Trump’s military buildup against Iran on Netanyahu’s behalf is a gambit doomed to fail
By Iqbal Jassat | Press TV | February 25, 2026
While uncertainty clouds the possibility of America launching a full-scale war on the Islamic Republic of Iran, pro-war narratives emanating from the apartheid regime of Israel desperately seek to justify it.
The war cries raised by Israel’s genocidaires are hardly surprising. After all, it is well known that the regime premier and the criminal-in-chief, Benjamin Netanyahu, has, since the 1990,s been pressuring the United States to carry out direct military action against Tehran.
Hence, it would not be incorrect to conclude that Washington’s war drums over Iran are not the product of strategy. They are the product of imperial reflex and Zionist pressure masquerading as deterrence.
Bizarrely, the spectacle of force assembled under President Donald Trump’s orders, the largest concentration of US air and naval power in the region since 2003, is being sold as strength, whereas it is, in fact, insecurity dressed up as bravado.
The indicators tell their own story.
Despite the theatrics of deployment, the expected escalation signals, mass embassy evacuations and sweeping NOTAM expansions remain limited.
Even within the American military establishment, caution seeps through the cracks. As noted in the February 2026 analysis circulated by Larry Johnson and Douglas Macgregor, the absence of full-spectrum preparatory measures suggests hesitation, not inevitability.
Contrary to the mainstream Western media’s view of “weighing options”, the reality points to a deeply fractured power struggle inside Washington’s war machine.
For instance, the Washington Post report citing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Dan Caine is particularly revealing.
Caine’s warning about depleted munitions stockpiles, exhausted by Washington’s underwriting of Israel’s war machine and its proxy entanglements in Ukraine, punctures Trump’s fantasy of an “easily won” confrontation.
Trump’s public denial of Caine’s caution is predictable. But the leak itself is the story when senior military officials allow their reservations to reach the press, it is the Pentagon placing a marker in history: we warned him.
Netanyahu’s pressure on Trump has left him in a huge dilemma.
Iran is not Iraq. It is not Libya. It is not a fragmented state awaiting aerial collapse. It is a formidable military with layered air defenses, dispersed missile clusters, hardened infrastructure and strategic depth supported by Russia and China.
The fantasy that standoff air power will induce “disintegration” is recycled doctrine from Kosovo, Iraq and countless failed coercion campaigns. Precision bombing has never delivered political submission where sovereignty is embedded in national resistance.
Yet Trump persists in the illusion that overwhelming force will produce capitulation. Historians will remind us about the folly of imperial habits.
What is absent from Washington’s framing is the geopolitical driver beneath the rhetoric.
The protection of Israeli supremacy remains the unspoken constant. Every escalation is filtered through Tel Aviv’s military and “security” doctrine. Every negotiation is judged by whether it secures Israel’s interests rather than American interests.
Just as the American public is told the “reason” for US hostility is about nuclear proliferation, so too have Zionist-allied agents in South Africa used similar fake arguments to justify the annihilation of Iran.
Some analysts based in the Israeli-occupied territories, who are skeptical about Netanyahu’s motives, remind us that his long-held view about a US attack on Iran would be a “masterstroke” to attain his personal incentive to remain in power.
The reality, though, as Caine cautioned, exposes a deeper truth: the United States is overextended. Its munitions stockpiles are strained. Its alliances are brittle. Its domestic coalition is fractured. A war with Iran would not be a swift surgical strike. It would be attrition, retaliation and regional conflagration.
What unfolds now is not a clash of civilizations. It is the exhaustion of empire confronting the limits of coercion.
A war with Iran would not restore American dominance. It would accelerate its unraveling and the warning has been issued from within.
Whether Trump listens is irrelevant to the structural decline already underway.
Iqbal Jassat is an executive member of the Media Review Network, Johannesburg, South Africa.
Israel, not America, first: Carlson’s Huckabee interview lays bare US foreign policy priorities
By Maryam Qarehgozlou | Press TV | February 23, 2026
In a recent interview with the US ambassador to the Israeli-occupied territories, Mike Huckabee, prominent US journalist and commentator Tucker Carlson confronted an Israeli-led system of intimidation, censorship, and foreign influence shaping American policy.
In a blistering monologue before his sit-down with the controversial American diplomat, Carlson framed his trip to Israeli-occupied territories not as a routine diplomatic media engagement, but as a revealing encounter with an entrenched apparatus exerting sway over American power.
The interview, conducted at the high-security Ben Gurion Airport, 20 kilometers to the south of Tel Aviv, itself began with a public challenge on Twitter from Huckabee, who suggested that if Carlson was addressing Christians in West Asia, he should speak to him as well.
Carlson initially hesitated. Having known Huckabee for decades, he admitted that interviewing him would require “a lot of self-control,” noting that the hawkish former Baptist minister’s genial, grandfatherly persona makes it difficult to press hard without appearing hostile.
Still, Carlson concluded that the moment demanded it. The stakes, he said, were enormous.
The United States, he noted, is moving toward a war with Iran – and Israel is “driving that.”
The US, he stated bluntly, is acting “at the behest, at the demand of” the Israeli regime’s premier Benjamin Netanyahu, who has presided over the modern-day holocaust in Gaza.
Embassy obstruction and security refusals
From the very outset, Carlson described encountering bizarre and hostile treatment from the US Embassy personnel in Israeli-occupied territories.
He said he requested basic measures – private security or an embassy representative to accompany his team from the airport. He was flatly refused.
At the time, he noted, Israeli regime officials, including Netanyahu, had publicly denounced him, suggesting Carlson was effectively aligned with Nazis and branding him a “member of the Woke Reichstag.”
Given such rhetoric, Carlson believed modest security precautions were reasonable.
Instead, the embassy declined assistance and referred him to Israel’s foreign ministry, specifically to deputy foreign minister Sharon Haskell, who had released a video labeling him an anti-Semite and “enemy of Israel.”
Carlson was stunned.
“I’m an American citizen responding to an invitation from the American ambassador,” he recounted telling embassy officials.
Why, he asked, was he being handed over to foreign officials who had publicly smeared him? Why was the US Embassy unwilling to provide even minimal official accompaniment?
The explanation that “legal reasons” prevented it struck him as evasive. He described the behavior as “very strange” and later, more ominously, as “menacing.”
Flight data and a troubling refusal
Tensions escalated when Carlson’s team chartered a plane for a quick in-and-out trip.
He asked the embassy to pass along his flight details to Israeli military authorities, citing airspace protocols and regional volatility. Israel, he pointed out, is engaged in a “seven-front war” and has a history of aggressive military action.
The embassy initially refused. The refusal unnerved him. Only after pressing aggressively did they agree.
For Carlson, the episode underscored what he sees as a deeper dysfunction: American officials appearing either unwilling or afraid to act independently of Israeli authorities, even in matters concerning American citizens.
The Netanyahu rift
Parallel to arranging the Huckabee interview, Carlson had been trying for months to secure even a brief meeting with Netanyahu. Not for an interview, he says, but partially because of the attempts by the Israeli regime to target members of his family.
He references Netanyahu’s invocation of “Amalek,” a biblical concept for collective punishment, and says the rhetoric felt threatening to him and his family members.
Despite reaching out through multiple intermediaries, Carlson was rebuffed. He was told meeting him would not be “in [Netanyahu’s] political interest.”
To Carlson, this signaled not merely disagreement but fanaticism. “You’re dealing with people who are unreasonable, who are inflexible, who are, in fact, fanatical,” he later said.
The interview
When Carlson finally arrived at Ben Gurion Airport’s diplomatic terminal, he describes the setting as grim and shabby, a metaphor, perhaps, for the larger dysfunction he was witnessing.
Huckabee, he said, was friendly but constrained.
During the two-and-a-half-hour marathon interview, Carlson said Huckabee seemed less like an American representative and more like a spokesperson for the Israeli regime.
“You’re the US ambassador,” Carlson reflected. “You’re our representative to a foreign country. Why is your red line criticism of that country?”
He arrived at the conclusion that his country’s ambassador was “obviously representing the Israelis.”
Interrogation and intimidation
After the interview concluded, as Carlson’s team prepared to depart, Israeli military personnel detained and interrogated him and his team, including two of his producers.
The questions, Carlson said, had nothing to do with security and everything to do with intelligence gathering: What did you ask the ambassador? Was the interview hostile? Who works at your company? Where is your office? Show us your text exchanges.
“They’re doing an intel op and humiliation exercise,” Carlson said. “This isn’t security.”
Carlson slammed the Israeli regime as a “police state” and “surveillance state,” as constant monitoring and digital intrusion are routine.
The interrogation, he said, confirmed that criticism of Israel, even by an American journalist, triggers aggressive retaliation.
The aftermath
Carlson said he never received a follow-up from Huckabee or the US Embassy asking about the interrogation. Instead, Huckabee publicly dismissed Carlson’s account as false.
For Carlson, that response crystallized the deeper issue: “Who exactly is Huckabee working for?”
He pointed out that the incident revealed a harsh reality: “If you’re an American in [Israeli-occupied territories], you can be certain that your government will take the side of the Israeli [regime] and not your side.”
Worse, he said, the same dynamic operates within the United States itself. “Your government exists for you, not for a foreign [regime],” he declared. “But that’s not how we live in this country.”
In his telling, the episode was not just about one interview or one ambassador. It was about what he sees as an inversion of sovereignty — an American government reflexively defending a foreign power while marginalizing its own citizens.
The interview with Huckabee, Carlson implied, did more than expose diplomatic friction. It revealed a structure of influence and intimidation that, in his view, is “not sustainable,” “too humiliating,” and dangerously corrosive to American self-government.
Here are some highlights from the interview.
Jonathan Pollard, the spy
At the beginning of his sit-down with Huckabee, Carlson pressed him on a meeting that has long disturbed critics of US-Israeli relations: His encounter at the US Embassy with convicted spy Jonathan Pollard.
Pollard is no ordinary offender. He was convicted of passing highly classified US military secrets to Israel during the Cold War, material that, according to US intelligence officials at the time, ultimately reached the Soviet Union.
Carlson slammed Huckabee as the sitting US ambassador to the occupied territories for receiving him at the American Embassy at all, especially given Pollard’s unrepentant posture.
Huckabee described the meeting as a courtesy. He had previously met Pollard briefly at a hotel in occupied al-Quds years earlier.
After Pollard’s wife died, Huckabee sent a condolence note. Pollard then requested to visit the embassy to thank him.
He dismissed media reports describing the encounter as secretive.
Carlson, however, was unmoved. He reminded Huckabee that Pollard, after his release, gave interviews to Israeli media, urging Jewish Americans with US security clearances to spy for Mossad.
Pollard said at the time that “all Jews should have dual loyalty.” Carlson called this “not repentance… that’s someone who’s encouraging American Jews to betray their country.”
“That’s pretty heavy, don’t you think?” Carlson pressed. “Oh, I do, and I disagree with that wholeheartedly,” Huckabee replied.
Yet he did not distance himself from the decision to host Pollard at the embassy.
When Carlson emphasized the symbolism — “Once you become US Ambassador… and then you invite not only the most damaging betrayer in our lifetimes, but also a guy who continues to advocate for betrayal” — Huckabee minimized the significance.
“You make it sound like I’m hosting a meeting,” he objected. “I simply met with him. I meet with people all the time.”
Carlson interjected: “You can just walk in without a… No, they have to have an appointment,” Huckabee admitted.
“Oh, so it is hosting him then, I think,” Carlson replied.
Huckabee ultimately stood firm: “He was certainly able to come to the US Embassy to have a meeting at his request. And frankly, I don’t regret it.”
The exchange exposed more than a dispute over terminology. It revealed a deeper tension about allegiance and optics. The US Embassy in the occupied territories is sovereign American territory.
For its chief diplomat to welcome a man convicted of spying against the United States, who has since defended dual loyalty and encouraged further espionage, struck Carlson as shocking.
Huckabee, however, treated it as routine diplomacy.
Israel sheltering child molesters
In another charged segment of his interview with Huckabee, Carlson confronted a disturbing pattern: American fugitives accused of child sex crimes finding refuge in the occupied territories.
“There are dozens and dozens,” Carlson said, citing a recent case involving an Israeli cybersecurity official arrested in Nevada in a sting targeting individuals soliciting minors.
The suspect was charged with attempted child molestation, then fled to Israeli-occupied territories.
“Have you advocated for the Israeli [regime] to return him?” Carlson asked. Huckabee feigned ignorance.
“It has not come to us at the embassy,” he said, though he added, “I would have no problem with him being extradited back to the US.”
Carlson pressed the moral point. “Does it seem strange to you that people accused of child molestation… are allowed to have refuge within the borders of our closest ally?”
He then slammed the Israeli regime for allowing — even “shielding” — fugitives. Huckabee rejected that characterization.
“I am not aware that the Israeli [regime] is shielding people,” he said, emphasizing due process and noting extradition would be a Justice Department matter.
In the exchange, Carlson described the occupied territories as a haven where American fugitives can find protection, shielded by diplomatic inertia and political sensitivities.
Huckabee framed the matter as procedural, dependent on formal requests and judicial channels.
At its core, the exchange underscored a troubling question: if individuals charged with crimes against American children can flee to the occupied territories and remain there without swift resolution, what does that say about accountability — and about the priorities of an alliance rarely subjected to scrutiny.
The Epstein files and Israel
Elsewhere during the interview, Carlson asked about the murky case of Jeffrey Epstein and the millions of documents the United States Department of Justice continues to withhold.
Carlson’s question was blunt: Why are they still classified? Huckabee’s answer was even blunter in its indifference.
“I have no idea. I haven’t kept up with that,” he said, adding that he is “6,000 miles away from DC.”
But geography was not the real distance on display.
Carlson pressed further, pointing to disclosures suggesting that Isaac Herzog — Israeli president— was listed as a visitor to Epstein’s island.
Huckabee claimed total ignorance: “Had never heard that. Never heard it even in the Israeli press.”
The denial was categorical. Yet the exchange illuminated a deeper pattern: when allegations brush up against powerful Israeli figures, the reflex is not inquiry but dismissal.
Carlson was later forced to issue a public apology on X after receiving a forceful letter from Herzog’s office denying any contact with Epstein.
He said the claim stemmed from a 2014 email released by the Justice Department in which Epstein mentioned Herzog and former prime minister Ehud Barak as potential guests.
But even setting Herzog aside, the broader web of connections remains unsettling.
Barak’s relationship with Epstein is well documented, and evidence has proven that Epstein maintained contact with figures tied to both the Israeli spy agency Mossad and the CIA.
“I’m not saying he worked for Mossad,” Carlson said. “But there’s no question that he had extensive contact with the CIA.”
Huckabee bristled at the implication. “You think he does. From where do you get that?” he demanded, as though the mere suggestion of Israeli spy agency proximity crossed an invisible line.
That line — the boundary beyond which criticism of the Israeli regime becomes taboo — hovered over the entire exchange.
Carlson noted the asymmetry himself: “Everyone’s very sensitive about the Israel connection, but not at all sensitive about the US connection. We should care about what our government does first.”
Huckabee’s defense was evasive. As an ambassador based in occupied al-Quds, he said the matter was not “in my portfolio.”
He repeated that the Justice Department handles such issues. When Carlson urged him to call for full transparency, Huckabee shrugged: “Well, fine — call for it. Let’s have it all open.”
Yet the casual tone belied the gravity of the subject: a convicted sex offender with global elite ties, intelligence-adjacent associations, and high-level contacts in the occupied territories.
Millions of pages remain hidden under the banner of “national security.” Whose security, precisely, remains the unspoken question.
Epstein was a wealthy financier who cultivated relationships with presidents, billionaires, academics and intelligence-linked figures while operating a vast sex trafficking ring involving underage girls.
He socialized with members of the American elite, moved easily in circles connected to the CIA and Mossad, and maintained ties to prominent Israeli political figures.
Arrested in 2019 on sex trafficking charges after a prior lenient plea deal in Florida, Epstein was found dead in a Manhattan jail cell before trial, in what authorities ruled a suicide — a conclusion that convinced few.
‘Right to the land’
In one of the lengthiest parts of the conversation, Huckabee was pressed about the geographical borders of Israeli-occupied territories, which he claimed are rooted in the Bible.
However, Huckabee, a vocal supporter of the Israeli regime and its expansionism, repeatedly struggled to answer simple questions.
Carlson’s probing made clear the absurdity of his worldview: that an entire region of West Asia belongs to a religious and ethnic group because of a biblical promise.
The conversation began with definitions. “What is a Christian Zionist?” Huckabee asked, then provided his own answer: a believer in the Old and New Testaments who accepts the idea that Jews have a divine right to their homeland.
Carlson pressed him: Does this “right” extend beyond Israel? Huckabee stumbled.
He cited Genesis and the promise to Abraham, claiming a divine grant of land stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates — essentially all of modern Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and parts of Saudi Arabia.
When Carlson asked if it would be “fine” for Israel to take all of it, Huckabee hesitated. His answer was telling: “It would be fine if they took it all, but I don’t think that’s what we’re talking about here today.”
Carlson, who appeared taken aback by the statement, asked Huckabee if indeed he would approve of Israel expanding over the entire region.
“They don’t want to take it over. They’re not asking to take it over,” the ambassador replied.
The US envoy, an avowed Christian Zionist and staunch defender of Israeli apartheid, later appeared to walk back his assertion, saying that it “was somewhat of a hyperbolic statement.”
Still, he left the door open for Israeli expansionism based on his religious interpretation.
“If they end up getting attacked by all these places, and they win that war, and they take that land, OK, that’s a whole other discussion,” Huckabee said.
Huckabee also claimed that Jews have a moral and legal right to occupied Palestine due to both ancient ties and modern international recognition.
Yet he struggled to define who qualifies as Jewish or how legitimacy is measured.
Carlson repeatedly noted that modern Israel is largely populated by descendants of European Jews, many of them secular or atheist, with no direct genealogical connection to the biblical land.
Huckabee offered vague appeals to language, religion, and tradition, but avoided any concrete answer. Huckabee’s invocation of international law was equally shaky.
He cited the Balfour Declaration, League of Nations mandates, and UN resolutions as proof of Israel’s legitimacy. Carlson pointed out the absurdity: “The Balfour Declaration is not exactly international law… it was a colonial power saying, ‘Okay.’”
Huckabee responded with a rhetorical dodge, praising Israel’s military assaults as if survival in war creates moral entitlement. Carlson also asked, “If Israel were out of compliance with international law, whatever that is, would it be less legitimate?”
Huckabee’s answer was revealing: “Depends on if the law and the way it’s applied are legitimate. Some applications of so-called international law are not legitimate. Look at the ICC or the ICJ.”
Here, the first cracks in the narrative appear. The justification for Israel’s so-called modern statehood leans on selective legal interpretations rather than consistent international standards.
Israel faces significant legal challenges and escalating pressure from both the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) related to its genocidal war in Gaza and the West Bank.
In November 2024, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former minister of military affairs Yoav Gallant for using starvation as a method of warfare and intentionally directing attacks against civilians in Gaza.
The Israeli regime, in response, has “personally threatened” ICC officials, including former prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and current prosecutor Karim Khan.
Supporting Israel, the US government (under both the Biden and Trump administrations) has imposed or threatened sanctions against ICC judges and staff, branding the court’s actions as “illegitimate judicial overreach.”
The debate over Jewish identity further exposes the tension. Huckabee insisted that modern Jews are descendants of Abraham, maintaining “an unbroken line of Jewish people… they were hunted down… they came back.”
Carlson countered with historical facts inconvenient to the narrative: the founders of the Israeli regime, largely secular or atheists from Europe, had no direct connection to the land for millennia.
“The current prime minister’s ancestors weren’t from here within recorded history… Bibi Netanyahu… his family from Poland… how do we know that he has a connection to the people whom God promised the land to?” he asked.
The answer was vague, relying on cultural markers rather than genealogical certainty: “If they speak the same language, if they worship the same God, if they follow the same Bible… does that not give you a clue?”
This logic conveniently ignores the existing Palestinian population, who have inhabited the land continuously for centuries.
The claim to occupied Palestine as a homeland for Jews from around the world effectively erases local Arab communities.
Carlson pointedly noted that in 1948, Jews “kicked out a lot of people… it was a war… a lot of Christians wound up fleeing, they lost their homes, and they’ve never been allowed back.”
Yet Huckabee dismissed these losses, asserting that Christianity is now growing in Israeli-occupied territories and claiming, “There are 184,000 Christians here today,” a figure Carlson immediately challenged as misleading.
“There are many more Christians in Qatar than there are in Israel. Fact.”
Carlson’s questioning exposed the selective narrative: Israeli-occupied territories are portrayed as a safe haven, yet the regime’s policies have displaced indigenous populations.
The repeated invocation of a “right to exist” ignores the rights of those already living there.
When asked, “Does every nation have the same right to its own homeland that you say Israel does?” Huckabee evaded a universal principle, insisting that Israel’s claim is unique:
“I think it applies specifically to Israel… Israel… does bring up international law… connection to the history… connection to the Jewish people.”
On the Gaza death toll
When asked how many civilians have been killed by the Israeli military in Gaza, the exchange was brief. The questions were simple. The answers were not. Huckabee did not offer a number.
“We don’t know,” he said. “You know why? We don’t know.”
It was a striking admission: after months of war, after at least 72,000 reported dead, after global headlines, satellite images, hospital counts, and intelligence briefings.
Still, he insisted: “We don’t know.” Across from him, Tucker Carlson pressed further. “What’s your guess?” Huckabee hesitated. Then he shifted the ground.
“Well, the only numbers we have come from this dubious entity called the Gaza Health Ministry. You know who that is?”
The implication was clear. The figures cannot be trusted. Therefore, the scale cannot be known. Therefore, the moral weight remains suspended.
“How many kids were killed?” Carlson asked. Again:
“We don’t know.”
“What’s your guess?”
“I don’t know. I’m sure it was thousands,” Huckabee conceded. Then came the justification. “And some of the kids who were killed had been recruited to be in the military — kids as young as 14 years old.”
There it was. Thousands of children are dead, followed immediately by a caveat.
Carlson responded sharply: “Terrible. Did you hear yourself?”
Huckabee doubled down. “I just said that there were kids as young as 14 that were recruited to be Hamas soldiers and given arms.”
The moral frame narrowed. The dead children became potential soldiers. The category of innocence shrank. “How do you feel about the kids being killed?” Carlson asked.
“I think it’s horrible,” Huckabee replied. But the answer did not rest there. “You know what I also think is horrible? I think it’s horrible that 1,200 people were slaughtered by people across the border, and 252 people were taken hostage.”
The reference was to the October 7 resistance operation by Hamas. The numbers have become fixed in Western political discourse. 1,200 killed, 252 taken captive, forty-eight Americans among them.
“When are all lives equal?” Huckabee asked. “When Hamas could have ended this on October 8th and given all the hostages up, they didn’t — leaving no choice.”
“Leaving no choice.” It is a phrase that has defined much of the defense of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. No choice. No alternative.
No other path. The responsibility, in this framing, lies entirely with Hamas. The consequences, however vast, are portrayed as inevitable.
What stood out in the exchange was not simply Huckabee’s refusal to cite figures from Gaza’s health authorities. It was the asymmetry. The October 7 toll was precise, the captive count exact. The number of Americans specified. But when it came to Palestinian killings, especially children, the language dissolved into uncertainty.
Huckabee defended Israel’s aggression on Gaza, claiming the military warns civilians before attacks.
“They send page messages and texts to every cell phone in Gaza… They drop leaflets, and they announce where they’re going to hit,” he said, framing it as an effort “to prevent civilian casualties.”
Huckabee blamed Hamas for killings, claiming they “gather up the children and put them in the targets… by gunpoint, they push people into those various places,” then accuse Israel of “slaughtering these people.”
He went further, claiming that even if Hamas’ casualty figures were accurate, “you still have a lower number of civilians killed than in any urban warfare environment in modern history.”
Oxfam reported that the average daily death rate in Gaza (estimated at 250 people per day in early 2024) exceeded that of any other major conflict in the 21st century, including Syria (96.5), Sudan (51.6), and Iraq (50.8).
More than 3 percent of Gaza’s pre-conflict population has been killed. This rate of mortality relative to the total population in such a short period is considered unprecedented by some researchers.
Netanyahu’s ‘Amalek’ reference
During the interview, Huckabee also came to the defense of Netanyahu, who referred to Palestinians in Gaza as “Amalek,” a biblical reference associated with total annihilation.
Carlson pressed the issue, noting the chilling implications: “If you say ‘our enemy is Amalek’… you are calling for genocide. Tell me how I’m missing something.”
Huckabee sidestepped, offering only vague justifications.
“I don’t know what he meant. I don’t know if it was an illustrative metaphor,” he said.
He attempted to minimize the concern by saying, “If Israel wanted to commit genocide, they could have done it in two and a half hours,” framing the killing of tens of thousands of civilians, including children, as a controlled operation rather than a moral crisis.
Israel’s grip on US foreign policy
In a revealing exchange, Huckabee defended Israel’s repeated lobbying of the US, including seven White House visits in a single year under Netanyahu, pushing for “regime change” in Iran.
Huckabee framed Israel as “not just a friend or an ally — it is a real partner,” insisting that close coordination justifies the influence.
Carlson pressed the moral and strategic implications: “Why do you think a foreign leader was in the White House seven times in one year? Are you okay with that?”
Huckabee offered no real critique, sidestepping questions about US sovereignty and the extent to which American foreign policy is being shaped by outsiders.
Huckabee also justified US aid to Israel, claiming that the $3.8 billion sent annually “goes right back to the US to purchase weapon systems,” supporting American jobs in places like Arkansas.
He claimed that the investment yields “many more times back in the return on investment.”
Carlson countered with the domestic perspective: “Our country is not thriving, and we’re spending tens and tens of billions of dollars over time defending Israel… Why are we sending money to a country that has a higher standard of living than ours?”
Iran war What if today’s Iran is resigned to a long, hellish war with the US?
By Sajjad Safaei | Responsible Statecraft | February 23, 2026
Trump’s decision in June 2025 to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities in the final days of Israel’s war on Iran removed any lingering doubts about his administration’s willingness to cross the longstanding U.S. red line of directly attacking Iran’s nuclear program.
As a result, every subsequent American military threat, against Iran as well as the rest of the world, was imbued with a credibility that only the precedent of naked aggression can impose. The U.S. military’s abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January only reinforced that credibility.
But the U.S. strike on Iran, or Operation Midnight Hammer, has also set in motion two consequences that run directly counter to his vision of coercing Iran into submission.
First, the brief U.S.-Iran dustup following Operation Midnight Hammer communicated to Iran that while Washington was now more likely to pull the trigger, it was by no means eager to enter a costly and open-ended firefight. Indeed, it did not escape the attention of the Iranians that while the Trump administration warned Tehran that any Iranian response to Operation Midnight Hammer would trigger a devastating U.S. response, Iran’s ballistic missile retaliation against U.S. bases in Qatar elicited not Trump’s wrath but his framing of the episode as an opportunity to move toward “peace and harmony.” This was then promptly followed by his brokering of a ceasefire between Iran and Israel.
Second, the joint U.S.-Israeli war on Iran in June liberated Iran from its own fear of total war. In the months and years leading up to the 12-Day War, Tehran’s intoxicating belief that war could and should be avoided — at every turn and at any cost — had infused the Iranian decision-making apparatus with a paralyzing caution that, on the one hand, deterred Iran from retaliating decisively against Israeli attacks while at the same time emboldened Israel to repeatedly push the limits of escalation with impunity.
But that edifice of fear would collapse under the weight of Israel’s war on Iran in June 2025, and the United States’ direct participation in that war. In its place emerged a sober recognition that Iran was no longer standing on the brink of a war it could prevent but was already fully immersed in a recurring cycle of limited Israeli and American wars inside Iranian territory.
Iran’s generals understood that the only reliable way to conclusively break that cycle was to drive the confrontation beyond Washington’s comfortable terrain of swift, manageable military interventions and into a realm where the costs of continued escalation would become unbearable for the United States and Israel alike. In the recent warning of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, “If they start a war this time,” he cautioned, “it will be a regional war.”
For Washington, this shift in Iranian consciousness could not have occurred at a worse moment in time. Iran has been thrust into a state of full-mobilization for a regional war at the very moment when it has become unmistakably clear that Washington’s appetite for military adventures does not extend beyond spectacular, swift, and high-impact demonstrations of military dominance.
The suggestion here is by no means that the Iranian armed forces are somehow on par with, let alone superior to, those of the U.S. military. Rather, an acute asymmetry has emerged in the two sides’ resolve and pain tolerance, an asymmetry in which, paradoxically, the militarily weaker party is structurally less constrained in its willingness to both endure and impose costs, resulting in a strategic posture far less favorable to the U.S. than the raw balance of military power would suggest.
More paradoxical, still, is that this sharp imbalance in resolve has crystallized at precisely the moment when Iran’s overall regional position is far more precarious than at any point in recent decades, a precarity made possible by the collapse of Assad’s rule in Syria and the significant weakening of Hezbollah’s operational depth in Southern Lebanon.
This asymmetry in resolve has found political expression in the recent resumption of talks between Iran and the United States over the nuclear program, assuming, of course, that the current negotiations reflect a sincere U.S. effort to reach an agreement and not, as was the case during last year’s negotiations, an attempt merely to lull the Iranians into complacency ahead of war.
The talks are not, as is often claimed, evidence of U.S. success in coercing Iran to come to the negotiating table. Instead, the talks reflect a growing realization within the Trump administration that Washington’s options are limited: either climb to the next and final rung of the escalation ladder, which is a full-scale war with Iran, whose duration and intensity would likely escape U.S. control, or return to a negotiated settlement of the nuclear dispute.
Should current talks result in a resolution of the nuclear file, they will stand as yet another outward expression of the realization in Washington that a total war with Iran is a monstrous black box the United States has no desire to open. For if Trump truly believed the U.S. could win militarily against Iran in the time-frame, shape, and intensity of his choosing, he would already have started this war, just as he did in the operation to abduct Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
What has prevented him from doing so, more than anything else, is Iran’s very real and sizable capacity to drag the United States and the entire region into a grinding, drawn-out war of attrition that would further accelerate the decline of U.S. global hegemony in ways previously thought unimaginable.
To be sure, the current impasse offers precious little by way of novelty. On the contrary, almost all of its defining features were either knowable or predictable before Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA. Indeed, President Obama’s pursuit of nuclear diplomacy was driven chiefly by the same military realities that have until today prompted Trump to pursue diplomacy with Iran.
Nine years after Trump first set out to overwrite the legacy of Obama’s deal, the paths available to Washington are clearer than at any point since the 1979 Islamic Revolution: a total regional war whose limits would not be set by Washington, or a nuclear settlement that, while not perfect from Trump’s standpoint, would pull the United States back from the brink of an open-ended and intractable regional war with an Iran.
If Washington’s participation in Israel’s June 2025 war with Iran elevated U.S. military force to a perfectly viable instrument of the United States’ Iran policy, the success of current talks would signal the formal undoing of that logic. But should the failure of talks pave the way for another full-scale war, the United States and Israel will be fighting an Iran vastly different from June. For the Iran of today appears to have made its peace with the grim conclusion that while a decisive slog with Israel and the United States is sure to be agonizing, it is preferable to the recurring attrition of repeated wars and a chronic strategic vulnerability that only emboldens adversaries to target Iran and its regional allies.
This cold calculus is captured with unsettling clarity in an oft-quoted Iranian proverb: marg yek bar, shivan yek bar—“death once, wail once.”
Sajjad Safaei, PhD, is a multidisciplinary researcher, lecturer, and analyst based in Germany. Previously a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, he has also taught at the Humboldt University of Berlin and the University of Zurich. His writings on Middle Eastern geopolitics, Iranian domestic and foreign policy, nuclear diplomacy, regional security dynamics, and arms control have appeared in outlets such as Foreign Policy, Responsible Statecraft, Aljazeera, DAWN, and The National Interest.
Why Israel Is Escalating Its War Crimes Against Lebanon
By Robert Inlakesh | The Palestine Chronicle | February 23, 2026
Key Analytical Points
- Israel’s pattern of ceasefire violations suggests a deliberate attempt to reshape deterrence rules in Lebanon rather than isolated tactical operations.
- Provocations aimed at Hezbollah appear designed to trigger a response that would justify a broader Israeli escalation under new “rules of engagement.”
- Hezbollah’s restraint signals long-term strategic patience rather than weakness, indicating preparation for a larger confrontation tied to regional dynamics.
- The northern front is increasingly linked to US–Iran tensions, raising the likelihood that Lebanon could become either a preemptive battlefield or a secondary theater in a wider war.
- The balance of power on the ground—particularly Hezbollah’s missile capabilities and ground forces—creates significant deterrent risk for Israel, limiting its escalation options despite mounting pressure.
Escalation under the Cover of Ceasefire
Since the beginning of Ramadan, Israel has notably ramped up its campaign of aggression against Lebanon. Although airstrikes committed throughout Lebanese territory have been routine since the implementation of the November 27, 2024, ceasefire agreement, what we are seeing now is a sign of panic amid rising tensions between Tel Aviv and Tehran.
Israel has committed the most violations of any ceasefire in recorded human history in Lebanon. At the tail end of November of 2025, UNIFIL – the United Nations peacekeeping forces – confirmed that Israel had committed upwards of 10,000 violations of the ceasefire agreement. This is no accident and confirms that the Zionist regime never had any intention of adhering to a cessation of hostilities with Hezbollah.
Instead, the Israelis sought to impose new equations on the ground, enabling total freedom of action, while also using their US allies to pressure the Lebanese state and its army to pursue a policy of undermining the group within the country.
It was never a realistic prospect that the Lebanese army was going to disarm Hezbollah; therefore, the only possible outcomes were going to be civil war or a campaign of pressure. Both favor Tel Aviv, with a civil war conflict being their preferred outcome.
Several times, the Israelis have attempted to provoke a reaction from Hezbollah, which has adhered to the ceasefire and not fired a single munition at their occupiers, who have now illegally established a military presence, intended to be permanent, in southern Lebanon.
These major provocations have included acts such as the assassination of Haytham Ali Tabatabai in southern Beirut. Tabatabai had taken over the role of Hezbollah’s top military chief following the assassination of Fouad Shukr the year prior. The Israelis have attacked the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital, Dahiyeh, on a number of occasions, also committing civilian massacres in the south of the country up to the northern Bekaa Valley’s Baalbek.
Each of these waves of aggression was clearly designed to draw responses but failed to make Hezbollah bite. The idea was to set new rules of engagement, red lines, and establish a precedent for what constitutes aggression against Israel that would provoke a major bombardment of Lebanon.
Strategic Patience and Military Recalibration
On Hezbollah’s part, it appears that they understood what Israel was attempting to lure them into and instead refrained from responding, waiting for the opportune time to initiate a major war that would enable them to reclaim their territory and inflict what they see as sufficient acts of revenge on the Israeli enemy.
So, while Israel has been provoking Hezbollah and committing its daily acts of aggression against the civilian population in southern Lebanon in particular, Hezbollah has been working to rebuild and establish new battle plans. It has also become clear that the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria did not end the weapons transfers between Syria and Lebanon, something that both Israeli and US think tanks have themselves admitted.
Since the beginning of Ramadan, this campaign of incitement has only increased. On Friday, Israel launched an assassination strike, using three missiles, on the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain al-Hilweh, killing two members of Hamas and injuring a number of civilians. Then, later that same day, Israel bombed three populated buildings in the Bekaa Valley, killing 10, eight of whom were members of Hezbollah, and injuring 50 people.
The Northern Front
Israel and its Trump administration are now poised to enter a new conflict with Iran, as the largest US military buildup in the region since the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 continues. It has become clear that in the event a regime-change war is waged against the Islamic Republic, Hezbollah will very likely engage in a battle with the Israelis.
Nobody truly understands just how powerful Hezbollah currently is, yet it is clear from the final week of the 2024 Lebanon-Israel war that they possess ballistic missiles capable of successfully striking high-rise buildings in Tel Aviv, along with a large attack drone arsenal. However, their missile and drone power aside, Hezbollah’s biggest asset has proven to be their ground forces, which inflicted the largest number of military casualties during the war.
In other words, Hezbollah will act as Iran’s ground force in any regional war. If they can manage to breach the border into northern occupied Palestine, it will represent a major blow to the Israeli state, yet a battle in the heart of the Bekaa Valley and southern Lebanon could prove even more costly to the Israeli occupying forces.
It is because of this inevitable escalation in the north that the Israelis are displaying signs of panic and continue to target both Hezbollah members and civilians alike. There has even been a campaign of spraying cancer-causing chemical substances in the south, alongside a campaign of intimidation using their drone power, a similar strategy to what we saw in Gaza for decades.
If anything, the Israelis may even urge the United States to help them go after Hezbollah in Lebanon. There is a chance this could lead to a scenario where Lebanon is attacked prior to Iran, yet the inherent risks to this strategy could be that they then lose any element of surprise in their planned assault on Iran, especially in the event that Tehran comes to the aid of Hezbollah.
– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine.
Iran in the face of the armed diplomacy of imperialism
By Sayid Marcos Tenorio | MEMO | February 23, 2026
The ongoing negotiations between the United States and Iran, mediated by Oman and recently held in Geneva, have been presented by Western diplomacy as a technical effort to contain nuclear risks. This version is a carefully constructed farce.
What is at stake is not the so-called “non-proliferation”, but a direct dispute between national sovereignty and imperial domination, conducted in order to preserve the regional hegemony of “Israel” and to keep the Middle East under the strategic tutelage of the US–Zionist axis.
The United States does not negotiate in the name of peace or international security. It negotiates as the diplomatic and military arm of the Zionist regime, tasked with neutralising any regional power that escapes the colonial control imposed after the Second World War.
Iran is today the principal target of this machinery because it dares to assert political, scientific, and strategic autonomy in a region that Washington and Tel Aviv treat as a protectorate.
The real nature of these “negotiations” becomes evident in the adopted method. While speaking of dialogue, the US reinforces its military presence in the Gulf, deploys aircraft carriers, issues public threats, and makes it clear that the alternative to an agreement is violence.
This is the old gunboat diplomacy, in which the empire demands concessions under blackmail. This is not negotiation between sovereign states; it is political extortion disguised as a diplomatic process.
Washington’s central argument, wrapped in an alleged Iranian nuclear risk, does not withstand any honest analysis. Iran does not possess nuclear weapons, has not announced any intention to produce them, and accepts international verification mechanisms. The real problem is not nuclear; it is geopolitical.
What troubles the US and “Israel” is the existence of a state that refuses to integrate into the West’s colonial security architecture, that maintains its own deterrent capability, and that politically and morally supports the peoples of the region against occupation and aggression.
This is why the demand for “zero enrichment” reappears as a mantra of the Zionist consortium. It is an illegal, discriminatory, and politically obscene imposition. The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons explicitly recognises the right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy.
Even so, this right applies only to allies of the empire. “Israel”, a clandestine nuclear power outside the NPT, with an atomic arsenal that has never been inspected, remains untouched. Iran, by contrast, is required to submit completely. That is the double standard that sustains the current international system.
Sanctions play a central role in this hybrid war. They are not legal instruments, but weapons of collective punishment, used to strangle the Iranian economy, generate social suffering, and attempt to produce internal fractures.
Washington uses civilian suffering as a bargaining tool, hoping to force political concessions that it would never obtain under normal circumstances. It is a form of economic warfare that openly violates the most elementary principles of international law.
When the US attempts to expand the agenda of the negotiations to include Iran’s missile programme and defensive capability, it reveals its intentions even more clearly. Asking a country to negotiate its own defence is equivalent to demanding prior surrender.
No sovereign power would accept such an imposition. Iran has firmly rejected this manoeuvre, making it clear that its defensive capability is not under negotiation and never will be.
Iranian distrust does not arise from ideological paranoia, but from concrete historical experience. The United States unilaterally withdrew from the previous nuclear agreement, dismantled multilateral commitments, and, in 2025, went so far as to bomb peaceful Iranian nuclear facilities during ongoing negotiations.
This record renders any demand for “trust” on the part of Washington laughable. Imperialism does not inspire trust. It inspires caution and preparation.
Even so, Iran negotiates. And this point is central. It negotiates because it is a responsible state, aware of the gravity of the regional scenario, and willing to seek structured solutions. It accepts verification, accepts technical commitments, accepts dialogue. But it resists, and will continue to resist, because it is sovereign. To negotiate does not mean to kneel.
As repeatedly stated by the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatullah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, Iran does not build its foreign policy under threat, nor does it accept agreements imposed in the shadow of aircraft carriers.
Iranian diplomacy walks side by side with deterrence because recent history has shown, brutally, that unilateral concessions to imperialism do not produce peace, only new aggressions.
What is unfolding in Geneva, therefore, is not a technical debate about centrifuges or enrichment percentages. It is a chapter in the structural crisis of American imperial power, which can no longer impose its will without resorting to brute force and blackmail.
It is also a desperate attempt to preserve the regional supremacy of “Israel”, now shaken by the resistance of the peoples, and by the military and political failure of the Zionist project.
Ultimately, this is a historical choice: sovereignty or submission. The United States acts as the diplomatic arm of the Zionist regime, attempting to impose on Iran what it never demands of “Israel”: limits, inspections and obedience. Iran negotiates because it is responsible. But it resists because it is sovereign.
The US build-up around Iran constitutes strategic war option, not ‘deterrence’
By Amro Allan | Al Mayadeen | February 23, 2026
The confrontation forming around Iran is increasingly defined not by diplomacy or de-escalatory statecraft, but by infrastructure: aircraft, tankers, ships, interceptors, forward bases, and the logistics that bind them into a usable strike system. What is being assembled around Iran is coercion by force posture—a regional arrangement designed to make the use of violence not only possible, but administratively routine.
The danger is not simply that the United States is “sending a message.” It is those messages, once backed by operational capability and sustained logistics, that develop their own momentum—especially in a region where a single incident, whether staged, misattributed, or opportunistically interpreted, can push escalation beyond the point where political actors can plausibly reverse it. That is how wars become “inevitable”: not because they must happen, but because the architecture is built until restraint begins to look like an admission of weakness.
What is underway is best understood as a transition from episodic pressure to a posture designed to make sustained operations feasible. Deterrence theatre is reversible: it can be intensified, paused, or theatrically concluded. War-enabling posture is different. It organizes the region for a campaign that could last weeks, not hours—requiring refuelling depth, airborne command, electronic warfare, forward munitions, missile defense, and a permissive regional geography. In other words, it is not the language of crisis management; it is the language of readiness for force.
The Israeli role
Any realistic scenario involving major strikes on Iran necessarily includes Israeli capabilities, even if formal command structures remain ambiguous. The Israeli Air Force is not simply a parallel instrument. It is a forward-deployed capacity that can be synchronized with US regional power while allowing Washington to stage-manage deniability until the moment of activation.
“Israel” maintains a large combat fleet with a long-range strike capacity built around multiple platforms: approximately 66 F-15 aircraft (including F-15I variants configured for longer-range strike), roughly 173 F-16 fighters, and about 48 F-35I stealth aircraft in service, with additional units expected over time. The operational implication is a structure suited to repeated waves rather than a single, demonstrative raid: stealth assets prioritized for penetration and suppression, with conventional fighters sustaining the bulk of strike and support roles once corridors are opened.
Defense planning in “Israel” also signals expectation of retaliation on a scale that exceeds symbolic exchange. The layered interception network—Arrow, Iron Dome, David’s Sling, and THAAD—is designed to deal with different classes of incoming fire, from rockets and drones to ballistic threats, and it functions as a prerequisite for any prolonged confrontation in which Israeli and US regional assets become primary targets.
This is where the political and military lines converge. Israeli leadership has long framed Iran as the central strategic adversary, and war planning has repeatedly been presented as a means of reshaping regional balances. Whatever language is used—“pre-emption”, “self-defense”, “containment”—the practical effect is to normalize the idea that Iran’s sovereignty can be overridden by an external security narrative. In that framework, escalation is not an accident; it is a policy option that is repeatedly rehearsed as common sense.
What the United States has built
The most revealing element in the US posture is not any single platform, but the way assets are being layered into an integrated strike system.
Open sources indicate that, on the air side, the forward package includes at least 30 F-35A fighters deployed in theatre, 24 F-15E aircraft, and an additional 36 F-16s moving toward the region. Electronic attack support includes 6 EA-18G Growlers, alongside 8–12 A-10 aircraft. Around a dozen additional F-16s are operating from Prince Sultan and possibly Al Dhafra, supported by 3 E-11A communications aircraft. In addition, a deployment of 12 F-22 stealth fighters is underway, with part of the force already forward-positioned and the remainder expected to continue toward regional bases.
The intelligence and command layer expands this into something far beyond a “show of force”: the movement or deployment of U-2 reconnaissance aircraft, an RC-135 signals-intelligence platform, a WC-135 nuclear-detection aircraft, and additional E-3 AWACS aircraft preparing for redeployment to forward bases—strengthening airborne battle management and command capability.
Operational persistence depends on fuel and lift. The posture is underpinned by up to 22 tanker aircraft operating from regional hubs, and sustained transport activity by C-17, C-5M, and C-130 aircraft delivering troops, equipment, and air-defence systems to forward locations.
At sea, the naval component includes the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group moving toward the region while the USS Abraham Lincoln group operates in the Arabian Sea, alongside multiple Arleigh Burke destroyers positioned across key waterways (the Strait of Hormuz, the Gulf, the Red Sea, and the Mediterranean). The posture is reinforced by the USS Georgia, an Ohio-class guided-missile submarine capable of launching a large volume of cruise missiles.
Individually, each of these deployments can be framed as “routine”. Collectively, they form something more consequential: an operational environment in which launching a campaign becomes logistically straightforward. That is the essence of coercion-by-infrastructure. It does not announce war. It makes war easier to begin.
The aircraft carrier story
Washington foregrounds naval deployments because they are legible, dramatic, and politically manageable. Ships can be repositioned without forcing host governments into public commitments. Carrier strike groups allow Washington to appear decisive while keeping escalation thresholds ambiguous. This is useful domestically and diplomatically: it reassures partners, pressures adversaries, and sustains a narrative of control.
Yet the obsession with carriers often obscures the real center of gravity: land-based access, refuelling depth, persistent surveillance, and the defensive systems that keep regional bases operational. A serious campaign aimed at degrading Iran’s missile forces, air defenses, energy infrastructure, or nuclear-related facilities requires sortie generation and basing access that naval aviation alone cannot supply. The decisive question is not what is sailing; it is what is already positioned on land and in the air.
Iran reads this not as theatre, but as preparation. That reading is rational. When an adversary constructs a system designed for sustained strikes, it is the targeted state—not the deploying one—that is forced to plan for worst-case scenarios.
The geography of war
The enabling infrastructure of any sustained campaign sits in fixed locations. The operational map spans the Gulf and the Levant.
From Al Udeid in Qatar—often described as the operational heart of US Central Command—Washington can coordinate high-tempo operations supported by ISR and refuelling. Al Dhafra in the UAE extends its reach with advanced platforms and command integration. Prince Sultan in Saudi Arabia, if politically activated, shortens flight times and increases sortie density. The Harir airbase in Erbil provides forward access for strike and surveillance missions, while Jordanian airfields open western approach corridors. US positions in eastern Syria facilitate drone and reconnaissance activity along Iran’s western flank.
Beyond the Arab theatre, “Israel’s” bases operate in close alignment with US operational planning, forming an integrated environment even if formal command lines remain blurred. To the north, Azerbaijan offers potential basing or surveillance access along Iran’s sensitive frontier. Strategically, long-range bombers operating from the continental United States or Diego Garcia can be integrated through aerial refuelling and forward command nodes—adding strike capacity not captured by carrier-focused narratives.
This geography also clarifies what Washington rarely foregrounds: regional states become the battlefield’s enabling terrain. The bases, depots, radars, command centres, and runways that make sustained operations possible also sit within Iran’s retaliatory envelope. Iran does not need to neutralize a carrier to impose strategic and political costs. It can target the infrastructure that keeps the campaign running: runways, fuel depots, hangars, radar nodes, and the host-nation systems that sustain them.
If escalation occurs, the political question for host governments will not be abstract. It will be immediate: whether they are willing to absorb retaliation for choices made in Washington and Tel Aviv. That is precisely why the build-up is destabilizing. It expands the list of actors exposed to consequences while narrowing the space for de-escalation.
This is where the moral and legal questions sharpen. If host states provide launchpads, they are not passive bystanders; they become parties to the escalation. Yet these governments are rarely treated, in Western coverage, as societies that will absorb the consequences. They are treated as facilities—terrain, not people. Iran, by contrast, is treated as a problem to be managed.
Missile defense
If the escalation logic runs through bases, the defensive requirement runs through interceptors. Missile defense in this doctrine is a central operational requirement rather than a supporting function.
Patriot and THAAD batteries protect major airbases and logistics nodes across the Gulf and the Levant, integrated with early-warning radars, airborne surveillance, and regional command networks. Following the US withdrawal from Ain al-Assad in western Iraq, defensive emphasis shifted toward fewer but more politically sustainable bases: Al Udeid and Al Dhafra remain heavily protected, while positions in Jordan and eastern Syria rely on combinations of Patriot systems, shorter-range counter-drone defenses, and persistent surveillance.
“Israel” constitutes a distinct but integrated pillar in this interception architecture. Its layered air-defense network—Iron Dome, David’s Sling, Patriot, and Arrow—is linked to US early-warning and interception planning, forming a shared defensive envelope rather than a purely national shield.
Notably, the defensive geography is widening. Cyprus has deployed Israeli-made air-defense systems, and Greece is moving toward integrating Israeli interception technology into its own architecture—developments that point to the gradual emergence of an Eastern Mediterranean interception depth, built around interoperable sensors and strategic alignment rather than formal collective defence commitments.
At sea, US Aegis-equipped destroyers add a mobile interception layer capable of engaging aircraft, cruise missiles, and limited ballistic threats—again supplementing, not replacing, land-based interception.
This matters because missile defense introduces a vulnerability that carrier narratives often conceal: interceptor stocks are finite, and a sustained high-volume exchange strains them. In a scenario of large-scale missile and drone retaliation, the question becomes not simply “can you intercept?” but “for how long?”—and at what political cost to host governments whose territory becomes the absorbing surface for escalation.
Tehran’s strategic logic
Iran’s deterrence logic has been recalibrated by lived confrontation, namely the “12-day war”. The central conclusion drawn in Tehran is that survivability precedes deterrence. Missiles, air-defense systems, command-and-control, missile production, and retaliatory capabilities must be structured to endure the opening shock of war, not to dominate it.
In the opening phase of that confrontation, Iran’s air defenses suffered rapid degradation: fixed or semi-mobile systems were destroyed early, their locations effectively pre-mapped, and their network dependence exploited through precision strikes, electronic warfare, and intelligence integration. Mobile missile systems—long assumed to be the backbone of survivable retaliation—also proved vulnerable once movement became detectable under persistent surveillance and integrated strike networks. The conclusion Tehran extracts is structural: in a conflict dominated by satellite tracking and real-time targeting, anything that must move, emit, or communicate openly at the onset of war is at elevated risk of rapid attrition.
That assessment drives the turn toward underground infrastructure. Iran’s missile force is being reconfigured around hardened tunnels, concealed storage, underground silos, and pre-positioned launch infrastructure designed to reduce exposure time and reliance on vulnerable command links. In this model, air defense still matters, but its role is framed as damage limitation rather than denial: complicating targeting, absorbing strikes, and preserving enough capability to ensure retaliation after the opening exchange.
Disruptions cascade into command delays and coordination bottlenecks, so Tehran’s preparations increasingly prioritise hardened domestic infrastructure, reduced external dependencies, and decentralized command authority to ensure retaliation does not hinge on uninterrupted connectivity. Parallel to this is the elevation of the domestic front—civil defense, continuity, internal stability—as a core component of deterrence rather than an auxiliary concern.
This is not the posture of a state seeking war. It is the posture of a state that has learnt—through repeated threat and episodic attack—that its adversaries prefer to treat its security as negotiable. Tehran’s strategic lesson is bleak but coherent: if the US and “Israel” reserve an expansive right to strike, then Iran must reserve the ability to respond even after absorbing the first blow. This is not radical; it is the minimal condition of sovereignty.
The escalation problem
A central risk is that escalation is unlikely to remain geographically contained. Even if Washington frames an initial operation as “limited”, allied forces and partner theatres are not mechanically separable. Under conditions of sustained strikes on Iran, groups and allied actors across Yemen, Lebanon, and Iraq face their own strategic pressures, with intervention becoming a function of credibility and survival rather than preference.
Meanwhile, regional governments that host US assets occupy an exposed position. They may privately prefer de-escalation, but their bases and airspace can become operational requirements once Washington activates the posture it has assembled. Washington has 35,000–40,000 personnel deployed around Iran, expected to carry out the main attack in the event of war—an estimate that underscores how deeply the region is already militarily interlocked with any potential campaign.
This is where political constraint becomes as dangerous as military capability. When leaders publicly elevate threats, they increase the domestic cost of restraint; when adversaries interpret restraint as weakness, they increase the cost of compromise. In such conditions, accidental escalation—triggered by a strike, a misattributed attack, or a rapid chain of retaliation—can become more plausible than deliberate strategic design. And in an environment saturated with narrative warfare, the line between “accident” and “pretext” is rarely as clear as officials insist.
The build-up manufactures the conditions for war
The build-up is not reducible to theatre. It is a layered strike-and-defense system: forward stealth fighters and conventional strike aircraft; electronic warfare; airborne command and ISR; tanker depth and heavy lift; carrier groups and missile-capable submarines; a regional lattice of bases; and an expanding interception architecture stretching across the Gulf, the Levant, and into the Eastern Mediterranean. The combined effect is to make sustained operations technically feasible, while widening the geography of vulnerability and entanglement.
The strategic irony is that the more “prepared” this posture becomes, the less space remains for political off-ramps. Host governments become exposed. Interceptor sustainability becomes a decisive variable. Tehran’s retaliatory doctrine evolves toward survivability and endurance rather than symbolic signalling. In such an environment, the question is no longer whether war is “intended”. It is whether the operational infrastructure of war is now sufficiently in place that a single trigger—miscalculation, provocation, or opportunism—can transform a posture into a campaign faster than political channels can arrest it.
Iran’s reading of this is neither paranoia nor ideology. It is a basic inference. When a superpower constructs the machinery for a sustained strike and embeds it across neighbouring territories, the targeted state will plan accordingly. The real moral burden, then, lies not on Iran’s preparations for survival, but on the political decision—repeatedly rehearsed in Washington and Tel Aviv—that a regional order can be engineered through coercion and air power, while everyone else is expected to absorb the consequences.
If the international community is serious about preventing war, it should stop treating Iran’s defensive doctrine as the primary problem while granting the US-Israeli posture the presumption of legitimacy. The liability of proof lies with those constructing a regional strike system and calling it “stability”. There is nothing stabilizing about embedding a war option across neighbouring territories, then demanding that the targeted state behave as though this is normal. The region has seen this script before: coercion presented as protection, escalation presented as necessity, and catastrophe presented—after the fact—as an unfortunate surprise.
Iran to US: Sanctions and war failed; try diplomacy and respect
Press TV – February 23, 2026
A top Iranian diplomat says the time is ripe for the United States to abandon its “fruitless” sanctions and failed policy of war against Iran, urging genuine respect for diplomacy as the only viable path forward.
“Iran’s enemies may start a war, but they will not be able to determine the end,” Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs Kazem Gharibabadi said in an address to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, on Monday.
“You have tried sanctions and war in relation to Iran and got nowhere. Now it is time to experience diplomacy and respect,” he said.
He said Iranians do not seek aggression against other countries but will firmly stand against any military or political conspiracy against the Islamic Republic and will defend their homeland.
Gharibabadi said the consequences of war will not be limited only to the parties to the conflict, “but will engulf the region.”
US President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened military action against Iran since early January, following his public support for foreign-linked riots.
Trump has since ordered a significant military buildup in regional waters near Iran and warned of strikes if Tehran does not accept a deal on US terms.
Iranian officials have reiterated their readiness for a fair agreement on the country’s nuclear program but warned that even a limited attack would trigger a decisive response.
Elsewhere in his address, Gharibabadi said the so-called advocates of human rights supported the United States and the Israeli regime during the 12-day war against Iran in June 2025, which killed more than 1,060 Iranians and injured some 6,000 others.
“They did not even allow the UN Security Council and the Human Rights Council to condemn the aggression.”
Gharibabadi said Iran’s enemies, who suffered a severe defeat in the June war, attempted to set the stage for another military offensive by inciting unrest in the country and turning peaceful economic protests into deadly riots.
The Iranian official condemned the terrorists for committing Daesh-style crimes that resulted in the martyrdom of 2,427 civilians.
Gharibabadi said those who place the least value on human dignity are exploiting human rights as a tool to serve their own interests.
The Iranian deputy foreign minister said the main instigators of the January unrest, notably the United States and Israel, must be held accountable for crimes against humanity.
Why the US-Israeli alliance will lose against Iran
By Robert Inlakesh | Al Mayadeen | February 21, 2026
While it is impossible to predict precisely what the war on the Islamic Republic of Iran and its regional allies will result in, the winnability of the regional conflict is clear. The only thing driving this attack is sheer Israeli arrogance, as there is no conceivable situation where all out regional war delivers anything short of uncontrollable chaos.
Why is an all out regional war unwinnable? Although there are various reasons as to why this is the case, it suffices to say that the US and Israelis have no way of controlling its outcomes, in addition to this, they simply do not possess the military industrial capacity to wage such a war for a long period of time.
Now, when this argument is made, it is not done from an idealistic point of view. Therefore, it is important to preface this piece on the fact that there is a clear Israeli-US superiority in terms of technology and the kinds of weapons they possess. Nobody disputes this. There is also clear superiority in the field of their intelligence agencies.
So, let us first assume that the United States and the Zionist entity manage to score all of their desired tactical victories. Working on this assumption will then definitively prove the injudicious nature of the endeavour.
Therefore, under the best case scenario for the Zionist coalition, perhaps they succeed in conducting another decapitation strike on the Iranian military leadership, manage to penetrate and destroy some missile bases, nuclear facilities, while gutting the Islamic Republic’s air defences. These are very likely goals that they will seek to achieve.
Let’s also work under the assumption that they manage to put Tehran on the backfoot for at least a week, due to the intensity of their air campaign, making it difficult for the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) to fire large bursts of ballistic missiles at a single time. Then, after achieving air dominance, strikes on essential infrastructure begin, including cultural sites, government buildings, the media, but also the likes of oil facilities, agricultural areas and water systems.
On top of all of this, assume hybrid warfare tactics will be ongoing. Militant groups, especially those focused along the Iranian periphery, will start major offensive operations, working in conjunction with foreign intelligence agents and operatives on the ground, similar to what we witnessed during the 12-day War in June of 2025.
Note that the much debated potential goal of assassinating Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei is not included above. Although many have speculated that the strategy could very well hindge upon this, it guarantees a war with no predictable end, no escalation ladder and will likely trigger calls for global Jihad.
An inevitable US-Israeli defeat
Giving the Zionist coalition the best possible conditions and achievements as a result of their opening offensive, this strategy will quickly begin to run into major issues.
As we saw last June, decapitation strikes against the Iranian leadership do not work at crippling the government and its military, they are simply replaced by another line of leadership, who implement a whole series of pre-planned counter attack strategies.
The Israelis wrongfully believed that their success during the initial attack on Iran last year was going to yield major results, even attempting to utilise their asset in the United States, the son of the deposed Iranian dictator, to call for a revolt. Not only did no such action take place, as Iranians outside of the diaspora do not support this clear Zionist puppet, but the very opposite occurred as the population rallied behind the flag.
Within 15 hours, the Iranians not only managed to get their air defences back online, but captured the initiative and began launching huge volleys of ballistic missiles into the heart of Tel Aviv. As the conflict evolved, a few important developments occurred: the Israeli air defences began to buckle – with the draining of anti-air munitions – while their agents on the ground carried out most of the attacks, something that is key to note.
While it is clear that the US will bring in greater firepower than the Israelis can muster, an air force is still run by human operators who get tired and operate equipment that needs to be serviced. Iran will very easily be able to launch drones waves constantly at US and Zionist positions, and even if their ability to launch large salvos of missiles is constrained during the first week of the conflict, eventually the opportunity will present itself.
If the Iranian State has not crumbled and civil war has not erupted within this time, then the US and Israelis will then be subjected to wave after wave of counterattacks. Inevitably, this means that airbases will be struck, equipment will be lost, and with fewer assets, this means less ability to keep up the pace of their offensive.
Bear in mind that warhawks employed by Washington and Tel Aviv based pro-war think tanks, who claim that the Iranian State is crumbling at least once a year, are far detached from reality. Take the latest round of foreign backed riots for example, the Western corporate media invented an alternate reality in order to sell the idea that Iran was falling, yet the entire ordeal was more or less over in two days.
It is clear to any learned observer, that without a significant ground element, toppling the Iranian government is impossible. Which then leads to the obvious next question: What if major militant offensives occur inside Iranian territory?
Answering this in depth would take time and a more nimble military mind. Yet, again assuming some level of success on the behalf of separatist militias and al-Qaeda linked Takfiri groups, even if they were to seize territory, Iran is a massive country that allows for mistakes. None of these groups compare and can stand up to the Iranian army and IRGC, nor do they likely possess any considerable advanced capabilities.
What this means is that even if they manage to see some level of initial success, the much larger, well trained, motivated and well equipped Iranian armed forces will eventually crush these insurgents. The only real threat is some kind of mass civilian mobilisation that will deal a blow to the Iranian economy, for which there is no indication this will happen, especially as the nation is suffering through a bloody war of aggression against it.
Then come the attacks on missile bases and nuclear sites. Even if some of these attacks are successful, they won’t destroy all of Iran’s capabilities, and as we saw in June of last year, the US attacks on the nuclear facilities don’t appear to have stopped the nuclear program. If it were that easy to simply take out Iran’s capabilities, it would have been done long ago. The Israelis tried last year and failed. If anything, on the nuclear issue, such a war could end up leading to Tehran actually reversing course on its stance against developing the bomb.
Even with full US-Israeli air superiority, the remaining air defences of Iran will at some point come back online, but even in the event that 100% of their anti-air capabilities are gone, their power is in their offensive, not defensive capabilities.
Once this initial period of assumed US-Israeli offensive dominance is over, Iran can easily block the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf, inflict large casualty events on US and Israeli targets, while taking out assets. It is impossible to predict which strikes will be the most effective, however, it is clear that everything will become a target. So expect a big hit on the global oil market, resulting in an economic crisis.
If Iran simply keeps up a pace of fire against the Israelis, the likes of which we saw during the 12-day War, then they only have a matter of weeks before their air defences also become useless.
This is all without factoring in Iran’s various allies, which may enter at any level of intensity at any point in this conflict. There’s Ansar Allah, which has the capability of striking the Israelis, but also assets throughout the Persian Gulf. If Hezbollah manages to wage a considerable ground war, the Israelis have proven in the past to be the weakest in this arena.
The Iraqi Popular Mobilisation Units (PMU/PMF, Hashd al-Shaabi) are around 250,000 men strong, alongside Saraya Awliya al-Dam, who can use their own capabilities to not only target the US, but the Israelis also. So far, since October 7, 2023, we have not seen a true demonstration of their power. Another factor which is not often discussed, but is also very important, is the role of the Palestinian resistance, who are more likely to wait for the right opportunity, but can also pose a major ground challenge to the Israelis from Gaza.
None of this considers the other elements that could come into play, such as the roles played by regional nations, armed groups we may not have previously heard of, the likes of the Fatemiyoun of Afghanistan and Zainabiyoun of Pakistan, or the general populations throughout the region and what we could see in the event that chaos erupts. Governments could be overthrown, the civilian populations of Jordan and Egypt could become active and out of control. There is also the possibility that some groups in Syria could seize the opportunity to attack the Israelis.
In the event that such a war occurs, the longer it goes on, the more chaotic and unpredictable it becomes. A situation will be totally out of the US’s control, especially as the only means of combating this regional explosion is through the air. As we witnessed with the US campaign against Yemen, airstrikes alone change very little. Even in Gaza, the armed resistance groups fought for over 2 years with no supply chain, and by the admissions of the US and Israelis, their fighting force is still roughly the same size.
If things don’t go their way very quickly, then the Zionist coalition is going to get battered, and not even nuclear weapons will get them out of it. Therefore, [if] the US and Israelis, as long as we again grant them another assumption, that they are somewhat sane, choose to go to war, they will have to try and establish an escalation ladder, devising a real exit strategy.
The question becomes whether the Iranians and their allies allow them to exit the fight. An all out war will be bloody, it will claim an enormous amount of civilian lives, and it will also inflict considerable damage on civilian infrastructure. Truly, the effects of such a war are not desired by anyone in the region, yet the Iranian-led Axis of Resistance have long prepared their capabilities in order to combat what appears to have been inevitable.
Another thing to be mentioned here is that the US government, under the Trump administration, is totally captured by the Zionist entity. For all the reasons noted above, no previous administrations have dared escalate to this extent. If it were easy to launch a regime change operation against Iran, it would have been carried out many years ago.
However, a Zionist stooge is occupying the White House, a narcissistic man whose already low cognitive abilities are clearly declining. He is a President that an FBI report concluded had been compromised by the Mossad, but even if that report isn’t to be taken seriously, his whole campaign was bankrolled by Zionist donors, and his administration is an embarrassing collection of Zionist war hawks. If there was ever any US administration that was foolish enough to launch such a war, it is that of Donald Trump.
US envoy Huckabee claims Israel has ‘biblical right’ to conquer all West Asia
The Cradle | February 21, 2026
During a recent interview with Tucker Carlson, US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee claimed Israel has a biblical right to take over “all” of West Asia.
“It would be fine if they took it all,” Huckabee said when asked whether a passage from the Book of Genesis can be interpreted as granting Israel the right to steal all the land between the Nile River in Egypt and the Euphrates in Syria.
Huckabee was appointed by President Donald Trump as Ambassador to Israel in 2025. He is a former Arkansas governor and Southern Baptist minister.
Carlson and Huckabee discussed interpretations of Old Testament (Torah) scripture used by Christian Zionists to justify Israel’s killing and expulsion of native Christians and Muslims from the Holy Land.
Carlson asked Huckabee about a biblical verse in which God promises Abraham that his descendants will receive land “from the wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates – the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.”
“Israel is a land that God gave, through Abraham, to a people that he chose. It was a people, a place, and a purpose,” Huckabee claimed.
Carlson responded, saying this would include “like, basically the entire Middle East.”
“The Levant … Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon – it’d also be big parts of Saudi Arabia and Iraq,” Carlson said.
“I’m not sure it would go that far, but it would be a big piece of land,” Huckabee answered.
Since 7 October 2023, Israel has launched wars to occupy land in Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria, including to establish settlements for Israeli Jews. Israel has also escalated its efforts to steal and annex Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank.
Israel has killed at least 72,000 Palestinians during its effort to conquer Gaza, the majority of whom were women and children. Tens, if not hundreds, of thousands more may die from the indirect effects of Israel’s destruction of the strip.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought to justify the eradication of Palestinians in Gaza at the start of the war, calling them “Amalek,” a reference to the Biblical account of a people exterminated by ancient Israelites.
Israeli Finance Minister and settler leader, Bezalel Smotrich, has stated that Israel would expand “little by little” and eventually encompass all Palestinian territories as well as Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia.
“It is written that the future of Jerusalem is to expand to Damascus,” he said, referencing the “Greater Israel” ideology.
Carlson also pressed Huckabee about Israel’s role in pushing the US to go to war against Iraq in 2003, which led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and thousands of US soldiers.
“How many Americans put their boots on the ground for Israel?” the US ambassador asked.
“Everybody who served in Iraq,” Carlson responded, adding that the intelligence falsely claiming that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction had come from Israel.
As Gary Vogler has detailed, neoconservatives inside the government of George W. Bush worked secretly with the Israeli lobby and government to launch the invasion of Iraq to satisfy Israel’s energy needs.
Since the start of the genocide in Gaza, members of Trump’s so-called “America First” political movement have become increasingly critical of Israel’s dominant influence in the US government, in particular at the expense of US citizens.
President Trump has currently amassed an “armada” of US forces in West Asia to prepare for a possible attack on Iran, long a key priority for Israel and Netanyahu, which would lead to the deaths of additional US citizens for Israel’s sake.
Testing the Alliance: Netanyahu’s Washington Visit
By Abbas Hashemite – New Eastern Outlook – February 21, 2026
Netanyahu’s recent rush to the United States signals that Israel seeks Washington to expand the agenda of negotiations with Iran. However, the Trump administration seems to recalibrate its policy alignment with Israel.
A Diplomatic Visit or a Geopolitical Stress Test?
Soon after the first round of US-Iran peace negotiations, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rushed to Washington. This visit was not part of routine diplomacy, but rather a test of geopolitical endurance. Israel and the United States had always been close allies. This bilateral relationship reached a new high during the tenure of US President Donald Trump. Since Donald Trump’s reelection as the 47th President of the US, both sides have exchanged numerous visits. Yet the recent visit of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu displayed pressing importance and urgency that signaled Israel’s anxiety over the recent US-Iran peace talks. Since the visit, analysts around the world are trying to analyze if the US will once again conduct a military attack on Iran at the behest of the Israeli government or if it will assert strategic independence.
The regional landscape in the Middle East is fraught with stress. Washington has intensified its military posture across the region to reinforce strategic deterrence and stability. The United States is critical of Iran’s nuclear program. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran’s uranium enrichment purity reached up to 60 percent as of mid-2025. This made Tehran’s nuclear enrichment levels the flashpoint for Western concern. Iranian officials insist that their nuclear program is merely for peaceful purposes and reversible. However, Tel Aviv views Iran’s nuclear enrichment levels as an existential threat. Some Arab states are also concerned about Iran’s nuclear program.
Due to these concerns by Israel and some pro-West Arab states, the United States imposed economic sanctions on Tehran. Moreover, it increased its military pressure on Iran by intensifying its military presence in the region. The United States deployed its largest aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, in the Middle East. Reports suggest that the Pentagon has also ordered the deployment of another aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, in the region. US President Donald Trump has also confirmed the deployment of another aircraft carrier in the region. However, none of these arrangements appears to be enough to appease Israel.
Expanding the Negotiation Framework
Netanyahu visited Washington to seek expansion of the US-Iran negotiation outline. Tel Aviv has long maintained that any negotiations and agreement with Tehran must also include restrictions on Iran’s regional alliances and ballistic missile program. This demand has further increased after the recent 12-day war between Iran and Israel. Israel views the range of Iranian missiles and its regional proxy network as a unified threat to its security and expansionist ambitions.
However, Washington’s posture after the Trump-Netanyahu meeting did not suggest any major breakthrough. After the meeting, President Trump stated that nuclear talks with Iran would continue, without mentioning anything about Iran’s ballistic missile program. This suggests that President Trump made no immediate commitment to the Israeli Prime Minister about including Iran’s ballistic missile program in the agenda of ongoing diplomatic negotiations. The absence of a clear US stance on Israel’s demands has drawn global attention.
Domestic Pressures and Global Constraints on Washington
The United States has been Israel’s closest ally for decades. Israel has received the largest amount of US aid in terms of money and weapons. However, it appears that this time the US wants to draw a boundary. There are numerous reasons behind this shift in Washington’s response to the Israeli demands. On the domestic front, the Trump administration is dealing with scores of challenges. American society is highly polarized over the Israeli aggression. Independent estimates suggest that the Palestinian death toll since October 7, 2023, has surpassed 80,000.
More than 90 percent of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure has been intentionally destroyed by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). A recent report revealed that Israel used prohibited US-made thermobaric weapons, capable of generating temperatures above 3500 degrees Celsius, in Gaza, which made thousands of Palestinian people evaporate. The United States also provided diplomatic assistance to Israel at international forums. Such reports sparked sustained protests across the United States against unequivocal military and strategic alignment with Israel. These protests and the American youth’s criticism have altered the domestic environment in the country and diminished the influence of the AIPAC on American politics.
On the international front, the United States is already facing diplomatic and strategic challenges. Due to Trump’s “America First” approach and his increasing sanctions, tariffs, and interventionist attitude, Washington is facing diplomatic isolation. The rapid rise of Russia and China as new global superpowers and the increasing role of middle powers in global politics have made the world multipolar. The American economy is also burdened by federal debt of around $34 trillion. A war with Iran would deepen Washington’s economic strain and complicate its diplomatic standing. Due to all these issues, the Trump administration seems to adopt a cautious approach towards Iran. However, given the Zionist influence in the US establishment, it would be hard for President Trump to reject Netanyahu’s demands. The increasing US military posture in the Middle East suggests that the coming few weeks will be decisive for the region.
Аbbas Hashemite is a political observer and research analyst for regional and global geopolitical issues. He is currently working as an independent researcher and journalist.
Israel ready to strike Iran-backed armed groups – media
RT | February 20, 2026
Israel’s military is preparing to launch large-scale pre-emptive strikes on Iran-backed armed groups across the Middle East in order to prevent them from lending support to Tehran in any potential regional conflict, the Saudi daily Asharq Al-Awsat reported on Friday.
Israeli military sources told the newspaper that West Jerusalem has engaged mediators to warn Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group, Yemen’s Houthi rebels, and armed factions in Iraq that any attack against Israel would be met with a “massive and unprecedented response.”
The sources said that Israeli defense officials believe Tehran is pushing its regional allies to take part in any potential escalation after concluding that their limited involvement in the 12-day Israel-Iran war was a strategic mistake.
Iran has allocated substantial resources, including an estimated $1 billion in 2025, to bolster its allies’ ability to strike targets in Israel and the region, the sources claimed.
Israeli assessments cited by the paper suggest that Kataib Hezbollah in Iraq is reluctant to take part in a confrontation, while Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis are more likely to participate.
The IDF said on Thursday it had carried out airstrikes on alleged Hezbollah sites in southern Lebanon. Despite a fragile US-brokered ceasefire, Israel has routinely attacked its northern neighbor, accusing it of violating its side of their agreement.
The Houthis, who control much of Yemen, have halted missile and drone attacks on Israel and its commercial shipping in the Red Sea since the truce with Gaza was signed in October, after repeatedly targeting vessels in what they said was solidarity with Palestinians.
On Thursday, US President Donald Trump set a ten-day deadline for Iran to reach a nuclear deal with Washington, saying that failure to comply could trigger decisive measures. The warning followed Omani-mediated talks in Geneva on Tuesday, which both sides described as a positive step, although no breakthrough was made. At the same time, the US accelerated its troop buildup in the region.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also warned about preparations for possible missile strikes on Iran. “We are prepared for any scenario,” he said, adding “they will experience a response they cannot even imagine.”
The US struck Iran’s nuclear sites during the 12-day Israel-Iran air war in June 2025. Tehran has maintained that its nuclear program is peaceful and has vowed it will not be deterred. Tehran’s UN envoy Amir Saeid Iravani reiterated on Thursday that Iran “will not initiate any war,” but will respond resolutely to being attacked.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has accused the US of “playing with fire” and warned that strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites could lead to disaster.
In an interview with Al Arabiya aired on Wednesday, Lavrov said Moscow backs Tehran’s right to peaceful enrichment, adding that the current tensions stem from the US tearing up the 2015 Iran nuclear deal during Trump’s first term.
Behind US war drums against Iran: No goals, no plan, no off-ramp
Al Mayadeen | February 20, 2026
As the United States continues to amass unprecedented military firepower in West Asia, the largest such build-up since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, a senior analyst at the Atlantic Council is warning that Washington has yet to answer fundamental questions about what a military campaign against Iran would actually achieve, or what catastrophic consequences it might unleash.
In a piece published this week, Nate Swanson, director of the Atlantic Council’s Iran Strategy Project and senior advisor on Iran policy to successive US administrations, outlined six critical questions that US policymakers appear unable, or unwilling, to answer before potentially launching a “massive, weeks-long” aggression against Iran.
The analysis, while emerging from a Washington policy establishment that has long driven the logic of “maximum pressure” against Tehran, nonetheless lays bare the incoherence and recklessness of the current US posture.
No clear objective, no clear endgame
Swanson acknowledges that the White House has failed to define what it hopes to achieve militarily. The possible objectives he outlines, leveraging a strike to force nuclear concessions, decapitating Iran’s leadership, or launching symbolic attacks to appear supportive of rioters, each carry “significant obstacles.”
Most notably, Swanson concedes that Iran’s leadership appears to have calculated that dismantling its defense capabilities would be more dangerous than absorbing a US strike. In other words, Washington is considering going to war against a country that has already determined it will not surrender to US demands, regardless of the military cost.
No diplomatic path
Swanson is frank that a diplomatic off-ramp is effectively closed, though the reasons illuminate where responsibility lies. The Trump administration, he notes, is not seeking a deal in the conventional sense but something closer to “an Iranian surrender pact.”
Iran, meanwhile, insists on its sovereign right to a civilian nuclear program. The vast gap between the two positions is less a failure of Iranian diplomacy than a reflection of maximalist US demands that leave no room for negotiation.
The human cost
One of the more significant acknowledgements in Swanson’s piece is the human toll of the June 2025 unprovoked Israeli war on Iran, which the US supported. Over 900 Iranians were martyred in the aggression, including many civilians.
He cautions that a new, prolonged campaign would risk far greater casualties, which is something the great majority of Iranians would oppose. The analyst also notes that Iranians did not come out to protest against the government during the twelve-day war, so there is no reason to believe a large-scale US aggression would trigger protests to overthrow the Islamic Republic.
Regional alarm bells ignored
Arab and Turkish partners of the United States have spent the past month urging Washington to step back from the brink, with Gulf states publicly refusing to permit US use of their airspace for attacks on Iran. The regional consensus against military escalation is striking and largely being ignored in Washington’s war calculus.
Swanson also raises the possibility of Iran retaliating against Gulf states if it cannot de-escalate, echoing the 2019 precedent when Iran struck UAE and Saudi Arabian infrastructure during the last “maximum pressure” campaign. It is a reminder that Washington’s wars rarely stay contained to their intended theatres.
A war machine in search of a justification
Swanson’s analysis, despite being authored from within the US foreign policy establishment, ultimately underscores a troubling reality. The United States is on the edge of a potentially devastating war without a clear objective, without a viable diplomatic track, without regional support, and against the wishes of 70 percent of its own population.
The questions Swanson is asking should have been answered before B-2 bombers were positioned in Diego Garcia and carrier strike groups were dispatched to the Gulf.
That they remain unanswered speaks not to a failure of analysis but to the nature of a foreign policy apparatus that treats war as a tool of first resort.
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Israel Would Have No Qualms About USS Liberty-Style FALSE FLAG If Iran Campaign Falters – Analysts
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 18.06.2025
Donald Trump is mulling whether or not to join Israel’s aggression against Iran as Tel Aviv faces problems sustaining its defenses against growing counterstrikes, and apparently lacks a realistic game plan for an end to hostilities after failing to achieve its goals. Analysts told Sputnik how the US could be ‘nudged’ into the conflict.
“The US is already assisting Israel with supplies, intel, refueling support, etc. One of the many US posts in the region could be attacked for a casus belli,” former Pentagon analyst Karen Kwiatkowski explained.
“If Trump doesn’t comply with Israel’s demand” and join its aggression voluntarily, “a false flag may be needed” to drag the US in, Kwiatkowski, retired US Air Force Lt. Col.-turned Iraq War whistleblower, fears.
Netanyahu has a diverse array of options at his disposal, according to the observer, including:
- a false flag against US assets abroad blamed on Iran or one of its Axis of Resistance allies, like the Houthis
- a US domestic attack or assassination blamed on Iran
- Iranian air defenses ‘accidentally’ hitting a civilian jetliner carrying Americans
- use of a dirty bomb or nuclear contamination somewhere in the region blamed on Iran
- even blackmailing by threatening to use nukes against Iran if the US doesn’t join the fight
Kwiatkowski estimates that Israel probably has “enough blackmail power” against President Trump and Congress to avoid the necessity of a false flag operation, but a “USS Liberty-style” attack, targeting the soon-to-be-retired USS Nimitz supercarrier that’s heading to the Middle East, for example, nevertheless cannot be ruled out entirely, she says. … continue
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