You can't bomb peace into submission

A rude awakening to the beginning of WW III

I had just woken up at 05h30 to get ready for my last game drive at a private lodge in the Klaserie Game Reserve adjoining Kruger before returning home to Johannesburg.

The night before had been hectic: crashing through dense bush in an open game drive vehicle as we pursued two wild dogs chasing a leopard. The leopard got away. The wild dogs vanished. So we went to find a lion (one of the four Birmingham Pride brothers).

My phone gave me the bad news. Trump just unilaterally had decided to drop huge bombs on Iran. I hadn’t even had a cup of black coffee yet, and here World War III had started! No fanfare, no Declaration of War, no adherence to any of the laws that govern us as nations, as peoples, or as a global community

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Picture ex-Aljazeera.

I quickly scanned the various news items as I drank my coffee. Trump said he used B-2 Stealth long-range strategic bombers to “obliterate” Iran’s nuclear facilities at Fordow with GBU-57 super-bunker-busting 30 000kg bombs (that allegedly can penetrate only about 50m). US submarines had launched Tomahawk missiles at the other two sites, Natanz and Esfahan.

Iran denied the Fordow nuclear site was seriously damaged. An MP from the province contradicted Trump’s claim that the Fordow, Natanz and Esfahan nuclear sites were “completely and totally obliterated”. Iran’s nuclear facilities are much deeper than 50m, and are around 90m deep under the mountain. Iranian authorities said they had evacuated the three facilities before the strikes.

Iran’s Center for the National Nuclear Safety System also said emergency inspections at the targeted sites had found no signs of radioactive contamination or leaks. The International Atomic Energy Agency also confirmed no increase in radiation levels.

This bombing, Trump claimed, will force Iran back to the negotiating table, but no self-respecting sovereign country will suffer an act of war without retaliation.

Trump’s “successful operation” is just propaganda, bullshit and lies.

Trump has learned nothing from the more than 30 North American bombings of sovereign states since WW II ended in 1945. Vietnam, Cuba and Afghanistan are three of the best examples of failed US bombing campaigns. People resist.

The USA has not won a war since 1945. All they have ever done is kill millions of people in continued attempts at global jackboot domination, imperial theft of resources and “regime change” of US “enemies“ (what has been called “naked capitalism”). The United States of America is the world’s real enemy and biggest threat to global peace. They behave with impunity, just like Israel.

And as we headed out into the cold dawn air to look for predators and elephants, my mind boggled at the crass stupidity of Trump and his coterie of advisors and yes-men. An Emperor with No Clothes. No predator in the wild would ever be so reckless.

The real elephant in the room is Netanyahu, who manipulates US foreign policy for his own personal gain (he is desperately avoiding his corruption trial by starting new wars, and trying to drag the USA into them). The world’s politicians remain largely silent and complicit, although tens of millions of ordinary people have protested Israel’s continued genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank, as well as the strikes in Syria and Lebanon

Picture courtesy of Aljazeera.

Trump’s geopolitical gamble is highly dangerous. No-one has ever won a war with bombs alone, boots on the ground are always required. For Trump to threaten Iran further with attacks if they do not comply and return to negotiations is folly.

Was this a faux bombing to provide the US with an off-ramp from the conflict? Some reports suggest the Swiss informed Iran daeir ys prior to the bombing and that Iran had a chance to reinforce their defences before the attack.

In any event, the trap for Trump is this: if Iran targets US assets, America will be pulled into a military confrontation. If Tehran goes for a measured response, Netanyahu and his Washington neo-con hyenas will try to pressure Trump to “finish off a weakened regime”. It would be smarter to retaliate just against Israel, the cause of all the trouble, and it seems this is what Iran is doing.

The rest of the so-called West, meanwhile, continues to bleat weakly about going back to the negotiating table. Iran has said hostilities must cease before that happens. You don’t commit an illegal and unilateral act of war against a sovereign nation and expect them to meekly bow before Trump. This is Trump’s fantasy. The idea mooted by Pakistan, that Trump gets the Nobel Peace Prize, is also a stupendous mistake. Pakistan also suggested it would give Iran nuclear weapons.

Iran has many more missiles (and production facilities and output) than Israel and had proven to break Israeli air defences. Iran has already launched around 20 missiles, and big impacts were apparently reported from Tel Aviv and Haifa.

The Iranian response is going to be much more devastating in the coming days and weeks. Israel fudges and under-reports casualties and damage from Iranian missile strikes, and prevents media verification. They will do so again.

The Al Quds Network quoted the Iranian Revolutionary Guard: “For us, the war has just begun.” Trump’s believes that sending a message that the USA is “not seeking regime change” will fool Iranians into believing that the Americans can be trusted. Nothing is further from the truth. Iran’s response to Trump and America is as follows: “Trump, you started it. We will end it.” This will be a bitter contest, and likely to involve many other players.

Early on Sunday, Iran's foreign ministry warned that Tehran "considers it its right to resist with all its might against US military aggression."

Australia is already mobilising troops to deploy in the Middle East, sucking up to Trump like the lap-dog they are. The Russian naval fleet is on the move to the Middle East. Russia’s deadliest nuclear bomber is just 400 miles from US airspace.

Is the plan to draw Russia and China into a Middle East morass of war to weaken them? The Strait of Hormuz is closed. The Houthis in Yemen have blocked Red Sea traffic. The situation will evolve rapidly.

The West perceives a willingness to negotiate and a refusal to submit, so it responds with force, not diplomacy. This is the true face of Western imperialism.

If Pakistan gives nukes to Iran, India is likely to be drawn in against Pakistan. China has said it will help Iran, but for now is not doing anything except watch and prepare.

Russia is already involved in a war against the West as it tightens the noose around Ukraine. Already on a war footing, could it survive another war in the Middle East?

Fortunately, both Europe and the MAGA crowd are divided. The enemy within. The Anti-war protests have broken out all over the USA and steps are being considered against Trump for unilaterally starting a war without approval from Congress. Soon the Europeans are going to have to chose sides, either to be with history and against genocide and illegal wars, or sucked into a global conflict that Netanyahu has engineered in the Middle East.

If they choose the latter, Europe will fall inevitably with the crumbling American Empire. Questions remain: What is going to happen to the oil price? Is America’s debt going to cause a global depression and end the dollar as the world’s reserve currency?

Can Trump survive his term, will the USA descend into civil war? And what will Africa do? It seems that a major e re-organisation of global politics and institutions will be required, in which the UN and its organisations should be re-created anew and offshore from the US, with proper teeth, and an expanded BRICS will assume dominance. But all this will take years and in the meantime, we have war to deal with, not to mention a failure of conventional economics.

As Lenin asked so pertinently so long ago: “What is to be done?”