The entire region is in flux, with violence spreading and economic catastrophy looming. Trump has backed down yet again from his apocalyptic threats, possibly after having been informed by the US military that there is no path to victory. He has indicated a willingness, likely deceptively as before, to return to negotiations, but the only option is the MOU he previously signed which amounted to an American surrender. He’s caught between a rock and a hard place, because the terms of the MOU are completely unacceptable domestically, but Iran holds all the leverage, so he cannot force any kind of settlement on his terms. He can attempt to maintain his blockade, which is only effective in the sense that it raises perceived risk, and therefore the cost of insurance. The US lacks the naval assets to mount a militarily effective blockade. If the ships it does have get closer to the strait in order to improve the effectiveness, they would be within range of Iranian missiles.

Netanyahu doesn’t intend to let the US abandon the fight, since his political future, and ultimately his liberty, depend on winning the next Israeli election. The Israeli population wants to see Iran completely destroyed, but a large majority believes the war has been lost, so Netanyahu’s chances in the election are looking slim. If he loses, his most likely successors will be even more genocidal, but also therefore even more likely to get their own country obliterated. In his desperation, Netanyahu is threatening that Israel can attack Iran itself, the idea being that such a move would force the US back into the conflict to protect Israel. The odds are that this strategy would work, given the power of the Israeli lobby in the US, and the fact that the US and Israeli militaries and intelligence services are about to formally merge. This is widely regarded as treasonous, for good reason.

In response to the toxic situation in the region, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey have formed a mutual defence pact, which has been described as a Sunni NATO. In the second video above, Nima Alkhorshid provides maps and detailed analysis of the players and alliances at the sub-nation state level. The pact is problematic, as it compromises Pakistan’s role as a neutral mediator in the war. Saudi Arabia attacked Yemen at the behest of the US, and Yemen has responded by bombing critical Saudi energy infrastructure, futher restricting oil supply from the region. Yemen is an ally of Iran. If Pakistan were to defend Saudi Arabia against Yemen, it would no longer be neutral.

The countries of the region have realised that the US not only cannot protect them, it never had any desire to do so. The bases in their various countries were not for their protection, but to allow the US to project power and to defend Israel. Those bases made these vassal states targets, and they compounded this by allowing the bases to be used in attacks on Iran. They were also complicit in that they funded the war effort. The various Gulf monarchies are artifical constructs of the British empire, and they are corrupt, politically fragile, and physically vulnerable. They share a critical dependency on water desalination, which is also a major Israeli vulnerability. The monarchs rule over restive populations and enjoy little political legitimacy among their people. With the war spreading and critical infrastructure being destroyed or blockaded, it’s possible that the entire region may go up in flames.

The probability that either the US or Israel may resort to using nuclear weapons against Iran is uncomfortably high. Neither party has any conventional path to victory, and neither will go down without taking the rest of the world with them. In Israel this is called the Samson option. The US may well have a version of this as well, especially while Trump is president, since he’s psychologically incapable of admiting defeat due to his extreme narcissism. He cares only about himself, and he must know he’s dying, so why should he care if he takes the whole world down. The American strategy appears to be to wreck the global economy and degrade everyone else, in hope of being the least worst affected by the coming polycrisis that will result from the war. The shortages of energy, fertiliser, and other critical commodities from the Gulf are going to cripple the economy. The damage is already done. This will create a population bottleneck, even if no one resorts to nuclear weapons. Most people have no idea what’s about to happen, so it will come as an abrupt rug-pull. The worst people have been leading the empire into disaster. They represent psychopathy writ large.

The Epstein network is alive and well, and still expanding its influence. The man himself was simply middle management – a self-admitted agent of the Rothschilds. Those he served have continued to accumulate wealth, power, and control, and are now co-opting the machinery of government. Les Wexner was Epstein’s benefactor, and Wexner is still an important node in the network. Wexner has never been questioned about his role, and has continued to expand his activities while retaining connections to organised crime and to the Greater Israel project, where the ends are said to justify the dreadful means. At the same time he sits at the interface between Big Tech and the national security state.

Wexner’s New Albany Company has essentially privatised the local government of New Albany, Ohio, through a public private partnership, where the public aspect is very much the junior partner. His company can now tax local residents and issue bonds, which is unprecedented. The ostensible partnership is extremely pro-development, particularly of data centres. New Albany is now home to a major cluster of them, and is intended to become a model for smart cities by beta testing the necessary technology and programmes. Ohio in general has more data centres than almost any other state, and the New Albany area has more than anywhere else in the state. The company makes generous political donations, ensuring that their applications are fast-tracked and that lucrative incentives are offered. The eventual number of jobs promised in no way justifies the incentives given, especially considering the negative impact of these installations on local residents. Data centres are a creeping menace, gradually co-opting land, water and power, and for the purpose of controlling the newly dispossessed population. Computing power over people is their mantra.

Besides Wexner, other billionaire techbros with their own connections to the Epstein network are also intimately connected with these projects, and with political power. The most obvious is Peter Thiel, who created and financed JD Vance’s career from beginning to end, buying him an Ohio Senate seat and then arranging for him to take the Vice Presidency. If Trump cannot finish his term, which is looking increasingly likely due to his health, Vance will take the Presidency and the techbro takover of politics at the federal level will have moved into high gear.

The privatisation of New Albany is just the beginning. The model is meant to be extended to the whole country, and the whole empire, with vassal states potentially having little say in the matter. Public private partnerships are increasing rapidly, and the public aspect is being relegated to simply being a front for private interests, and a more superficially acceptable means of extracting wealth from the citizenry. The ideal, from the techbro point of view, is to follow the notions of Curtis Yarvin, who thinks the country should be run as a business dictatorship, with a CEO in sole charge. Already there are plans for this model on a small scale, beginning with single cities. Peter Thiel had even been considering Greenland as a potential location, although he probably hadn’t entirely thought through what that would involve. His recent move to Argentina makes sense in light of the fact that President Javier Milei is very much part of the network, and is already implementing the model of feudalism enforced by technology in his country.

There are many connections with the Israeli military industrial complex, which specialises in all manner of surveillance and control tech marketed to authoritarian governments around the world. One of the techbro oligarchs, Paul Singer, has been encouraging American companies to purchase Israeli tech start ups, so fronts for Israeli intelligence can be deeply embedded into large US companies, particularly those involving national security. This fits with a current federal bill to formally merge the American and Israeli militaries. The oligarchs appear to have an almost religious devotion to the idea of transhumanism – merging humans with AI with neural implants – as well as a determination to micro-manage humanity. The technology for all of this is being pioneered in Israel and tested in Gaza and elsewhere in the Middle East, along with technology for indiscriminate violence, such as the exploding pagers that maimed and killed many people, including children.

The hubris involved in all of this is off the charts. The Epstein network, which spans the globe, is aware that the financial system is at the end of a debt cycle and that control over critical resources confers power over people. They’re aiming for a controlled demolition of global society, devolving it into a plutocracy ruling over a huge proletariate with no rights or privacy. Whitney Webb describes it as going from a model contrasting the exploited and the unexploited, to a model where the contrast is between the exploited and the expendable. Human livestock is supposed to be able to prove its worth to the plutocrats in exchange for the privilige of continued existence. What the oligarchs fail to recognise is that large scale contractions, especially when war is involved, are very likely to take on a life of their own and become completely uncontrollable. Therefore the odds are that these initiatives will ultimately fail, although they’re likely to do substantial damage in the attempt. Humanity will need to cope with a period of considerable chaos, making resilience, community and relationships of trust absolutely vital. The sooner people recognise this and act on it, the better the outcome can be.

For the 20th time, Trump made increasingly lurid threats against Iran and then backed down, in time with market opens and closings of course, so his hangers on could profit enormously. The US military has told him that there’s no path to victory , and the Gulf states have asked him not to assure their destruction, given that Iran has threatened to retaliate disproportionally against them if its civilian infrastructure is attacked. Trump appears to be buying time to prepare for another attack, but may well lack the capacity even after a delay. He’s desperately trying to avoid the inevitable loss, which Patrick Henningsen rightly says will be humiliating and historic, while insisting that Iran surrender to him or he will inflict “military terror” (a war crime of course). To Trump, every deal must be win-lose, strictly on his terms. Every deal must equal surrender by the other side, and this is not going to happen. His every accusation or claim is either a confession or confabulation, the latter being characteristic of frontotemporal dementia, where the afflicted tries to create their own reality by speaking it into existence.

Iran is not begging for a deal. They are not speaking to the US at all, because they recognise that Trump’s word means nothing, and that the US is agreement incapable. The US navy is not successfully blockading Hormuz. Iran has closed it, and has said it will remain closed until the war ends. There’s nothing the US can do to prevent this, and the US, and Trump specifically, will be blamed for the global consequences. It is the US empire, including its Israeli attack-dog, that has been destabilising and brutalising the region for decades, and is the largest state sponsor of terrorism, not Iran. US warships will never again be allowed into the Persian Gulf, and their bases there will never be rebuilt.

The US is using the Gulf states as a shield around Israel, while running a protection racket – extorting them while offering no actual protection. American bases on their territory not only offer no protection, but make them active targets. The monarchies are controlled by the US because their funds are in dollars, often in US banks. They could be financially destroyed on a whim, and the US is using this leverage against them to make them act against their own interests. Kuwait and Bahrain are being used to strike Iran and are paying a terrible price for it. Saudi Arabia was ‘encouraged’ to attack Yemen and Iraq. Its leader, MBS, is compromised due to his close friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, as well as being financially comtrolled by Washington. Now its oil exports are blocked to the south and tankers are being told not to load at Saudi ports on pain of attack. It’s pipeline to the Red Sea port of Yanbu has been damaged, as has its flagship refinery at Jazan and other important infrastructure in the country. If the Gulf states refused to comply, the US could simply arrange a military coup against their fragile sutocracies and install a compliant puppet regime, allowing them to control Gulf oil directly.

Israel has recently been staying out of the conflict while the US bleeds for it. Iran has not targeted Israel either. There are several reasons for this. Israel is in political and economic turmoil, and Iran might be choosing to let that play out without having to risk the Samsom option. Also, the US is withdrawing its troops from Gulf bases and concentrating them in Israel. Iran could in effect be herding US troops there in order for them to present a concentrated, target-rich environment later. Retired Israeli Major General Itzhak Brik has recently been warning in Haaretz that Israel’s military entanglements could result in the destruction of the country, but Netanyahu is focused only on his own electoral prospects and staying out of jail. Brik has said that Israel had no strategic intelligence and no cultural understanding of Iran. The country may eventually pay an enormous price for its acquisitiveness and bloodlust.

Former Israeli general: War with Hezbollah will destroy Israel

Retired Israeli Major-General Itzhak Brik says potential escalation with Lebanon’s Hezbollah in the north of the country may lead to “a full-scale regional war and the destruction of our country”.

The US is determined to prevent the development of a Russia-Iran-India corridor, as well as acting to disrupt China’s Belt-and-Road initiative, as both of these represents building blocks in the formation of land-based Eurasian dominance, which is poised to eclipse the maritime powers that have been dominant for centuries. It will use all manner of financial leverage, physical threats, dirty tricks and mafia tactics to achieve this, but it will ultimately fail, as all empire trying to regain lost supremacy eventually do.

Trump had been making a series of increasingly lurid threats against Iran, following its attacks on American bases in Jordan and Kuwait. He had been threatening to terrorise the population and destroy civilian infrastructure, specifically power generation, which is a war crime. The attack had been proposed for this weekend, and over in time to avoid disturbing the stock market. This has been a consistent pattern of market manipulation with both Trump’s statements and attacks. This time the attack didn’t come as expected, despite American embassies in the region having warned their compatriots that they may need to leave in a hurry and that air travel may be disrupted. Trump is now saying that Iran asked him not to attack and that a deal is now close. This is another one of Trump’s fantasies. Iran has never asked Trump to make a deal, and in fact is refusing to negotiate at all after the US reneged on every aspect of the MOU deal it signed. Trump’s signature is worthless, as he changes his mind constantly and never keeps his word. The only deal Trump would accept is a complete capitulation by Iran, including giving up their control over the strait of Hormuz, but Iran has no intention of agreeing to surrender. Why would they when they’re winning?

Iran knows it cannot prevent being struck by US missiles, so long as the US has missiles to fire, but it does have sufficient air defence to threaten American planes. The US is running low on long range missiles, and its short range ones must be carried by its aircraft, bringing them into range of Iran’s air defence. The military has apparently made this clear to Trump, which may be the real reason for the latest TACO. Iran has specialised in second strike capability, meaning that whatever damage they take, they will always be able to strike back. They achieved this by burying their military infrastructure deep below the mountains, where it cannot be taken out, likely not even with a nuclear weapon. They also created a highly decentralised and resilient command structure, making them impervious to the decapitation strikes the US and Israel so often use.

This capacity to resist American aggression and retain the capacity to retaliate may well be what deterred the US military, given that Iran had threatened to cripple the Gulf monarchies if Trump carried through on his promised attack. Unlike Iran, which has sufficient water, the Gulf states and Israel rely heavily on desalination plants for drinking water. These plants in turn rely on energy supply, and it’s the energy supply that Iran had threatened to take out if the US attacked its energy infrastructure. This would render these states uninhabitable at the height of summer heat.

Iran has had decades to prepare for this war, which it knew would eventually come. The US has not prepared. It has, or at least had, many bases in the region, but these were acutely vulnerable to missile and drone attacks. Nothing was underground or sufficiently protected by air defence. US air defence has proven to be ineffective, with the PAC3 patriot interceptor having perhaps a 2-3% success rate. Iran was able to take out the extremely expensive radars on these bases with drones, leaving the base blind to incoming missiles. Further retaliatory strikes have since rendered the bases inoperable and uninhabitable. The US has been lying about the resulting casualties.

The US always underestimates the capabilities of its adversaries, generally after thoroughly dehumanising them. One only has to look at Afghanistan, where the US fought an assymmetical war for twenty years that resulted in replacing the Taliban with the Taliban. Now it’s attempting to fight a peer competitor – Russia (albeit indirectly through proxies) – and a near-peer competitor in Iran. In both cases it’s losing because it failed to understand its opponent’s military capacity and drive to defend themselves in an existential battle. Yet American warhawks still somehow think they can take on China in the future.

We are watching a failing empire, deeply indebted and over-extended militarily, embed itself in Thucydides Trap. It’s elected a mob-connected malignant narcissist with delusions of grandeur, but no knowledge about how anything works. Bullying, extortion, and perfidiousness are his modus operandi, and this fails to impress other world leaders. The US is now hated globally almost as much as the genocidal state of Israel. The regime believes, in its hubris, that it can revive its unipolar moment and rule the world in perpetuity, but that moment is decisively over.

Some 50,000 migrants have now crossed from Morocco into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta on the coast of North Africa. The town normally has a population of 85,000, so it’s now been swamped. Virtually all the migrants are young to middle aged men. They were encouraged to cross by their own government, which is allied with Israel, and which Israel pressured to do this. Spain has been a vocal supporter of the Palestinians, so this is revenge for that stance. It’s a deliberate attempt to destabilise the country, and the EU more broadly, since the migrants are now on EU soil and will be able to travel freely within the EU once transferred to the mainland. The Spanish government, which has been welcoming to migrants so far, has not taken any action to stem the tide. They sent medical teams since there was violence, including burning cars and invading homes, but nothing to prevent further crossings. The Spanish supreme court recently ruled that migrants arriving by sea could not be immediately sent back, and these people are arriving by swimming round the border crossing (a mere 200m swim). They’ve been instructed by NGOs as to how to gain entry, and how to navigate the legal system.

One particularly awful motivation for encouraging this kind of migration is to generate hatred towards muslims in Europe. Here that sentiment is explicitly stated by Trump ally and hatemongering zionist Laura Loomer:

Islam is not the enemy of Europe, and fomenting hatred is reprehensible, but parr for the course for the Trump regime and its hangers-on. It’s true that mass migration of people from very different cultures is extremely destabilising, and causing that to happen inevitably leads to conflict, but using this to demonise entire ethnic and religious groups is uncalled for. There has been far too much migration in too short a time over the last few years, since the major migration following the war in Syria and the fall of Libya. This has overwhelmed countries’ ability to integrate new people, and some unfortunately have no intention of integrating. The fact that such a large percentage of the migrants are military age males is also a major red flag. An excess of young men with no partners and no work creates a powder keg. For instance, sexual assaults have increased substantially.

The Moroccans are not the only group that was encouraged to cross into Europe. This has been going on for years, as the globalists seek to erase borders, dilute national cultures, and weaken people’s sense of identity. All western countries are experiencing this, and it’s being promoted by their own governments, which no longer serve their own people and see homogenisation as a benefit when it absolutely is not. The consequences are increasingly negative, but that doesn’t mean Islam should be blamed for everything. Muslims are not all interchangeable. As with any group, there are both peaceful and violent individuals. There are those who assimilate, becoming productive citizens, and those who do not. Zionists as z group have far more to answer for more recently, given the genocide they’re currently conducting and their desire to depopulate and take over virtually the entire Middle East. This will naturally generate far more refugees and much greater migratory pressure.

The world stands on the brink of WW3, with two expanding wars threatening to coalesce. The old order is breaking down, and a new one will eventually form, but the interrim is going to be violent, and possibly nuclear. Transfers of hegemonic power do not occur peacefully.

Japan has been a major engine of global liquidity for decades through the yen carry trade. After it’s bubble burst in 1989, Japan lowered interest rates to essentially zero and kept them there. This allowed for borrowing in yen for free and investing the money where yields were higher. This benefited both foreigners and the Japanese investing abroad, resulting in Japan being tbe largest holders of US treasuries. It also allowed the Bank of Japan (BoJ) to act as buyer of last resort for Japanese bonds without having to worry about interest payments. Japanese debt is the highest in the world, but mostly owed to itself, in its own currency at a very low rate, meaning the debt could be managed despite the enormous outstanding principle. Consumer prices remained flat, as did wages.

First the pandemic and now the war in the middle east have upset the balance, as both forced price rises. During the pandemic, other central banks were raising rates while Japan did not, but this impacted the value of the yen as money flooded into dollars instead. Japan tried to raise rates marginally, but this threat to the carry trade caused a minor panic, so rates were lowered again. Since Japan is not self-sufficient in essentials, it imports a great deal, including all of its oil and gas. A falling yen causes further price rises for commodities and goods priced in dollars, leading to BoJ intervention to try to protect the vale of the yen. However, buying yen merely fed the speculators who were shorting it on obvious weakness. Rising prices (ie prices denominated in falling yen ) have led to rising wages, threatening a wage-price spiral. Interest rates have since been raised again to protect purchasing power, but this both threatens the carry trade and greatly increases the cost of carrying the gargantuan debt.

Japanese bond yields, while still lower than in other jurisdictions, are still almost ten times as high as they were a mere four years ago. Unfortunately the perceived risk of holding them has risen substantially, meaning that potential buyers of Japanese debt will be demanding still higher rates. In the meantime, leveraged bets against the yen are increasing. Japan is in the unenviable position of being forced to choose between saving its currency or saving its bond market. The government wants to protect the bond market, keeping rates low enough that it can afford its payments, while the central bank wants to save the currency with higher rates. The rest of the world would like to avoid a disorderly unwinding of the yen carry trade, but such an outcome is increasingly likely. Higher bond yields are coming, meaning money coming home as the carry trade reverses and investment at home is encouraged. This will have severe effects on the global economy.

The likelihood of a fire sale of assets, including US treasuries, is rising as the burden of the huge Japanese debt rises on higher rates. The US wants to prevent this, as it would push up the borrowing cost on their own $40trillion in debt. Japan has been vassalised into the empire, so the US has leverage over it, both financially and militarily. Pressure may be placed on Japan to prevent the selling of treasuries, but their situation will break eventually anyway. If US yields on the ten year exceed 5% (currently about 4.6%), the US will find itself in an exploding debt scenario. A financial reset is coming, as the tensions in the global financial system are rapidly increasing, and limits are approaching. This could result in a knee-jerk flight to safety into the reserve currency, which would suppress the value of other currencies, including the yen. This could send prices of Japanese imports very much higher, especially for energy, and everything derived from it. The combination of skyhigh prices and the Japanese demographic timebomb, due to a chronically low birth rate, is very unfortunate. Pensions promises are very unlikely to be able to be kept as a highly indebted government tries to cope with far too few young people to fund a pension system, or other entitlements. Japan will not be the only country facing this conundrum, but it may well be the first to fall.

Saudi Arabia has been blockading Yemen for a decade, following their long war, which the Saudis lost. They’ve been focused on preventing contact between Ansarallah (the Houthis) and Iran, but a Yemeni delegation was recently flown to the funeral of Khamenei on an Iranian plane. (This was necessary since all Yemen’s own aircraft were blown up by the Israelis.) As the plane was returning the delegation to Sanaa airport, the Saudis bombed the runway. The plane diverted to a different airfield and landed safely, but the Saudi action has reignited hostilities between Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Subsequently, Saudi Arabia joined the US in bombing an Iraqi militia group that’s also part of the resistance against the American-Israeli axis. These actions were extremely foolish, as the backlash has been severe. The Iraqis attacked the critical oil facility at Abqaiq, and Ansarallah bombed Saudi ports, oil storage facilities and refineries, all of which were within easy reach. The Jazan refinery is the most advanced facility of its kind in the world, producing petrochamicals as well as fuels. The damage in all cases has been significant, and will take a long time to repair. This can’t even begin while hostilities are ongoing, as they may now be for a long time.

These actions were not at all in the interests of Saudi Arabia, which begs the question as to why they would invite such obviously predictable retaliation. Following the closure of Hormuz, the Saudis had been exporting oil via a pipeline to the port of Yanbu on the Red Sea. Ansarallah has now closed the southern exit of the Red Sea – the Bab-al-Mandab strait (the Gateway of Tears) – to Saudi shipping. For oil exports to take the Suez route adds considerable time and cost, as much of the oil would be destined for Asia. Ansarallah has now told ships not to dock and load at Saudi ports, which would reduce the kingdom’s export potential to zero. Given that the Saudi economy is not diversified, and is completely dependent on revenues from oil exports, the country could be economically crippled.

The most likely explanation as to why the Saudi crown prince would have taken such actions emerged from an announcement by Trump that he would facilitate the development of nuclear power capacity in the kingdom, with the potential for uranium enrichment, and no inspection regime would be required. This has been a goal of the Saudis for years, and may well have been sufficient inducement for them to put themselves in harms way in the short term. Unfortunately for them, Trump added an additional requirement the next day, namely that they sign the Abraham Accords with Israel. This is a New Yok real estate technique Trump once boasted about in one of his ghost-written books – make a deal, add further huge demands, and intimidate the other side into agreeing to a win-lose deal. It remains to be seen whether this can work in international relations, vut the odds are stacked against it. Signing the accords is something the Saudis have vowed not to do unless a Palestinian state is established. The result may depend on how badly the Saudis want nuclear technology, especially enrichment, which they would be extremely likely to develop into nuclear weapons at their earliest convenience. They may, however, find their infrastructure and economy so damaged over the next few weeks that they no longer have many capacities. A round of nuclear proliferation in the region is now highly likely, as each party will be racing to secure themselves from the empire and their own neighbours.

The war has now encompassed all the Gulf states, with the partial exception of Oman, Jordan, Yemen, Iraq, and potentially Syria. It appears that the US had been planning a major attack on the whole of the resistance groups, but Iran acted pre-emptively by bombing the US base in Jordan from which it would likely have begun, destroying a number of US fighter jets. So far Israel is standing aside, prefering to let the Americans do the dirty work while they avoid becoming a target. However, with the US withdrawing from damaged Gulf bases back to Israel, a concentrated and target-rich environment could be created. Israel is already concerned about the large number of US military refueling planes parked at its main civilian airport. Turkey is also keeping out of the mess so far, although it may eventually be facing off against Israel in occupied Syria.

Meanwhile in the other threatre of war, Ukraine attacked an Iranian ship in the Black Sea. This was most likely an attempt by Zelensky to curry favour with the Americans by being best friends with Israel. This would merge the two wars into one gigantic mess. The idea seems to be on hold for the moment though, as Ukraine has apologised for its ‘mistake’ in targeting the vessel. Presumably they were told to stand down, at least for now. The risk remains high, and the impact of all of this has yet to hit the global economy, but that impact is rapidly approaching.

The US has paused the Gulf war again, but not from a desire for peace. Apparently Trump was told by the US military that they lacked the necessary armaments to pursue Trump’s plan, at least for now, meaning that they need another period to rearm and reorganise before reigniting the conflict yet again. The US is attempting a controlled demolition of developing multipolarity, trying to degrade all its potential adversaries without sparking an immediate panic. It tries to over-stretch its opponents militarily, while attacking them through the financial system, arming dissident factions, providing intel and satellite imaging to its proxies, imposing sanctions to immiserate the opposing population, and hoping the government would be blamed and eventually overthrown. This worked in Syria, and is now being applied against Russia and Iran, with (so far) indirect impacts on China. The US intends to define a new “axis of evil’ to include Russia, Iran, China, and North Korea, and may stage a false flag attack to encourage Americans to support wars they currently reject.

The war in the Gulf has recently spread in two new directions. First the US encouraged Saudi Arabia to bomb the airport in Yemen as the Yemeni delegation to Khamenei’s funeral was returning to the country. Yemen is now retaliating by blockading the Bab-al-Mandab to Saudi shipping, warning tankers not to load up at Yanbu port on the Red Sea, and bombing both Yanbu and the major refinery at Jazan. This was the most advanced refinery in the world, but it seems to have suffered substantial damage. Saudi exports of oil are now greatly reduced, compounding the effect of the closure of Hormuz. Saudi Arabia was offered a nuclear enrichment deal, which may have been the inducement to attack Yemen, but they don’t seem to have anticipated the intense backlash. Trump tried to change the terms of the deal with the Saudis almost immediately, as he previously did with the MOU with Iran, saying the deal was conditional on the Saudis signing the Abraham Accords with Israel, which they will never do. The US has also been pressuring Pakistan to declare its support for Saudi Arabis against Yemen by dangling an $18 billion stabilisation fund for the Pakistani rupee. This could compromise Pakistan’s ability to act as a mediator in the war, and could instead draw them into it. The UK has also made itself a target by allowing its bases to be used to launch attacks on Iran, for which Iran has said it will retaliate. Iran has z target list for European infrastructure should Europe be drawn into the war in the Gulf.

The second expansion appears to be occurring following an attack by Ukraine on an Iranian ship in the Black Sea. Iran has said it will retaliate. Zelensky said he’s entitled to attack Iranian shipping because Iran is an ally of Russia, and Iran provided the original Shahid drones that were developed into the very effective Russian Geran drones. This seem like a blatant attempt by Zelensky to curry favour with the Americans, draw them firmly back into both conflicts, and combine the wars. There is also pressure for a frozen conflict from Khazakstan, which has had its exports curtailed due to Ukrainian attacks on Black Sea ports used for Caspian Sea exports. If the wars do in fact combine, this could morph into full-blown WW3 very quickly. A controlled process would then cease to be possible, as wars take on a life of their own. The US has been concealing its casualty numbers, but if the real numbers are leaked, this could precipitate an uncontrolled situation domestically, quite possibly raising the risk of dramatic retaliation.

The war in the Gulf is funded through the rest of this year, although it remains to be seen if the necessary weaponry is also available, given the long timeframe for weapons production in the US. The US could easily become the party fatally over-stretched. It still believes in its own supremacy, but those days are clearly over. It still controls most of the levers of international finance, and so can still pressure vassal states to act against their own interests on pain of economic destruction, but its conventional military strength is greatly reduced. Of course this may mean it would resort to a nuclear attack. Israel could also resort to this – the Samson option – if it feels it’s about to suffer strategic defeat, and has said so since the days of Golda Meir. The US and Israeli militaries are about to be fully integrated, if the relevant bill passes the Senate, as it appears likely to do. They could collectively start a nuclear war. Netanyahu is currently on his way to the US and will likely be trying to convince Trump to escalate against Iran, as Israel will settle for nothing less than the country’s complete destruction. He typically presents ‘new intelligence’ to Trump, actually fabricated by the Israelis to manipulate him, playing on his narcissism and paranoia. So far he’s fallen for it every time, and in his greatly weakened mental state he may do so again, but that won’t solve the lack of conventional military capacity, hence the nuclear risk.

The US was once admired and envied. It considered itself a shining city on a hill in an almost messianic way, but those days are long gone. As Alistair Crooke says, the US has now come to see things as black and white, with themselves as the epitome of goodness and everyone who disagrees with them as inherently evil – manicheanism in other words. When others are seen as evil, negotiation is impossible, and deception and perfidiousness come to seem reasonsable, as the ends would be seen to justify the means. The use of weapons of mass destruction also becomes far more likely, adversaries are not see as being human, so their suffering and their lives don’t matter. The US also feels entitled to steal their territory and resources.

Trump is the worst person to be leading the US, as he’s a malignant narcissist with no understanding of any of the context or the outstanding issues. His dyslexia means he’s functionally illiterate, his inflated ego means he doesn’t listen to others, his rampant corruption is obvious, his mafia tactics of extortion and threats are damaging the w
hole world, and his rapidly progressing dementia has removed his filters, so he sounds more and more irrational and insane with each passing day. Nothing he says can be trusted, as he constantly changes his mind, sometimes in less than a day. His rhetoric makes wild swings from one extreme to the other, so no one knows what’s going on. This makes the situation far more dangerous. The Iranians have been working with a psychologist in their indirect communications with the US, as they’ve decided that Trump is clinically insane. Those communications have now ended, as they were obviously pointless. Diplomacy is now impossible.

The US pretends that it isn’t involved in the war in Ukraine, but it clearly is. It’s been supplying the weapons via the Europeans, and extorting the warmongering Europeans in the process. It also supplies the satellite targeting information and the communications technology via Starlink. It’s been encouraging the Ukrainians to destroy Russia’s energy infrastructure, and is niw destroying purely commercial targets, like Wildberries warehouses, which are Russia’s equivalent of Amazon. The goal is clearly to weaken Russia to the point of collapse, so it can be dismembered, taken over in pieces, given western puppet governance, and have its resources stolen. However, Russia is winning. Its advance has been slow, due to the nature of drone warfare, but its progress has been relentless. It’s closing in on the last fortified cities of the Donbass – Slavyansk and Kramatorsk – and there are no further fortifications between these and the Dnieper River. Ukraine is rapidly running out of manpower to press-gang, and this will remain the case even if Europe returns the Ukrainian refugees as it’s promised to do. It’s also out of air defence, and its energy infrastructure is being crippled.

The war with Iran is a joint American-Israeli endeavor, and they are clearly on the losing side there as well. The Iranians were drastically under-estimated, as the US does with all its adversaries. Trump’s attempts to force capitulation under threat of further bombing are doomed to fail. Iran is a natural defensive fortress, and it’s had decades to prepare for this war. It is going to end up controlling the Strait of Hormuz. The US appears to be preparing for some kind of ground war, but this will only end in a bloodbath for American troops. The Israelis are sitting on the sidelines, quite happy for Americans to die for their Greater Israel project, although their military leadership is warning that the IDF is close to collapse due to the casualties it’s taken in Gaza and is taking in Lebanon. They warn of civil war. The US has been bombing Iranian infrastructure for days since the war resumed, and Iran has been returning the favour by utterly destroying US bases in the region. The US fifth fleet is essentially hostage in Bahrain. It’s entirely possible that the US sill be driven out of the region entirely and that Israel will be destroyed. Iran is emerging as a much greater and more cohesive power than before the war, despite decades of sanctions and recent destruction of surface infrastructure. Critical facilities are out of reach of US bombs, in tunnels under hundreds of metres of granite.

Trump’s extreme narcissism will never let him admit to losing, even when it’s obviously inevitable to anyone paying attention. He always doubles down on a failing strategy, ignoring the price being paid by everyone else. His coterie of ‘advisors’ are profoundly incompetent and delusional, and are encouraging him on his disastrous path. The rest of the world is watching the previously formidable reputation of the US military collapse, which will have serious consequences, emboldening many potential adversaries. The US is now widely perceived as the new evil empire, and that is the reputation it increasingly deserves. Meanwhile the conflict is expanding into an unresolvable quagmire, now involving Lebanon, the Gulf monarchies, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Yemen, and potentially Turkey. Pakistan is trying to mediate, but may be dragged into the mess due to its military pact with Saudi Arabia over the Saudi conflict with Yemen. Many countries are now thinking of developing nuclear weapons as the only means to deter imperial aggression, and Trump has aggravated this by promising the Saudis nuclear technology, despite the Saudis having been involved in terrorism and brutality while the Iranians have not.

Both Trump and Netanyahu are facing electoral defeat at home, and both are planning either to cancel elections or to cheat to win. Both plan to defy their supreme courts if necessary. Both face severe consequences if they lose. Netanyahu would probably be jailed for corruption, and Trump would likely be impeached and convicted by a Congress that’s absolutely sick of him and the horrendous damage he’s done to the country. The empire is failing. The US is drowning in debt and run as an oligarchic casino, with no regard for the plight of its people. Israel is tearing itself apart in a mass formation. The European vassal super-state is increasingly authoritarian and is on the verge of economic collapse due to the loss of its energy supply. The Asian vassals states of Japan and South Korea are sick of American domination. They’re ultimately likely to decide that their future lies with the Russia-China-Iran axis. The empire’s eventual collapse will lead to a very messy, and bloody, interregnem. Brace for impact.

The US has become an oligarchy run by the donor class and lobbyists for Big Capital for their own profit. The opinions of the population no longer count when almost every member of Congress is bought and paid for. Votes no longer count when continuity of agenda guarantees that the same policies will be pursued no matter who takes office. Only the branding changes. The SCOTUS decision in Citizens United declared political donations to be ‘speech’, meaning that they could not be regulated because that would constitute suppression of free speech. Of course the actual speech of ordinary people is being increasingly suppressed all the time, but the big players can do as they please. This means elections are now purchased, not legitimately won. Conflicts of interest are everywhere, and are allowed to persist. Industries write their own regulatory frameworks, and there is a revolving door between industry and government, ensuring maximum freedom for industries and maximum payoffs for the individuals supposedly charged with regulating them. The concept of ethics has been completely discarded.

One of the most influential lobbies is AIPAC, which pays off most of Congress, and will dump huge amounts of money into political races to ensure that the ‘right’ person is elected, namely someone who will prioritise the interests of Israel above those of their own constituents and their own country. This is why Benjamin Netanyahu, in mid-genocide, can visit the US and receive over 50 standing ovations in Congress. Official criticism of Israel is forbidden, no matter what it does. In some states, public employees are forced to sign a declaration of support for Israel and promise not to criticise or boycott it as a condition of employment. Support for the Palestinians is not only condemned, but frequently criminalised. Strong sanctions are applied to international critics, such as the members of the International Criminal Court who brought crimes against humanity charges against Netanyahu and his defence minister, and against UN human rights spokesperson Francesca Albanese. The people who voted for America first are now sorely disappointed, as the interests of their own country are fully subordinated.

The most egregious example of Israel first is clause 219 of the National Defence Authorisation Act (NDAA), which merges the US and Israeli militaries, enshrining the right of Israel to all US military technology. A further addition by Senator Tom Cotton, section 1217, would also grant Israel access to all American intelligence. This bill, which has just been approved by the House, legalises and institutionalises the actions of former Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, who stole military secrets and passed them on to Israel, which then sold them on to the Soviet Union. Pollard had been convicted to a long prison sentence for espionage, but was pardoned by Trump and allowed to return to Israel, where he was received as a national hero and is now running for a seat in the Knesset. The Senate will now vote on the NDAA, and is expected to pass it.

The American people have become increasingly aware of Israel’s genocidal activites, and have become increasingly opposed to supporting it. This makes it politically awkward for Congress to vote every year, or more often, to send more money and weapons to Israel. Section 219 of the NDAA gets around this by removing the need for a vote and instituting a presumption that the supply will continue. It nominates an executive agent to decide all issues relating to Israel, and this person can only be overruled by the President or the Secretary of Defence, both of whom currently are arch zionists. This has been described as treason by many informed commentators. The US is handing over its sovereignty on a silver platter. Unfortunately the US is not the country is once was. It has long since morphed into an empire and now under Trump a mafia state coveting the world’s resources, practicing global extortion, and attempting to exert monopoly control over the whole world as a rentier state. It steals and kills with impunity. This kind of rampant corruption, degradation, and degeneracy is characteristic of late stage empire. Once it finally falls to overreach, as empires always do eventually, the interregnem will be violent and chaotic. Hopefully humanity will survive the period.