US-Israeli aggression on Iran: What happened on 34th day of the imposed war by Press TV Website Staff Friday, 03 April 2026 12:24 AM [ Last Update: Friday, 03 April 2026 12:24 AM ] https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2026/04/0 ... mposed-war
Thirty-four days into the US-Israeli war on Iran, launched on February 28 with the assassination of the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, the military aggression continues to target civilian and industrial infrastructure across the country.
US-Israeli airstrikes on Thursday hit a wide range of sites nationwide, including the B1 Bridge in Alborz, the Pasteur Institute, Kashan passenger airport, locations in Khuzestan, and a site outside Qom. Explosions were also reported in Tehran, Karaj, and Mashhad.
Iran's Red Crescent Society (ICRS) released its latest damage assessment: 117,239 civilian units were struck by the US and Israel, including 93,544 residential units across the provinces.
On the diplomatic front, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi confirmed that Iran has provided safe passage facilities for non-hostile vessels through the Strait of Hormuz.
French President Emmanuel Macron insisted the strait can only be reopened in coordination with Iran, calling any military option unrealistic.
Meanwhile, the London meeting on the Strait ended without producing any practical solution.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Washington is ready for a ceasefire under certain conditions; however, Iran maintains that it wants a permanent end to the unprovoked war as well as guarantees that the aggressors will not renew their aggression.
Key developments from Day 33 of the imposed war:
• The US and Israel stepped up attacks on civilian infrastructure in Iran, hitting the B1 bridge near Tehran and a century-old Pasteur medical research centre. • Trump boasted of the destruction of the bridge, which connects Tehran to the city of Karaj. “The biggest bridge in Iran comes tumbling down, never to be used again — Much more to follow!" he wrote on his Truth Social platform. • China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi said US and Israeli attacks on Iran were a violation of international law. • In a speech, the US President Donald Trump said the war's main strategic objectives are nearly achieved. Threatening Iran, he said that if no agreement is reached, the US will strike all of Iran's electrical facilities and send “Iran back to the Stone Age.” • ICRS released its final damage assessment of civilian infrastructure hit by US and Israeli airstrikes up to Thursday. 117,239 civilian units in total — 93,544 residential units across the provinces, 46,437 residential and commercial units in Tehran alone. The healthcare sector lost 316 facilities, including treatment centres and emergency bases. Education suffered 763 schools being struck. The Red Crescent itself saw 18 of its centres damaged, 48 operational vehicles destroyed, and three rescue helicopters, belonging to both the Red Crescent and emergency services, knocked out of service. • The US and Israel attacked a civilian airport in Kashan. • The US and Israel attacked several locations in Tehran, Mashhad, Qom, Hormozgan and Khuzestan. • The Innovation Factory and Creative Industries of Alborz Province, a private-sector hub for knowledge-based enterprises, was attacked by US-Israel airstrikes. • The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) stated that an attack on Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant would constitute a war crime.
Press TV @PressTV Not a single enemy soldier to survive in case of ground invasion: Iran's Army chief presstv.ir Not a single enemy soldier to survive in case of ground invasion: Iran's Army chief https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2026/04/0 ... rmy-chief- The commander-in-chief of the Iranian Army warns that no enemy soldier will survive if the United States and the Israeli regime wage a ground invasion of the country. 5:35 AM · Apr 2, 2026
• UN chief Antonio Guterres warned that the West Asia conflict risked spiralling into a wider war, and called for an immediate halt to US-Israeli strikes on Iran. • A UK-led meeting of some 40 countries on the Strait of Hormuz, convened under British direction, concluded without producing any practical or immediate solution for reopening the strategic waterway. • US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Washington may need to reconsider its relationship with NATO after the war on Iran ends. • Araghchi said that despite the imposed insecurity on the region and the Strait of Hormuz, the Islamic Republic of Iran has adopted a responsible approach and, through coordination with relevant Iranian authorities, has provided the necessary facilities for the safe passage of non-hostile vessels and ships. • Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran's deputy foreign minister, speaking to Sputnik, addressed the issue of imposing tolls on ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz. He stressed that it is still far too early to discuss the exact amount of these tolls, as the matter remains under review. • Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the current situation cannot change without normalising relations with Iran, which has constructively agreed to allow the passage of ships from non-belligerent nations. "Without considering Iran's position and its direct participation, it is hardly possible to discuss the practicality of any plans for the strait," Zakharova said, adding that Moscow knows of no legal mechanism that would allow waters within a country's territorial sea to be placed under foreign control without Iran's explicit consent. • The Philippine foreign minister said a positive understanding had been reached with Iran regarding the security of the Philippines' energy supply. • French President Emmanuel Macron said that while some defend (US) the idea of forcibly reopening the Strait of Hormuz through military operations, he believes such an approach is unrealistic. • Kaja Kallas, the European Union's foreign policy chief, suggested that Donald Trump's criticism of NATO might be part of a deliberate plan to weaken the alliance from within. • Spain's El Mundo, citing NATO sources, reports that the alliance is experiencing one of its deepest crises in the wake of the West Asian conflict and escalating threats from Trump and may never fully recover. • Foreign Affairs magazine argued that the costs of a war with Iran will ultimately outweigh its benefits for the US.
Press TV @PressTV In the US, petrol averages over $4 a gallon for the first time since 2022, as a war launched by Washington and Tel Aviv against Iran has triggered a global oil crisis; now American citizens are feeling the pain. https://x.com/i/status/2039666706130608387 5:30 AM · Apr 2, 2026
• Bloomberg reported that oil prices rose by five percent following Donald Trump's remarks on Iran. • Kamala Harris, former US vice president and Donald Trump's 2024 election rival, said she had predicted Trump would try to project an image of victory in his recent address to the nation, but insisted that Americans are watching his actions, not his words. • The US Embassy in Baghdad urged American citizens to leave Iraq immediately, citing security developments and the possibility of attacks in the city center within the next 48 hours. The warning reflects Washington's growing fear of resistance forces in Iraq. • Axios reported that Trump's threat to target Iran's energy infrastructure stems from frustration that Iranian officials “do not believe they are losing the war,” and therefore see no incentive to reach an agreement on his terms. A Trump confidant told the outlet that while Iran's military command has “suffered heavy losses, they still don't feel pain," adding that the question now is how much pressure they can absorb. Axios also noted that Trump's claim of an "imminent threat" from Iran has been widely doubted. • Joe Kent, former director of the US National Counterterrorism Centre, responding to Trump's speech on X, wrote: "Learning from the past, we honour our fallen only by spilling American blood in defence of our own nation. The best time to exit this chosen war is now, before we lose more lives." He added that the United States can declare “victory” whenever it wants, but only if Trump reins in the Israelis. • The South Korean President said the war in West Asia poses the greatest threat to global energy security. • A senior World Bank official has expressed deep alarm over the war’s potential to drive inflation, shatter jobs, and unravel food security, adding that the institution is now consulting with member states on how to address the most urgent needs of the crisis. • Italy's foreign minister has sounded the alarm over a looming food catastrophe, calling for the creation of a "humanitarian corridor" through the Strait of Hormuz to allow the passage of fertiliser and other essential supplies, a move aimed at averting disaster, particularly for vulnerable nations across Africa. • Panicked selling sent oil prices higher. US stock futures fell one percent, while European stock futures tumbled more than 1.5 percent. Asian equities also plunged, with Japan's Nikkei dropping 1.8 percent and South Korea's Kospi falling 3.6 percent.
Press TV @PressTV The spokesman of Iran's Khatam al Anbiya Central Headquarters says the United States and Israel have a miscalculated and incomplete understanding of Iran's military capabilities, warning that the enemy should expect more retaliatory strikes. https://x.com/i/status/2039662732044046660 5:14 AM · Apr 2, 2026
• Israel's Yedioth Ahronoth, citing a senior Israeli military official, reported that the Israeli air force on Wednesday completed its planned strikes on Iran's military industries and nuclear-related facilities. The official said nearly all pre-designated "vital and strategic" targets have been disabled, and the “damage inflicted on Iran's military and nuclear infrastructure” is expected to keep Tehran from rebuilding its ballistic and nuclear capabilities for an extended period. • The Wall Street Journal reported that Washington is ready for a ceasefire with Tehran. The US informed mediators that it is prepared to agree to a ceasefire under certain conditions, including the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. A White House official also told the Daily that NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte will visit Washington next week to meet with President Trump. • The Guardian reported that Trump, continuing his characteristic contradictions, called on other nations to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Following his remarks, Brent crude rose more than four percent to $105.55 a barrel, while West Texas Intermediate gained three percent to reach $103.16. Both benchmarks had been falling before the US president's address. • Global gold and silver prices fell after Trump's address to the American people on the Iran war. Cryptocurrency markets also turned bearish following the speech and fresh political signals, with Bitcoin and most altcoins trading in negative territory as selling pressure mounted. • Citing multiple reports, US Senator Chris Coons said Israel assassinated Iran’s former National Security Advisor Ali Larijani because the United States wanted to negotiate with him. • Saudi Arabia's Sadara Chemical Company temporarily shut down its petrochemical complex in the port city of Jubail in the Eastern Province. The facility, a roughly $20 billion joint venture between Aramco and Dow Chemical, has not announced when production will resume. • The New York Times reported that Kamal Kharrazi, head of Iran’s Strategic Council on Foreign Relations, was tasked with overseeing coordination with Pakistan to lay the “groundwork for a potential meeting with US Vice President J.D Vance.” The newspaper said the targeting of Kharrazi was seen as an attempt to disrupt diplomatic efforts. • Iran has said that Washington’s demands were “maximalist and irrational” and denied any negotiations were underway on a ceasefire to end the war. • Vietnamese Foreign Minister Le Hoai Trung expressed condolences over the martyrdom of the Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Sayeed Ali Khamenei and several senior officials and citizens.
The US Will TURN On Israel - Courageous Israeli Journalist Gideon Levy Owen Jones Apr 2, 2026
Transcript
We're going to bomb them back to the stone ages where they belong. That's what Donald Trump said in his address to the nation last night with no sense whatsoever of how long this war, which has already gone on now for over a month, how long that will last. Um he's even uh pointed to previous wars such as the Vietnam War and the Iraq war to point out how long they went on for and this is only uh you know few weeks in comparison which is ominous. What? We're going to talk about this war. We're going to talk about what's going on with Israel obviously which is one of the two states which is waging the war obviously on Iran along with the United States. Where is this all heading? What was this all mean? There's no better guest to talk over this with Gideon Levy, the brilliant Israeli journalist who is a titan of moral clarity and courage. We've not spoken for way too long, Gideon. So, I'm so It's so good to see you looking well, full of health. It's so good to see you again. know it. It's been way too long, which is absolutely absolutely your fault. It is your fault. I will take all the blame. I will take accountability. I'm happy to do that. I'm happy. You know, there's a long list of things, but you know, I'll add it on. Um I just want to start just with what Donald Trump said there. And I it's just, you know, we're in it's There was this old view, wasn't there, of human development which you know perished and it should have perished in the Som or at least Aitz Burkenau which is that things get more enlightened and progressive the wigish view of history they called it. Um, but nonetheless, the fact that, you know, we saw what happened with Gaza, the genocide, the depravity, the rhetoric. I mean, do you think that's what, you know, this is just now normalized, completely normalized the way people, a lot of people don't even blink when Donald Trump says we're going to bomb Iran back to stone ages. So, for first of all, people are blinking here. We talk about it. So, some is somewhere in the world. and how good it exist. But most seriously, first of all, he's not original. You know, he's imitating the Israeli leaders who promise it day and night to Gaza to Lebanon, to Lebanon, to Gaza. I heard it so many times from Israeli statesmen both about Gaza and about Lebanon from time to time also about Iran. So this primitive dark really stone age expression because it is a stone expression. It's almost a biblical expression of primitive dark statesmen who look for revenge, who look for for bloodshed, who look for destruction as a goal, not as a mean as a goal. This repeats itself. And you see how much do they share in common the some of the Israeli leadership and some of the American leadership mainly Donald Trump I can't see any other American president talking like this but the talking are not important and the world is fullles who the Americans try to return to a stone ages all over the world ever since World War II. do that's not a new strategy. It's only that Trump say says it exclusively and therefore maybe we should appreciate it. It doesn't cover it up. Nobody's saying it about Vietnam. Nobody's saying it about Afghanistan. Nobody said it about Iraq. But this what the American did there. And besides, are we sure that the stone ages were so much worse than our age? I'm not even sure about this. in terms of the war. I mean, as I noted, it's gone on now for over a month, and Donald Trump clearly thought it'd be over in a few days after he assassinated the Supreme Leader. In terms of we can see for the US, from the US perspective, this is a strategic catastrophe. What about Israel? What do you think in terms of is is this a disaster strategically for Israel in the way it clearly is a strategic catastrophe for the United States? It might be even worse because Israel can absorb much less catastro catastrophes than the United States. United States is so much more independent and stronger. The main thing which now concerns me is what will be the day after because Israel turned into a par state already in Gaza and the world is furious at Israel and shocked by Israel for two and a half years if not more. But at least in the last two and a half years, you saw really whole public opinions turned their back toward Israel, in the United States, in the Jewish communities in so many new environments, which by itself is a strategic loss because Israel needs the world. Israel cannot exist without the world. But now there is a new danger and you can see it already happening in front of our eyes. The morning after the United States, the American public opinion and the administration is going to blame Israel for this war. The moment it will be declared as a failure and I don't see any scenario in which it will not happen. The moment Israel will be blamed for everything from pushing Donald Trump into this war for convincing him that it will be just few days you know just a small picnic between and I'm very scared that Israel will be left alone. I mean scared on one hand I am wishing all my life that this will happen because I think the relationship between Israel and the United States are not healthy relationship very sick for Israel and it was long time ago the time that Israel will stand on its own feet and take accountability for what it's doing but in any case I don't want the destruction of my country and losing the United state is a great danger for Israel. Before we come on to those potential consequences, you just mentioned there obviously what you know that sense of a backlash coming in terms of Israel's role. How great I mean we know Benjamin Netanyahu in particular has agitated for this war for decades. I mean he's talked about the threat of a nuclear armed you know an imminent nuclear Iran. He was talking about that in the s. How much do you think this was Israel getting its way with the United States compared to Donald Trump himself who obviously is, you know, obviously surrounded by right-wing fanatics in the United States who themselves have many of them agitated for war with Iran. I mean what how much do you think this was Israel using influence or convincing or persuasion or whatever or you know where do you fall on that one? So first of all, some of those right wings who who surround him were opposing the war. They were not in favor of this war. They're opposing any involvement of the United States in any place including Iran, including launching wars. They have a different policy for the United States. Secondly, I don't know. But the fact is that uh that was at least seven I think seven times in Washington within one year. This seems like a campaign. This seems like a ongoing effort to persuade to convince Trump to launch this war or to join Israel in this war. Logic says that it was Netanyahu who pushed Trump. But you know it does it really matter? Trump Trump is accountable for this war. He is the president of the most important and strong superpower in the world. And you cannot just say it was Netanyahu because he is a full partner of this war and both carry the same responsibility. Each of them in front of their people should explain now was it necessary? What did it achieve and where is it aiming now after one month over one month? Where is it aiming to now? The polling in the United States shows that the war is now very unpopular. It was never popular. Um that you know it's it's about well it's faced a small proportion majority opposed the war and that's true in in Britain overwhelming opposition in other countries. Where do things stand with Israel? Is there any sense of I mean there's overwhelming support from the beginning. Um has that shifted? Is that I mean tell me where is public opinion at the moment. So overwhelming is a really modest expression to describe % of the Israeli Jews who supported this war. % you know oh and this is a North Korean figure. You will not find it in any democracy about any issue. %. We started this war like always Israel starts this war the wars with the wars of choice obviously with huge support and then usually the question marks rises but look I they are not updated polls for sure there is no majority who wants to the war to stop now in in the current conditions because if you stop now what did you achieve. I think you will not achieve any anymore. But those who support the war want to see some achievements. And those achievements were unachievable from the beginning. And now, you know, like a gambler in the casino, he says maybe the next round will be really successful. Let's wait or while the chances are almost zero for real achieving changing regime army of its nuclear capability. Those are all fantasies. So Israel is now on one hand I can't ignore that there is something very heavy in the air. look like last night we ran three times to the shelter and in the evening which was the said the eve of Passover another three or four times I think all together in the last hours we ran like times to the shelters this is not normal life this is not acceptable for a long time and this is also not justified when you ask yourself why do we do it what does it serve us but those cracks are still deep deep because the Israeli media continues to support the war and to praise the war and not to let any alternative voice to be heard. Nothing by by its own choice. Nobody, no synergy by its own choice. No alternative voice, no opposition, no question marks. So I guess it will go on like this with the support of the people until people will really realize that this is a too high price to pay for nothing. I mean you say % plus that's not normal in a democracy. You don't get true those figures. You know if that was in an election and % voted you presume that was a dictatorship. You know that's so overwhelming. Why? you know, how has it got to a point where, you know, because even in could you like, you know, the US and so on, the Vietnam war, Iraq war were all popular for a period, people don't often remember that, but they they were unfortunately, but there were still substantial minorities always who had opposed them. Why has it got to this point? So, even in Israel in former wars, the opposition was a little more meaningful than %. I mean % is almost nothing. Look, we are after decades of brainwash that Iran is the big Satan, that Iran is an existential threat to Israel. You hear it day and night for decades. The wet dream was always to try to go for war with Iran and it was always very irritating because all the prime minister before had called their feet from this because they knew that this is very very complicated. Iran is a huge country with a huge military force with huge military forces. It's not there, you know, Lebanon that you make their picnic and conquer half of the state or Gaza, which is a really nothing with nothing. So, it was about brainwashing the people that we are facing. It's either war in Iran or destruction of Israel. This was more or less presented to the people. And then you have to take into account that the mindset of Israelis, the national sentiment is always favoring wars over compromises, over diplomacy. You see it again and again. It's so much easier for any prime minister in Israel to launch a war rather than to go for negotiations and maybe go get a compromise or an agreement. The Israeli sentiment is living on the sore. We were doomed to live on our sword. Still believe most of the Israelis that's that's life. I mean like someone who lives next to a volcano and knows that that's his life. Israelis believe that we are living in a place where wars are inevitable. So why not to to to initiate? Do you think Benjamin Netanyahu thought that the Iranian Rosie would collapse in the way that Donald Trump did? Do you think that was the calculation of the Israeli state? Or maybe that's maybe maybe some factions of the Israeli state fall and others didn't. What do you think about that? Net tend now to blame the head of the Israeli Mossad that he promised him that the regime will fall. Obviously, we don't know because none of both of us unfortunately were not present in the rooms where those decisions were made. But I think that deep in his hearts, yes, he saw the uprising a few months ago, he he believed that there is a potential. What he didn't take into account that never in history you can make a regime changes throughout Bombay. What we see now is a very strong boost for the regime. The regime, I'm sure, is much more popular now than before this war because no Iranian, no Iranian wants to see his country being destroyed and his fellow Iranians being killed. No Iranian supported like no Brits or or Israeli would support the destruction of his country. And if someone is doing it, you spend behind your government and this what will happen now. Did you believe or not? You know, with the it's very hard to tell because there's never any kind of of of similarity between what he says and what he believes and what he thinks and everything is very complicated and manipulated. I don't know. I'm sure he tried to persuade Donald Trump that this is possible. in terms of the polit before we talk about Israel globally in terms of what happens with its relationship with the US in terms of Israel I mean politically because it was reported that Netanyahu was hoping that he would use this war partly in for the elections that he would get a kind of boost from war hysteria and all the rest of it which you know although like for example Margaret Thatch did join the Falcons you know that helped her win the huge majority she did in but I Is this if if this ends in a situation where I don't know Iran is in charge of the straight of hormuz in practice um and those the war aims conflicting as they are uh haven't clearly been achieved at all so essentially it's an Iranian victory deacto what does that mean politically within Israel you can trust Netanyahu that he will any failure will be described by him as a huge historical achievement and victory. You can also trust Netanyahu's fans that they will believe him because they believe anything he says. So politically, I'm not sure that this will make much difference because what is happening in Israeli public opinion right now in Israeli society is that we are divided almost only on one thing and this is Netanyahu. Yes or no? And on this the the it's unbridgeable. Those who hate the Netanyahu hate him and distrust him no matter what he does. Those who admire him, adore him and do so no matter what he does. This is the nature of populist politicians like Netanyahu. And I don't think that the facts on the ground will change. I don't know. The question is will one of the two camps which are quite similar be strong enough to create the next government and will it be a real alternative because there are too many people abroad who think that if we only replace and if we only replace Netanyahu you know Messiah will come Israel will turn into this Pacific human rights international law supportive country um the Palestinians will be free. Gaza will be free. No, no, no, no. Forget about it. Their alternative is not much better than it. It just in terms of talking then before about the consequences in terms of the US and Israel because as as you know I mean the US is sorry Israel is dependent on the US for its weapons, aid, diplomatics of what we could go on. back in at the the very beginning with Gaza, I remember you said to me in in in an interview that this will change when public opinion shifts in the United States. Um, but at the time you I think it was you said something along the kind of to years those consequences will be felt. I mean since then Israel's polling in the United States has collapsed and and that is a real shift. When I say collapsed, I mean I mean there's still a large chunk compared to Britain, for example, who express positive views, but it's at a historic unparalleled low. And amongst Democratic voters, it is the abyss. It's, you know, complete nad support for Israel is now a fringe opinion amongst Democrats. That did not at all used to be the case. What's amongst Jewish Americans? I mean, a great divergence. you know, the way your you speak, your opinions in Israel are on the fringes, but with amongst Jewish Americans, your opinions are actually quite mainstream. Um, % of Jewish Americans think Israel's committed genocide. About /think it's committed war crimes. What do you think h what consequences do you think are do you think those consequences are going to be felt? I mean, you said that's before the economic consequences of this war hit ordinary Americans, including people who voted Trump, partly because of prices. So, what do you think is going to happen in that sense? Look, things don't change, especially not in the United States on one day or one night. It is a process which started by now, which started two and a half years ago. It is on its way. those uh protesters who were gathered in in in the universities, the campuses in in Berkeley and in NYU and and in Harvard and in other places. They are the next president, secretary of state and secretary of of defense of the United States. They are the next congressman and the senators. This is a new mindset. If not Donald Trump, I think Donald Trump is going to be the last American president. We used to say that Biden was the last Zionist American president. Donald Trump will be the last American president who still feels some commitment toward Israel. I don't see will it be a Democrat or a Republican. I don't see any special commitment to Israel. On the contrary, I see a great playing game between Israel and the United States when Israel will have to pay a heavy price. Now, my feelings about this are obviously mixed when I told you so many years ago that this is the key for change. I was hoping for this to happen. I was really longing for this to happen. And now it happens. The problem is that it happens and it's going to happen in such an extreme way that it might really put a danger about Israel's existence. It's not a game. Israel without the United States right now is nothing but really nothing. Imagine embargo by the United States, an arm embargo or sanctioned. Israel cannot handle it. And Europe is just waiting just waiting that the United States will give the green light for it because the the EU is so pale and so helpless visav the Americans that just wait that the Americans will give a green light for for sanctions over Israel and they will join them with a lot of enthusiasm. I can tell you they are sick and tired from a count of a country which again and again does not listen to any advice of the international community who really dismiss any international possible international law who treats the international community as garbage only because Israel had the United States in its and it seems that those days are going to end and quite soon and then we'll face a new reality and um on one hand I'm very happy about it because really some problems will be solved and above all hopefully the Palestinians will get what they deserve finally finally right some finally equality finally some justice not full justice they'll never get it but at least proportional justice on the other hand Israel is lost in this case what I don't get is why that reality is not widely understood in Israel. So not in a sense of you know a kind of well well we're going to embrace this reality you know people can come to that conclusion and think well we hate this reality but look we are dependent objectively on the west there's no getting around that therefore we need to avoid alienating western public opinion but there doesn't seem to be any realization actually reminds me it's that famous quote associated with West Ham Football Club in Britain no one likes we don't care as the uh as the song goes that seems to be emblematic of the Israeli state but a large basically a large chunk of the Jewish Israeli population. I mean why is there not that hardnosed understanding of the balance of power and and is there an understanding that public opinion in the west is catastrophically in quite an angry way turning against Israel? You're mentioning Westm and I will will quote David Benorian the first prime minister of Israel the establish of state of Israel who said no matter what the Gentiles are saying what matters is what the Jews are doing and here you get it in an actions were taught for years and years and years that in any case the world is anti-semitic and therefore it doesn't matter we don't have to please the world because anyhow they all hate us which is Not true obviously, but it's a very good good excuse to ignore the word. On the other hand, Israelis were spoiled enough to believe that no matter what, America is on our side and that's enough in our in our world. That's enough. You don't need more. when you get billions and billions and billions unconditioned dollars without putting any conditions to getting this aid throughout decades by all presidents. I mean Barack Obama who really believed in the right things maybe gave his the biggest aid ever without any conditions nothing. So you are you are learning that really you can go on like this because America is with us and in many cases even in our pocket. So and to this the fact that any critics about Israel is immediately labeled in Israel as anti-semitism which is another force mure which which we can't do anything. Add to this the the the real pleasure I would say of Israelis to victimize themselves always and they feel always the best when they are portrayed as the victims and the victims and look what we pay and look at the shelters and look at the children without seeing nothing around us and the victims around us which are times in worse conditions but In any case, uh something must happen to break this. It's almost a a a religious belief. I would say we are right, the world is wrong and no matter what the world says, we will continue. Also, the the the feeling that we can do it until now it was true. It proved itself. The world did nothing to Israel. The world was much harsher with Russia or with other countries who violated the international law. The world was very forgiving to Israel. So Israelis said, "Oh, let them talk. Let them let them condemn. We're used to it. Who cares?" Do you think actually Israeli strategy is actually predicated on the fact that things are going to shift? that they're not going to have the blank check of support that they enjoyed from the United States and other western states and that this is a smash and grab that basically what Israel is doing is doing as much as it can for example annexing large chunks of South Lebanon u you know it's it's basically going on a rampage thinking we have a window of opportunity now to carve out a greater Israel uh to do all of these things we won't be able to do this in a few years so let's get as much done as possible in the here and now. Is that kind of what might be going on? This is for sure the mindset of the current government because it's not only about the shift in America policy. They also know that they might not be reelected. So let's catch as we can now and therefore they really broke all the boundaries in the West Bank in the in the domestic regime of Israel in as Israel in a as a state of law in the way that we lost shame. I mean before we used to be at least shameful for things we are doing now we are proud of what we are doing. The Israeli parliament approved this week the death penalty for only Palestinian terrorists. Yeah. Some right-wingers opened champagne bottles. I mean you celebrate killings of other human beings. I mean you celebrate it. Don't even say it's a need. We don't have any other choice. No, it's a reason to celebrate for raising a toast. I mean they lost any shame. But here I must tell you relating to the last two question of yours there is another problem that the discourse in Israel is so shallow is so stupid the media which is totally free but it feels free also to do only what their listeners and readers want to do want them to do. You open Israeli TV, there's no serious discourse about anything. Day and night, only one view, never question marks and never serious debates. The discourse is such a superficial and and stupid one that those question you raise are even not discussed on Israeli media. They are not discussed. You think that anybody spoke about this what we speak now? You think that in the last two years there was one toe in which those questions were touched at all? Not at all. Tell us more about our successes in Lebanon. Tell us more about how many were killed in Iran. Tell us more about the suffer of the people of Gaza which they care take they carry the responsibility for. This what the people want. just tell us about our successes. You know, I was at a Passover Center last night. Um it was at the the the flat of one of the founders of Namod, which is a a brilliant leftist Jewish organization here which fights for justice for Palestinians, among other things. Um and some of those there were uh leftists from Israel, from Tel Aviv, Jewish leftists. Obviously, you know, we had this pass over with interpreted in a in a in a leftist way, including talking about what had happened to the Palestinians and solidarity and opposition to the the genocide. I mean, I guess what you know, and they were full of obviously that humanity and it's it's a a humanity which has always existed on kind of particular humanism of the Jewish left without which the left generally wouldn't even exist. I mean, how much has that just been squeezed out of existence? Is there any sense after and a half years since this particular phase of horror began, is there any sense of growing of of look at what h look at what we have done to the Palestinians. Look at how they've suffered. Look how they're suffering. Is I mean, is there any sign of that emerging in any meaningful way at all? Oh, and even if you will use an electronic microscope, you will not find any signs to it. Not in the public discourse, not in the Israeli media except it's obviously not not in in listening to people in the street. No, it doesn't cross their mind that first of all, they know very little about it and what they know is totally biased because that's the way that the the media is is transferring it to them. And secondly, they don't care because they really believe genuinely that after the th of October, Israel has the right to do whatever it wants. That's the belief. When you saw when you say the massacre in Israel, you think they mean the massacre of people in Gaza, the massacre of babies less than one year old, the massacre of girls releasing they believe it's not at all. The massacre is the th of October and there is no other massacre. That's the only one that exists. It's it's a very sick way of thinking and it will end it will end up badly. I mean the phrase which people often refer to in that context is the summary of that attitude is nothing can justify the th of October. Everything can be justified by the th of October. I mean that's the mentality isn't it? Absolutely. Absolutely. And then again, it brings us back to the fact that only Jewish blood counts. That only the suffer of the Israelis and the Jews counts. That their suffer doesn't exist because they are not really human beings like us. And they and there are no innocent people in Gaza, which you hear again and again and again. No innocent people in Gaza. Even not the babies who were just born. Yes. Even not the babies who were just born into their deaths. Yes. with this mindset, don't expect much. In fact, there was a just to flesh that out, there was a the poll asking um if there was any innocent people in Gaza. % of Jewish Israelis said no, which is just it was just so horrifying. Just finally, I just want to talk about just finally about the the Palestinian people who you've mentioned and we've talked about a few times, but you know, the people of Gaza living in apocalyptic ruin and you know, I speak to people in Gaza a lot and you know, they're living in this never-ending hell. What do you think? Where do you think things are heading with Gaza in the West Bank? I mean, because in the West Bank, we have these constant I was in the West Bank in September. Where do you think things are heading with the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank? I'm very afraid that their fate will be like the Native Americans. Finally, they will be forgotten. Their just cause will be forgotten with all the demonstrations in the world now. And they are very impressive, I must say. and with all this really popular movement to to to save them to bring freedom bring their rights but finally you see governments don't care at all and they might be forgotten look Gaza is forgotten by now once the whole Iran game started Gaza is totally forgotten nobody speaks about Gaza nobody knows what's going on there nobody cares they can remain like this for years now in torn tents in the the rain which is with which is no facilities with no medical basic services nothing no education system nothing they can why why didn't they start to rehabilitate Gaza yet they didn't build one new house in Gaza we are now two and a half years after the war started and nothing is happening there and they are forgotten in the West Bank Israel is doing as you know because you've been here in September so you saw what Israel is doing. It's not the West Bank that we knew two years ago and in few months it will not be the West Bank that we know now because they don't save they don't save time. They don't sorry they don't waste time every day by the time we are talking now settlers and soldiers are changing the West Bank for the bed. today, yesterday, tomorrow, transferring people, killing people, tyrannizing people, all in one purpose, to push as many Palestinians away from the West Bank. All this is happening, the world does nothing about it. I guess just finally, I mean, it's just looping back to what we've kind of talked about a bit in this interview repeatedly, but is that I'm going to try and end on a hopeful note. We'll see. We'll see how this goes, but very odds me. It's very odds me. We've we've managed glimmers before, Gideon. So, we'll we'll try and we'll try and open those glimmers. No, we'll talk about we talked about because it does go back to what you said about the shift in the US. But I guess it is you could imagine a situation. Look, I mean, could someone like Alexander Cortez become president? By the way, you wouldn't rule that out is all I'm saying. A few years ago, that idea would be completely ludicrous and nobody would take, you know, but now you wouldn't rule that out. You wouldn't say that's definitely not going to happen. And that itself shows how things have shifted within US politics. That that could be a potentially plausible scenario. I guess the point is Israel at the end of the day is a a country of million people. And if the world's admittedly declining superpower goes, "Times up. You're not going to do what you want anymore. That's the end of it. We're not just going to give you these weapons and allow you to slaughter Palestinians whilst occasionally doing hand ringing statements uh about the need to defend human right sorry international law while you you know just go through every single you know plank of the Geneva Convention which you can violate what's Israel going to do about it you know the Israeli government might scream and yell and stamp its feet there might be fury within Israeli society but that would be the end of it you know the America would go you're going have to, for example, the Palestinians will have to have their justice. There'll have to be some form of freedom for the Palestinian people. You're not going to be able to you're going to get get out of Lebanon. That's the end of that one. Do you see what I mean? I mean, actually, what that would just be the end of it. So, actually, this could end in a way which, you know, isn't to the liking of what the me the the average Israeli wants, but it would be tough basically. I don't know if to tell you that this is wishful thinking or is it a far-fetched but it might very much happen and maybe sooner than we think for decades I kept on saying that the future of the Middle East and the future of the Palestinian people will not be h decided by Israel. It will be decided by the international community until now the international community was totally passive about it and not only passive very supportive to the occupation to the apartheite let's not put them as passive they are part of those projects the settlements the apartheid the the genocide in Gaza the west is part of it directly indirectly United States for sure it might change it might change and then Israel will really face one of two options either to become a North Korea totally isolated with all the consequences or change it policy right now both don't seem realistic because Israel Israel will not change unless it will be really forced to change and even then because we have this big part core of lunatics, of messiahic Jews who are ready to pay every price. No, they will never change. They will never give up. It's not like you are dealing with rational people. They truly believe that God promised them this much farther than this. Listen to the American ambassador though it goes throughout the whole Middle East. God promised it us and if he promised it to us, it's ours. That's a mindset of many Israelis, not all of them obviously, but more and more so. And demography is also playing to their heads. So it's very hard to be optimistic, but still because you want to end with some kind of hope. I really think that the change in the international community now is real is a real shift. It is a real shift and it is promising a law to tell you that I can guarantee the international community. I can trust them. No, they might push the Israelis out, but I'm not sure they will care much about the Palestinians. Also, I don't see the international community goes out of its way to promise the people of of of the Asia refugee can better life. You know, we are dealing with quite a cynical world. Let's not romantize it, romanticize it. But it is time of big events and big changes and there is some kind of light in the the end of this very very dark tunnel. Well, I think however this ends, I think in years to come, you will be vindicated. I just make that clear. Um, history is always extremely kind to those who take morally courageous stances which are righteous when they are in their time demonized and attacked. And I know that's true in Israel, of course, but obviously within the wider world, you're obviously celebrated and applauded and huge numbers of people all over the world, right? And rightly so. So, for those watching, please like and subscribe, leave your thoughts, leave your comments, do share the video, but honestly, Gideon, it's always an honor. Thank you. Thank you so much for having this. It's always a challenge and a very very interesting one. Thank you very much. I always learn a lot. Thank you.
IRGC's Wave #91: Iran Punishes 5 Million Israelis, Sets Tel Aviv & Haifa 'Ablaze' With New Missiles Hindustan Times Apr 2, 2026
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps said Wave 91 of Operation True Promise-4 struck Tel Aviv and Haifa, claiming hits on key Israeli sites, including military gathering points and airports. The IRGC also said the Houthis joined the attack, while Iranian claims extended to U.S. bases and fighter jets in the region. Israeli broadcaster Kan reported damage from an Iranian ballistic missile, and another strike reportedly left a crater in Petah Tikva. Watch for more
Transcript
million Israelis were forced into shelters as the IRGC's st wave of attacks sent a new shock through the country. Iran punishes Israel with ultra-heavy missiles, striking with force that sends a stark warning across the region. Iran's missiles leave Israel reeling from fires, craters, and widespread destruction. In the aftermath of the strikes, Trump's threats backfire, and Israel pays the price as Iran's anger turns into a devastating military response. Iran escalates tensions after Trump's bombing back to the Stone Age remark, responding with a sharper and more aggressive stance. Tonight, I'm pleased to say that these core strategic objectives are nearing completion. As we celebrate this progress, we think especially of the American warriors who have laid down their lives in this fight to prevent our children from ever having to face a nuclear Iran. We will spare you the trouble. Do not count our missiles, drones, and strategic equipment because you will certainly be mistaken and get nowhere. Donald Trump's claims about Iran's war games were met with fresh IRGC strikes on US and Israeli targets as the confrontation grew even more intense. On April nd, the IRGC said wave of Operation True Promise four hit Tel Aviv and Hifa hard, delivering another powerful round in the ongoing attack. Iran claimed the strikes forced millions of Israeli settlers into underground bunkers as civilians rushed for cover during the missile assault. The IRGC said Telnof, Hamakim, and Bengurian airport were among the targets, marking a direct hit on some of Israel's most sensitive sites. Iran said military gathering points in Tel Aviv, Hifa, Aot, the Needf, and Beerba were hit, widening the scope of the strikes across multiple regions. Israeli broadcaster can said an Iranian ballistic missile caused significant damage with the strike leaving visible destruction in its wake. Hours later, another Iranian missile slammed into Pettitka, leaving behind a large crater and deepening the damage on the ground. IRGC in a statement said, "IGG aerospace force fighters alongside the brave fighters of Yemen conducted wave of Operation True Promise The attack targeted and destroyed the Israeli regime's force deployment centers, military-industrial companies and support equipment in the western regions of Tel Aviv and the port of AOT using long-range liquid and solid fuel ultraheavy missile systems. The sound of massive consecutive explosions in the center and heart of Israel and the rush of more than million people to underground shelters eliminated the possibility of censorship and distortion of the battle scene realities by Israeli intelligence services. The continuous, combined, and comprehensive operations of this wave against Israeli and American targets in the region continues, and supplementary information will be presented to the noble nation of Iran. The Yemen front said it joined Iran and Hezbollah in a joint strike on Tel Aviv's Jaffer region, marking a wider and more coordinated escalation. The IRGC said the Houthis launched attacks toward Israeli territories and Deona, expanding the threat to more strategic areas. The Iran-backed militia claimed it fired a missile at what it called vital Israeli enemy targets in Tel Aviv, adding more pressure to the region. IRGC coordinated missile and drone strikes targeted Israeli and US forces across the region, widening the conflict far beyond the original battlefield. Iran's army said it launched drone strikes on US fighter jets at Alazra air base in Jordan, aiming to disrupt enemy air power in the region. Iran said US bases at Akmed Aljab, Ali al-Sum, and Alcarge were hit by heavy missile strikes as the attack spread across multiple military sites. The IRGC said the Aldafra early warning radar in the UAE was destroyed in the attack wave, dealing another blow to regional defense systems. The Iranian army said its Alazra drone strike aimed to weaken enemy air power in Jordan, framing the operation as a direct military response. The attacks come amid a war of words between US and Iranian leadership with tensions rising on both the battlefield and the political stage. IRGC's Kadam Alan Baya spokesperson threatened the US with a deadly hidden missile, adding to the pressure and uncertainty. Ibrahim Zulfagari taunted Trump, saying US intelligence on Iran's military capabilities was incomplete in a sharp message aimed at Washington. As we stated before, we declare to the American Zionist enemies, your information about our military capability, power, and equipment is incomplete. You know nothing of our vast and strategic capacities. Do not hope that you have destroyed our centers for producing strategic missiles, long-range offensive and precision guided drones, modern air defense systems, electronic warfare systems, and our specialized equipment. Because with such assumptions, you will only further increase the depth of the swamp in which you have trapped yourselves. The centers you believe you have targeted are insignificant. and our strategic military production takes place in locations you are completely unaware of and will never be able to reach. We will spare you the trouble. Do not count our missiles, drones, and strategic equipment because you will certainly be mistaken and get nowhere. You must pay the price for the aggression that you initiated against the honorable noble and Muslim nation. With trust in Almighty God, this war will continue until your humiliation, disgrace, lasting regret, and eventual surrender are certain. Following the continuation of the heavy and unimaginable blows and strikes you have already received, expect even more forceful, broader, and more destructive actions from us. Earlier, US War Secretary Hegseth also mocked Iran in an ex post, using the back to the stone age remark to sharply escalate the rhetoric. The same message was echoed by Donald Trump in a speech earlier on April st, reinforcing the hardline tone from Washington. Tonight, Iran's navy is gone. Their air forces in ruins. Their leaders, most of them terrorist regime they led are now dead. Their command and control of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is being decimated as we speak. Their ability to launch missiles and drones is dramatically curtailed and their weapons, factories, and rocket launchers are being blown to pieces. Very few of them left. Never in the history of warfare has an enemy suffered such clear and devastating large-scale losses in a matter of weeks. Our enemies are losing in America, as it has been for five years under my presidency, is winning and now winning bigger than ever before. I've made clear from the beginning of Operation Epic Fury that we will continue until our objectives are fully achieved. Thanks to the progress we've made, I can say tonight that we are on track to complete all of America's military objectives shortly. Very shortly, we are going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks. We're going to bring them back to the stone ages where they belong. In the meantime, discussions are ongoing. Regime change was not our goal. We never said regime change, but regime change has occurred because of all of their original leaders death. They're all dead. The new group is less radical and much more reasonable. Yet, if during this period of time no deal is made, we have our eyes on key targets. If there is no deal, we are going to hit each and every one of their electric generating plants very hard and probably simultaneously. We have not hit their oil, even though that's the easiest target of all because it would not give them even a small chance of survival or rebuilding. But we could hit it and it would be gone. And there's not a thing they could do about it. They have no anti-aircraft equipment. Their radar is % annihilated. We are unstoppable as a military force. The nuclear sites that we obliterated with the Bbombers have been hit so hard that it would take months to get near the nuclear dust. And we have it under intense satellite surveillance and control. If we see them make a move, even a move for it, we'll hit them with missiles very hard. Again, we have all the cards. They have none. It's very important that we keep this conflict in perspective. American involvement in World War I lasted one year, months, and five days. World War II lasted for three years, eight months, and days. The Korean War lasted for three years, one month, and two days. The Vietnam War lasted for years, months, and days. Iraq went on for eight years, months, and days. We are in this military operation so powerful, so brilliant against one of the most powerful countries for days and the country has been eviscerated and essentially is really no longer a threat. They were the bully of the Middle East, but they're the bully no longer. This is a true investment in your children and your grandchildren's future. The whole world is watching and they can't believe the power, strength, and brilliance. They just can't believe what they're seeing. They leave it to your imagination, but they can't believe what they're seeing. The brilliance of the United States military. Tonight, every American can look forward to a day when we are finally free from the wickedness of Iranian aggression and the spectre of nuclear blackmail. Because of the actions we have taken, we are on the cusp of ending Iran's sinister threat to America and the world. And I'll tell you, the world is watching. And when we do, when it's all over, the United States will be safer, stronger, more prosperous, and greater than it has ever been before. May God bless the men and women of the United States Armed Forces, and may God bless the United States of America. Thank you very much and good Right.
Handala Strikes Again: Israel's Air Defense Secrets In Iran's Hands Now? | FBI, Trump, Netanyahu Hindustan Times Apr 3, 2026 #IsraelIranWar #USIranWar #USIsraelIran
A new front has opened in the Iran-Israel conflict as cyber warfare intensifies alongside missile strikes. Iran-linked hacker group Handala has claimed a major breach of systems tied to Israel’s air defense infrastructure, raising alarms over potential exposure of sensitive command data. The group says critical details on communication networks and defense operations are now compromised, warning that future attacks could be guided by this intelligence. The development follows earlier cyber-linked strikes in the Gulf, signaling a growing overlap between digital and battlefield warfare as tensions continue to escalate rapidly.
Transcript
After weeks of missiles and rockets, is Benjamin Netanyahu now facing a new front? One where hackers go after the brains of Israel's air defense instead of its borders? After breaching the FBI director's personal email, is the same Iran linked crew now claiming to have hacked into the brain of Israel's air defense network itself? Has the nerve center of Israel's air defense, its command and control maps and comms, now been opened up for the IRGC and its allies to study before the next barrage? If leaked command maps and communications data are really in resistance missile units hands, does that turn every future strike into a far more informed targeted attack? And when hackers warn that no system is beyond their reach, are they signaling that this is just the opening shot in a long cyber war shadowing the missiles overhead? After breaching the FBI director's personal Gmail, Iran linked hackers are now claiming they've gone after the very core of Israel's air defense network. On April nd, the Handala Activist Group announced it had breached a company directly tied to Israel's air defense systems. The group says it hacked PSK Wind Technologies, described as a key designer and operator of Israel's integrated command and control networks. Handala claims it gained full access to data on Israeli command centers and critical defense infrastructure, not just a few stray files. The leaked material allegedly includes blueprints of communication systems and operational details of Israel's air defense network. The hackers say they have already passed this intelligence to resistance missile units to help plan future strikes with greater precision. In its statement, Handala warns that Israeli defense networks will no longer enjoy the level of security they once took for granted. The group calls this hack the beginning of the collapse of Israel's false sense of security, framing it as a psychological as well as technical blow. Handala also warns that no military system, however advanced, will remain safe from future cyber attacks by the so-called resistance axis. In its statement, Handala said, "Israeli command centers and defense infrastructure will no longer enjoy their previous level of security. Future resistance operations can be planned and carried out based on the intelligence obtained in this attack. This is only the beginning of the collapse of Israel's false sense of security. No system, regardless of its technical sophistication or military-grade design, is immune to the cyber capabilities of the resistance." unquote. This cyber claim comes right after Iran linked missile strikes physically damaged a major cloud facility in Bahrain on April st. A Financial Times cited report says Amazon's cloud computing infrastructure in Bahrain was hit and set on fire in that Iranian attack. Iran's guards had already threatened to go after US tech giants, naming Google, Apple, Microsoft, and others as part of their wider retaliation playbook. The PSK wind breach comes barely a week after Handala went after US security infrastructure, showing how its footprint is spreading from Washington to the Gulf and now into Israel's air defense brain. On March th, the pro Iran pro Palestinian group Handala claimed it had breached FBI director Cash Patel's personal email account. The hackers then posted personal photos and documents online, crowning Patel as their latest high-profile target. The dump included images of Patel smoking cigars, riding in a convertible, and posing with bottles of rum, clearly meant to embarrass him. A US Justice Department official has confirmed his inbox was compromised and said the data appears authentic. The leaked cash is said to mix personal notes with work-related emails stretching from about to Handala calls itself a pro Palestinian vigilante crew, but Western researchers trace it to Iranian cyber units like Void Manticor. Andala recently claimed a massive hit on US medical tech giant Striker, saying it wiped more than systems and exfiltrated tens of terabytes of data. Cyber researchers see Handala as just one online persona fronting for Iranian state-backed cyber spies. Separate reports say top US defense contractor Loheed Martin has also been breached by proaron hackers tied to the same ecosystem. The group claims to have accessed sensitive data on senior Lockheed engineers working inside Israel. Those engineers were allegedly warned to leave Israel within hours or face unspecified danger to their homes. Andala's statement urged Lockheed staff to halt all cooperation with Israel's military machine altogether.
“Casualty Cover-Up”: The Pentagon Is Hiding U.S. Losses Under Trump in the Middle East. The Pentagon has sent outdated statements on the number of U.S. troops killed or wounded during the Iran war, resulting in undercounts. by Nick Turse The Intercept April 1 2026, 2:51 p.m. https://theintercept.com/2026/04/01/ira ... p-hegseth/
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Secretary of War Pete Hegseth answers questions as President Donald Trump looks on at the White House on March 24, 2026. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Almost 750 U.S. troops have been wounded or killed in the Middle East since October 2023, an analysis by The Intercept has found. But the Pentagon won’t acknowledge it.
U.S. Central Command, or CENTCOM, which oversees military operations in the Middle East, appears to be engaged in what a defense official called a “casualty cover-up,” offering The Intercept low-ball and outdated figures and failing to provide clarifications on military deaths and injuries.
At least 15 U.S. troops were wounded Friday in an Iranian attack on a Saudi air base that hosts American troops, according to two government officials who spoke with The Intercept. Hundreds of U.S. personnel have been killed or injured in the region since the U.S. launched a war on Iran just over a month ago.
President Donald Trump — who wore a blue suit, red tie, and a ball cap to the dignified transfer of the first Americans killed in the war — said casualties were inevitable. “When you have conflicts like this, you always have death,” he said afterward. “I met the parents and they were unbelievable people. They were unbelievable people, but they all had one thing in common. They said to me, one thing, every single one: Finish the job, sir. Please finish the job.”
On Tuesday, Trump teased that he would wind down the war with Iran in as little as two weeks despite not achieving many of his stated aims, such as “freedom for the people” of Iran, “tak[ing] the oil in Iran,” and forcing Iran’s “unconditional surrender.” At one point, the president even declared that the war would last “as long as necessary to achieve our objective of PEACE THROUGHOUT THE MIDDLE EAST AND, INDEED, THE WORLD!”
“When you have conflicts like this, you always have death.”
CENTCOM has sent outdated statements on casualty numbers, meanwhile, resulting in undercounts, including a statement sent Monday from spokesperson Capt. Tim Hawkins noting that “Since the start of Operation Epic Fury, approximately 303 U.S. service members have been wounded.” The comment was three days old and excluded at least 15 wounded in the Friday attack on Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. The command did not reply to repeated requests for updated figures.
CENTCOM also would not provide a count of troops who have died in the region since the start of the war. An Intercept analysis puts the number at no less than 15.
“This is, quite obviously, a subject that [War Secretary Pete] Hegseth and the White House want to keep under major wraps,” said the defense official who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to speak frankly.
In 2024, during the Biden administration, the Pentagon provided The Intercept with detailed chronologies of attacks on U.S. bases in the Middle East that listed the specific outpost that was attacked, the type of strike, and whether — or how many — casualties resulted, along with an aggregate count of attacks by country.
The Trump administration’s numbers, by comparison, lack detail and clarity. The current CENTCOM casualty figures do not appear to include more than 200 sailors treated for smoke inhalation or otherwise injured due to a fire that raged aboard the USS Gerald R. Ford before it limped off to Souda Bay, Greece, for repairs. CENTCOM did not reply to close to a dozen requests for clarification on the casualty count and related information sent this week.
“CENTCOM and the White House should be providing accurate and timely information on the costs and casualties involved in this war. After all, it is American taxpayers who are funding it and U.S. economic prosperity and economic wellbeing that is being undermined by it,” Jennifer Kavanagh, the director of military analysis at Defense Priorities, a think tank that advocates for measured U.S. foreign policy, told The Intercept.
“CENTCOM and the White House should be providing accurate and timely information on the costs and casualties involved in this war.”
As the U.S. has relentlessly bombed Iran, that country has responded with attacks on U.S. bases across the Middle East using ballistic missiles and drones. CENTCOM refuses to even offer a simple count of U.S. bases that have been attacked during the war. “We have nothing for you,” a spokesperson told The Intercept. An analysis by The Intercept, however, finds that bases in Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and the United Arab Emirates have been targeted.
On Tuesday, Hegseth said that Iran retained the ability to retaliate for U.S. strikes but that their attacks would be ineffectual. “Yes, they will still shoot some missiles,” he said, “but we will shoot them down.” On Wednesday morning, officials in Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar all reported missile or drone attacks from Iran.
Iranian strikes have forced U.S. troops to retreat from their bases to hotels and office buildings across the region, according to the two government officials. The defense official was livid about the Pentagon’s failure to adequately harden the bases and ridiculed Hegseth’s Tuesday prayer at a Pentagon press conference. “May god watch over all of them, each day and each night. May his almighty and eternal arms of providence stretch over them and protect them,” said Hegseth.
“Why didn’t Hegseth protect them?” the defense official asked. “Anyone with a brain knew these attacks were coming.”
Pentagon spokesperson Kingsley Wilson did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Retired Gen. Joseph Votel, a former head of Central Command, recalled that U.S. troops in the region have faced drone attacks for at least a decade. “At that time we identified a need to protect against this threat, and it has taken far too long for the DoD to respond and provide adequate protection for our deployed troops,” he told The Intercept, referencing drone attacks during the campaign against ISIS in the spring of 2016. “It was a known expectation that, if attacked, Iran would retaliate against our bases, installations, and forces, and I agree that we should have anticipated and been prepared for this inevitability.”
Kavanagh, who previously called attention to the vulnerability of U.S. outposts in the Middle East, echoed Votel. “It has been clear for years that the rapid proliferation of drones and cheap missiles would put U.S. bases and U.S. early detection radars in the region at risk, yet the Pentagon did little to protect them,” she said. “The failure to invest in hardened infrastructure was a choice. Congress should see this failure as evidence that simply giving the Pentagon more money is not a path to national security.”
“We would be better off if bases across the region were closed for good,” she added.
“We would be better off if bases across the region were closed for good.”
In public statements, Iran’s foreign minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi called out the U.S. for using civilians in nearby Arab monarchies of the Gulf Cooperative Council states as human shields. “U.S. soldiers fled military bases in GCC to hide in hotels and offices,” he wrote on X last week. “Hotels in U.S. deny bookings to officers who may endanger customers. GCC hotels should do same.”
Votel also expressed concern about troops using hotels and offices, noting it “could turn normal civilian infrastructure into military targets for the regime.”
Last month, an Iranian drone strike on a hotel in Bahrain wounded two War Department employees, according to a State Department cable reviewed by the Washington Post. CENTCOM did not respond to a request to confirm to The Intercept that those injuries stem from a March 2 attack on the Crowne Plaza hotel, a luxury property in Manama, Bahrain’s capital, but one official indicated this was likely.
Votel said that a failure to provide troops with adequate protection may handcuff U.S. operations. “I think this really complicates command and control and could affect unit cohesion and effectiveness,” he told The Intercept, referring to the transfer of troops to hotels and office buildings. “That said, we may not have many options if we cannot protect the military bases where they would normally be bedded down.”
At least 15 U.S. troops in the Middle East have died since the beginning of the Iran War, including six personnel who were killed in a drone strike on Port Shuaiba, Kuwait, and a soldier who died due to an “enemy attack on March 1, 2026, at Prince Sultan Air Base, Saudi Arabia.” More than 520 U.S. personnel have also been injured, including those who suffered smoke inhalation on the Ford.
Prior to the current war with Iran, U.S. bases in the Middle East were increasingly targeted by a mix of one-way attack drones, rockets, mortars, and close-range ballistic missiles after Israel’s war in Gaza began in October 2023, most of the attacks occurring in the year following the outset of the conflict. At least 175 troops were killed or wounded in those attacks, including three service members who died in a January 2024 strike on Tower 22, a facility in Jordan. Other attacks targeted al-Asad Air Base, the Baghdad Diplomatic Support Center, Camp Victory, Union III, Erbil Air Base, and Bashur Air Base in Iraq and Al-Tanf garrison, Deir ez-Zor Air Base, Mission Support Site Euphrates, Mission Support Site Green Village, Patrol Base Shaddadi, Rumalyn Landing Zone, Tell Baydar, and Tal Tamir in Syria.
The casualty statistics do not include contractors, most of them foreigners who suffered non-combat injuries. Official U.S. statistics show that there were almost 12,900 cases of injuries to contractors in the CENTCOM area of operations during 2024 alone. More than 3,700 were the most serious non-fatal injuries, including traumatic brain injuries, requiring more than seven days away from work. Eighteen contractors were also killed, all of them in Iraq. The numbers are likely significant undercounts, but if even the fractional number of known contractor injuries is added to the tally, the casualty count for Americans and those on U.S. bases may top 13,600.
Generals sacked, F-15 downed; Trump’s Iran war strategy falls apart on 34th day | Janta Ka Reporter Janta Ka Reporter Apr 3, 2026
Iran has scored a major military and psychological victory over the US after the Trump administration was reportedly forced to remove several serving generals. They included the Chief of Staff, Randy George. The news coincided with the Iranian claim that it had shot down another American fighter jet. The Islamic Republic then coordinated with Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen to launch coordinated strikes on Tel Aviv. Rifat Jawaid says that Trump's miscalculation on Iran is proving to be hugely costly.
Transcript
Two massive developments that show just how brutally Iran is humiliating the collective might of the US and the illegal Setra colony. And this explains why these two rogue entities have been bombing hospitals, schools, and bridges in Iran in their sheer frustration. If you can't defeat Iran militarily, then let's bomb their civilian population and kill everyone there. This seems to be the new mantra of the cowards from the US and the settler colony. So much for the two best armies in the world. So thug Pete Hexith has sacked his army chief right in the middle of a war and Iran has destroyed one more F-fighter jet and even released the video of his shooting. But Iran is losing the war, says Israeli lap dog Donald Trump. This would be the broad focus of my video today. Also in my video, how Iranians experts are now returning home to stand with their country. So, please stay tuned. So, the Donald Trump's administration has sacked its army chief. Yes, you heard it right. US Army Chief of Staff, Randy George, was fired on Thursday by Defense Secretary Pete Hexet. Now, you tell me, under what circumstances would a country fire its army chief right in the middle of a raging war? Unless of course you are either being hammered by your enemy or the general in question has refused to follow your illegal orders or both. No sane general would agree to make his soldiers cannon fodder to satisfy the genocidal urge of his rogue leader. That's precisely what appears to have happened in this case. I'm sure the general himself would like to tell his story at some point, but either way, this is a public confession of a humiliating defeat by the US military. Latest reports say that Hexith has also fired two more generals, namely General David Horden and Major General William Green Jr. And if this wasn't enough, the Iranian military released this video claiming to have shot down another American fighter jet. as it emerged. The fighter jet in question was an American F-This is a second major blow to the US Air Force after the Iranian destroyed an F-fighter jet. On this occasion, however, the pilot too is reported to have been killed. But Trump and his minions would tell you that they have decimated the Iranian military and their missile power. These facts from the ground aside, even the American media is now broadcasting the truth on the Iranian military. This is CNN reporting how half of Iranians missile launchers are still intact despite indiscriminate bombings by the US and Israeli terrorist for over a month now. We have some breaking news for you tonight with a CNN exclusive report as sources are telling us here tonight that recent US intelligence assessments found roughly half of Iran's missile launchers are still intact and that thousands of one-way attack drones are still in Iran's arsenal tonight. That's despite daily US and Israeli air strikes that we've seen against Iranian milit military targets for the past five weeks. And I should note this assessment that my colleagues are reporting on tonight might include launchers that are currently inaccessible, such as those that are buried by strikes or not just completely destroyed. The intelligence though does offer a more nuanced picture that we're getting of Iran's capabilities that they still have right now than what we have heard from the White House since the beginning of this war. There's also disqu amongst the US military generals over the Trump administration's desperation to hide its fatalities. Iran has repeatedly claimed to inflict heavy losses on the US military personnel in the ongoing war. But the US always denied these claims and only acknowledged the deaths of personnel. But a New York-based media outlet, Intercept, has accused the US administration of a cover up, saying that hundreds of US personnel have been killed or injured in the region since Trump and his war criminal Israeli boss launched their illegal military aggression on th of February and try and see the recent sackings of top army generals by Hex in this context. Now, which upright general would remain silent in such a situation? Watch this broadcast by Fox on how Trump is busy purging the Pentagon. And we're back. So, we have two ousters today. This time from Defense Secretary Pete Hegathth. He has asked Army Chief of Staff General Randy George to leave his post. George is the Army's most senior general. A defense official says Hegathth asked General George to retire immediately. Now, the ouster comes as the US of course is battling Iran. Joining me now is Hal Kefort, a familiar face around here and uh on live now, a national security analyst, also a retired US Marine. Thank you and thank you for your service. Uh let's just get your reaction uh to this. Is this really a big deal? Well, Mara, it's a deal. I mean uh normally when you get a become a service chief or a chairman of the joint chiefs or the vice chair, normally those are four-year terms. that is not set in stone. Uh that that can change and certainly we've seen a lot of changes, you know, with Pete Hegsth as Secretary of War or Secretary of Defense. He's removed uh about a dozen flag and s, secondgeneral officers. Of course, you may recall he removed uh CQ Brown, uh Air Force general, who was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs when he came in. Mhm. Uh he also Lisa Franchetti who was uh the uh CNO Admiral uh head of the Navy, you know, chief of naval operations and then of course uh General Cruz, Lieutenant General Cruz, head of DIA and and others have been removed as well. So he they're not afraid of removing uh flag and general officers, but this is still a big deal. Even former military personnel are now openly calling out the criminality of Trump. Listen to this former US Armycolonel on Sky News Australia and pay attention to her choice of words for Trump and the US administration. Let's get back to our top story now. And these are the continuing developments, the troubling developments out of Iran, which is, as we know, showing no sign of slowing down. Joining us live now, the former US Army Colonel, State Department official, Anne Wright, she's there with us. Um, and thanks for your time this morning. So, the war's ending now. It's going back to the stone ages. Where do you think we are at this hour? Well, I think it's a pretty stupid thing that uh Trump and this administration has done to uh to blow up a a country uh like Iran. Uh you know, they say thousands, I think it's missile attacks on Iran. Supposedly, the the danger from Iran was coming from uh its potential nuclear weapons. Of course, the Iranians have said they would never ever uh have a nuclear weapon, and they haven't so far. Trump in his first administration throughout uh the JCPOA and uh uh then now uh following uh the lead of Israel where the US now is the lap dog of Israel uh the United States have mounted a horrific horrific uh set of attacks days of attacks uh on on Iran and uh sadly I think the US will pay for this in many many ways. Iran was certainly heading towards nuclear though. Isn't the world safer and better off um with that taken out of the picture? Well, it always has had this nuclear program and it was under uh uh inspection and observation uh through the JCPOA uh that Trump threw away and and nuclear inspectors had been back into it. There was no evidence that there was a movement toward nuclear weapons. But of course, you always have to wonder that. uh uh and one would say uh if you don't want to be attacked by the United States, you ought to have nuclear weapons, which is a sad state of affairs. Uh for that to be the world diplomacy and for the peace president of the United States now to have uh severely severely damaged the civilian infrastructure uh of Iran, a country uh you know, Trump said we're bombing it back to the Stone Age. Well, in the stone age, there was a a vibrant society in Iran where there was no society to speak of other than the the stone age and many other parts of the world. Interestingly, Iran has intensified its attacks on the American targets in the Arab world and also in the settler colony. Iran has claimed to destroy an Oracle data center in Dubai and an Amazon cloud computing center in Baharan. The Dubai government has denied the claims on the bombing of the Oracle data center, but has not provided any evidence to support its claim. The IRGC's Kathmolia Brigade also released a video of the UAE's largest AI data center and its exact location threatening to bomb it next. Now, this is next level military maneuvering on the precise location of such a hugely important target. You thought? Last night, the IRGC in Iran, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen coordinated their missile attacks against the settler colony. And boy, the result was simply breathtaking. It was as if there was no resistance from the Israelis in the sky. One video captured the moment when a powerful ballistic missile struck the Lib. Another video captured the moment when nearly a dozen interceptor Israeli missiles failed to stop one Iranian ballistic missile from hitting its target. Al Jazzer later broadcast the devastation caused by these missile attacks. Iran continues to fire missiles towards Israel. A ballistic missile hit Peditikva in central Israel on Thursday evening, bypassing air defense systems. It landed between a residential neighborhood and the city's industrial zone, causing a large crater. The shock wave damaged nearby buildings. Neta Ibrahim is live for us in Ramla in the occupied West Bank. Neta, give us an update on what's been happening in Israel overnight and into this morning. Well, the most of the pressure that has been coming into Israel was targeted and focused from the side of Hezbollah. Firing rockets and drones into northern Israel mostly as you mentioned there. This Iranian missile has caused damage in the areas of greater Tel Aviv caused panic, a large crater, but also severe damage to properties and buildings. I will leave you with two videos of Iranian resilience. In the first video, an Iranian couple returns home from England where the family owned a restaurant. This family now says that they would rather die in their own country. Another video is about two Iranian girls explain why Israeli terrorists deliberately target places of historical significance. While the first video would make you emotional, the second video would definitely bring a smile on your face. Jang is London. Dad. That's it from me. Thank you very much for your support of this platform and our journalism. If you haven't subscribed to my channel, please do so because that's one of the many ways you can support independent journalism. God bless you all.
Iran DOWNS US F-15 Over Tehran, TORCHES Amazon – Trump is DESPERATE | KJ Noh & Elina Xenophontos Danny Haiphong Started streaming 39 minutes ago #iran #trump #israel
Independent journalists and analysts KJ Noh and Elina Xenophontos react to the massive escalations in the Iran war as Tel Aviv gets pounded by Iranian missile fire, Amazon and Oracle Data Centers are torched, and Trump begs for a deal by bombing bridges in Iran. A full break down on all the latest developments you don't want to miss!
Transcript
Welcome everyone. Welcome back to the show. It's your host Danny Hiong. I'm joined by geopolitical analysts and commentators Alina Centos and KJ No. Thank you so much for joining me. Uh let's get started though right away. Hit the like button as you come on. We want to begin with the breaking news. So, Western mainstream media is even now reporting it after Iran claimed that it had downed an F-E fighter jet over Tan this time. And I'm just going to pull up the news story about this. Uh one of the crew members is said to have been rescued a complex rescue operation. Iran is saying they actually have also hit a helicopter that was conducting these rescue operations. And an interesting development out of this that you two can comment on is that the media, the Iranian media has sent out a message via the government which I'll I'll play here in silence. Uh but if you can read it, basically what this report is saying is that if anybody in the military, the armed forces or civilians because it's it's unclear where they have been downed, where they have escaped to that if you hand them over alive to security forces, you will get a big reward. So there's a now a wild hunt going down around this. And maybe I can begin with you KJ. you know, Donald Trump gave a speech just hours, hours before this saying that Iran was finished, its air defenses were gone, its navy was gone, its missile system was gone. It seems like every passing hour that he said that something else happens. Amazon was just hit in Bahrain. Their web services are down. Uh but I'll pull up all the latest developments as you talk, but react to this development and where you see this war now as we enter out of we enter the month of this of this war. Excuse me. Well, what it looks like is that it's been pretty clear that Iran has escalation dominance, strategic overmatch primarily because it's able to achieve its strategic goals. and the US is unable to thwart any of them. That is to say, hasn't achieved regime change despite what it says. Uh it's not able to open the the straight of Hormuz. It hasn't achieved denuclearization. It's not controlling any of the oil. So all of its strategic goals have failed. And now it's you can also see that it's failing tactically and operationally. And what we see in this shootown of the F-and the possible shootown of the Blackhawk is I mean this is a debacle that it's on the scale of Mogadishu you know this anytime US always goes into the battlefield into the theater claiming it has dominance over the air and dominance over the seas and we saw very rapidly that sea dominance was immediately curtailed. the US was blinded. It had its radars, its Awax knocked out and now it does not even have local operational dominance. If you have an F-being shot down and most likely, you know, with you know, handheld weaponry, that shows that there's something very very seriously deficient on the operational level. So I think this is going to signal I mean it signals to the world already that the US doesn't know what it's doing and it has gotten way in over its head and even these kind of small operations which the US is supposed to dominate it's no longer capable of doing effectively. Yeah. Well, anything you want to follow up with that? given the fact that we heard even Centcom, they've deleted everything. They tried to deny that this happened. They've been denying everything that's been going on essentially that Iran claims they've been hitting and striking when it comes to US aircraft. But your reaction? Yeah, I think I would agree with everything that KJ said up until this point. you know, we've seen the United States um engage in obviously a general kind of blackout with regards to what is actually going on and regurgitating the same information of, you know, we've defeated Iran's defense capacities. We have air dominance and we've destroyed the navy. I mean, part and parcel of this as well is obviously over estimating or rather artificially inflating what the Iranian Navy was to begin with in order to create the sort of faux inter like idea of of a victory which the United States really needs. Um but ultimately you know what we're seeing right now is is the actual successful implica sorry the successful application of Iran's military strategy which was always to obviously completely destroy its command and communication centers within the region because all the bases that were hit all the radar systems that were hit operationally speaking these are the systems that are used in order to conduct these sorts of operations and right now I mean this has been reported even in Israeli media as well as obviously in the United not not in the United States mostly by Israeli media is that um the United States is acting partially blind if not more so than that. And these are the kind of implications that are going to basically continue to unravel because the United States no longer has that ability to be able to communicate with regards to its um operations within Iran. So if anything, this actually goes to show that Iran's strategy has been successful, that everything that Iran has stated up until this point in time or at least the vast majority of it in terms of its strikes, its strikes have been accurate and um if you know the United States continues to operate within the region, given how severely damaged and impacted its military infrastructures have been because I I think it was the New York Times that actually reported around bases have been incredibly damaged as Well, , US bases in the region have been completely I think it was Elena. I think it was even more than that. I think it was but continue. I think I I read it was out of Uh, but I I could be wrong. That that that that was the that was the sum that I remember, but if it's I it could very well have been And we're also seeing the images that are coming out as well of Saudi Arabia and the sort of damage that's been done to the bases there. So, um, I agree with everything that KJ said. this is you know completely contradictory to everything that Trump made everything rather Trump said in his speech um with regards to how successful the US has been in the region. Uh so yeah it's been interesting to to see these developments. Yeah. Well KJ I just wanted to pull this up. Uh this is according to Iranian media the summary of what Iran has hit in this about what is it days since February th. Uh four F-s three in Kuwait one tan. Of course SENCOM said that it was friendly fire Kuwaiti air defense is mistaking something or something of that sort. F-two now including one overhan F-fighter jet and and two F-s they're claiming they have struck. they're not claiming they necessarily down them or or that they caused them to crash, but they say that they hit them. So, how does this go along though, KJ, with this notion of an a ground operation? Because Donald Trump said two to four weeks of sending Iran back to the stone ages. But yet, the US just, you know, sent thousands upon thousands of paratroopers and marines ostensibly for something. And yet Iran has just demonstrated that it has pretty heavy defenses along along its coast, you know, in being able to shoot down this fighter jet. Your your thoughts on this? Well, I mean, so as you pointed out in the graphic, nine jets have been shot down. That's probably over a billion dollars worth of hardware, plus five radar THAD radar systems seem to have been disabled. They literally had to rob Peter to pay Paul. They had to pull Thaad out of Korea and move it probably to Jordan. And then we also know that the Awax have been disabled. So the US is literally fighting blind. And if you want to think of this as like a cage match or as you know you know a martial arts fight, not only have blinded when I say blinded I don't mean a cut, I mean like a detached retina. their legs have been cut out. They don't have their bases anymore. Uh their arms are tiring. They're no longer capable of blocking effectively. In fact, Russy recently came out with an article on the expected schedule of depletion of major interceptors and none of them look none of the picture looks good. It's it's all they're all heading towards depletion. And so having lost your legs, having been blinded and having your arms no longer being able to block, if you think that you can go to the ground and have a ground game, I think that is an act of madness because that is exactly what Iran wants. It is exactly where Iran will have the greatest advantage. you know, they have an extraordinarily large army and if you send in a few thousand rangers and um Marines, nd st, um I don't think it's going to make a difference. In fact, it's going to be a suicide run. So, it's not clear what the US is planning with its ground attack. But I think back to Douglas MacArthur who said that anybody who is thinking about waging a land war in Asia needs to have their head examined. This is from MacArthur who actually did it himself. And so I think it's an act of madness. I think it's a suicide run. I have no idea what the game plan in that. But if if if the air war and the sea war are any indication, any attempt at a ground attack will result in even greater military catastrophe. Yeah. And Alen, I just wanted to pull this up from Almayadin because they have an image actually that is going around of there's the ejection seat or one of them for the two crew members. And not only this, , Lena, they're they're also claiming Iran is that they also shot down an F-over um a stealth fighter over central Iran in the last hours. That is not being confirmed. It's unclear whether that's Israeli. It's unclear whether that's US. I mean, it's a of course a US fighter aircraft, but you know, Israel has F-s, both the U and the US does. So that has not been verified by the US-Israeli side but nonetheless this appears to be a disastrous day and I'm wondering what you see as going through the minds right now given that there's a promise that this is going to last two to four more weeks of the empire of Israel as these developments just keep on keep on rolling you know they they keep on occurring and um many have noted in the telegraph all across mainstream media that it seems like Trump is on the defensive and Trump and his administration seem to be desperate at this point without an offramp. Yeah, I would agree. So, this is it's interesting to see what the United States is going to accomplish at this particular stage. So if they try a ground invasion or you know to continually bomb Iran into oblivion or rather back into the stone ages is what actually Trump had said in his speech um was it the other day um their main ambition at this particular point in time the way I see it is to try to inflict as much damage and destruction to Iran as possible. That being to destroy their infrastructure, oil infrastructure. Uh we're seeing obviously the destruction of universities, hospitals. Um they had actually even bombed I think it was a CA a cancer center, research center. Um so the entire basis of the Israeli US coalition at the moment and its imperialist war in Iran is fundamentally to be able to inflict as much humanitarian catastrophe on the people of Iran. given the fact that there is no other way by which to they can actually accomplish their main goal which was regime change which obviously has been ruled out now pretty much in the earliest days of this obviously violent onslaught against Iran even by Netanyahu himself. So the idea is to try to bomb Iran um to destroy as much of its infrastructure as possible in order to effectively be able to um at least in their view be able to take Iran back at least several decades and to obstruct Iran's general um I guess position within bricks within its alliance with China um and to what extent it'll be able to kind of evolve in terms of like the BRRI the digital silk road um among all these other factors that are you know are part and parcel of these you know trade agreements with China because this is this is effectively right now what the US is trying to accomplish. Um will they conduct a ground invasion? I mean that would just lead to a massive casualty situation. It would the any such operation would lead to um massive losses for the United States because the Iranians have been very much prepared for this. But much like also KJ said, the US as well as Israel and the general western um sort of military infrastructure is significantly running out of even defense systems that'll be able to even provide any sort of protection um to its obviously to its military personnel in this kind of scenario as well as of course the fact that the United States as we just you know as we said beyond the fact that it doesn't have a defense um sorry it's running low on its defense capacity um it you know it it doesn't even have its radar systems in place anymore. So, this would actually be a massive catastrophe for the United States. So, the way I see this going forward, well, my personal interpretation is is they're going to try to dismantle as much of Iran's infrastructure to essentially cause an economic um sort of crisis for Iran because again, we always have to remember that Iran is a country that has been facing years worth of sanctions with the snapback mechanism that was reimposed in October obviously of And you know the snapback mechanism aren't just any sort of sanctions. These are un sorry multilateral UN sanctions which um obviously legally oblige um all its member states to essentially embargo Iran. Obviously China and Russia as well as some other countries have said that they will not abide by this and we've already seen that take manifest but obviously does have economic repercussions on Iran. So this is what I perceive that the United States will try to do. Um and we're we're we're already kind of witnessing that given the sort of civilian targeting that we have seen over how other civilian infrastructure has been targeted in just the last few days. Yeah. Well KJ at what cost though as they always say as the western mainstream media likes to say with regard to China whenever it does something beneficial to its society and its people. But at what cost? But what at what cost here to continue on this path, especially as what Alina says, which I think is % accurate, they're going to continue to try to destroy Iran, send it Iran back to the stone ages as Trump said. But Iran keeps on retaliating. I mean, here is Kuwait. Here's an oil refinery in Kuwait that is burning as of Iran's last strikes. And then, as I said before, I put I pulled this up, Bahrain. They're starting to hit US firms in the Gulf and they've started with Amazon Web Services, Oracle and Bahrain. It's a big one to hit the Amazon Web Services cloud computing center there because it's a major employer. Um and so we already know oil is at about $plus dollars a barrel for Brent crude right now and it's only going up. Uh people are talking about rising food costs. Amazon itself has put a tax on sellers %. So there's massive costs associated with this. KJ, what do you make of these and maybe and and and there are likely others that I'm not mentioning? I think that if it's a matter of who can endure more economic pain, I think that Iran has the upper hand. Once again, even in the economic sphere, it has escalation dominance. Uh, as you point out, Iran has already hit the oil and gas , refineries and fields in Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Uh, it has the potential to hit desalination plants. If its desalination plants are hit, it has the capacity to choke off not merely oil but all the precursors that oil rely on and the other industrial inputs like helium and ura fertilizer etc which are critical for the functioning of the global economy. So my thought is that if the US wants to turn this completely, you know, into a strangulation bout, I think that Iran actually already has the US and the Western powers in a chokehold and I don't think any attempt to choke off Iran will result in in the US gaining a strategic advantage. I think that it it will actually have to tap out and tap out soon. Yeah, I want to I want to pull up and Alien, I know you wanted to talk a bit about some of the desperation that you're seeing on all sides of the US u Anglo European sphere, imperial sphere. Well, here's what Donald Trump said today. Uh more words from him on True Social. With a little more time, we can easily open the hormone straight, take the oil and make a fortune. It would be a gusher for the world. And what's so shocking about this, Elena, is that just while he is trying to sound like a salesman at the end of the day, it does look quite desperate to be saying with a little more time, it almost seems like there's this rolling need to justify what's going on and there's much disarray happening. Mediators are saying that there are no talks anymore. They have hit a dead end despite Trump saying that Iran is begging and calling and all of this. um all signs point to this war and the consequences of it are going to continue to get worse. What are you seeing in terms of this desperation and how this all fits into the latest? All right. So, I actually want to continue off of KJ's point. First of all, I do completely agree that Iran actually has the capacity right now to be the one to outdo let's say the United States and the entirety of the West. um from so begin to start off with um I was actually reading and this is quite ubiquitous at this point that I mean the United States is also um you know there's they're struggling to even not only do they not have the industrial base to be able to meet the kind of war needs within West Asia but also to actually meet the needs of its NATO allies um generally I mean it was actually published by Politico just a couple of weeks ago that you know its allies are just in shock and awe at the moment because um weapons that were meant to be that were rooted toward were were basically heading towards West sorry um Asia and Europe were rerooed to West Asia fundamentally because the United States doesn't have um the industrial capacity to mass-produce to meet the needs that for its own war against um obviously Iran at the moment as well as the needs of its allies but also it's running out of mineral earth supplies u which obviously China has a dominance on I think I was reading that around it has around a month and a half left of rare earth minerals in order to be able to meet its own needs. And in fact, in just the last couple of months, suppliers to, you know, aerospace and defense companies have had to turn down um obviously buyers fundamentally because they're running out of those supplies. So this is the entirety of NATO and the western, you know, industrial complex so to speak that is not able to meet its own needs. Um however, they're making a lot of money in terms of their own um you know, when it comes to their stocks. you know the value there is increasing dramatically because of an increase in demand but that's what you know this is the kind of way in which the United States makes its money makes its money off of the accumulation of you know this fictitious capital on stocks but the reality of the matter is that they don't not only have the industrial base but they don't even have the resources in question to continue this war and much like KJ also said you have um you know Iran hasn't actually even faced any significant losses when it comes to its own international trade as in its trade especially especially with China has continued as normal as it was prior to the war. Whereas for the west that would include Europe and the United States, that has actually significantly changed. So the um you know, Iran is able to upkeep its trade. It's actually been reported that they're making more now on their oil fundamentally because of the fact that oil prices have increased to the degree that they have. Um although obviously there are agreements set in place but it it is you know it is creating the kind of conditions that Iran will come out of this far stronger than actually the west given the fact as well that is a self-sufficient economy and that self-sufficiency was born out of the sanctions regime. Um you know also KJ had bought you know bought up the concept of fertilizers. We're seeing in the west right now and even in the United States that they're struggling to have access to fertilizers. Now, we've seen this before obviously with the Ukraine Russia war because obviously the two largest um producers are China and Russia. What does that mean for agriculture farming? We're seeing farmers in the United States that are currently, you know, severely struggling just to be able to meet their own needs and their own demands. Um so this is this is what's currently happening in the west where Iran is not is not you know is able to pretty much be able to sustain itself and it does have that ability to be able to withstand um obviously this aggression. it it's made for a wartime economy whereas the west isn't. Now with regards to the desperation and something that I did want to bring up is that we're seeing obviously Europe at this point in time as well who is probably going to be hit even more so obviously than the United States fundamentally because of its geographic location. Um making all these declarations that obviously they're not going to participate in this war. um they're supposedly attempting to present themselves as sovereign um to the United States and um you know we saw Melani state that you know the Sicily basically cities weren't going to be used and so forth but actually when you look into what's currently occurring and I don't know if you know KJ wants to explore this but I can get into a little bit more as we go onto this conversation what's actually happening behind the scenes and this is what I think is most defines the desperation of the west is that they're currently preparing for um post ceasefire operations in the straight of Hormuz. So the UK today actually no yesterday the st of April conducted talks with another countries which to form a coalition so as to secure or rather restore the freedom of navigation in the straight of Hormuz and with that there's a two-stage process by which they said the first stage the first phase would include having the EU and Gulf states militarily enter the street of Hormuz and destroy the mines the water mines that have been placed by the obviously the Iranian military as a defense structure and then to obviously um accompany vessels through the straight of Hormuz. This is a direct this directly antithetical and oppositional to Iran's you know strategic objectives in this war which is has outlined that the maritime activity of the straight of Hormuz has now indefinitely changed that there will be tolls placed and paid to Iran which Iran shall then use. It's basically a form of sanction use. It will use the sanctions to rebuild its economy. And so you have the EU who is trying to portray that oh we're not just you know we're not just going to listen to the United States. We're you know we we have a sense of sovereignty and so forth. This is just theatrics. But behind the scenes and if you look at what's happening in the Eastern Mediterranean um the European Armada that's being built there, they are preparing for some point in the next few weeks to enter the straight of Hormuz. and this is going to be the sort of next stage and how that's going to manifest. It's interesting, but I don't want to I don't want to continue speaking too extensively about this, but we can continue discussing it as we go forth. But this is just to highlight the desperation because the EU at this point is attempting to enter this conflict through the more legal means of using obviously the law of the sea, the United Nations Convention, the law of the sea and the the the freedom of navigation um sort of article was it I think or I can't remember. But itself it's completely demilitarized and it's reliant on the United States to rebuild itself. It doesn't have industrial capacity and at the same time it's trying to antagonize Iran at a time that they themselves cannot economically withstand the trade shocks that it's occurring to the EU. Post ceasefire operations KJ seems a bit premature. Uh and nonetheless that is exactly what's happening. But yeah, your reaction to this I mean um what can any I mean what can anyone do? The United States has no idea what to do when it comes to the Straight of Hormuz and Iran's control over it. Iran has said Iran and Oman will determine what happens in the straight of Hormuz from here on out and there's no there's no if ends or buts. That's the new law of this territorial waterway. What's what's what's your reaction to anything Alina said in this? Well, I I agree with Alina and if the US imposes or if the West imposes significant economic sanctions on Iran, the only way or one of the main ways that it will have to recoup or recover those costs is by imposing san imposing tolls on the straight of Hormuz. So the straight of hormon prior to this you know if you think as oil as being the lifeblood of capitalism the gulf of hormuz is its carroted artery and Iran has essentially placed its finger on that artery and it says you know we control it and I think there's very very little that the EU can do. Certainly the US can't do anything. I can't imagine the EU can do anything. A first thing there is that they're not going to open open up the straight by sending naval ships. It's not simply a matter of demining, you know, their drones, their underwater drones. there. Uh the entire landscape of the strait is is honeycombed with Iranian strategic and tactical assets that are capable of shutting down anywhere along that coast down completely. You know, it's a it's a thousand-mile coast. experts have said that to control the straight of hormones, you would essentially need to control an area the size of Vietnam. Essentially, you would have to restart the equivalent of the Vietnam War. And once again, remember that the entire topography of the straight and the Gulf favors Iran. That is to say, you have, you know, the mountain ranges, they kind of ring the entire coast and the straight like a set of bleachers or even an amphitheater. And on the other side on the Gulf side on the Gulf States, it's essentially coastal or aluvial plane. It's flat aluvial plane. So purely from a geographic standpoint, Iran not only has the upper hand, but it has a kind of fractal geometry that allows it to have incredible presence and force projection all throughout that area. And any notion that some kind of naval armada or some kind of land presence is going to change anything in the straight is absolutely absolutely misguided. It's it's completely misguided. So I don't think it's going to happen. I think the EU is you know it's it's pie in the sky fantasizing at this point. They really have kind of lost the thread. Yeah. And um Alina, you know, there is this pattern I think that's becoming clear is that while the United States claimed that it was at first wanting to conduct regime change and said and now Trump is actually saying that that had already happened and that wasn't even the goal. It seems like there's major disarray even in the US ranks. overnight in the last hours we had Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense or as he calls himself, Secretary of War, fired high ranking generals including General Randy George who was the head of the US Army and there were rumors that there was a lot of disagreement about how the situation in Iran is unfolding and then you have a a complete opposite dynamic. you have, you know, people like Abbas Aragchi in the streets with Iranian people. Uh you have Iranian people out there every single day. And here's what he said about the bridge that was bombed by US-Israeli strikes, the unfinished bridge. Uh and he said striking civilian structures, including unfinished bridges, will not compel Iranians to surrender. It only conveys the defeat and moral collapse of an enemy in disarray. Every bridge and building will be built back stronger. What will never recover is the damage to America's standing. So a bit of a contrast here, Alina com I don't know if you want to comment on this and what you find significant. So what was significant about what happened with regards to the military? Obviously, he hexth having um essentially fired um you know significant personnel within the US military at a time of war. I think speaks volumes as to the internal sort of conflicts that are currently transpiring between obviously the Trump administration but also the you know the military I guess apparatus because ultimately at the end of the day um the job of the military is to make sure that they're able to successfully carry out operations and they can see that what is currently happening within the region within um obviously it's it its war against Iran um for all the reasons that we have mentioned up until this point that this is a failing operation and yet rather than moving away from the conflict, moving away from the war, you know, obviously we saw Trump speaking of, you know, having this continue for another you know, significant amount of time, maybe up for another month, um and while simultaneously obviously mobilizing all this personnel. Now, from a logistical perspective, if you're you know within the military, this is the common sense approach is to obviously terminate this operation. However, unfortunately, the military is not a neutral actor. It is unfort it's part and parcel of a greater imperialist machine that is the United States and they are run by entirely different motives and their motives are of course sustaining global hedgemony and their own imperialist projection abroad which Iran is a you know at the front lines of in terms of what it represents in the grander scheme of things with regards to obviously like I said before its role in bricks its role in developing you know u you know new financial infrastructure that would you know bypass as the western financial system its threat to the petro dollar which is pretty much the backbone of the United States. is the backbone of what has contained rather sustained western rather American imperialism because without the dollar dominance there's no way to continue to finance you know the United States deficit um and the you know you need a stabilized economy and a stabilized dollar in order to have the mass investment in American capital and you know US treasury bonds in order to be able to continue to facilitate the type of wars and global hedgeimonyy the US needs and now you Iran in its alliance with Russia and China as well as obviously the BRICS project is threatening that very idea. So ultimately um you know the United States or rather the I guess the the those who are I guess the more powerful figures in the United States and that's fundamentally the corporate actors that are behind the scenes do not align their motives do not align with that of the military um which you know it's is meant fundamentally to obviously their logic is to win wars whereas the United States at this moment is guided by we need to effectively weaken target and encircle China so far as is possible and we are willing to go to whatever length is necessary in order to achieve those aims. And so what we're seeing right now is these internal contradictions that are manifesting within the establishment itself. That's my belief anyway.
Um and this is going to continue to occur because ultimately the military apparatus and the I guess the those that are like I said in power that are driven by corporate greed um are two entirely different um I guess conflicting ideologies at this point. So that's ort of like a my interpretation of that. Yeah. And KJ, you know, the United States with all of this chaos that's plaguing the US economy, the US political class, they often talk about Iran like it's a singular entity on its own or if they mention anybody else, it's their terrorist proxies that they are supposedly supporting. But what we've seen I think is not only has there been a real and I'll I'll pull up the images of what's happening to Israel right now because every strike against Israel right now is being coordinated by Hezbollah which has come back with a resurgence I don't think anybody expected and now of course Ansarah known as the Houthies are also in the war and firing all entirely on Israel and threatening to close the Baba Mandab Strait. And as Alina mentioned earlier, China is still providing absolutely critical economic cooperation to Iran in terms of buying its oil exports in massive numbers. So Iran is by far not alone. And how does this change the calculation? Because the US Israel has to talk about Hezbollah because they're trying to invade Lebanon and having a really hard time doing so. But the United States doesn't like to acknowledge any of this. The United States is looking at Iran as a as a singular entity that it's trying to destroy and in many ways it seems like it has tunnel vision. But what's your thoughts and reactions on this? Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. The US does have tunnel vision. It has a completely misguided conception of the battlescape and the players and the way they're related. It's you can see that right from the get-go from the beginning of the US attack on Iran where it thought that it could do a single decapitation and then that would completely disable and render you know Iran open to the regime change that had been fomenting on the ground. That's completely misguided because as we know Iran has prepared this mosaic defense which resists decapitation. It's a decentralized form of military command. It's com I compare it to a starfish. You cannot decapitate a starfish. If you attack a starfish and you manage to sever it, it will simply regenerate itself into multiple starfishes. So that whole notion of decapitation what the US calls airline battle or air sea battle what is colloquially referred to as shock did not work and then the errors compound from that point forward. So Iran was able to escalate first horizontally and then further up the escalation ladder and in particular in the economic sphere. Of course, China's support economically and politically as well as with for example ISR with the BU navigation system I think has also been critical but also the US has failed to understood understand that Iran is not isolated. It's not an entity that can be simply decapitated, isolated and taken out. Of course, it has not only economic allies but military allies. And if you look at you know the Babel Mandeb which is currently under threat even as the strait of Homus is under total control of Iran, then they have created themselves a debacle which I really don't think they know how to get out of. they've literally painted themselves into a corner. Uh, and the last statement I'll make is really regarding this framing of Iran as quote unquote terrorist and fomenting terrorist proxies. If anything, , we know who the global terrorist is. And I think the Iranians themselves were subjected to decades of terrorism by a US proxy, namely the Palavi regime. And so I think the complete you know black is white, up is down, left is right kind of framing is the reason why the US and its allies are facing a strategic defeat in in West Asia because they simply have no grasp of reality. Any assertion Allah the neocon that you know they make their own reality is shown to be completely utterly fraudulent and bankrupt. Uh yeah. Yeah. Well Alina in many ways too the assertion of control over the straight of Hormuz has the opposite effect of isolating Iran. Iran now has so much leverage in the world economic arrangement of things that countries are needing forced to go to Iran and say hey how can we work out a deal and arrangement where we can actually move our tankers and our commercial vessels through this waterway the Philippines is doing this European countries India so many countries have come to Iran and to say hey we we need this or we're not going to, you know, or we're going to be in dire economic straits. How can we play by your rules? Uh, and Iran would say our rules are fair. That this is a territorial waterway of ours off of our coast and it's part of our sovereign waters. What do you say? And how do you how do you see this development unfolding and we can see what's on the brain of the United States, Europe, the entire collective west, , is the straight of four moose. they can't get it out of their brains because of how significant this really is. Yeah. So, ironically, um, one of the main reasons as I mentioned earlier that this wars, , you know, this war took part took place on Iran, , is obviously to, you know, , restore the dollar system and the threat that Iran brings to that. And what's interesting now is obviously seeing that if anything this has accelerated the weakening of the federal dollar system because what we are seeing is that like I said earlier what was a wartime tactic obviously taking control of the straight of hormuz is now being passed um through parliamentary votes and it's going to become official law in Iran that you know like you said they're going to be controlling essentially the straight of Hormuz and there's going to be effective tolls sanctioned tolls essentially that going to be passing that are we required to be paid in Ian if you going to be passing through the straight of Hormuz. And so, interestingly, what will this actually do? Not only does this strengthen Iran's position um in terms of its economic capability to restore itself um as a country. Um it also becomes leverage against the western you know states in terms of asking them to obviously remove and weaken um you know sanction the sanctions regime that's been imposed on Iran up until this stage. But also it is now set the stage for the you know for the yuan and other currencies essentially but especially the yuan to be able to become a very important currency in the trade of um commodities in the trade of oil in the trade of you know gas fertilizers and we're already seeing that sort of transpire anyway within brick states especially as well with with regards to like China and Russia's relations. So now the impact of this war that that what it has had on the s of hormuz is actually to um actually cement the very thing that the United States was actually attempting to thwart. Now I also wanted to bring some attention as well to the to the state of the US economy um which is actually struggling rather significantly and this matters when we're discussing sort of its greater ambitions within the region but also its kind of ability to project power. So there was actually a couple of reports, not reports, there was the the balance of payments sheet that was actually produced by the treasury um found that obviously and this is not obviously new but they had actually declared technical insolvency and obviously this is somewhat problematic in the terminology because obviously the United States cannot technically go insolvent but what it means is that the United States is currently facing an enormous fiscal crisis with around six six trillion in um in in capital assets and it owes essentially in liability is trillion because in this um essentially um in this I guess balance sheet they actually included all social securityities and Medicare and so forth which up until this point was always excluded. Now why was it included? it was included fundamentally because um it's no longer seen as sustainable to continue in the direction in the debt driven sort of driven direction that the United States is currently in and given the fact that we are reaching a point in time where these social security payments are going to have to obviously be have to be met um this is becoming unsustainable and um I was actually even reading just in this week alone because of the war in Iran We're seeing obviously the the United States is facing massive inflation. The Federal Reserve is not going to enter to basically engage in what is quantitative easing because it simply if it was to do that it would actually further exasperate the devaluation of the dollar. Um the demand for Treasury bonds has has actually weakened in just this week alone because obviously because of the threat because of the weakened state of the US economy. And so this is again problematic in terms of the United States because it needs that constant investment in its treasury bonds in order to be able to fund itself. Um and obviously um this is also bringing about an increase in the kind of the yields to their existing debt. Um and that essentially means that the United States is actually going to be further indebting itself whilst not being able to actually bring the kind of money in to financially be able to withhold itself. So what what's happening in the United States as the moment in the moment is that it's facing a massive fiscal crisis. Its debt bubble is dramatically increasing as well as a consequence of the war. is actually further exasperating that and as there's a loss as this will continue this will actually further create a loss of faith in the US dollar which should actually strengthen if anything looking for alternatives looking at establishment like the bricks looking at you know the sort of the multipolar world in a different way so again we're seeing how the United States attempt to actually thwart this sort of the rise of the multipolar world has actually accelerated created it and I think this is the greatest loss that the United States can actually take away from this operation and there's no way by which we can frame this or fame you know present this that can change that material reality. Yeah, great points. And KJ, I definitely want you in here in the context of your reaction to to that point in the context of this. You know, Donald Trump is asking Congress to supersize the military budget to trillion US while slashing domestic programs. What's interesting about what, and this is according to Politico, but what's interesting about what he's asking for too, KJ, is he wants to slash domestic programs that Republicans actually like. you know, they're obsessed with China and tech and research. You know, they want the United States to invest in, you know, private scientific research, development, R&D, , in order to counter China. And Trump wants to cut everything. He wants to cover all funding. He wants to cut all funding to science, to tech, any federal funding to and social programs, too. So, , $trillion on top of the point that Galina just made, , $ trillion to the military. your reaction to this. This is during a war which is not going well. Well, it's like you know eating your seed corn or you know burning your furniture and your you know and your your you know framing the framing of your house in order to keep yourself warm. It's completely and totally self destructive. Uh the US you know thinks that it can solve everything through military Keynesianism. That is to say by constantly expending more and more on the military. But there is a real guns and butter issue and if you cut you know your domestic programs even you know this the fundamental social compact then you no longer have anything worth defending. And it may be that the calculation is we don't care as long as our oligarchical bureaucratic elite are happy we'll just keep on going until everything collapses. But I think that is extraordinarily extraordinarily full hardy regarding what Elina said. She's absolutely correct. You know, traditionally people have calculated US national debt at around $ trillion, but it's actually much closer to $trillion. In other words, there's a hundred trillion worth of debt that has been hidden. And the reason for that is essentially the US when it calculates its debt and adjusts its budget it uses cashbasis accounting which is absolute nonsense because if you have a business larger than $million you absolutely have to use acrruel accounting which takes into account future debts and you know it takes in a a much larger viewpoint that includes your your debt picture and and and and and the obligations that are incurred at the time of incur rather than when when when money actually changes hands. And so yes, the US is facing a critical fiscal crisis. Uh it is technically insolvent. Now, traditionally, it has dealt with that through essentially what is a Ponzi scheme. It's a confidence scheme where they simply float and pump out more cash and they expect people simply on the basis of their assurance and their you know their their declarations to continue to buy into the Ponzi scheme. But at a certain point all of that fictitious capital that fictitious bubble has to break. And then when it breaks, what it does do is it undermines the US credit card that it uses to fund its limitless wars. It traditionally it has had this unlimited credit card essentially printing money or printing tea bills and it's used those to fund its unlimited wars. But that credit card was securitized with oil and that's also linked to the exorbitant privilege or the reserve currency status of the dollar. Once you start undermining your control of the major oil artery through your inability to think dialectically then you've undercut your foundation. you've undercut your security, which is the reserve currency, the the exorbitant privilege of the dollar, and you've lost control of the global flow of oil. And so all of these things point out that the US is doing everything it can to undermine itself. It's literally sawing off the branch on which it is sitting. And it boils down once again to inability to think systemically to inability to see the large picture and also the inability to think dialectically. And if they did, if they thought dialectically just for a moment and not in the kind of grossest way of thinking of blowback or unintended consequences, but really understanding things from a dialectical perspective, they would realize that President Trump, you know, is actually doing God's work in making China great again and in making Iran great again. He's also decarbonizing the global economy once again inadvertently. Yeah, this is true. This is true. And there's some breaking news here. According to the New York Times, actually a combat plane was downed in the process of the F-being downed. This A-Warhawk attack plane according to the New York Times went down near the straight of four moves about the same time as the F-E was shot down over Iran. This is according to US officials. And you know in terms of you know all this is not going well for the United States and its uniolar order. Uh we even have US intelligence assessing that and this is probably conservative. This is probably not accurate. It's it's it's it's definitely the case that US intelligence doesn't have good intelligence on Iran in its capabilities. It says roughly half of these missile launchers are still intact after more than a month of supposedly decimating them and blowing them away. Alina, so Iran is saying it can do this for years with the straight of Hormuz with the war as it's going at the intensity that it's going at at the capabilities that all sides are demonstrating. This is already having a massive change on the overall world order. Uh is there anything that you want to talk about regarding this given that these are are very bleak and dark signs signs that we've all talked about on various programs on this program um in our respective you know in in our respective platforms but you know maybe there's something we have not yet talked about Alina that you want to bring in here. Well, I will also just say um you know based on you know what KJ was saying just a kind of continuation of the economic demise I guess of the United States um you know in order to tackle obviously its fiscal crisis that we spoke about earlier. Uh yes, they're not going to pump out money like they've done in the past with regards to obviously the crisis and so forth which is and and again in um no actually in they began quantitive tightening rather sorry but you can't obviously print money without essentially devaluing your currency weakening that currency reducing demand for that currency which then allows you to be able to continue your imperialist aggression abroad. So what they effectively they're going to do is they're going to make as you said massive cuts on social security, Medicare etc. So it's going to actually impact the the American people and this is going to come at a time when the American people are already facing significant you know deterioration of the material conditions because of the war because of the because of inflation not being able to make ends meet um you know like I said a lot of small to medium-sized businesses are effectively unable to handle the economic implications of this war as well as a trade war but why this matters because this is going to cause internalized conflict within the US itself you're going to see people becoming increasingly disenfranchised with the state and all the more outraged. And so this sort of the means that we this the United States was able to establish um up until this stage um you know by creating these social security programs and or you know providing labor rights and laws all these all these I guess u I guess programs that were pushed forward through like you know the influence of like I guess more left-leaning socialist influences are just currently being are going to be all the more dismantled and when you've done that you've delegitimized your own state and what we're going to see is a crisis in the US and we're going to see the same thing happening in Europe as well. And so um there's they can't even handle their own fiscal crisis at home. They're unable to meet the the war needs the ind the I guess the ability to even um produce and and go to war with their adversaries. And much like KJ Noah said, we're seeing you know Trump or rather the United States has been making China great again. In fact, I think the Financial Times just a couple of days ago published a paper which I couldn't believe was on the Financial Times about how China has now been positioned essentially to become the superpower of the world. I mean this is an enormous sort of recognition to come from a western mainstream media um you know outlet um because you know like we said there's no way that the United States or Europe are going to be able to again assert their control over the straight of Hormuz. Iran is going to have complete control over this um territory even if they're going to try to claim that this is sort of violation of international law of the seas etc. They're going to be coerced to make certain agreements. They're going to be coerced to sort start paying in yuan that's going to undermine their own currencies and their own economies and this is going to bolster bricks and effectively everything um that the that the west has tried to prevent is going to actually materialize at some point. Um oh yes this is the Iran war. Essentially this is this is quite quite a decent article from the financial times actually um because you know China is very well prepared to weather this entire storm as is Iran and as is as is Russia. The only ones who are do not have oil reserves um gas fertilizers and are essentially or just struggling is the entire west and there's no they have lost any sort of leverage at this point to actually assert any of their demands. So, um, this is, I think, what's going to be very interesting going forward, seeing the economic implications of that, how it's going to manifest at home for Europe and the US. Um, because it's going to be, I think, very chaotic. Yeah. KJ, anything that we have not yet covered here that you want to bring in? Because, , you know, the last time we spoke, it was the day of the USIsraeli strikes on Iran. The very first day, February th, they destroyed the school, the Manab school, plus young girls killed, war crimes committed, and the US came out of that saying, "We've decimated everything. We killed Ayat Ali Khamanei. Uh we have killed most of their leadership and they thought it was going to be three to four days, four two to four days I believe, that this would all be wrapped up. And here we are speaking in well into the month. Yeah. Well, you know, just going back to, you know, the the start of the war, the entire war was criminal from top to bottom. It's war of aggression, which is the ultimate crime under international law that controls, you know, the evil of the whole. And just recently secretary Rubio came out and said that Iran was violating international law by controlling the straight of Hormuz. I mean irony of ironies. I mean the hypocrisy has you know no limits. But coming back to what um what was said earlier about the state of conditions in the United States, things are not going well for your average American family. I mean, % of all families do not have $to their name. % do not have $to their name. which means that any even the slightest unintended economic shock to them can essentially send them over the edge and send them into homelessness. And God knows we have no end of homeless in the United States. It's literally a failed state third world, you know, it's a failed state. you know, as soon as you go out into the urban areas in the United States. And so when President Trump talks about, you know, bombing or returning Iran to the Stone Age, you know, I mean, that in and of itself is a promise to commit war crimes. And let it be said clearly that Trump is not the only person to talk about that. It was that phrase was coined by Curtis Lameé and then it was picked up by Richard Armitage and James Baker and Colin Powell even talked about turning North Korea into a charcoal briquette. So anybody who's you know astonished by that language is not paying attention. But going back to this notion of returning Iran to stone age, I mean to be honest, there's a large population of the United States that is living in stone age conditions. If you go to you know some of the homeless encampments, people are living worse than they would have been living in during the stone age period. Uh and so I think that you know I think we need to understand you know this fundamental reality that the US as a declining empire is making things even worse for its own people even as it threatens not only to genocide the Iranian people but also to devastate its own working class. The other thing I think that we haven't mentioned but you know which I regretfully feel is important to point out is that the risk of war if this continues is not simply you know further attrition or ground troops but also there is a risk of nuclear escalation. Both Iran and the US are nuclear-powered superpowers. Uh and US nuclear doctrine essentially boils down to the fact that if we are losing a war, we can use nukes to bring it to a tolerable close. That is literally in black and white. They've written it up, you know, um as as doctrine. So that is a real danger and I'm very worried because I see secretary under secretary Colby has been very very silent this whole period but that silence speaks to me of you know kind of dangerous munitions because he's the person who has actually advocated for the seamless use of tactical nukes in war. The last thing I I want to say and perhaps just to turn it back, you know, into an optimistic standpoint is President Trump is referred to in China as comrade Trump because, you know, as we've noted before, he's making China great again. Uh he's dismantled the US industrial base and sub subsequent, you know, multiple administrations have turned the industrial base. they've dismantled it. And President Trump himself is, as far as I can tell, decarbonizing or pushing the world towards decarbonization, pushing the world towards de-dollarization. And he's doing extraordinary things to dismantle the empire. And so in that sense, President Trump inadvertently, perhaps against his own wishes, is doing God's work in making the world perhaps a slightly safer place over the long term. Alina, I'll give you the final word since KJ got the first word in the show. Uh anything you want to add before we close out? No, I I agree with everything that KJ just said. Um I think it's you know I would also add that it's very interesting to watch the United States not in any way assess its position in a dialectical way but ultimately always have to remind ourselves the only people that are currently benefiting from this war in the United States are is the you know military-industrial complex it's big oil it's big tech all these industries are significantly and finance of course are significantly profiteering because in an economy that is ultimately failing that doesn't have an industrial base. It doesn't actually produce anything. It's a finance capitalist economy at the end of the day. It it it in order to sustain itself, it requires sort of the building of fictitious capital off of its stock market bubbles and its bond markets etc. Because if we see now as well the reports that are coming in is that a lot of the Treasury bonds are less in demand but what is high in demand bonds for you know a lot of other financial institutions but also the military-industrial complex. So they're making a lot of money and war creates money for the the ruling classes but ultimately it's that the American working class is going to suffer the cost of that and these are all um you know mechanisms by which to sustain a failing economic structure ultimately unless it's too radically change and that is what's happening in the United States and so for me I think the positive thing and I think I will just kind of finish off in the same way KJ did um is that um ultimately great change is coming even within the west there's going to be you know the the the impact on the working class the squeeze um on their own material well-being will become as such that it will generate this kind of a um I guess internal struggle um that will actually bring about possibly different avenues of change but it will also weaken the US and its ability to assert itself um globally and so where the United States as well as the EU and I remember I think it was Marco Rubio was trying to speak about kind of returning back to that colonial era because obviously that was the era by which they were able to consistently exploit the global south that era is officially dead. They were able I mean even when the the formal formal colonialism finished I mean neoc colonialism in the form of you know the IMF and World Bank and again this financial capital exporting into the global south was the means by which to sustain the EU and the United States. But that is now rapidly closing and the United States in its attempt to again like I said before try to prevent that Trump especially but even I would even say even prior to that even the war in Ukraine also had the same sort of criminal in terms of the criminal in the context of for the United States anyway negative repercussions we saw the same thing happen then even under the Biden administration because ultimately there aren't really any differences between the Democrats and the Republicans there their main agenda is to serve the same sort of imperialist I needs. And so they they they both kind of it's a continuation of agenda. This is how I would basically say it. And it's it's costing them the future of the US, but as long as they're making quick profits because if you look at Morgan Stanley, they're publishing little leaflets saying it's a great time to invest and it's a great time to buy stocks and so forth. So they're making money. It's quick money, but that's not going to be enough to to stay in the US. And so what we're going to be looking at in the future is the rise of multipolarity, the rise of alternatives that will allow especially countries of the global south that have been suffocated essentially by western financial dominance being able to breathe. And um I think this is the one this is how we should sort of look into this war. Although of course yes it's going to bring about a lot of destruction when you're dealing with an empire that's collapsing. It is dangerous but it's also the opportunity for for change to manifest. Yeah, and I think we're definitely seeing that in ter with Iran's retaliation and the global ramifications and just what we're seeing in the battlefield in the region that the US and Israel opened up. But with all that said, I think this is a great place to end. Uh I want to thank you both for joining. We're going to head out together. Um, I want to make sure people know that people can find people can find Alina's work in the video description. Both her Substack and her Instagram are there. Uh, you know, and KJ makes the rounds. All kinds of places as well. So, be sure to look up his prior work. Without further ado, everybody, hit the like button before you go. That keeps things going in the algorithm. I'll be back tomorrow p.m. Eastern, p.m. Eastern with Mark Sabota for more military update. Uh the video description is where you can find Alena's work and all the places to support this channel. And I will see you tomorrow. Bye-bye.
