Clouds of War in the Middle East

The war of the Trump administration and Israel against Persia / Iran is bringing humanity ever closer to catastrophe. Both Israel and Iran are theocratic regimes designed to overcome each other, no matter the consequences. They replay the crusades of the dark ages. They have sacred books promising paradise, should they exterminate their enemy. But why is the United States in this deadly war? It knows Israel very well. It is its arms supplier. But should it also fight its wars? I don’t think Americans want such a state of subordination.

Second, the raging war in the Middle East is certain to exacerbate the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the management of nuclear weapons, other military plans, strategies and conventional weapons. That means the war Israel provoked against Iran becomes even more dangerous. Israel and the US have nuclear bombs. And Israel is determined to destroy Iran. In such paroxysms of hubris, logic, history and justice take a vacation. Passions rule. Thus this unnecessary, destabilizing and destructive war will delay world nuclear disarmament and peace for a very long time. In fact, the war against Iran may become global with unforeseeable calamities and other adverse consequences. Russia has already expressed support for Iran. And China probably has done the same thing. So, without knowing, we may be on the eve of World War III.

War in the Middle East

Trump campaigned for peace. Yet American and Israeli missiles are raining on Tehran. A US Airforce strike over the Iranian capital, Tehran, killed school girls. On March 8, 2026, Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said that killing children is “unforgivable under any circumstances.” He is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “But the fact that this was one of our first targeting decisions, that this mistake was made on the first day of war, I think speaks to the incompetence of our leadership at the Department of Defense.”

However, the US and Israel cannot win. Persia is a large country with a large population of 90 to 100 million people. But Persia’s greatest asset is that Persians know who they are. Their theocratic government may be divisive but, in general, Persians love their country. Persia / Iran is thousands of years old. The war against it violates international law and the Charter of the United Nations. It is also thoughtless. And it is unconscionable that a giant country like America is fighting Iran on behalf of a tiny state like Israel. This is no speculation. The Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, and the House Speaker, Mike Johnson, admitted that this is Israel’s war. Israel led the United States into war.

The war against Persia / Iran by the United States and Israel started on February 28, 2026. No one expected the war because for several days Iranian and American officials were talking how to avoid the war. And yet, in the midst of negotiations, Trump unleashed the US-Israeli bombing of Tehran, killing Iran’s Supreme Leader and several other officials. The rhetoric of Trump and his Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, made no sense, suggesting that Iran was a national security threat that had to be disarmed and destroyed. The prime minister of Israel, Benjamyn Netanyahu, kept repeating that Iran had to be destroyed because its nuclear program was an existential threat to Israel. Of course, he never suggested that nuclear-weapons armed Israel was a much greater threat to the entire Middle East.

The war the US and Israel against Iran “has unleashed chaos across the Middle East.” According to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran has attacked at least 27 US bases in the Middle East, including military installations in Israel. Iran has also launched missile strikes against Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates. In addition, an Iranian drone struck a British military base in Cyprus.”

Israeli and American hegemony

Oil is one of the reasons why the US joined Israel’s hegemonic attack on Iran. “America’s economy is more than 40 percent more oil-intensive than China’s.” It’s also the disappearing of trust and professionalism. There are “profound apprehensions about the military strikes in Iran. We can’t trust that they got the degree of deliberation that war demands.” This mirrors the corrupt plutocratic culture of the Trump administration: Senior government officials showing off “their fundamental sloppiness, selfishness, disregard for proper procedure, evasion of accountability. They simply don’t do their jobs — or at least don’t do them earnestly, maturely or competently.”

However, in the midst of this disterbing chaos, hegemony of the planet is the ultimate goal of US foreign policy. Jeffrey Sachs, professor of economics and advisor to world leaders, described the hegemonic ambitions of America this way:

“Let us be clear about what the United States and Israel are pursuing. The US objective is not the security of the American people. The objective is global hegemony. The attempt is to destroy the UN and the international rule of law—an attempt that will fail. Israel’s objective is to establish a Greater Israel, destroy the Palestinian people, and assert its hegemony over hundreds of millions of Arabs across the Middle East (from the Nile to the Euphrates, as US Ambassador Huckabee recently asserted).

“The United States’ delusional efforts at global hegemony are proceeding region by region. The US has recently claimed, in a wholly twisted supposed revival of the Monroe Doctrine, that it controls the Western Hemisphere and can dictate how Latin American countries conduct their economic and political affairs…. Today’s war against Iran aims to prove that the US similarly owns the Middle East. The war is part of a 30-year campaign, initiated by the Clean Break doctrine, to overthrow all governments that oppose US and Israeli hegemony in the region.”

Epilogue

Hegemony has been tempting politicians and states for millennia. But hegemony demands kings, emperors or tyrants. Hegemony of a state over another is colonialism. The institution thrived for centuries before and after the invention of democracy by the ancient Greeks.

The US-Israel war against Iran is unjust and illegal. Netanyahu and Trump are responsible for this unprovoked conflict harming the entire Middle East, including America. If America’s NATO steps into this war, then we will have a World War III. Russia and possibly China are helping Iran. With the Biblical slogans about a greater Israel and the second coming of Christ, we resurrect darkness. Therefore, this war against Iran takes a religious and theocratic crusading vision and purpose that has no end before the annihilation of Iran.

But higher prices of petroleum and the disruption of energy markets might bring the American war in the Middle East to an end. On March 9, 2026, Trump said the war was “an “excursion” that would be over soon,” primarily because of “spiking oil prices, troop casualties, allies under attack and low support among the American public.” A commentator of PBS News Hour, Tamara Keith, zeroed in on gas prices that explain Trump talking about his Iranian war as an excursion. She said:

“I think [rising price for gas] is very clearly weighing on the president, whether he admits it or not, and that is oil and gas prices. That is something that affects voters immediately the second they go to fill up their gas tanks. And it undercuts the affordability agenda that the president has been talking about. I mean, he’s mostly been dismissing affordability and he has repeatedly, including in his State of the Union, touted these… very low gas prices… were going to be the solution to all of the ailments, everything that ails everyone on affordability. And he’s saying that they knew that oil prices would rise as a result of this war. But they are rising now, and he is suddenly talking about this as, oh, this is just an excursion, this is a very short-term excursion. We are going to fix this because we need to fix the oil prices.”

Keith is right. Low gas prices are certainly important to Trump. Rising gas prices are even affecting Australia. But the war is more that rising gas prices. It is corruption, hubris, hegemony, ignorance of history and destruction. Iran was preparing for such a war for decades. Its missiles are harming Israel and US military bases in the Middle East. “Satellite imagery,” said Jeremy Scahill of Drop Site News in an email, March 10, 2026, “has shown that Iranian attacks have damaged or destroyed advanced AN/TPY-2 and PAC-3 missile defense radars for the THAAD and Patriot systems as well as other radar domes at U.S. bases in the Gulf. In addition to reducing ballistic missile defense effectiveness for the entire region, the disabling of defensive facilities at airbases may force operations to be carried out farther from Iran, further reducing the number of sorties that the U.S. can carry out on a daily basis.”

So, Trump has more than rising oil prices in mind in considering an exit from the war. Bit in order to prevent this abuse of power, Americans must strengthen their constitution to prevent a president from becoming a tyrant. At the same time, they should take money out of elections and politics. And the government should stop giving tax cuts to billionaires. These superrich Americans are fueling a huge gap between rich and poor. These steps of preventing the undermining of democracy rejuvenate democracy. Democracy matters. It’s the civilized link to living together in peace and security. And on issues of war, the Constitution says Congress should be the sole deciding factor, not the president.

For reasons of justice and truth and national security, the Trump war against Iran should end. Trump even called Vladimir Putin of Russia for facilitating an exit from this war. Finally, the US must tell Israel it does not support its Biblical vision / nightmare of hegemony over the Middle East.

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