The War In Iran has seriously escalated in recent days with Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities, and a retaliatory Iranian strike on Dimona, the Israeli city housing its secret Nuclear Weapons development centre .
Israel struck a nuclear enrichment site in Natanz, Iran, and in response, Iran struck, Dimona, in what was apparently a strike targeting the Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center located just outside of the city.
For Iran, the fact that an Iranian missile was able to get through such an important strategic area means that Israel is effectively “defenseless”.
After the strike, one Iranian speaker of the parliament said:
If the Israeli regime fails to intercept the missiles in the highly protected Dimona area, it is operationally a sign of entering a new phase of the battle:
Israel’s skies are defenseless.
As a result, it seems the time has come to implement the next pre-designed plans.
Happy Nowruz to the Iranian nation.
Journalist Glenn Greenwald noted that , “Dimona is one of the most strategically important places in Israel” adding that, “If Israel can’t even intercept Iranian missiles aimed there, that is an obvious sign of the serious weakening of their air defenses”.
Indeed, Dimona is no doubt seen as a deeply strategically important place to Israel, given that it, as Middle East Eyenoted , “sits near one of the most sensitive locations in Israel: the Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center, long linked to Israel’s undeclared nuclear weapons programme.”
Journalist Seymour Hersh in his 1991 book, “The Samson Option: Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy”, detailed the history of Israel’s secret Nuclear program at the Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center and the efforts Israel went to in order to hide the facility from then U.S. president JFK, including by creating a “false control room … at Dimona, complete with false control panels and computer-driven measuring devices that seemed to be gauging the thermal output of a twenty-four-megawatt reactor (as Israel claimed Dimona to be) in full operation” in order to “convince the (American) inspectors that no chemical reprocessing plant existed or was possible.”
Hersh added that, “One former Israeli official recalled that his job was to interpret for the American team. ‘I was part of the cover-up team. One of the engineers would start talking too much’ in front of the Americans, the official said, and he would tell him, in seemingly conversational Hebrew, ‘Listen, you mother-fucker, don’t answer that question.’ The Americans would think I was translating.’”
Hersh went on to report that, “Sometime early in 1968, Dimona finally was ordered into full-scale production and began turning out four or five warheads a year — there were more than twenty-five bombs in the arsenal by the Yom Kippur War in September 1973”.
The Israeli nuclear program was used to advance the Israeli “Samson Option” doctrine, which as journalist Kit Klarenberg described, is “if the (Israeli) entity feels sufficiently threatened, it reserves the right to carry out preemptive nuclear strikes not merely on regional adversaries, but its Western sponsors into the bargain.”
Israeli military theorist Martin van Creveld, talking about the Samson option in 2003, said, “We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets for our air force” adding, “We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen before Israel goes under.”
Today, “the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute included Israel in its list of nuclear-armed states in June 2025 and assessed that Israel possesses more than 80 nuclear warheads.”
Given Dimona city’s proximity to the Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Centre, and its importance to Israel’s Samson option doctrine, there is no doubt that it is viewed as a strategically important area for Israel, and the fact that an Iranian missile went through shows that Israel’s air defence has been severely weakened.
March 21, 2026
Posted by aletho |
Militarism | Iran, Israel, Zionism |
Comments Off on Iran’s strike on Dimona – Israel’s nuclear weapons research center – shows Israeli air defences are weakened
MOSCOW – Moscow does not currently see any US commitment to respecting Russia’s interests, with Washington attempting to push Moscow out of all energy markets, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Saturday.
“We are being pushed out of all global energy markets. Eventually, only our own territory will remain. The Americans will come to us and say they are for cooperation with us. But if we are willing to implement mutually beneficial projects on our territory and provide the Americans with what they are interested in, taking their interests into account, then they should also consider ours. We do not see this yet,” Lavrov told a Russian TV program.
He added that the US “has welcomed and welcomes Russia’s marginalization in European energy markets,” which, he said, was an open claim to energy dominance worldwide.
“This is an unusual situation – a return to a time when there were no frameworks for international relations. It was stated clearly that the interests of the US take precedence over any international agreements,” the minister said.’
The severe consequences of US and Israeli actions in the Middle East will be felt for a very long time to come, Lavrov also said.
“Despite all the outward signs of a farce, and I think many people understand that these are present, the consequences of what our American colleagues are doing, in this case together with the Israelis, are extremely severe. They will continue to have repercussions for a very long time,” Lavrov told the Russian TV program.
On March 19, RT war correspondent Steve Sweeney and his cameraman Ali Rida Sbeity were injured by an Israeli strike meters from where they stood in southern Lebanon.
Sweeney was on camera reporting on recent Israeli attacks on southern Lebanese towns and infrastructure when he heard the sound of an incoming projectile. Ducking and running, he managed to escape the brunt of the impact.
According to the journalists, an Israeli aircraft fired a missile at their filming position near Al-Qasmiya Bridge, where Sweeney was reporting on, “the targeting of bridges and the forced displacement of one million people, an ethnic cleansing operation on a larger scale than the Nakba,” as he later stated, referencing the violent displacement of Palestinians which accompanied the creation of the Jewish State in the late 1940s.
The men were treated for shrapnel injuries. Sweeney said, adding “I’m amazed that we survived. We were incredibly lucky to come away with the injuries we did.”
Just a day prior, Sweeney had posted on X about the Israeli targeted airstrike on Lebanese journalist and Al-Manar TV presenter Mohammad Sherri and his wife. Both were killed. Sweeney reposted the news with the words, “Targeting journalists is a war crime.”
The next day, he himself was targeted.
This deliberate targeting of journalists wearing press vests is another Israeli war crime, in a long list of Israeli war crimes which include killing at least 261 Palestinian journalists in Gaza in the past two years alone, as well as previously killing Lebanese journalists and bombing Iranian media repeatedly.
Targeted assassinations of journalists by the Israeli army are not new. Back in 2008, Fadel Shana, a Reuters cameraman in Gaza, was killed by a flechette shell fired by an Israeli tank as he worked.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Israel was responsible for two-thirds of all press killings globally in both 2025 and 2024. CPJ notes that the Israeli army has committed more targeted killings of journalists than any other government’s military since the CPJ began documentation in 1992.
Russian condemnation, British silence
RT Editor in Chief Margarita Simonyan posted on X about the targeted attack, clearly stating the journalists had been targeted by an Israeli strike and stating, “War journalists are not legitimate targets.”
Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova highlighted that in no way could the strike be considered accidental, particularly given, “the rocket did not hit an ‘important strategic military target’, but the location of the report.”
While Western media is always quick to highlight claims of legacy media journalists in danger, no matter how staged it appears to be, when it comes to journalists actually under attack the outrage is selective.
Although the attack on Sweeney and Sbeity was filmed on camera in broad daylight, with Israel virtually the only possible culprit, British media in particular have been disinterested. The BBC’s report ran with the headline, “Missile lands next to presenter during live report from Lebanon.” Barely noticeable in small print many lines later, the BBC mentions the “ongoing Israeli air strikes and ground operations in southern Lebanon.”
The BBC listing an experienced war correspondent as a “presenter” was also not accidental. The overall flippant tone of their report was to insinuate a minor incident had occurred, the missile’s origin unknown.
Other media followed suit, includingThe Independent, which didn’t even mention, not even in small print, Israeli bombings of Lebanon.
As for the British government, the reaction thus far has been nothing. Declassified UK posted on X that the Foreign Office’s response to British journalist Steve Sweeney being targeted by an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon was simply to reply to the government’s position made before Sweeney was targeted, a word salad blaming Iran and Lebanese Resistance, Hezbollah, and whitewashing the US-Israeli strikes which were the direct cause of Iranian retaliation.
It also claimed the government would, “continue our support for British nationals in the region.” Clearly, that support doesn’t extend to Sweeney.
Remarkably, later the same day that he was nearly killed, Sweeney was already back outside reporting, defiantly stating, “If Israel thinks today’s strike will silence us and keep us out of the field they are very, very mistaken.”
To the CPJ’s credit, despite its failing elsewhere (like failing to report on Russian journalists killed by the Ukrainian regime), it did issue a strong and clear condemnation of the attack on Sweeney and Sbeity, unequivocally naming Israel as the perpetrator.
It called for “an investigation into the apparent targeting” of the journalists, and emphasized they were injured, “when an Israeli air strike hit just feet away from where they were filming while wearing clearly marked press gear and with their equipment clearly visible in southern Lebanon.”
CPJ stated, “Striking reporters who are clearly marked as a press constitutes a violation of international law.” See, BBC and co? It’s not that hard.
Not only does Israel, empowered by Western silence and cooperation, bomb civilians and civilian infrastructure. It also targets journalists, whose job it is to document these atrocities. Refusal to call these attacks out for what they are is cowardly at best, complicit at worst.
Eva Bartlett, an award-winning Canadian independent journalist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine, as well as Venezuela and the Donbass.
Israeli journalists with connections to Benjamin Netanyahu and the Likud party are now openly calling for an Israeli annexation of Southern Lebanon and the establishment of Jewish settlements, after the Israeli bombing campaign has displaced over one million people from Southern Lebanon.
Netanyahu-connected figures in the Israeli media are now using this mass displacement to push for a permanent Israeli occupation of Southern Lebanon.
Amit Segal, a Likud connected journalist, in the Miriam Adelson funded outlet Israel Hayompraised Trump for supporting the idea of an Israeli annexation of the West Bank and Gaza and hoped that the Trump administration would approve an Israeli annexation of Southern Lebanon, writing, “Trump, a man with no sentimentality for old borders, already shook the Middle East when he agreed in principle to recognize Israeli sovereignty over parts of Judea and Samaria in the framework of the Peace to Prosperity plan, and when he supported mass emigration from Gaza. The mass migration from southern Lebanon has already happened. The only question is whether he will give Israel merely de facto approval of its new northern border or de jure approval as well.”
Referring to IDF militants who expanded up to the Litani River in Southern Lebanon, Amit Segal hoped it would lead to permanent occupation, writing, “Is this a temporary, isolated event? Soldiers who went deeper into Lebanon this week should think again, and remember that IDF forces have now been on the summit of the Syrian Hermon since the end of 2024, with no expiration date.”
Taking it a step further, Michael Freund, a former deputy communications director of Benjamin Netanyahu, writing in The Jerusalem Post, explicitly advocated for a permanent Israeli occupation with Jewish settlements of Southern Lebanon calling for Israel to “incorporate southern Lebanon into sovereign Israel and settle it with Jews.”
He added that, “A growing movement in Israel has begun to argue that the only way to guarantee lasting security in the North is not merely military control of territory but the establishment of permanent Jewish communities there. One such initiative is Uri Tzafon (‘Awaken, O North’), an organization advocating the settlement of southern Lebanon as a long-term security solution.”
He advocated that Israel “maintains control of the territory south of” the Litani River and the “establishment of Jewish communities there”.
Michael Freund cited biblical Israel as a justification for stealing Lebanese land, writing, “Biblical sources describe the borders of Canaan as extending northward toward Sidon, and the territory of the tribes of Israel included it as well” along with arguing that Israeli annexation of Southern Lebanon is needed for “security”, (i.e. destroying Hezbollah’s ability to defend against Israeli expansion).
The motive behind the war in Iran has always been the Greater Israel project. With Israel’s mass displacement of Southern Lebanon, the Likud-friendly media is already explicitly stating that this move was done to advance the project and expand Israeli territory into Southern Lebanon.
On February 28, the United States and Israel began striking targets in Iran, including in Tehran, causing damage and civilian casualties. Iran has carried out retaliatory strikes on Israeli territory, as well as on US military targets in the Middle East.
The damage caused by US and Israeli aggression against Iran amounted to approximately $53 billion for the 20 largest publicly traded airlines, the Financial Times reported, based on its own calculations.
Airline executives are warning of the consequences caused by the sustained rise in oil prices, disruptions at Gulf airports, and a potential hit to global demand, the Financial Times added.
In the coming months, passengers planning trips on routes that are not related to the Middle East will face a sharp rise in ticket prices as airlines try to protect their revenues, the newspaper reported.
What’s the difference between Vietnam and the Iran War? Answer: Trump had an exit strategy for Vietnam.
How much collective responsibility can the West take for the shitstorm it is in now, otherwise known as ’The Iran War’? Many would like to blame most of it on Trump for being a manchild and just going ahead with the most madcap military venture NATO countries have ever known, against all the expert advice, and ending up with a regime which is even more hardcore for having a bomb, world energy prices soaring and causing chaos due to Iran choking the Straits of Hormuz, and the entire relationship between Washington and its allies in the region reduced to a handful of dust?
The reality is that Trump took the decision to go to war not based on one issue alone. Left-wing commentators in the U.S. would like us to think it was to distract the media away from the latest revelations of the DOJ and the Epstein files, which had a tome of evidence accusing him of having inappropriate relations with a 13-year-old girl. But there were other reasons which pushed him over the line. Top of that list is surely that Netanyahu was blackmailing him, threatening to release recordings of his phone calls with Epstein where they talk about young girls. Add to that, it was probably pointed out to him that he was not going to keep both houses when the midterms come unless a considerable amount of Jewish American money was pumped into his campaign.
But it isn’t just Trump that has got us all into this mess that we’re in. For decades, the EU allowed Israel to ratchet up their brutal occupation of Palestinians and in the process to dehumanize them, leading to the climax of the Gaza genocide. This gave an unrealistic sense of impunity, almost akin to a divine intervention to religious fanatics who already believed that they were the chosen people and that they had a right to murder those beneath them and steal their property. Look at the reaction of western governments and in particular the EU when the events of October 7th unfolded and how they supported any response at all from Israel. In fact, just look at how any UK government minister reacted to the start of the Iran War, which, if we didn’t know better, might have thought it was started by Iran.
Trump is isolated now not for his rank stupidity, or his delusional views about who he is and what America is. He is isolated by EU leaders as none of them want to be part of a new Vietnam War scenario which goes on for years and only produces body bags — only to keep a U.S. president from looking like a total fuckwit in front of his own people.
Yes, the reality is that the vast majority of Americans don’t really understand what Trump just did in Iran. Even today, something like 80 percent of Republicans polled agree with his decision to begin a conflict with Iran, while Democrats are in the other camp altogether, perhaps better informed of Trump’s rationale behind going ahead with the plan.
Most likely the plan had been on the table for months and each time a military expert pointed out the harsh realities of it bringing blowback on a global level, affecting not only pump prices rocketing but just about everything else over the longer term, they were ignored or swapped for a sycophant in a uniform who just nodded like a demented parcel shelf toy dog until he had a whole room full of them. Does the American public understand just how self-indulgent Trump has been and that he has now created for himself a new threat, like a magician pulling a pigeon out of his hat? While the so-called ’threat’ from Iran goes from being a vague, opaque notion which most people don’t even believe, to being something quite real and lucid to the point that, ironically, Trump can now present it to the gullible public and hope they don’t notice that he manufactured it all by himself.
Yet it is remarkable how detached Europeans are from Trump and his plans. What an extraordinary example of how diplomacy is entirely dead and not worth the paper it’s written on, when EU ambassadors had no clue about these meetings and what came out of them. Shouldn’t EU leaders have stepped in at some point and warned him he was playing with fire and that the only certainty was that the West was guaranteed to be the burn victim? What about our intelligence services? It is inconceivable they didn’t know what was coming? Did they not tip off their own governments? Likely they did and that London, Paris and Berlin simply did nothing, such is the non-existent special relationship between Old Europe and Washington. Even Britain.
Transatlantic relations between the U.S. and EU countries is never going to be the same again if something can’t be done to get a dialogue going. Sure, Trump may pull the U.S. out of NATO just out of spite, like a fuming four-year-old who’s just lost his ball to an angry neighbour, but other, bigger relations are probably burnt forever. Washington’s relations with Israel can never go back to the Master (Israel) Slave (U.S.) set-up. And America’s relations with Gulf Arab countries is going to be hard to put back on an even keel when Arab leaders can see how fake they were in the first place.
Trump’s childish revelation recently that he couldn’t have imagined Iran hitting the GCC countries feels like a seven-year-old boy trying to explain to a room full of adults that he didn’t realise that borrowing his friend’s go-kart would result in so much damage as no one told him the jalopy would go so fast down a hill. The EU has a similar idiot in power, though. Kaja Kallas, a name which conjures up a 1980s underarm deodorant or a Greek ferry company, is blessed by at least not looking as stupid as she really is. This daughter of an Estonian communist politician, who was happy to live the high life under the Soviets, seems to be almost entirely brain dead when she gets on the podium or in front of the six microphones (all of EU TV networks who are actually paid cash to broadcast her moronic ramblings) and harps on about Russia getting more money now from oil sales. It’s literally like watching someone in a mental institution who hasn’t taken their medication talking to the mirror with a toothbrush as a mic and trying to sound clever.
But it’s no joke how the West got to where it is with Iran, when these same buffoons for decades have been encouraging Israel to expand its ideas and, red in tooth and claw, reach a point today where they are either starving people so as to ethnically cleanse Gaza or simply bombing women and children in their tents — or taking over part of Lebanon, a decades-old fantasy which didn’t end well in 1982 when they tried it before.
So the Trump joke is less funny when you see it in the light of who led him to where he is and what his inconsistent messages are to EU leaders. He is stuck in the past and tends to be someone trying to correct or duplicate U.S. foreign policy. Of course, he lacks élan, though, which is also part of the problem with such leaders. In the early 70s, when Nixon wanted to devalue the dollar but retain its power around the world, EU leaders were horrified. Apparently, he simply said to them: “It’s our dollar, but it’s your problem.”
US President Donald Trump has indicated he is considering scaling back the underway unprovoked aggression towards Iran, even as the crisis surrounding the Strait of Hormuz remains unresolved.
In a post on his Truth Social platform on Friday, Trump claimed the United States was close to achieving the military goals sought by the aggression.
“We are getting very close to meeting our objectives as we consider winding down our great Military efforts in the Middle East.”
He listed, what he called, degrading Iran’s missile capability and industrial base, and protecting US allies in the region.
The remarks flew in the face of the Islamic Republic’s robust underway retaliation, codenamed Operation True Promise 4, that keeps taking larger portions of hostile targets under the country’s firepower.
US military positions throughout the region, including in Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan, have been subjected to sustained counterstrikes.
The retaliation has also struck sensitive and strategic locations across the occupied territories, including those lying in Tel Aviv, the holy occupied city of al-Quds, Haifa, Be’er Sheva, considered a technological hub, and the Negev Desert.
On the issue of the strategic Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has closed to enemy vessels as well as ships belonging to those cooperating with the adversaries since the onset of the aggression, Trump suggested the US might step back from direct responsibility.
“The Hormuz Strait will have to be guarded and policed, as necessary, by other Nations who use it — The United States does not.”
Commenting on the remarks, American outlet Axios acknowledged that efforts to reopen the strait have proven difficult.
It cited Trump’s advisors as pointing to his frustration due to limited allied support, despite his alleging military victory.
The US has sought to form a coalition to secure the strait, asking NATO allies and others to contribute naval and air assets. Most have declined to commit forces, and some have only backed a political statement supporting the effort.
Trump has retorted to allies over their reluctance, calling NATO countries “cowards” and saying that without US backing, NATO is “a paper tiger.”
Meanwhile, disruptions to global oil flows continue to drive up energy prices.
What if the state that claims global military supremacy is now confronting a conflict it cannot win on its own terms?
President Trump’s repeated assertions that the US could defeat Iran and force it to surrender are now colliding with battlefield realities and geopolitical fissures that suggest otherwise. The very premise of a quick and decisive US victory is unravelling in real time, raising profound questions about American strategy, alliance cohesion, and power in a multipolar age.
The Illusion of Swift Victory in Tehran
President Trump’s pronouncements on Iran have been starkly ambitious. On multiple occasions he has touted rapid success and overwhelming military might in confronting Tehran — insisting that the US does not need British help to prevail and that Iranian forces will be “hit very hard.” Yet these claims increasingly look detached from both strategic reality and on‑the‑ground dynamics.
The US military doctrine has traditionally relied on superior air power and technological edge to achieve rapid dominance. In early March 2026, the Pentagon publicly stated that operations against Iran’s missile, air, and naval capabilities were underway, though officials stopped short of conceding a quick end to the campaign. But the timeline Trump once floated — nominally four to five weeks — has already blurred into ambiguity, with the White House acknowledging potential extensions and evolving objectives primarily because of the failure to achieve quick objectives. They thought that the assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader would cause the regime to fall. That did not happen, forcing the US and Israel to rethink the nature and the duration of the campaign.
The expectation that air campaigns alone could cripple Iran’s military infrastructure — or compel unconditional political submission — misreads Tehran’s defensive resilience and strategic depth. A recent classified report from the US National Intelligence Council found that even large‑scale US use of force is unlikely to dismantle Iran’s entrenched political and military leadership. That insight undercuts the notion that a blitz of strikes can replace the complex sociopolitical calculus of regime transformation. The council’s document, drafted late last month, builds on work by the C.I.A. that assessed that a complete change of government was unlikely even if Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, was killed in a US-led military operation.
Iran’s responses have also defied Washington’s expectations. Despite extensive targeting, Iranian forces have not capitulated; they have continued missile and drone strikes on US and allied targets across the Gulf region. Rather than collapse, Tehran appears to be adapting, leveraging both conventional responses and strategic signaling to blunt American efforts and maintain a posture of deterrence. Reports in the Western media show significant Iranian success in repeatedly targeting US military bases. Taken together, these developments erode the core of the Trump administration’s confidence in quick, decisive military outcomes, thus setting the stage for a campaign that may extend far beyond initial projections without achieving strategic objectives. As such, President Trump has now stopped threatening “certain death” to Iran and its people.
Eroding Alliances and Strategic Overreach
A second blow to US fantasies is the fraying of Western and regional support that Trump and his advisers presumed would form the backbone of sustained operations. Trump’s suggestion that the US does not need British assistance belies deeper tensions within the transatlantic alliance over legal responsibility, operational strategy, and political backing for war.
Across Europe, capitals are deeply divided over the US-led escalation. Spain has resisted aligning its military fully with Washington’s campaign, and the US leadership has grappled with legal and planning complications related to base access, epitomizing a broader transatlantic unease over the wisdom and legitimacy of war with Iran. These disagreements have reduced the coherence of NATO‑era cooperation, complicating US expectations for collective action.
The US’ handling of Gulf states has also strained ties with regional partners. Officials in several Gulf kingdoms privately expressed frustration at the lack of prior notification before strikes on Iranian territory and at US reliance on Gulf air defenses to intercept Iranian missiles with limited American support. This undercuts longstanding assumptions about the reliability of regional alignments and may incentivize some states to hedge their security calculations.
Domestically, American public opinion is also shifting in ways that undermine unilateralist ambitions. Polling suggests historically weak support for the operation against Iran, with a significant portion of the public expressing opposition and frustration at the perceived readiness of U.S. forces to engage in protracted conflict. This internal division complicates political sustainment of a drawn‑out campaign, particularly given the toll of casualties and financial costs that would accrue over time. Collectively, these fissures — within alliances, among regional partners, and on the home front — highlight the weakening of America’s hegemonic posture and raise questions about its ability to marshal durable coalitions in pursuit of major strategic objectives.
A Crisis of America’s Own Making
The deeper problem is not Iran’s resilience or the alliance falling apart; it is the strategic trap Washington has walked into. According to testimony before Congress, Pentagon officials repeatedly warned that Tehran posed no imminent threat of attacking the US directly. Yet the Trump administration chose to escalate, interpreting cautious intelligence as justification for preemptive strikes and forceful posturing. The result is a war the US did not need to fight, at a cost that will reverberate far beyond the battlefield.
This miscalculation is more than a tactical error; it is a strategic misstep that is reshaping global perceptions of American power. Allies are questioning Washington’s judgment, adversaries are emboldened, and the credibility of US deterrence is being tested. The costs are not just measured in military engagements or financial outlays; they are being paid in influence, alliances, and leverage in other regions of the world. The campaign against Iran is eroding the very hegemonic posture the US has relied on since the end of the Cold War.
The longer the conflict drags on, the more entrenched this erosion becomes. The US now faces a geopolitical deadlock of its own making: a situation where victory is unlikely, withdrawal risks loss of prestige, and every subsequent action is constrained by the consequences of a war initiated without necessity. What started as an assertion of American strength may ultimately be remembered as a cautionary tale of overreach, misreading intelligence, and underestimating both the limits of force and the resilience of regional actors.
In short, the crisis is not just in Iran. Rather, it is in Washington itself. A nation confident in its global supremacy has stumbled into a conflict that threatens to unravel the assumptions underpinning that supremacy, leaving the US not just challenged militarily, but on a path to strategic downfall.
Salman Rafi Sheikh, research analyst of international relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affair
The US-Israeli strikes on Iran have entered their fourth week, with Washington’s operations against Iran veering into contradictory directions. While US President Donald Trump has publicly said his intention is to gradually “wind down” military operations, media reports say that the US Department of Defense has made comprehensive preparations for the potential deployment of ground forces inside Iranian territory. A Chinese expert says that the US is currently putting on a show of toughness, yet its real intent is to bring this unsustainable war to a face-saving end.
The US is “getting very close to meeting our objectives as we consider winding down our great Military efforts in the Middle East,” Trump said in a Truth Social post late Friday.
Yet the Pentagon’s planned actions stand in stark opposition to President Trump’s claim of phasing out military operations.
US military officials said that about 2,500 additional Marines aboard three warships are heading to the Middle East, the New York Times (NYT) reported.
The Marines, who will deploy next month, are from the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit based at Camp Pendleton, California, and the U.S.S. Boxer amphibious ready group, per the NYT.
The US actually has come to realize that it has overcommitted and overextended itself in this war, which is increasingly detrimental to its own interests, Li Weijian, a vice president of the Chinese Association of Middle East Studies, told the Global Times on Saturday.
Yet it is unwilling to acknowledge the reality of its situation or its inability to prevail, and seeks to preserve its dignity by deploying troops, Li added.
It is by no means the first time that the US has struck a defiant tone in regard to this war. Trump told reporters on Friday that he is not interested in a ceasefire with Iran, CNBC reported. “We could have dialogue, but I don’t want to do a ceasefire,” Trump said from the White House South Lawn before departing for Florida. “You know you don’t do a ceasefire when you’re literally obliterating the other side.”
Additionally, CBS News reported that the Trump administration has been strategizing methods and options to secure or extract Iran’s nuclear materials, according to multiple people briefed on the discussions.
The timing of any such operation — if President Trump were to order it — remained unclear Friday night, per CBS News.
Such tactics of the US are intended to send a clear message to Iran that “it is not incapable of responding to the situation,” Li said, adding that the reality is that the US has already expended far too much.
Iranian strikes on military bases used by the US in the Middle East caused about $800m in damage in the first two weeks of the war, a new analysis shows, BBC News reported on Saturday.
A significant portion of the damage was caused by a strike on a US radar for a THAAD missile defence system at an air base in Jordan, per the report.
The US is also seeking to draw more countries into this conflict. Trump said Friday that “it would be nice” if Japan, China and other countries that are highly dependent on energy imports from the Middle East join his efforts to protect shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, the Mainichi reported on Saturday.
Trump also assailed NATO allies on Friday over their lack of support for the US-Israel war against Iran, calling the longtime US allies “cowards,” Reuters reported.
Unwilling to concede defeat and unable to make an outright withdrawal, the US, amid mounting pressure, has sought to leverage the influence of other countries to pressure Iran into making concessions, according to Li.
The US ought to recognize that the war it has waged against Iran together with Israel is inherently unjust, that its isolation is no accident, and that it must bear the consequences for all of this, Li added.
The Trump White House plagiarized its justification for attacking Iran from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, the main DC outfit promoting war with Tehran. The think tank was originally founded to “enhance Israel’s image,” and partners closely with the Israeli government.
The Trump Administration appeared to plagiarize its official justification for its war on Iran, copying almost word-for-word a document originally produced by the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), a pro-war think tank with close ties to Israeli intelligence which was originally founded to “enhance Israel’s image.”
The FDD document was authored by Tzvi Kahn, the former assistant director for policy and government affairs at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
A March 2, 2026 statement issued by the White House accusing Tehran of 44 instances of terrorism against American citizens is “virtually identical” to the list published by FDD in June 2025, analyst Stephen McIntyre noted Thursday.
While the White House did make superficial alterations to the text, they largely consisted of appending the label “Iran-backed” to every mention of groups like Hezbollah and Hamas. In the few instances where Trump administration officials bothered to make significant changes to the original FDD list, the edits were almost always made in service of “ratcheting up the underlying allegation,” McIntyre concluded.
Among the most egregious examples was a 1996 attack on the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, which FDD originally said merely that Hezbollah al-Hejaz was “deemed responsible” for. In the White House version, however, the group’s responsibility was “asserted as factual,” explained McIntyre, noting that serious questions about the incident remain unanswered to this day. “Clinton’s Defense Secretary William Perry subsequently wondered (along with many others) whether Khobar Towers should have been attributed to Al Qaeda,” he wrote.
A 2009 investigation by journalist Gareth Porter based on interviews with over a dozen former CIA, FBI and Clinton administration officials demonstrated that the FBI’s inquiry into the Khobar Towers attack was precooked to blame Iran, when Al Qaeda was mostly like the culprit. Porter found that Shia citizens of Saudi Arabia had been tortured into confessing to the crime by Saudi secret police.
While the White House declined to join FDD in blaming Iran for the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, it echoed the Israel-oriented organization in blaming Tehran for 603 military deaths in Iraq, which both documents attributed to “Iran-backed militias.” But there are major discrepancies with the figure, which amounts to 60% of the total US combatant deaths attributed to Iran. As McIntyre noted, such a claim is “not made in the State Department annual reports on Global Terrorism.”
At least four of the Americans the Trump administration claims were killed by Iran had served in Israel’s military. These included a US citizen who died while invading Lebanon in 2006 and two Americans in the IDF’s Golani brigade who were killed while invading Gaza in 2014. The fourth American, who was born in Israel and had also served in the Golani brigade, was killed amid violent reprisals against settlers in the West Bank in 2015.
A number of the claims are undermined by the very sources they cite, including a December 2019 incident in which the Trump administration insisted “Iran-backed Kataib Hezbollah terrorists killed an American civilian contractor and wounded several U.S. service members in a rocket attack at K1 Air Base in Kirkuk, Iraq.” But the Reuters article cited by the White House as proof that Iran was responsible made no such claim, explicitly cautioning that “no group has claimed responsibility for the attack.” In reality, Reuterssuggested the attack was the work of “Islamic State militants operating in the area [who] have turned to insurgency-style tactics.”
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said at the time that “we don’t know” how operationally involved Iran was in the January 28 attack that killed three US troops, “but it really doesn’t matter.”
“We have FDD”: Israel’s favorite Washington cutout
In tax documents filed with the IRS upon its founding in 2001, FDD was originally named EMET, which is Hebrew for “truth.” The fledgling outfit described its mission as working to “enhance Israel’s image in North America and the public’s understanding of issues affecting Israeli-Arab relations.” It changed its name soon after, presumably to sound less overtly Israeli.
FDD has since emerged as the leading Washington-based think tank pushing the US toward war with Iran. During the first Trump administration, FDD participated in a $1.5 million dollar State Department initiative to attack critics of the policy of “maximum pressure” on Iran. At the time, FDD was openly promoting a military assault on Iran. The think tank’s staff are brought to testify before the House Foreign Affairs Committee more than those of any other think tank, invariably to advance conflict with Tehran.
During a 2017 conference of the Israeli American Council in Washington DC, then-Director General of Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs Sima Vakhnin-Gil was recorded by undercover journalist James Kleinfeld during a private breakout session. The Israeli military-intelligence official named FDD as a partner in a covert campaign to spy on Americans involved in Palestine solidarity activity.
“This is something that only a country can do the best,” Vakhnin-Gil said. “We have FDD. We have others working on this.”
The Israeli American Council was sponsored by a billionaire who has also been a top donor to the FDD: the Sheldon and Miriam Adelson Foundation. Since the death of Sheldon Adelson, his Israeli widow, Miriam, has emerged as the top donor to Trump’s political campaigns. Having donated hundreds of millions to Trump and his allies, Adelson clearly expected him to wage war on Iran on behalf of Israel, according to conservative former Fox News host Megyn Kelly.
Since Trump thrilled his Israel-aligned donors by attacking Iran, FDD has provided the White House with more than talking points for justifying war on Iran. It has also proposed civilian targets in Iran for the US military to strike. These included the Tehran oil depot which Israel bombed on March 8, causing massive fires that shrouded the city of 9 million in toxic fumes.
After the strike triggered a wave of punishing retaliatory Iranian attacks on oil infrastructure in US-allied countries in the region, Trump advisors expressed regret. “We don’t think it was a good idea,” one told Axios. But by then, it was too late to avoid escalation. They had followed the FDD-authored, Israeli-designed script into a quagmire.
UK media has whitewashed Israel’s attempt to kill British war journalist Steve Sweeney and his Lebanese cameraman Ali Rida while they were broadcasting live from southern Lebanon on 19 March.
Footage shot by Rida shows Sweeney giving a news report about a previous Israeli strike when he realizes another strike is headed towards them. He quickly ducks as the missile is seen exploding as it hits the ground just meters behind him.
Sweeney was treated at the hospital to remove shrapnel from the bomb that was embedded in his arm.
While reporting on the strike, the BBC used a headline stating, “Missile lands next to presenter during live report from Lebanon.”
The headline did not mention that Israel had fired the missile, nor did it describe Sweeney as a journalist or war correspondent, while implying the strike was only random or simply an accident.
The Independent newspaper described the incident in a similar way, writing “A missile landed just a few feet away from a British journalist as he was reporting live from Lebanon.”
“Footage shared by Russian state broadcaster RT on Thursday (19 March) shows Steve Sweeney, its Lebanon bureau chief, running for cover as an explosion detonated behind him,” The Independent added, also failing to mention Israel had launched the strike.
The Daily Mail, a British tabloid, acknowledged Israel’s role, but referred to Sweeney’s statement that Israel tried to kill him as only a “claim.”
“British journalist Steve Sweeney has claimed Israel ‘tried to kill him’ in a targeted airstrike that left him and his cameraman with minor injuries,” the Daily Mail wrote.
The New York Post and CNN used similar headlines, omitting mention of Israeli responsibility, while taking Israel’s claims at face value that its military does not target journalists in the body of the article.
“Insane moment missile blows up just feet away from reporter in Lebanon,” stated the New York Post headline.
CNN wrote, “News crew narrowly escapes strike in southern Lebanon,” while publishing only the video and no other details on its website.
BBC, The Independent, and Daily Mail reports ignore Israel’s deliberate killing of Lebanese journalists covering Israeli war crimes since 2023.
The targeting of Sweeney and Rida came just one day after Israel assassinated Al Manar journalist Mohammad Sherri and his wife in a brutal strike on Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, as part of a series of deadly attacks that killed at least a dozen.
During its previous war on Lebanon – which started in 2023 and ended in a so-called ceasefire in 2024 – the Israeli army murdered three Lebanese journalists with an airstrike as they slept at a media guesthouse in southeast Lebanon.
“The 3:00 am airstrike turned the site – a series of chalets nestled among trees that had been rented by various media outlets covering the war – into rubble. Cars marked ‘PRESS’ were overturned and covered in dust and debris, and at least one satellite dish for live broadcasting was totally destroyed,” AP reported.
The strikes killed camera operator Ghassan Najjar and broadcast technician Mohammed Rida of Al Mayadeen TV, and camera operator Wissam Qassim, who worked for Hezbollah-affiliated Al Manar TV.
“The journalists thought they were safe because this south Lebanon area wasn’t in Israel’s evacuation zone,” PBS journalist Leila Molana-Allen wrote on X.
Molana-Allen, who is also currently reporting from Lebanon, said the journalists had given details of their movements to UN peacekeepers to send to the Israeli military.
“Turns out the IDF [Israeli military] used that info to bomb them while they were all inside asleep,” Molana-Allen reported.
Lebanese journalists had already been working for almost a year under the shadow of Israel’s killings of Reuters video journalist Issam Abdullah on 13 October 2023 and Al Mayadeen journalist Farah Omar, her cameraman Rabih al-Maamari, and their assistant Hussein Akil on 21 November 2023.
All four were killed reporting from the Lebanon–Israel border area after the war between Lebanon and Israel began on 8 October 2023, the next day after the launch of Hamas’s Operation Al-Aqsa Flood and Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
A Reuters investigation concluded that Abdullah was killed and six others were injured when Israeli troops fired two tank shells directly at a group of journalists from Reuters, AFP, and Al Jazeera who were filming at an open spot one kilometer from the border.
A record 129 journalists and media workers were killed worldwide in 2025, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported, with Israel responsible for two-thirds of the deaths, including many it killed in Gaza.
By GARETH PORTER | CounterPunch | February 27, 2013
“Going to Tehran” arguably represents the most important work on the subject of U.S.-Iran relations to be published thus far.
Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett tackle not only U.S. policy toward Iran but the broader context of Middle East policy with a systematic analytical perspective informed by personal experience, as well as very extensive documentation.
More importantly, however, their exposé required a degree of courage that may be unparalleled in the writing of former U.S. national security officials about issues on which they worked. They have chosen not just to criticise U.S. policy toward Iran but to analyse that policy as a problem of U.S. hegemony. … continue
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