamenei, but Trump rejected it, fearing wider regional conflict, according to reporting by The Associated Press, which cited officials familiar with the talks.

How did the strike on Khamenei unfold?

Although Israel and the US had planned to hit the country at night to take advantage of darkness, as was the method during the 12-day war’s Operation Midnight Hammer, the CIA’s information about the gathering moved up the timing of Saturday’s attacks, the Times reported.

It is understood that Israel unilaterally launched the attack on Khamenei, using US intelligence, according to reports by multiple US media outlets.

Speaking to CBS, Republican Congressman Mike Turner said the US was not directly involved in the killing. Turner said he had confirmed from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who “was very clear in the answer that we did not target Khamenei, and we were not targeting the leadership in Iran”.

According to media reports, Israeli fighter jets took off from a base in Israel around 6:00am local time (04:00 GMT) on Saturday. It is unclear how many aircraft were involved or how many bombs were dropped, but it was reported there had been “a few” fighter jets all armed with “long-range and highly accurate munitions”.

Their travel to Iran took about two hours, at which point they dropped bombs on the Tehran compound where Khamenei was located. While the top military officials had gathered in one building at the time of the hit, Khamenei was in another building nearby, The Times reported.

Simultaneously, the US military’s Cyber Command division appeared to block communications signals in Iran. In his briefing after the killing, Dan Caine, the US chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said “the first movers were US Cybercom and US Spacecom, layering non-kinetic effects, disrupting and degrading and blinding Iran’s ability to see, communicate and respond.”

Satellite imagery of the compound following the strikes showed smoke rising from the rubble of the buildings.

On Sunday, Iranian authorities announced a three-member leadership council to temporarily lead the country: President Masoud Pezeshkian; the chief justice of the Supreme Court, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei; and a member of the Guardian Council, Ayatollah Alireza Arafi.

About a dozen members of Khamenei’s family and close entourage, along with 40 other senior Iranian leaders, died in the Saturday attacks, military officials in Israel told The Guardian newspaper in the UK.

At least 13 top defense officials were confirmed killed at the Saturday meeting and in targeted strikes on other locations on the same day, including:

• Mohammad Pakpour, Commander of the IRGC.
• Azis Nasirzadeh, Defense Minister.
• Ali Shamkani, Head of the National Defense Council.
• Seyyed Majid Mousavi, Commander of the IRGC Aerospace Force.
• Abdolrahim Mousavi, Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces.
• Mohammad Shirazi, Head of Military Office of the Supreme Leader.
• Salah Asadi – Head of the Intelligence Directorate.
• Hossein Habal Amelian – Chairman of the Organisation of Defensive Innovation and Research (SPND).
• Reza Mozaffari Nia, Former SPND Chairman.
• Mohammad Baseri, Senior Intelligence Official.
• Bahram Hosseini Motlagh, Head of Operations Planning, General Staff of Armed Forces.
• Gholamreza Rezian, Commander of Police Intelligence.
• Mohsen Darrebaghi, Deputy for Logistics and Support, General Staff of Armed Forces.

A Harder Line Team Takes Over

Not long after this strike, Mojtaba Khamenei, Khamenei’s son, was ‘selected’ as the new Supreme Leader. Mojtaba had survived the blast but was severely wounded, with current reports indicating he is heavily incapacitated. 

Reports state his face and lips were severely burned, making it difficult for him to speak and requiring future plastic surgery. One of his legs has reportedly undergone three surgeries, and he may require a prosthetic limb. He also underwent surgery on one hand and is reportedly regaining limited function.

There are reports that he remains mentally sharp and is participating in governance via audio conferencing; other intelligence memos suggest he has been unconscious and incapacitated at times.

Not to be forgotten is that, besides the injuries he has suffered, and in addition to his father, he lost his mother, wife, and daughter in this attack. To say he has a grudge now and will be far more potent against the US and Israel is to put it very mildly.

Far from decapitating the regime, Trump has, in effect, put in place a much more militant, harder-line team in power in Iran, with a real grudge. Mojtaba now seems like a nefarious character out of a James Bond movie, with a disfigured face and real potential to translate evil intentions into catastrophic destruction. It’s scary.

Trump’s attempt to decapitate Iran has failed miserably. This is a horrible outcome. To pretend that this was a success in any way is to put lipstick on this pig!! It’s a lie, it’s a deception.

Putting lipstick on a pig is the only way to describe the Trump administration’s systematic failures in dealing with the fallout from a failed Iran War!

This article is part of a five-part series detailing the Trump administration’s total, systemic failures in its Iran campaign. From (1) trying to decapitate Iran, only to engineer Mojtaba Khamenei’s rise, and the emergence of hardline IRGC leadership into key roles governing Iran, to (2) a failed attempt to capture Iran’s Uranium that now, in retrospect, looks more like a Jimmy Carter’s failed desert hostage rescue mission, to (3) the obliteration of US bases in the region with not only billions of dollars of damage but also – more importantly – the serious loss of electronic surveillance and guidance systems which will take years to restore. And then (4) we look at Trump’s failure to blockade the Straits of Hormuz and his aborted series of negotiations.

Trump has made the situation inside Iran much worse. He has added no value to the US or its allies. In a final, (5), conclusive article we explore how, without a visible or viable off-ramp, and a near total collapse of the world (and regional) economies, Trump may choose (or has already chosen) to either – directly or indirectly – nuke Iran, causing devastation on a scale never seen by mankind, leading to the death of over 10 million Iranians and large parts of Iran rendered totally uninhabitable for centuries – and precipitating the start of World War III, and the end of the American empire.

For me, with the evidence so blatant and openly available, what is incredibly baffling is the total lack of congressional oversight and control. How can a rogue President conduct such an expensive, failed campaign for over 60 days without challenge? This is not only a systematic failure of the Trump administration to conduct a campaign against Iran, but also a systematic failure of governance in America – and the whole world (with no real oversight by the UN Security Council, or other allied leadership). It is a failure on an unprecedented scale.

I implore you to read all 5 articles and decide for yourself.

On April 3^rd, 2026, there were mainstream media reports that a US F15 fighter jet was shot down in Iran, and there was an elaborate rescue mission taking place to retrieve the pilot(s).  On the face of it, it sounded ‘reasonable’. Only later, it was revealed that the ‘rescue’ mission somehow involved a whole train of airplanes, which were all conveniently destroyed by the US in the desert of Khuzestan (prior to leaving Iran).

It turned out that the operation was not just a rescue mission. That is the key point.

Officially, the story centered on a downed U.S. F-15E Strike Eagle and the rescue of its crew inside Iran. But the scale, aircraft mix, location, and logistics strongly suggest something larger was underway: a deep-penetration special operations mission near Isfahan, where Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile had become the central unresolved prize of the war.

According to reporting and Iranian claims, the U.S. established a forward operating position at an abandoned airstrip near Mahyar, south of Isfahan, roughly within reach of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. The mission involved special operations aircraft, helicopters, drones, fighters, and transport planes. CBS reported that verified images of low-flying U.S. aircraft over Iran were consistent with a combat search-and-rescue operation, while Iranian reports argued the scale suggested a uranium-seizure attempt, not merely a pilot recovery. 

The Trigger — F-15E Downed

The crisis began with a U.S. F-15E Strike Eagle shot down inside Iran. That aircraft was not a random platform. The F-15E is a deep-strike aircraft, built to fly long-range attack missions with a two-person crew: pilot and weapons systems officer.

Once the aircraft went down, the U.S. had an immediate problem: recover the crew before Iran captured them.

But the rescue footprint became unusually large. Low-flying aircraft, helicopters, drones, and special operations forces appeared over hostile territory. That is where the official rescue narrative started to look incomplete.

Air Cover and Suppression

To protect the mission, the U.S. reportedly used a layered air package.

Iranian accounts described air cover involving:

• F-15s
• F-16s
• F-35s
• roughly 20 drones

The purpose of this package would have been obvious: suppress Iranian response, monitor roads and villages, and keep Iranian units away from the rescue/extraction zone. F-35s would provide stealth surveillance and targeting. F-15s and F-16s would provide strike and escort coverage. Drones would watch movements on the ground.

This is not the kind of air package used for a minor pickup. It suggests a much larger operating area had to be secured.

The Desert Airstrip

The most important detail is the reported use of an abandoned airfield near Mahyar.

That changes everything.

A normal pilot rescue can be done with helicopters. But establishing a desert runway or forward operating base suggests the mission required fixed-wing aircraft to land, unload, reload, or extract personnel and cargo.

That is why the location matters. Mahyar is south of Isfahan, and Isfahan is central to the uranium question. IAEA reporting has identified Isfahan as a key site linked to Iran’s 20% and 60% enriched uranium stockpiles, with Iran holding about 440.9 kg of uranium enriched to 60% and over 1,000 kg of Uranium enriched to 20%.

If the mission was only to grab a pilot, helicopters would make sense. If the mission requires moving heavy material, a runway makes sense.

Special Operations Transport Aircraft Land

The reported aircraft losses are central to the reconstruction.

Accounts describe two MC-130J special operations transport aircraft becoming stranded or disabled on the ground. These aircraft are built for exactly this kind of mission: deep insertion, resupply, refueling, and extraction for special operations forces.

The MC-130J is not a casual rescue aircraft. It is the backbone of special operations air mobility.

If two MC-130Js were on the ground at a desert strip near Isfahan, that points to a major special operations footprint. One account cited in the search results says the U.S. later described the two stuck MC-130s as deliberately destroyed after replacement aircraft arrived and extracted the rescued crew and about 100 personnel. 

Helicopters and Ground Teams Movements

The helicopter component reportedly included MH-6 or AH-6 special operations helicopters.

These small helicopters are associated with fast, low-altitude special operations: landing teams, protecting ground forces, and operating in tight spaces. If AH-6 versions were present, they could provide armed overwatch. If MH-6 versions were present, they could move small teams quickly.

This suggests U.S. personnel were not simply waiting at the runway. They were moving across the ground, either toward the downed crew, toward a target, or both.

CBS reported that images showed U.S. aircraft flying low in broad daylight over hostile territory, which its analyst said would only happen for a major reason, such as recovering downed pilots. 

The Mission Breaks Down

At some point, the operation appears to have gone wrong. The possible causes are straightforward:

Iranian forces closed in faster than expected. The aircraft could not safely depart. The runway became compromised. The mission objective could not be completed. The risk of capture became too high.

This is where the destruction of U.S. aircraft becomes the decisive detail.

If MC-130Js were disabled on the ground, the U.S. would not leave them intact. These aircraft contain classified communications, sensors, defensive systems, mission equipment, and special operations modifications. Letting Iran capture them would be a massive intelligence loss.

So, the decision would be brutal but logical: destroy the aircraft yourself.

The U.S. Blows Up Its Own Planes

This is the heart of the story.

The U.S. reportedly destroyed its own stranded aircraft at the desert site after replacement aircraft arrived. That is not a sign of a clean operation. It is a sign of an emergency extraction.

The logic is simple: personnel first, secrets second, aircraft last.

If the crew and special operations forces could be extracted, but the aircraft could not, then the aircraft had to be burned, blown up, or otherwise rendered useless before Iranian forces arrived.

That is exactly the kind of decision commanders make when a mission has failed, but the force still has a chance to escape.

Replacement Aircraft Extract the Force

The replacement aircraft are also telling.

One account says a U.S. military official cited three Air Force Special Operations Command De Havilland Canada Dash 8 aircraft, while FlightGlobal reportedly believed that the Airbus C295Ws seen in the area may have performed the extraction; CBS was cited as corroborating the C295 possibility. 

Either way, the point is the same: the original extraction plan failed, and smaller replacement aircraft had to evacuate people.

That is not a routine rescue. That is improvisation under pressure.

Additional Claimed Losses

Iranian claims also included the loss of:

• one A-10 Thunderbolt II
• one MQ-9 Reaper drone
• multiple small special operations helicopters

These claims are more contested, but they fit the larger pattern of a mission that spiraled from covert extraction into emergency survival.

The A-10, if involved, would likely have been used for close air support, keeping Iranian ground units away from U.S. personnel. The MQ-9 would have provided surveillance and possibly strike capability.

The Bottom Line

The reconstructed picture is this:

A U.S. F-15E went down inside Iran. A large special operations rescue package entered Iranian airspace. The U.S. established or used a desert runway near Isfahan. The MC-130J aircraft landed there. Special operations helicopters and ground teams moved under fighter and drone cover. The situation deteriorated. Aircraft became stranded or disabled. Replacement planes were brought in. U.S. forces extracted personnel, then destroyed their own aircraft to prevent capture.

The official version calls it a rescue. The Iranian version calls it a failed uranium-theft operation.

The truth may sit between those two narratives — but the scale, location, and aircraft mix make one thing clear: this was no ordinary rescue. It was a major deep-penetration operation that went badly enough for the United States to destroy its own aircraft on Iranian soil.

And that makes it one of the most consequential military failures of the crisis.

If all this sounds familiar, those with deep memories might recall a similar aborted mission to ‘rescue US embassy hostages’ in April 1980 undertaken by then President Jimmy Carter, at an abandoned airbase (Tabas) in Iran’s desert.  Jimmy Carter had to go on National Television to explain to the American public how that mission had gone badly. Major transport planes (C-130s) and adjacent helicopters had been destroyed, and Delta Force personnel died in the resulting fires.

This time, the Trump administration recast the mission as a rescue mission for pilots – and carefully managed a public relations disaster – to make it sound like the US was ‘successful’ at rescuing downed pilots, rather than explaining the failure of this overall mission.

I had predicted – on social media on March 31st – that Trump would try a Rambo-type mission to recover the Uranium and walk away from the war, declaring victory.

“They might send in troops to grab ‘some’ of the enriched uranium and say they saved the world from nuclear disaster – save face and get out. I think a Rambo-type ‘commando raid’ to grab say 200 kgs of Iran’s 400 kgs.”

Unbeknownst to me, this is exactly what Trump ended up doing – but doing badly.  Not surprisingly, the Trump administration executed poorly. But they succeeded in their PR campaign to smear the story and tell a different ‘truth’. But can they contain the truth long enough? They put lipstick on this pig!!!