“US Israel Iran War”

The Iran war is now in an artificial stasis, in which practically all of the vast international coalition of people who are repelled and horrified by U.S. President Donald Trump, in the United States and elsewhere, have reflexively bought into the Iranian claim that since that ghastly regime has ostensibly survived, Iran is winning the war.

This is a false conception. This has been the most one-sided war between serious combatants in modern history. Iran has been deprived of much of its military capacity, including related defence production, and is now being tightly blockaded by sea. American casualties have been minimal.

famous saying of Anton Chekhov’s has been making the rounds. “If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall,” Chekhov advised, “in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.”

I wonder if the thugs and theocrats who have been plundering Iran for the last 47 years have read Chekhov. If so, I conclude that they are slow learners. In January, the Iranian authorities slaughtered more than 40,000 protesters—Iranian citizens, mind you, who were fed up with the oppressive death cult that has been oppressing Iran since the dour clown Ayatollah Khomeini waddled off that plane from Paris in Tehran in 1979. Over the course of about a month this past winter, the US assembled a huge military presence in the waters around Iran: two aircraft carrier strike groups and innumerable air assets.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—President Trump scrapped a trip by U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to Pakistan for talks with Iran, leaving himself tough choices over how to force Iran to make concessions the White House wants to strike a deal.

Trump said on Saturday that he had decided to cancel the trip after receiving an offer from Iran that fell short of the White House’s expectations. “We’re not going to spend 15 hours in airplanes all the time, going back and forth, to be given a document that was not good enough,” he said.

The operatives of Sepah, Iran’s state within a state, are many in number. They include the construction workers digging out underground missile bases, the skippers on speedboats harrying oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz and the co-ordinators of militia activities in neighbouring Iraq. All of them will be reading the runes on how and when the war with America and Israel will end, as continued efforts by Pakistan to mediate a peace deal continue this weekend.

Sepah-e Pasdaran, usually translated as the Guards Corps, but habitually referred to by Iranians by that single word, grew from an army of the ultra-faithful during the bloody 1980s war with Iraq into an entity that controls up to one third of the economy and the military units used to crush dissent in the theocratic republic. However, its future power may depend on the degree to which sanctions on Iran are eased.

With the Hormuz crisis, another element falls into place in the mosaic of the new world order. This order is dominated by the titanic struggle between the U.S. and China, manifesting in commodity and energy markets. That Europe has slept through this transformation is a sign of blatant reality denial.

We are currently receiving conflicting reports from the Strait of Hormuz — that strategic chokepoint where global geopolitical weather is shaped like nowhere else. Sometimes a Greek tanker passes through, sometimes a French one. Most often, tankers destined for India or China navigate without incident.

If you listen to the mainstream media, you might come away with the impression that Iran is somehow prevailing — resilient, defiant, and still shaping events across the Middle East. The narratives often suggest that the US campaign has failed and that Tehran remains firmly in control. In reality, however, US President Donald J. Trump has pursued a strategy that departs radically from decades of precedent — one that has left the Iranian regime cornered in ways not previously seen.

Imams in West Portray Khamenei as Victim, U.S. as Perpetrator

In the wake of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s death as the result of joint U.S.-Israeli airstrikes against Tehran on February 28, 2026, various Shia Islamist institutions and figures in Western countries have issued statements of mourning that frame his death as an act of “martyrdom” and express solidarity with the Islamic Republic—even after U.S. troops were attacked, and in some instances, killed by Iranian ordnance. Such responses, often from registered charities, student groups, and community centers, portray Khamenei—who led a brutal regime that has murdered tens of thousands of its own citizens—as a victim and the United States as under the control of the Jews.

There had been little hope for any diplomatic breakthroughs this weekend. Now, what little there was is gone entirely.

The proposed US delegation, led by Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, already lacked the weight of the vice-president. JD Vance was “on standby”, but was not going to be initially involved.

The fact that even the lower-level team have now cancelled their trip is a sign of how far apart the sides are.

Hours before a two-week ceasefire with Iran was set to end this week, President Trump announced its extension, claiming a power struggle in Tehran was impeding its ability to negotiate.

Pakistan had requested the extension, he claimed on Truth Social, “based on the fact that the government of Iran is seriously fractured”. An anonymous American official put it more bluntly to an Israeli journalist for Axios. Trump was giving the Iranians a few more days “to get their shit together”, the official said.

Most people in America are against the war with Iran, as they are in Britain, too.

Very few, however, actually understand why this war is as necessary as it is unavoidably complex.

Few seem aware that Iran has been actively at war against America for the past 47 years. Few seem to grasp that Iran’s fanatical Islamic regime has killed hundreds of U.S. servicemen, perpetrated numerous attacks on U.S. bases, committed countless terrorist atrocities and taken Americans hostage.

…In reality, Iran is not consolidating strength; it is managing decline. And Trump’s play on the Strait of Hormuz has quietly forced energy markets to reprice security—tilting the balance decisively toward the Americas, and away from Europe, Asia and China.

The Islamic Republic no longer resembles a confident revolutionary project.

WASHINGTON — Iran Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei hasn’t released an audio or video message since assuming power because his face was badly burned in Israeli airstrikes on Feb, 28, according to a report — as President Trump says peace talks are inhibited by a lack of clear leadership in Tehran.

Khamenei, 56, “does not want to appear vulnerable or sound weak,” four Iranian officials told the New York Times, adding that one of the ayatollah’s legs has been “operated on three times, and he is awaiting a prosthetic,” while he also has had surgery on one of his hands.

I was on active duty in the Navy in 1979 when the mullahs replaced the Shah and started their special Islamic revolution. I never served in Vietnam but was stationed with a number of veterans of that war, and was surprised when so many of them started repeating what became almost a chant in our unit: “Nuke them, nuke them. Nuke them ‘til the sands turn to glass.” I was working in a big hospital, and the chanters were mainly doctors and corpsmen. They were, as we might say nowadays, kidding, not kidding.

US forces have interdicted a sanctioned vessel that is transporting oil from Iran, the country’s defence department has posted on X.

“US forces carried out a maritime interdiction and right-of-visit boarding of the sanctioned stateless vessel M/T Majestic X transporting oil from Iran, in the Indian Ocean,” the statement says.

Footage of US Navy forces interdicting a vessel attempting to run the blockade of Iran. pic.twitter.com/YV2Ld9w23A

— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) April 16, 2026