Calls for the reconfiguration of military arrangements in the Gulf region
By Thembisa Fakude | MEMO | March 8, 2026
The former Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani called for the formation of a strategic defence alliance bringing together Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and Pakistan. Al Thani has described it as an “urgent need” in light of developments and changing regional and international dynamics. He made this call weeks before the attack on Iran by Israel and the US on 28th February 2026. It is not the first time Israel attacked Iran whilst in negotiations.
In June 2025 Israel attacked Iran whilst it was it was negotiating its nuclear program with the US. Iran retaliated with hundreds of missiles and drones targeting Israeli cities and the US military base in Al Udeid in Doha, Qatar. Al Udeid is the largest US military base in the Gulf region. In September 2025 Hamas leadership was attacked in Qatar by Israel whilst meeting to consider a ceasefire proposal from the US on the war on Gaza.
Qatar has spent billions of US dollars on US’s weapons and military hardware including a huge investment at the Al Udeid military base. It is estimated that Qatar has spent over 19 billion USD over time in Al Udeid. Notwithstanding, Qatar has remained vulnerable from external military attacks and its sovereignty has been compromised over the past months.
On 28 February 2026, the US and Israel started launching unprovoked attacks on Iran. They killed the Supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei and over 180 school girls at the Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in the city of Minab in the early stages of the attack. Iran retaliated to the attacks by firing hundreds of drones to Israeli cities and US military installations in the Gulf.
The US and Israel have called for a regime change in Iran. Speaking to the media on 5th March 2026, Donald Trump said “he wants to be involved in picking up the next leadership in Iran”. Iran has vowed not to allow foreign interference in their politics including how its leadership is elected. Such rhetoric from the president of the US presents a threat to the political process in Iran. Moreover, Trump’s hope and ambition that the US can come into Iran, impose its political will and preference and still have a stable Iran is farfetched and dangerous. It could lead to political instability in Iran and indeed the region. Iran has suffered tremendous infrastructural and leadership devastation already in this conflict. However, its government has vowed to continue fighting and judging by how it has resisted over the past couple of days since the start of this war, it is unlikely to collapse.
Secondly, the Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu has said repeatedly that he wants to eliminate all threats to Israel in the region including obliterating Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Hamas and Hezbollah have refused to disarm and are both showing signs of recovering from the devastating war on Gaza. The recent attacks of Israel by Hezbollah in retaliation to the killing of Ayatollah Khamenei, caught Israel and many in the world by surprise. After heavy bombardment and killing of its leadership by Israel over the past 24 months, they are still capable of sending missiles and drones hitting their targets in Israel. Likewise, Hamas – who got praised by Trump – for their great work in helping to allocate the dead bodies of the Israeli captives in Gaza – are still governing Gaza.
Notwithstanding the devastation of Iran and the killing of its leadership, its political infrastructure is likely to endure. However, as long as the government of Iran continues to function, with all its current political infrastructural framework, it will continue to be targeted by Israel. Moreover, Hamas, Hezbollah have not disarmed. The Houthis in Yemen continue to attack US and Israeli interests in the Red Sea. Basically, notwithstanding the military attacks on these organisations and Iran, they are still standing albeit weaker. This means the “threats” to Israel remain, it also means that future conflicts between Israel and the US on one hand and Iran will continue as long as both Israel and the US refuse to accept the status quo. This reality brings us back to what the former prime minister of Qatar raised i.e., the strategic defence alliance in the region. Second, a need for the reconfiguration of the military arrangement in the region. The recent unprovoked attacks on Iran and its subsequent retaliation have added a momentum to these discussions. The attacks have also raised questions about the significance of the presence of US’s military bases in the region. Particularly, whether countries in the region should continue having strategic military partnerships with the US? Iran has insisted that US military bases in the region are legitimate targets and it will continue targeting them in retaliation and in defense of their people and sovereignty.
The conclusion therefore is that unless there is a reconfiguration of the security arrangements in the region, the US and Israel are likely to attack Iran again. Iran is likely to retaliate in the manner it is currently doing, targeting both Israel and US’s bases and infrastructure in the region. Iran has repeatedly said “it is not targeting its friendly neighbors rather the interests and assets of the US and Israel in the region”. Consequently, Gulf countries hosting these bases will continue to be targeted by Iran.
US Bases in Middle East Fail to Secure Nations & Become Safety Risk – Expert
Sputnik – 07.03.2026
American bases in the Middle East are constantly facing various kinds of attacks and do not protect the countries on whose territory they are located that effectively, Turkish political scientist Umur Tugay Yucel tells Sputnik.
“For a long time, the Gulf countries had unwavering trust in the American security umbrella, but during the 12-day war, we all saw how untrustworthy it turned out to be,” Umur Tugay Yucel said.
He says that the ongoing conflict shows that the Western security framework in the Gulf region fails to address contemporary defense needs; a concern now spreading to US allies in Asia as reports emerge of THAAD and Patriot systems being withdrawn from South Korea — a move that could soon affect Japan and other partners.
“It is obvious that American bases bring more harm than good to the civilian population and infrastructure of the countries where they are located. They pose a serious threat to populated areas. When a base is struck, not only military installations are damaged, but also roads, railways, and vital transport channels in the vicinity. Moreover, there is an inevitable increase in civilian casualties,” the expert emphasizes.
Iranian Crisis Becomes Embarrassment for US Military That Can’t Protect Anyone – MidEast Analyst
Sputnik – 07.03.2026
Prior to the arrival of the United States, the Persian Gulf was essentially the domain of the British Empire which ended up handing over its holdings to the US to ensure that the latter would be at the forefront of any major war in the region, Middle East affairs expert Mais Kurbanov tells Sputnik.
Currently, the US controls a network of military installations that don’t just serve as military garrisons – these are all elements of a system of control of the Gulf ‘gas station,” Kurbanov remarks.
This defensive network was never meant to protect the Arab states of the Gulf – it’s real purpose was to protect Israel.
“This entire shield was created to keep Israel safe and to intercept missiles. They were more or less able to intercept them during the previous conflicts, before Iran started targeting their radars. And now they got nothing to intercept because Iran destroys the early warning system itself,” notes Kurbanov.
The US is unwilling and unable to defend the Gulf states – it only cares about its own interests. And all of the Gulf states besides Iran are now vulnerable because they don’t have any air defense systems, he adds. The US focuses on protecting only its own assets in the region.
“The US has embarrassed itself in front of the entire world. Everybody now knows that the Americans are no protectors,” says Kurbanov. “They used to mock Russia when Ukraine scored some hits, acting as if they are invincible. Now Iran keeps pummeling them, and US ships have to flee two thousand kilometers into the ocean to escape Iranian missiles.”
“It means the US has no meaningful air defense. Neither Israel’s Iron Dome nor the US’ vaunted Patriots can do anything. Consider this: such weapon system costs a billion dollars and an Iranian Shaheed, this dirt-cheap drone worth twenty thousand, just takes it out.”
All of the weapons the US peddled across the world – stealth aircraft, MQ-9 Reaper drones they were so proud of – turned out to be useless,” he points out.
Meanwhile, Iran keeps demonstrating the kind of new missiles that maybe two other leading world powers beside them possess.
“The US should just leave. There will be no negotiations with them and they know it,” argues Kurbanov.
Though the US does possess an extensive global network of military installations – several hundred facilities in dozens of different countries – even it cannot ensure an immediate stabilization of the situation. He points out that Russia and China haven’t yet become actively involved in the current crisis, and that without their involvement the US would be hard-pressed to deal with global issues.
Iran pledges to ‘respect sovereignty of neighbors’, declares US-Israel assets ‘primary targets’
The Cradle | March 7, 2026
The Iranian armed forces warned that US and Israeli military installations across the region remain legitimate targets, as officials seek to ease tensions with neighboring countries.
“Should the previous hostile actions continue, all military bases and interests of criminal America and the fake Zionist regime on land, at sea, and in the air across the region will be considered primary targets and will come under the powerful and crushing strikes of the mighty armed forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said in a statement on Saturday.
The warning came alongside a declaration by Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters that Iranian forces “respect the national interests and sovereignty of neighboring countries” and “have not carried out any act of aggression against them.”
Nevertheless, military officials emphasized that installations used by the US or Israel to launch attacks against Iran remain fair game. Lieutenant Colonel Ibrahim Zolfaghari said that at least 21 US personnel have been killed and many more injured in attacks on the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet infrastructure, while additional casualties occurred during strikes on Al-Dhafra Air Base.
He also said Iranian forces targeted a US-owned oil tanker in the northern Persian Gulf.
Earlier in the day, President Masoud Pezeshkian announced that Iran’s interim leadership council had ordered the armed forces to cease striking neighboring countries unless attacks originate from their territory.
“The temporary leadership council approved yesterday that neighboring countries should no longer be targeted and missiles should not be fired unless an attack on Iran originates from those countries,” Pezeshkian said in a pre-recorded address.
Pezeshkian’s statement was made amid increasing tensions over regional airspace with Iran’s neighboring countries.
Turkish authorities claimed this week that NATO missile defenses intercepted a ballistic projectile allegedly launched from Iran that crossed Iraqi and Syrian airspace before approaching the northwestern Syria-Turkiye border.
In Azerbaijan, officials accused Tehran of launching a drone attack that struck the Nakhchivan airport terminal, prompting President Ilham Aliyev to warn Iran “will regret it,” while Iranian authorities denied involvement.
Tehran vehemently denied involvement in either of these attacks.
Saudi journalist Adhwan al-Ahmari said in a recent interview with Asharq News that “not all attacks” targeting Gulf states come from Iran, warning the war could be “an American-Israeli trap to implicate the Gulf countries and draw them into a confrontation with Iran.”
Iranian officials told Middle East Eye (MEE) that some recent drone strikes on Gulf energy infrastructure were not carried out by Tehran, with one official describing the attack on Saudi Aramco’s Ras Tanura facility as “an Israeli effort to sabotage regional peace and alliances between neighbours.”
“I can categorically say that some of the attacks were not carried out by us [Iran],” the anonymous official told MEE.
Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Oman have all sustained strikes within their territories due to the presence of US assets within their borders.
USA and Israel: Who is the lord and who is the colony?
By Raphael Machado | Strategic Culture Foundation | March 7, 2026
The Epstein Coalition (USA and Israel) began a war against the Islamic Republic of Iran on February 28th. The starting shot was the murder of 171 girls in an elementary school (perhaps as a sacrifice to Baal, the Epsteinians’ favorite deity?), followed by the martyrdom of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in his own residence.
It was the beginning of an “operation” that the USA expected to see finished in a few hours, then in 3 days. Well, the operation has now exceeded 6 days, and all analysts indicate that the war will last at least a few weeks, with significant losses on both sides.
What led to this operation being initiated? The easy and predictable answer is that the USA wants Iran’s oil and other natural resources.
Usually, those who reason this way also tend to say that the State of Israel represents an enclave of the USA or the “collective West” in the Middle East, whose purpose would be to serve as a trading post to facilitate or enable the occupation of the region, to ensure the exploitation of its natural resources. This is perhaps the inevitable result of looking at the comparative statistics of both countries.
The USA is larger, has a larger GDP, more powerful and numerous armed forces, has more billionaires; in short, it is “superior” in every possible and imaginable aspect, so that the US-Israel relationship can only be perceived as one in which the USA commands and Israel obeys.
Indeed, Marxian and, in general, materialist readings go in this direction. But does the Iran War confirm this assessment?
If Israel is the obedient colony of the USA, then the decision to start the conflict would have been eminently that of the USA, with Israel simply obeying the determination of its “metropole.”
But what is perceived from the official statements of Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth is exactly the opposite: they made it quite clear in their press conferences that the USA became involved in the conflict only because Israel had already decided to attack Iran, with Washington simply following the Zionist determination.
The pretext of alleging a pre-emptive attack plan by Iran was used, but the pretext was quickly abandoned after being refuted by the Pentagon. In fact, Iran had no plan to attack either the USA or Israel.
In other words, Israel would have made the USA attack Iran. How is that possible?
The solution to the mystery seems to lie in the role of the Jewish community in the USA and its influence over the country’s internal affairs, regardless of whether its members hold Israeli citizenship or not. After all, despite comprising only 2.4% of the US population, 25% of its members have an income equivalent to the top 4% richest among non-Jews.
And if in many countries a large part of the Jewish community is critical or indifferent to Israel, in the USA, 90% of community members support Israel against its enemies. And this support is not merely verbal, expressing itself through the formal organization of lobbies that finance pro-Israel candidates and harm anti-Israel candidates, the most famous of these organizations being AIPAC, which invested almost 130 million dollars to elect its candidates in 2024.
A much more important asset, however, is the fact that, as indicated by income, many members of this community occupy positions of power and influence in the mass media, the banking system, and entertainment. Even though they are only, again, 2.4% of the US population, they constitute 33% of the CEOs of major banks, 40% of the CEOs of major media conglomerates, and 50% of the CEOs of major companies in the entertainment industry.
And these are the sectors that basically control the flow of investments, as well as shape the opinions and tastes of the country’s population.
Years ago, geopolitical analysts John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt released an excellent book on the Zionist lobby in the USA. What they make very clear in that work is that US support for Israel is not linked to any strategic interest of Washington. The cost of supporting Israel is immense, both in money and in the international popularity of the USA. In fact, the USA only harms itself by supporting Israel against its enemies.
So how could one say that the USA controls Israel?
Returning to the current presidential administration, figures like Hegseth and Lindsay Graham openly admit that the main goal of the USA is to facilitate the reconstruction of the Temple in Jerusalem to pave the way for the coming of the Jewish Messiah. Eschatologically, the problem there is that, for Catholics, Orthodox, and traditional Protestants, the Jewish Messiah is the Antichrist.
As much as Israel is dependent on US financial and military aid, Zionism has captured the decision-making and public opinion-forming mechanisms so completely that we could practically compare the unipolar hegemon to a headless golem. In place of “America First,” it is the policy of “Israel First.”
While US bases, radars, planes, and personnel are hit by barrages of missiles and drones, and Washington loses influence and the capacity to project power in the Middle East, it becomes inevitable to reach the conclusion that Israel is the one calling the shots in this relationship, and that Tel Aviv will instrumentalize the USA as long as it serves its own expansionist interests.
Europe not in position to cooperate with US and Israel against Iran
By Ahmed Adel | March 6, 2026
Although the US-Israeli attack on Iran has worsened the crisis in the Middle East, some European countries approved of the operation, such as the United Kingdom, which provided military bases to the Americans, and Germany, which rhetorically supported the offensive through its Chancellor, Friedrich Merz. However, Europe is not cooperating as actively as it was before.
Recent historical experiences, such as the wars in Iraq (2003-2011), Afghanistan (2001-2021), and the military intervention in Libya (2011), have created deep divisions among European countries regarding military actions outside their continent. Moreover, the European Union already dedicates substantial resources to Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. In this context, the economic and military crisis among EU members makes them hesitant to engage in another large-scale armed conflict.
The timing is not very favorable for the Europeans. They are facing an economic crisis mainly caused by energy prices. The EU is attempting to wean off Russian energy without harming itself, but the strategy ultimately failed, and now that there is war in the Middle East, energy prices have spiked even more.
Russian President Vladimir Putin stated on March 4 that Russia could immediately halt the supply of raw materials to European markets, and thus thwarted the EU’s plan to systematically phase out Russian gas. Putin’s words caused psychological trauma to the EU because, instead of a planned embargo on Russian gas for 2027, he suggested that Europe should prepare for an immediate cut.
The Russian president’s warning and ongoing tensions in the Middle East continue to drive up global energy costs. The price increases mirror developments in international energy markets. Oil and gas prices have risen since the war on Iran began, particularly because it has disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important transit routes for oil and natural gas.
Disruptions to shipping and decreased production by several Gulf states have tightened global supply. As a result, the price of Brent crude, the European benchmark oil, rose to around $84 per barrel on March 5, roughly 16% higher than before the conflict started, and close to its highest level since mid-2024.
Additionally, from a military perspective, Europe knows that its weaponry is not capable of conducting a high-intensity war due to a technical shortfall. At the same time, the EU wants to replace the US as Ukraine’s main benefactor, a corrupt state that drains many of the bloc’s resources.
Another reason for Europeans to remain impartial is the growth of the Muslim population in these countries, which also holds electoral influence and the power to sway domestic policy outcomes. The Muslim population in Europe is quite sizable, and European attacks in the Middle East could face internal opposition. Besides the Muslim community, most European citizens would be largely unwilling to fight for the Americans, especially in a scenario where the US might not achieve its objectives.
Europe uses rhetoric to avoid commitment. In the current context of hostilities in the Middle East, European leaders are not demonstrating a unified stance, even though some rhetorically support Washington and Tel Aviv’s initiatives. However, this behavior indicates a lack of European political cohesion.
London is not following Washington’s lead, something that has not occurred often since the Second World War. Germany is showing support, but lacks the power to act. Spain initially contradicted the White House but then quickly announced that a warship would be deployed to Cyprus in response to threats of sanctions from US President Donald Trump. In other words, Europe is divided and fragmented and therefore cannot act effectively at this moment.
Another obstacle is Iran’s warning that if Europeans join the offensive, there will be a fierce response. Because of this, Washington’s traditional Western allies are becoming mere observers in the region, even though they also have bases near the epicenter of the crisis. European bases are at risk if Europe attacks Iran, and it is a risk they are unwilling to take, besides not wanting to lose money in yet another conflict.
Furthermore, the Europeans are not even trying to mediate the conflict to avoid antagonizing Trump.
A new reconfiguration of the Middle East might happen after this conflict ends. The US could become weaker, which might impact its close ties with Gulf countries. Therefore, Europe might seize the opportunity created by its ally to expand its trade relations.
Nonetheless, Europe is not in a position to cooperate with the US and Israel and is acting opportunistically. They are observing Washington weaken politically in the Middle East, probably aiming to occupy spaces in neighboring countries after this war, because there will be new business opportunities.
In this context, Europe’s struggle to achieve political unity at the continental level is due to differing interests among its governments within the EU, as well as to managing its internal issues. Meanwhile, the bloc’s powers tend to exploit the situation to uphold their rhetoric aligned with Western values, while concealing their military weaknesses.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
How, and why, US data centers in the Gulf became targets of war
Al Mayadeen | March 6, 2026
The drone strikes that knocked Amazon Web Services facilities offline in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain this week were not random acts of escalation. They were, according to analysts and industry insiders, a calculated strike on infrastructure that the United States has quietly woven into its military architecture across West Asia.
Amazon and Google hold a $1.2 billion contract with the Israeli government to provide cloud computing and artificial intelligence services to entities, including the Israeli occupation forces.
That contract, largely absent from Western coverage of the strikes, may explain why AWS facilities, and not the dozens of data centers operated by local Gulf companies on behalf of US tech giants, were the ones that were hit.
“It would be easier to target AWS,” Ed Galvin, founder of data center research firm DC Byte, told Bloomberg, noting that other US tech services are typically housed within locally operated facilities, making them harder to identify and strike.
Of approximately 230 data centers built or under development across Gulf Arab states, only a handful are wholly owned and operated by a US company, according to DC Byte. All three struck this week belong to Amazon.
What was hit
The strikes took down two of AWS’s three availability zones in the UAE, one site located near Al Maktoum International Airport in Dubai, according to DC Byte, and damaged a facility in Bahrain situated close to a local military base and the King Fahd Causeway connecting the island to Saudi Arabia.
Consumer services, including online banking, were disrupted across the region. In a statement to clients, AWS said it was working to restore services while urging customers to migrate workloads to data centers outside West Asia, acknowledging that “the broader operating environment in the Middle East remains unpredictable.”
What Western media outlets fail to mention is that the exchange has not been one-sided. “Israel” and the United States have struck at least two data centers in Tehran, according to Holistic Resilience, a nonprofit organisation that maps airstrike activity.
A new front in an old logic
Data centers have entered the battlefield as legitimate targets because they power surveillance systems, drone navigation, real-time analysis of satellite footage, and the digital backbone of modern military operations.
Attacking such facilities can “paralyze banks, paralyze government offices,” Daniel Efrati, chief executive of NED Data Centers, told Bloomberg. “If you have one minute of downtime, it can cost any organization millions.”
Soft targets with hard consequences
The physical vulnerability of these facilities has been laid bare by this week’s strikes. Data centers are sprawling, visible, and dependent on exposed infrastructure, e.g., cooling units, diesel generators, gas turbines, that can be disabled without a direct hit on the building itself.
“If you knock out some of the chillers you can take them fully offline,” Sam Winter-Levy, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told the Financial Times. Conventional data center security is designed to repel cyberattacks and physical intruders; it was not designed for drones.
Gulf AI ambitions under fire
The strikes land at a particularly fraught moment for Gulf states whose economic diversification strategies rest heavily on positioning themselves as global AI hubs. Saudi Arabia’s Humain and the UAE’s G42, both state-backed, have committed to vast data center clusters and signed major deals with Nvidia, Amazon, and Microsoft.
The UAE is constructing one of OpenAI’s “Stargate” facilities in Abu Dhabi. Microsoft announced last month it would open a new Azure facility in Saudi Arabia before the end of the year. Those ambitions now carry a new risk premium.
“The Gulf sold itself as a safe alternative to other markets,” Jessica Brandt, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, told the Financial Times. “That argument just got harder to make.”
The new table stakes
Harder, but not necessarily fatal. Several analysts caution that the political and economic momentum behind Gulf AI investment is unlikely to be reversed by the strikes alone.
What has changed is the calculus around protection. “You can’t hide data centers,” Noah Sylvia, an analyst at the Royal United Services Institute, told Bloomberg. “But you can put air defence systems on them.”
One industry veteran based in the Gulf compared the situation to Intel’s chip manufacturing plants in “Israel,” ringed by military air defences, telling the Financial Times that for a project of Stargate’s scale, that kind of protection is now “table stakes.”
A global precedent
The broader implication reaches beyond the Gulf. “This is a harbinger of what’s to come,” Winter-Levy told the Financial Times, “and these types of attacks are not going to be limited to the Middle East.”
For the first time in history, the data centers that underpin the global digital economy have become a theater of war. The infrastructure the US built to project technological power across a volatile region has become a target precisely because of what it enables.
Donald Trump Was Installed in Office to Do One Thing
José Niño Unfiltered | March 5, 2026
Long before Donald Trump descended the golden escalator, long before he learned to tell campaign crowds what they wanted to hear about ending endless wars and bringing the troops home, he told the world exactly what he intended to do about Iran. He wrote it down. He published it. And almost nobody bothered to read it.
In his 2011 book Time to Get Tough, Trump laid out his position on Iran’s nuclear program with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. “America’s primary goal with Iran must be to destroy its nuclear ambitions,” Trump wrote. “Let me put them as plainly as I know how. Iran’s nuclear program must be stopped by any and all means necessary. Period. We cannot allow this radical regime to acquire a nuclear weapon that they will either use or hand off to terrorists.”
By any and all means necessary. Those six words should have settled every subsequent debate about Trump’s foreign policy instincts toward Iran. They were not the words of a non-interventionist. They were not the words of a man who believed in restraint, in diplomacy, or in the sovereign right of nations to manage their own affairs without American interference. They were the words of a man who had already decided, more than a decade before he ordered B-2 bombers over Fordow, that Iran’s nuclear program would be destroyed on his watch. Everything that followed was execution.
Tearing Up the Deal
Trump repeatedly condemned the Iran nuclear deal throughout his 2016 campaign, calling it “the worst deal ever” that would lead to “a nuclear holocaust.” Though he occasionally struck a peaceful tone with select audiences, his actual policy toward Iran was one of consistent escalation from the moment he took office. The International Atomic Energy Agency had certified Iran’s compliance with the agreement on at least ten occasions. Trump’s own administration certified Iranian compliance in April and July 2017. None of it mattered at the end of the day.
On May 8, 2018, Trump withdrew the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and launched what his administration called the “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign. A White House statement announced that the administration would “immediately begin the process of re-imposing sanctions” targeting “critical sectors of Iran’s economy, such as its energy, petrochemical, and financial sectors.” Trump also warned of “severe consequences” for any country that continued doing business with Tehran.
Maximum Pressure, Minimum Restraint
The sanctions that followed ranked among the most severe in modern American history. The White House stated explicitly that the campaign was “intended to bring Iran’s oil exports to zero, denying the regime its principal source of revenue.” The Trump administration steadily widened the scope of the economic siege, targeting Iran’s central bank, space agency, and shipping industry. In June 2019, Trump signed an executive order imposing sanctions on Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei personally, his office, and those closely affiliated with his access to key financial resources. In July 2019, the Treasury sanctioned Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. By November 2019, the administration had targeted Khamenei’s inner circle of advisers, including his son Mojtaba and the head of Iran’s judiciary.
Between 2018 and 2021, the Trump administration imposed more than 1,500 sanctions designations on Iran and on foreign companies or individuals who did business with Tehran. According to the International Crisis Group, the campaign targeted more than 80 percent of Iran’s economy.
Branding Another Country’s Military a Terrorist Organization
In April 2019, Trump took a step that no previous American president had ever contemplated. He designated Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, the first time in American history that any branch of a foreign government’s military had received that label.
At the time, Trump bragged about the move in a White House statement that read like a victory lap. “If you are doing business with the IRGC, you will be bankrolling terrorism,” Trump declared. “This designation will be the first time that the United States has ever named a part of another government as an FTO.” He called it an “unprecedented step” and boasted that it would “significantly expand the scope and scale of our maximum pressure on the Iranian regime.”
The timing was notable. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faced national elections the following day. The Soufan Center assessed that the designation appeared designed in part to bolster Netanyahu’s electoral chances. Iran’s Foreign Minister Zarif called it “another misguided election-eve gift to Netanyahu.” The move had little practical effect beyond the sanctions already in place, but it sent an unmistakable signal about whose interests Trump’s Iran policy was designed to serve—world Jewry.
Assassination in Baghdad
The most dramatic escalation of Trump’s first term came on January 3, 2020, when he authorized a drone strike near the Baghdad International Airport that killed Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force, along with Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy commander of Iran-backed militias in Iraq, and several others.
Trump addressed the nation from Mar-a-Lago the following day. “Soleimani was plotting imminent and sinister attacks on American diplomats and military personnel, but we caught him in the act and terminated him,” Trump declared. The claim of an imminent threat became the administration’s central justification. However, reporting from Pepe Escobar found that Soleimani was on a diplomatic mission with Iraqi paramilitary leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.
But the story began to unravel almost immediately. The Trump administration shifted its justifications repeatedly over the following weeks. First Trump said Soleimani was plotting to attack the Baghdad embassy. Then he told Fox News it “would have been four embassies.” Then he tweeted that it “doesn’t really matter” whether the threat was imminent. A UN human rights investigator later concluded that the killing was “unlawful” under international law.
Iran retaliated with missile strikes on American bases in Iraq, leaving more than 100 U.S. soldiers with traumatic brain injuries. The world braced for open war. The killing of Soleimani represented the first known instance of a nation invoking self-defense to justify an attack against a state actor on the territory of a third country. It was a line that no previous administration had dared to cross.
The Generals Who Tried to Stop Him
Even after the Soleimani episode, Trump continued to explore military options for striking Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. According to The New Yorker, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley spent the final months of Trump’s first term in an alarmed effort to prevent the president from launching a strike on Iranian interests that could ignite a full-scale war.
Trump had a circle of Iran hawks around him and remained close with Netanyahu, who continued to push for military action against Iran even after it became clear that Trump had lost the election. “If you do this, you’re gonna have a f***ing war,” Milley would warn. He began holding daily morning briefings with White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, meetings he referred to as the “land the plane” calls. “Both engines are out, the landing gear are stuck, we’re in an emergency situation,” Milley told his staff. “Our job is to land this plane safely and to do a peaceful transfer of power the 20th of January.”
On January 3, 2021, Trump convened one final Oval Office meeting on Iran, asking his advisers about reports from the International Atomic Energy Agency on Iran’s nuclear activities. It was the last time Milley spoke with Trump as president. The generals had managed to prevent the strike, but only barely, and only because the clock ran out.
Finishing What He Started
When Trump returned to office, there were no generals left to stop him. In February 2025, he signed a presidential memorandum reimposing “maximum pressure” and directing his Treasury and State Departments to implement a campaign aimed at “driving Iran’s oil exports to zero.” He sat beside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he signed it. He told reporters, “With me, it’s very simple. Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.”
According to The Wall Street Journal, Trump informed senior aides that he had “approved of attack plans for Iran” but was “holding off on giving the final order to see if Tehran will abandon its nuclear program.” The offer was never serious. American military assets, including carrier strike groups, bombers, and fighter jets, were moved into strategic positions across the region.
In June 2025, Trump ordered Operation Midnight Hammer, the first direct American military strike on Iranian soil. B-2 stealth bombers dropped bunker-buster bombs on the Fordow and Natanz nuclear facilities, while a submarine launched Tomahawk cruise missiles at Isfahan. Trump declared on Truth Social that the strikes had “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear sites, including the deeply buried Fordow facility. “Nobody thought we’d go after that site, because everybody said, ‘that site is impenetrable,’” Trump boasted to Fox News.
But the intelligence agencies told a different story. A preliminary report from the Defense Intelligence Agency suggested that the strikes inflicted only limited damage, potentially setting back Iran’s nuclear program by months rather than years. IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi told CBS News that Iran could resume uranium enrichment “in a matter of months.” “Frankly speaking, one cannot claim that everything has disappeared and there is nothing there,” Grossi warned. Iran remained, in his assessment, “a very sophisticated country in terms of nuclear technology.”
Then came February 28, 2026. Operation Epic Fury. The joint American and Israeli assault that killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, decimated the IRGC, and spread the conflict across the entire Persian Gulf. The culmination of everything Trump had promised over the course of 15 years.
Trump’s relentless hostility toward Iran is the predictable culmination of a career built upon deep integration with the most influential elements of American Jewry. These associations provided the capital and connectivity required for his ascent, inevitably shaping his worldview to prioritize their geopolitical ambitions. Consequently, Trump has functioned as the ideal vessel for those who seek to turn Old Testament fantasies into reality through American military might.
This pattern reveals that contemporary populism—and its Zio-populist offshoots across the pond—acts merely as a Trojan horse for Zionist interests. By exploiting rhetoric concerning immigration, race relations, and economic nationalism, these movements successfully capture the loyalty of the disaffected, only to redirect their political energy toward the preservation of Jewish supremacy rather than the survival of the European peoples of the West.
Nationalists must recognize these figures as false prophets and instead prioritize the demographic and civilizational continuity of our own nations through a policy of strict realism abroad and nationalism at home.
IRGC strikes critical Israeli military sites with Khorramshahr-4 missiles in latest wave
Press TV – March 5, 2026
The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) announced early Wednesday that its aerospace force targeted the critical Israeli military infrastructure with heavy Khorramshahr-4 ballistic missiles in the 19th wave of True Promise 4 Operation.
In a statement, the IRGC said the super-heavy missiles, each fitted with a one-ton class warhead, were launched in the pre-dawn hours.
The targets of the strike were central Tel Aviv, Ben-Gurion Airport and Squadron 27 of the Israeli Air Force at the airport, according to the statement.
It said the strategic salvo was preceded by attack drones and that the strike package penetrated “seven layers” of regional and domestic air defenses to reach its objectives.
Khorramshahr-4 is one of Iran’s most advanced weapons, a roughly 13-metre missile with a boost weight of nearly 30 tonnes and a maneuverable re-entry warhead (MaRV) capable of carrying over 1,000 kilograms of explosive payload.
The IRGC statement also said that in the previous wave its forces had successfully struck some 20 US military targets across Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait.
The statement described the strikes as part of coordinated, multi-axis action by Iran’s armed forces that exceeded US and Israeli expectations and had altered the operational calculus of the ongoing war imposed on the Islamic Republic.
In the statement, the IRGC further said American troops were fleeing regional bases and seeking shelter in hotels in host countries, while decrying the US military for using civilian facilities in Persian Gulf states as cover for military activity.
The statement also warned that such movements are under constant intelligence surveillance and that Iranian forces remain prepared to target aggressor troops.
The IRGC says at least 560 American troops have been killed in retaliatory operations and many more injured since Saturday.
US racks up billions in losses during first four days of war as Iran pummels key Pentagon assets: Report
The Cradle | March 4, 2026
Iran’s retaliatory strikes on US assets in the Persian Gulf have caused at least $2 billion in losses for Washington since the start of the war against the Islamic Republic, Anadolu Agency reported on 4 March.
Almost fifty percent of the losses result from Iran’s destruction of a US AN/FPS-132 early warning radar system at Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar, which is worth $1.1 billion.
The Islamic Republic also took responsibility for shooting down three F-15E Strike Eagles over Kuwait on Sunday, an incident US Central Command (CENTCOM) claims was caused by “friendly fire” from Kuwaiti forces. The estimated cost to replace the jets is $282 million.
Attacks by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Forces (IRGC) also caused heavy damage to the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet headquarters in Manama, Bahrain, destroying two satellite communications terminals and several large buildings.
“Using open-source intelligence reports, the targeted SATCOM terminals were identified as AN/GSC-52Bs, which approximately cost $20 million, factoring in deployment and installation costs,” Anadolu Agency reports.
Tehran has also reported destroying the AN/TPY-2 radar component of Washington’s Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) air-defense system deployed at Al-Ruwais Industrial City in the UAE, estimated to be worth $500 million.
“Combining these costs, Iran has damaged $1.902 billion worth of US military assets in the region,” the Turkish news agency says.
On top of these losses, Washington spent at least $2.3 billion during the first four days of the war, which was launched without congressional approval by using post-9/11 emergency laws.
The first 24 hours of the so-called “Operation Epic Fury” alone cost around $779 million, including pre-strike mobilization expenses of $630 million.
“At the current scale of operations, a three-week war could easily exceed tens of billions of dollars in expenses,” the Center for American Progress (CAP) estimated on Tuesday.
The US public policy research and advocacy organization also emphasized that “a conservative estimate for the initial costs of Operation Epic Fury is more than $5 billion as of March 2—and the campaign is just getting started.”
More losses still need to be accounted for, as the IRGC and its regional allies have targeted at least seven US military sites across West Asia since the start of the war, destroying several US diplomatic missions and intelligence sites belonging to the CIA and Mossad.
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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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