"A whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don't want that to happen, but it probably will." The genocidal words of Donald Trump, the President of the United States. For days Trump has promised a buffet of war crimes, with targets including bridges, power stations, energy infrastructure, and desalination plants. It goes without saying that residential areas and "soft" institutions, like schools, hospitals, universities, are likely to be in the firing line as the Pentagon designates them semi-military in nature. Just as the Israelis did for the entirety of Gaza.
Trump has promised escalation before, and not delivered. His civilisation-ending rhetoric fits the usual pattern of making extreme, and in this case blood-curdling statements, to monstrously browbeat opponents into submission. Unfortunately, what makes a cataclysm possible is the US government's refusal to understand Iranian strategy. Because Tehran is not responding how Trump and the State Department expects them to, this makes the carrying through of the threats more likely. Even if the US unleashes hell, Iran's position is unlikely to change. It will continue to exert control over the Strait of Hormuz, and it will continue to humiliate the Americans and Israel by striking back. Even more dangerously, the relative restraint Iran has shown toward Gulf state oil refineries and desalination facilities could be gone. Iran alone isn't facing catastrophe.
This brings to head a crisis of US constitutionalism as well. The US and Israeli war on Iran is an illegal war, a conflict that fits the UN definition of war of aggression and an understanding endorsed by the US itself. Attacking civilians occurred at the outset, with the murder of 168 people, including approximately 110 school girls at the Shajareh Tayyebeh primary school in the first wave of American bombings. The administration has done nothing to hide these crimes, and explains its actions as big power bullying. They openly, cynically tell the truth of themselves. But with a declaration of genocidal intent, the consequences of the war should rebound sharply on domestic politics. The 25th amendment allows for the provision of the removal of a president "unable" to discharge their duties, and indeed the Democrat leadership have called on the cabinet to oust Trump. The Republicans, however, are now the face of open, illusion-free, and unaccountable oligarchical power. And there is little chance those cabinet members, who are on the hook for war crimes too, would accede to the pleas for political proprietary. JD Vance, who would take over from Trump, is spending this crisis campaigning for Hungary's Viktor Orban ahead of this Sunday's election. The only Republican to have joined with the Democrats is Marjorie Taylor Greene.
As with the Greenland crisis in January, what the West and significant sections of the US itself are seeing for the first time is how the state operates as a (declining) global hegemon. How it threatens, how it bares its teeth, how it rains death with no regard to the rules of war on its opponents. Iran's every refusal invites a response that tears away not just the liberal democratic veils US power has hitherto dressed itself in, but shows up the emptiness of American constitutionalism itself. If Trump can't be checked, cannot be removed over his stated intent to murder an entire country, how then can he ever be removed? In that question lies the fundamental, and possibly terminal crisis of US legitimacy abroad. And at home.
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11 comments:
The Starmer government here is refusing to confirm or deny that US bombers will be flying from US bases in the UK to participate in Trump's threatened genocidal and totally illegal assault on Iran on Wednesday morning UK time. But of course US bases in the UK undoubtedly WILL be a key part of this imminent gigantic war crime. What utter scum this Labour government are.
The Iranian mass ballistic missile retaliation for such a genocidal attack will destroy the Middle East entire oil and gas infrastructure , and trigger a global energy, fertiliser, and other essential chemicals, crisis that will make the 1929 Great Crash look like a small ripple in international commerce. The lunatics have gained control of the capitalist global asylum , and we are in deep do do collectively , everywhere. The "Just Stop Oil" enthusiasts are about to get their hearts desire . Enjoy !
The Iranian Regime does not recognise borders. It is here to impose its version of Islam on all of humanity. It actively funds military and terrorist activity wherever it can at the expense of its won people. It actively supports rape and murder of those who refuse to submit. It massacred tens of thousands of its own citizens who protested. It has stated its aim to massacre jews and there is little doubt if it gained a nuclear weapon it would use it.
With regard to the UK it passed a Fatwha calling for the murder of a British citizen decades ago. It has launched a ballistic missile and drones at British military bases. It has funded terrorist activity here in the UK.
So you don't like Trump's war. Fine. But what then? When were you planning to deal with the direct threat to UK citizens from Iran? How are you planning to deal with it?
Well then. The Iranian peace plan, which was "completely unacceptable", is suddenly acceptable. The Strait "opens", with the Iranians continuing to operate their tollbooth. Annihilation of the entire Middle East is averted, temporarily. And a bitterly disappointed Israel has to console itself with breaking the supposed agreement straight away... but only against its smaller neighbours.
There was never any danger of Trump being removed, of course, unless his own military crossed the Constitutional line to do it. But he probably won't make another miscalculation this large and when the US and Israel come back to "mow the lawn" on Iran in a few months it will be on a more controlled scale, like it was last year.
"if King Croesus crosses the Halys River, a great empire will be destroyed."
The Israeli regime does not recognise borders and actively funds terror in surrounding states to undermine them. It carries out genocide on those who refuse to submit. Its stated aims are to drive Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians and Egyptians out of their land to create a greater Israel. It holds nuclear weapons and is willing to use them.
So how do you stop it destroying the Middle East and causing chaos? How do you deal with a rogue state like Israel before it completely upends the international system to realise some Biblical prophecy?
You've picked the wrong corner of the internet to spout your nonsense, mate.
Not sure if the orange pub nutter is a genius or outright mad, not sure it matters too much either way. What is interesting is who Phil thinks will be the new global hegemon, if the US is the declining hegemon? For me, decadence sets in when internal concerns for those who would happily destroy an state actor start to seriously compete with the self-preservation of that actor. Which of the competing would be hegemons have so far resisted that decadent tendency? China, Russia, India, other?
How is it nonsense? There is no comparison. Lebanon was a majority Christian country in our lifetime but Hezbollah has been driving them out. Islamists are committing genocide against Druze and Israelis are protecting them. Lots of Palestinians live peacefully in Israel.
If you are taking Iran’s side you really need to ask yourself some hard questions.
For one thing, you're confusing the Iranian regime with ISIS. Whatever one might say about the former, it doesn't hold any aspirations to establish a global caliphate.
While there is no reasonable doubt as to the repressive nature of the Iranian regime, claims of tens of thousands of deaths in crackdown on the December 2025/January 2026 protests are almost certainly wild exaggeration.
The notion that the mullahs who sit at the helm of Iran's clerical dictatorship are clamouring to get their hands on the bomb and nuke us all at the earliest opportunity betrays all sorts of highly questionable assumptions about the nature of the regime that I would contend don't withstand a cursory comparison against the regime's actual track record.
As to whose side I'm taking, that would be the side of the Iranian working classes in their war of self-defence against American and Israeli aggression.
If you are taking Israel's side you really need to ask yourself some hard questions. Do I want to support a state that knows no moral boundaries and inflicts huge civilian casualties on its neighbours, that destroys Gaza and seeks to expel its population, whose colonists steal Palestinian land iin the West Bank, that collaborates with armed gangs who steal food deliveries, that despoils agricultural land and seeks civil wars in its neighbours to reduce them to chaos?
Brave Sir Anon has a lot of gall complaining about Iran not recognising borders, or threatening the UK. For decades we've been in the custody of nuclear missiles which can reach them; now they've got missiles which can reach us, and suddenly the usual suspects are screaming that we have to flatten them to rubble NOW because they are Other and can't be trusted with those missiles.
A big "fuck off" is the only really appropriate response to that. If you don't want them to fire missiles at you, then don't fire missiles at them, or openly support nasty little countries that are regularly dropping bombs on them. Who attacked first in this round? Or the last round? Or the one before that...?
If you're really desperate for only white people to be able to wave intercontinental missiles around, then get your sorry arse over there with a rifle in person and try to flatten those dastardly brownskins yourself. We're not helping you indulge your murderous, racist delusions.
"But but but our friends are only committing genocide to stop their friends committing genocide" fuck you. If your answer to anything is genocide then pick up a weapon and go and do it yourself.
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