Frederick Deknatel

Epic Fury • EQUATOR The adoration of force has become the West’s ruling passion

"In refusing to articulate any coherent rationale for launching what has now become a regional conflict, with consequences too vast to calculate, Trump and Netanyahu have sent a clear message: they acted because they could." @equatormag.bsky.social on the adoration of force, intoxicated by impunity:

The Iran War Has Exposed the Gulf's Bet on U.S. Protection Voices across the Gulf express fear and anguish over a war that has turned supposed U.S. security guarantees into liabilities.

“U.S. military bases in the Gulf, long presented as guarantors of security, have revealed themselves as liabilities.”

@miraalhussein.bsky.social on reactions in the Gulf to the Iran war, which has exposed a bet on U.S. protection. @theconversation.com www.hidden-cities.com/p/the-iran-w...

9 days in, the most basic question about the Iran war remains unanswered In just over a week, Trump and top administration officials have given at least 17 different responses about why the war began

WE STILL DON'T HAVE A CLEAR ANSWER ON THE MOST BASIC QUESTION ABOUT THE IRAN WAR

WHY did the U.S. go to war?

A Popular Information review of public statements over the last 9 days found 17 DIFFERENT EXPLAINATIONS. Many of which contradict each other.

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Iran says US wants to ‘partition country, take oil’ as prices skyrocket Iran's military and political leaders pledge allegiance to Mojtaba Khamenei as US-Israeli attacks continue.

“If the war lasts longer than several weeks, if the price of oil shoots higher than $150 per barrel and we see inflation picks up a lot, then we’ll see a situation similar to the 1973 oil shock,” Nobel prize-winning economist Philippe Aghion said on RTL radio.

aje.news/a49wlz aje.news/a49wl

Oh look, the president is quietly very mad at Netanyahu, I wonder if he’ll do anything… 🧐

I’m briefly in India. This is a facile observation, but Americans have barely scratched the surface in understanding how the rest of the world is reacting to this war. It’s already an Iraq War-style disaster in the global imagination, underscored by the thuggishness and caprice of the Trump approach

The globalist climate agenda and green new scam in action.

someone at the pentagon frantically typing “Claude, open the strait of Hormuz for me, quickest possible strategy, make no mistakes.”

Netanyahu may be attempting to make sure Trump can’t chicken out and end the war to lower gas prices. Shoot the hostage, basically. Of course it also advances the goal of destroying Iranian economy and society.

The consequences of this war for Americans will be bleak and take decades to unfold, but it will impoverish and provincialize them in ways that would have been unimaginable ten years ago

Rabobank on the unfolding worst case scenario:

“We are looking at what is by far the biggest disruption in world history in terms of daily oil production,” said energy historian Daniel Yergin. “If it goes on for weeks, it will reverberate across the global economy.”

Good thing Trump is talking about a weeks-long war that’s just getting started.

The Long-Feared Persian Gulf Oil Squeeze Is Upon Us Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has ground to a virtual halt, unleashing the most severe energy crisis since the 1970s.

“In the whole written history of the strait, it has never been closed, ever,” said JPMorgan Chase analyst Natasha Kaneva. “To me, it was not just the worst-case scenario. It was an unthinkable scenario.”

They said it couldn’t be done, but Trump did it.

www.wsj.com/world/middle...

“This is not Iraq,” but the ground invasion to seize the WMDs is awaiting their orders.

Coming up with new ways to commit war crimes with each war.

There are probably ads for these hats running on Fox News, where they are running old clips, state TV-style, to hide the fact that Trump wore this hat when the bodies of the first American soldiers killed in his war came home. bsky.app/profile/atru...

Support the troops and honor the dead with your Trump 45-47 hat, only $55.00 plus shopping and handling. This is the cost of freedom.

Iran’s president apologises to Gulf nations; Trump threatens further strikes – Middle East crisis live Masoud Pezeshkian says no more attacks against neighbouring countries unless they were the source of an attack on Iran

www.theguardian.com/world/live/2...

It doesn’t sound like Iran’s president and the IRGC are exactly on the same page.

“If the armed forces believe countries simply providing land, in terms of bases, remain legitimate targets, then effectively nothing has changed since there are US bases in almost every Gulf State.”

All these Trump officials sound more and more like Bush officials circa 2003.

It's really unfair to compare this to Iraq in 2003, at least then they had the decency to put some effort into their lies and deception.

Reuters: "US military investigators believe it is likely US forces were responsible for an apparent ​strike on an Iranian girls' school that killed scores of children.... the strike would rank among the worst cases of civilian casualties in decades of US conflicts in ​the Middle East."

They're cramming years worth of shifting justifications for the Iraq War into a short week.

Trump demands Iran's 'unconditional surrender' as Israel says it hit leadership bunker 'with 50 jets' Tehran residents tell BBC Persian

In just six days we’ve gone from “Iranians take over your country” to “we’re open to talking with the new leadership of the regime” to “I want to pick the new leader” to now “unconditional surrender”.

A “concept of a plan”, indeed.

www.bbc.com/news/live/ce...

When Brent hits $100, is the Trump administration going to arm Baloch separatists in Iran along with Kurdish militias, since that will definitely bring this war to an end?

The United States Could Lose the Gulf Iran’s attacks on its neighbors are a reminder that the United States cannot protect them.

“Iran has, for the first time, shattered the illusions of Gulf citizens about their immunity from regional politics… and brought them firmly, and likely permanently, back into geographical reality.“

@abuaardvark.bsky.social on Iran’s Gulf retaliation and the hollowness of US security guarantees:

The predictable regional fallout has begun from America's reckless war of choice against Iran.

New roundtable from @tcambanis.bsky.social @peterjsalisbury.bsky.social @sajadjiyad.bsky.social @yaelmiz.bsky.social @abujamajem.com

tcf.org/content/comm...

The “stronghold” is a densely populated and mostly poor urban neighborhood.

Analysis Suggests School Was Hit Amid U.S. Strikes on Iranian Naval Base

What Hegseth meant by “no stupid rules of engagement”:

“a security analyst who served in the USAF and was a senior adviser on civilian harm at the Pentagon reviewed the new satellite images and concluded all the buildings, including the school, had been hit with ‘picture perfect’ target strikes.”