Preliminary Notes on a Planned Decapitation

+ Trump has done the world a service. He has abandoned pretense and clarified the true nature of American power. There is no longer any need to manufacture a case for war, to make an attack seem conform to international law and treaties or to demonstrate its righteousness by acting as part of an international coalition. Now America can do what it wants to whomever it wants solely because the people who run its government want to. This has, of course, almost always been the case behind the curtain of diplomatic niceties. But Trump has ripped those curtains down and now the world is seeing American power in the raw: brazen, arrogant and mindless of the consequences, which will be borne by others and if they complain, they might be whacked, too.

+ The joint Israeli/US strike on Iran wasn’t a surprise attack. (Though Wall Street was certainly surprised.) It could hardly be so with two aircraft carrier fleets aiming their massive arsenal at Iran. However, the US and Israel did use diplomacy as a cover. No one announced the talks had failed. Indeed, it’s been reported that Iran’s leadership was discussing a plan to end its enriched uranium program when the attack was launched. How do we know the US had no intention of accepting a deal? Because the attack was a joint venture with Israel, which has never wanted negotiations with Iran, only an end to the regime. The strike that killed Khamanei is a crime, whatever you think of the Ayatollah. And it should be a warning to any nation that you can’t trust the diplomatic envoys and entreaties of the US; they are the ultimate Trojan Horse.

+ Axios reported that the US/Israel agreed on the date of the attack a week earlier, meaning that the past week of diplomacy was indeed a ruse to lower Iranian defenses.

+ The “decapitation strike” did not cause the regime to collapse. Indeed, Iran’s response has been more robust than it was last summer. By Sunday, Israel was already running low on interceptor missiles and Trump, who had no plan other than launching a bunch of missiles, was calling for a ceasefire after his bombing-as-spectacle weekend.

+ Exulting grotesquely over killing an infirm 86-year-old leader of one of the world’s largest religions (200+ million Shia) probably isn’t the wisest precedent to set…

+ Trump and Netanyahu killed a religious leader who was aged, ill and near death. They made a martyr out of Khamenei when he likely would have died of natural causes within the next year. As former PM, Naftali Bennett admitted, “[Iran] built a very elaborate secession plan precisely for this event of mass decapitation that Israel has done.” 

+ Netanyahu: “Israel now has the assistance of the United States, my friend, US President Donald Trump, and the US military. This coalition of forces allows us to do what I have yearned to do for 40 years.” Netanyahu’s “dreams” of a Greater Israel are a nightmare for the rest of the Middle East and the US, in the long run, which might not prove all that long…

+ Israeli officials say that after Iran (assuming there is an “after Iran,” which doesn’t appear likely), Turkey is now seen as the next major threat to their existence. One of those officials is former PM Naftali Bennett, who said last week: ‘Turkey is the new Iran.”

+ Will Trump join Israel in an attack on a NATO country?

+ Sometimes, the dynamics driving 75 years of history become clear in a single instant: The US just launched an illegal war alongside a man who was indicted for the worst possible war crimes.

+ The day after US/Israeli airstrikes hit a girls’ elementary school, killing more than 150 people, they bombed a sports hall, where witnesses described a scene of horror and chaos with “continuous screaming.” This is the kind of attack that will unite a deeply divided population against the bombers for decades.

+ Robert Pape writing in Vox: “Air power can kill leaders.  It cannot engineer political collapse. From Chechnya to Kosovo to Libya, decapitation rarely delivers regime change — and often accelerates escalation.”

+ The CIA predicted that a decapitiation strike wouldn’t topple the IRI, but most likely led to an even more reactionary leadership. Looks like they were right for once.

+ Trita Parsi on why the Iranian leadership (still intact) rejected Trump’s offer of a ceasefire: “Tehran is not looking for a ceasefire and has rejected outreach from Trump. The reason is that they believe they committed a mistake by agreeing to the ceasefire in June – it only enabled the US and Israel to restock and remobilize to launch war again. If they agree to a ceasefire now, they will only be attacked again in a few months. For a ceasefire to be acceptable, it appears difficult for Tehran to agree to it until the cost to the US has become much higher than it currently is. Otherwise, the US will restart the war at a later point, the calculation reads.”

+ From a Washington Post report claiming that a push from the Saudis was decisive in convincing Trump to approve the attack on Iran: “The attack came despite U.S. intelligence assessments that Iran’s forces were unlikely to pose an immediate threat to the U.S. mainland within the next decade.”

+ It’s not clear–to me at least–how much Trump really wanted this war. What is crystal clear is that he is a weak-minded and insecure person who was easily manipulated into going to war against Iran by the Israelis and the Saudis. Not the kind of person you want leading a country with 1,770 deployed strategic nuclear weapons and 100 tactical nukes, if/when the war begins to go south.

+ US aircraft used in the first 24 hours of the attack on Iran: B-2 bomber, F-16, F/A-18, F-16, F-22, and F-35 fighter jets; A-10 Warthog; LUCAS drones, EA-18G Electronic Attack plane; Airborne Early Warning and Control aircraft; P-8 Maritime Patrol aircraft; RC-135 Reconnaissance aircraft; MQ-9 Reaper drones. They didn’t need all of these planes (except the A-10, of course), but they needed to showcase them to keep the weapons manufacturers happy.

+ The Democrats are still holding their fingers to the wind, even after Trump launched a war with Israel without any consultation with Congress, never mind their approval…

+ KRISTEN WELKER: If there is a war powers vote, will you be a yes?

SEN. MARK KELLY: Well, I’m gonna have to take a close look at it. I want to hear from the White House what their strategy is going forward. I would say at this point it’s rather unlikely that I would be.

+ “Rather unlikely”…

Kristen Welker: Is hope the plan for the future of Iran?

Lindsey Graham: The new Iran, whatever it is, whether it’s a cleric or a representative democracy, our goal is to make sure it cannot become, again, the largest state sponsor of terrorism.

Welker: But is there a plan? Does the president have a plan to guarantee that that happens?

Graham: No, it’s not his job or my job to do this. How many times do I have to tell you!

+ Colin Powell’s Pottery Barn rule was never going to apply to Trump. It didn’t even apply to Bush.

+ Trump and Hegseth aren’t prepared for a war that lasts longer than five days. Wall Street Journal: “The precise size of the U.S. stock of air-defense interceptors—what the Pentagon calls magazine depth—is classified. But repeated conflicts with Iran and its proxies in the Middle East have been eating into the supply of air defenses in the region.”

+ Ted Rall, political cartoonist: “As a student, my mom befriended an Iranian student at Wright State U. in the early 1970s. He protested the Shah here and, when he went home, SAVAK, the Shah’s secret police, arrested him. They tortured him and left him, bleeding where they had cut off both his legs, at his parents’ door. Fuck the Shah, fuck his son.”

+ Trump’s erratic policies “have led Chinese officials to judge that time is on China’s side, and the PRC should avoid provoking the U.S., which has the capacity to lash out at China even as it declines…In the PRC’s view, the international behavior of the U.S. is not only accelerating its own internal collapse but causing the world to ascend into chaos.” Where’s the lie?”

+ First, Trump bombed the US economy. Then he bombed Iran, which further bombed the US economy. Oil up, stock futures down…

+ Bloomberg Economics says there is a potential for oil prices to rise above $100/bbl if there are sustained disruptions to exports through the Strait of Hormuz.

+ How many Trump cronies got advance word of the attacks on Iran, so they could play the inevitable wild swings in the stock and oil markets?

+ CNN’s Clarissa Ward:  “I’ve been talking to sources throughout the region. They are very concerned that this is rapidly getting to a place where it will be very difficult to pull back from the brink…” Bari Weiss will have Clarissa Ward’s head for this kind of reporting when she gets control of CNN…

+ President Trump in 2020: “We’ve spent $8 trillion in the Middle East and we’re not fixing our roads in this country? How stupid. How stupid is it? And we’re not fixing our tunnels, our bridges, our hospitals, our schools? It’s crazy.”

+ When you’ve lost Blackwater founder Erik Prince:

I’m not happy about the whole thing. I don’t think this was in America’s interest. 

It’s going to uncork a significant can of worms, chaos and destruction in Iran. Who takes over?  You still have tens, hundreds of thousands of IRGC people who will be positioning themselves to be number two, to be the next rulers of that country.  I don’t see how this is in keeping with the President’s MAGA commitment. I’m disappointed.

+ Prince isn’t alone, even on the far-right. The first major poll (Reuters/Ipsos) on the Iran strikes shows the country remains sick of war: 27% approve, 43% disapprove. These numbers are even worse than the reaction to the airstrikes last June, where the split was 36-45. GOP support has fallen from 69% in June to 55% today.

+ Trump couldn’t even con 50% of Americans into thinking making a martyr of a dying Ayatollah was a good idea…

Approve: 40%
Disapprove: 31%

YouGov / March 1, 2026

+ From a Washington Post report claiming that a push from the Saudis was decisive in convincing Trump to approve the attack on Iran: “The attack came despite U.S. intelligence assessments that Iran’s forces were unlikely to pose an immediate threat to the U.S. mainland within the next decade.”

+ Sen. Chris Van Hollen at this week’s J Street conference: “I will tell you that AIPAC may call itself pro-American, they may call themselves pro-Israel, but they are neither.”

+ Robert Wright: “I suspect Trump thought killing Khamenei would be a punctuation mark that would let him declare victory and disengage (like the June bombings of nuclear facilities). I also suspect it’s going to have the opposite effect. It can’t be overemphasized that Trump is dumb as a brick.”

+ Iranians surely remember when the US urged dissidents (many of them Shia Muslims) to rise up and overthrow a regime under the cover of US airstrikes during the first Gulf War. They were soon abandoned by the feckless bombers and slaughtered by Saddam’s forces.

+ The last time the US conducted regime change by airstrike, it turned Libya into a slave-trading enclave.

+ The US bombed Afghanistan for 20 years and weeks after finally leaving, the Taliban returned to power, more brutal than ever, with lots of scores to settle against the Afghans who had naively allied themselves with their supposed “liberators.”

+ Trump, the man whose secret police murdered Renee Good and Alex Pretti, said that his main concern was for the freedom of Iranians and the safety of Iranian protesters.

+ Tom Gorman: “I’m glad Iran never showed any sympathy it may have with anti-ICE protesters by firebombing Minneapolis.”

+ In the 1980s, the US secretly backed and armed Iraq’s invasion of Iran. The war went on for 8 years. Around 300,000 Iranians were killed, including thousands of civilians from Saddam’s deployment of poison gas, which the US discreetly turned a blind eye to. The regime didn’t fall. Instead, the Iran-backed Shia eventually came to power in Iraq.

+ From the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, which has seen this play out before:

Under cover of the Israeli-American offensive on Iran, which could cost countless lives and plunge the entire Middle East into a spiral of violence and destruction, armed settler militias continue to launch organized violent attacks against Palestinian communities in an effort to expand ethnic cleansing throughout the West Bank.

Soon after the first air-raid sirens sounded this morning, settler militias set out to attack Palestinian communities across the West Bank, including in Masafer Yatta and the villages of Duma and Qusra, where only yesterday, two activists were assaulted and injured so severely they needed medical evacuation by helicopter.

B’Tselem cautions: Once again, as international attention shifts to the attacks in Iran, Israel will seize the opportunity to escalate violence, advance ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and intensify its genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip.

+ Jon Schwarz: “One reason I suspect Trump didn’t bomb Iran to create democracy there is Trump’s deep, bitter hatred of democracy in America.”

+++

+ Iran has not attacked the US. Cuba has not attacked the US. Venezuela did not attack the US. Nigeria did not attack the US. Gaza did not attack the US. Libya did not attack the US. Iraq did not attack the US. Serbia did not attack the US. Haiti did not attack the US. Panama did not attack the US. Nicaragua did not attack the US. Grenada did not attack the US. East Timor did not attack the US. Chile did not attack the US. Cambodia did not attack the US. Laos did not attack the US. Vietnam did not attack the US.

+ Donald Trump, July 19, 2025: “All three nuclear sites in Iran were completely destroyed and/or OBLITERATED. It would take years to bring them back into service.”

+ Steve Witkoff, February 22, 2026: “They’re probably a week away from having industrial-grade bomb-making material.”

+ Both of these statements are false.

+ And the NYT would, of course,  be intimately familiar with how a case is made to attack a Middle Eastern nation based on “false or unproven claims”….

+ Aside from Trump being mentioned more than 55,000 times in the Epstein files, a cratering economy, collapsing poll numbers and daily judicial rebukes for trashing the Constitution, have we been told one reason why we’re about to go to war with Iran? We certainly didn’t get any clue from Trump’s SoTU speech…

+ More than two dozen Democrats stood up and applauded every time Trump threatened Iran, roughly the same number that applauded every time he mentioned Israel.

+ Hours before the US/Israeli attack on Iran, Marco Rubio declared Iran a “state sponsor of wrongful detention,” which is some serious trolling for the man who signed illegal detention orders for Mahmoud Khalil, Rümeysa Öztürk, Moshen Mahdawi and dozens of others, in a nation that has illegally detained thousands of people in the last year.

+ The Democrats never made a case for not attacking Iran. At best, they meekly criticized Trump’s lack of following a proper process for attacking Iran and he just ignored them. They didn’t defend one of the best things Obama did, the Iran nuclear deal. Biden had four years to reinstate the deal. Instead, he backed Israel’s genocide in Gaza and attacks Iranian allies in Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. The consequences of this war are as much on them as on Trump….

+ Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth: “I’m glad that Khamenei is dead … My problem with this whole thing is how President Trump has gone about doing this.”

+ During her campaign, Kamala Harris fingered Iran as the US’s most dangerous enemy. She offered as little evidence for this assertion as Trump did for his war.

+  Even Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Cheney were smart enough not to go to war with Israel…In fact, Bush I and Bush II deliberately kept Israel from attacking Iraq in both Gulf Wars.

+ China and Russia saw this coming and did about as much to avert it as the Democrats. Which is nothing. So much for the multi-polar world as a deterrent to US aggression.

+ Iran’s population of 93 million people is more than three times that of Syria, whose (un)civil war produced 2.3 million refugees flooding into Turkey, Greece and, ultimately, continental Europe, destabilizing social services, economies, and governments and empowering xenophobic neo-fascist movements. How will they deal with a potential 5 to 7 million refugees if Iran collapses into a prolonged civil war?

+ Nearly 20% of the world’s LNG flows through the Straits of Hormuz, which Iran has threatened to close. Last summer, Iran had made plans to mine the strait.

+ Tariq Ali: “Have heard from an Iranian friend that her partner in Tehran has sent her a message. He is a leftist and is telling her that the US/Israelis are targeting a number of known leftists’ homes in Tehran and elsewhere in an attempt to make sure there’s no opposition to their favoured candidate once they destroy the regime. What this reveals is the degree of penetration by Mossad in Iran. What it also means is that this is not going to be an easy occupation for the US and its Israeli buddies.”

+ One of the US/Israeli airstrikes apparently targeted the Evin Prison in the Pasteur area of Tehran, where Hossein Mousavi, the leader of Iran’s Green Movement, has been confined under house arrest since 2011. Though their residential building was damaged, Mousavi and his wife reportedly survived the bombing.

+ If you needed any more evidence that Israel was doing much of the targeting: The toll from an airstrike on a girls’ elementary school in Minab, Iran, has risen to 85 students dead and 60 others injured.

+ I thought this was just campaign BS until they hired Tulsi. Then I knew they’d never launch an aggressive war…!

+ The FIFA Peace Prize President has now attacked 7 different countries in slightly more than a year into his second term.

+ There’s always a quote…

+ The Constitution is toast. And both parties burned it.

+ David Klion: “A minority of Americans want a regime change war in Iran, but 100% of CBS’s top-billed experts do.”

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