The United States and Israel are both revelling in inflicting the maximum possible death and suffering on Iran. After the genocide in Gaza, on a far larger field in Iran, those in power in Israel and the USA have a lust to kill and they revel in impunity.

The Epstein files reveal the same dynamic. We live in a society where those who obtain power wish to exercise it in the cruellest possible ways against the most defenceless. It appears to be a feature of late Western capitalist society, where sociopathic tendencies are essential to obtaining power, in a society which rejects altruism and cooperation as concepts and promotes competition, self-love and ruthlessness.

Iran is showing commendable fighting spirit, but as my last article stated, American military power should not be underestimated. They have the ability to destroy Iran from the air, to obliterate the institutions of the state and all of the key civilian infrastructure. Electricity, water, healthcare, education, administration, policing all can be knocked out just as they were systematically in Gaza and – on a scale insufficiently recalled – in Iraq.

Trump is already asking Congress for $50 billion to fund the operation and replenish stocks. The scale of destruction Netanyahu envisages will cost at least half a trillion dollars from the US Treasury. But there is nothing that can stop them.

I witnessed close up over five months the 80 to 100,000 homes destroyed in Lebanon by Israel in the last three years. We have all seen what they did to Gaza. The notion they cannot do this to Iran is simply wrong. It requires a colossal effort of will, a mania for killing, a vast amount of money and the depletion of the US arsenal. But they can do it.

Only political action by the peoples of the West against their leaders can stop it.

Iran and its allies have been the only physical opposition to the creation of Greater Israel. If the physical destruction of Iran is achieved, Greater Israel will be established at pace. One of the world’s greatest civilisations will lie in ashes, covering millions of corpses, but none of that will prevent the extraction of oil.

Pete Hegseth, American Secretary for War, simply comes over as a Nazi thug. He plainly is enjoying this as much as Netanyahu, Ben Gvir or Smotrich. He has gloatingly promised “Death and destruction from the sky, all day long”. He repeatedly signals ever-escalating bombing.

The Iranian Red Crescent has listed the bombing destruction so far. It includes:

• 5,535 civilian residential units
• 1,041 commercial units
• 65 schools
• 14 hospitals and medical centres
• 13 Red Crescent Society bases

By contrast, there has been no credible claim that Iran has inflicted widespread civilian damage. It has very tightly targeted specific facilities – collateral damage seems almost entirely confined to debris from intercepted drones and missiles.

But we know the US/Israel axis targets hospitals and medical facilities. It is proven beyond doubt in Gaza, and I witnessed it in Beirut.

In gloating about US military superiority, Trump advised Iranian civilians:

“Don’t leave your home. It’s very dangerous outside. Bombs will be dropping everywhere.”

Yet they are deliberately bombing residential buildings, exactly as in both Lebanon and Gaza. Trump is attempting to terrorise Iran into “unconditional surrender”.

At the Battle of Waterloo – an epic, large-scale and unmissable event – approximately 15,000 people died on the field of battle (more died later of wounds in an age before antibiotics). You are supposed to believe that the Iranian government in January killed twice as many demonstrators as died at Waterloo. This using only small arms and despite the complete lack of visual evidence of killing on anything like that scale.

At the same time you are supposed to believe that tens of thousands of tonnes of the highest explosives have been dropped into the centre of cities all across Iran but that these are “precision attacks” killing very few civilians.

It is obvious nonsense.

AI targeting only adds a new layer of dystopia to an entirely vicious and unnecessary war. The indifference of the Western media to the slaughter of 160 Iranian schoolgirls leads to really difficult questions about the type of society the West has become. Racism is just the beginning of the problems.

The effort to coerce the Kurds into yet again fighting for the USA, only to be abandoned when no longer deemed helpful, is reckless in the extreme. It is bound to lead to further war and fragmentation in Iraq. The repercussions in Turkey are potentially extreme – and possibly may jolt Erdoğan from his complacent furthering of the US/Israeli agenda.

Civil war is close in Lebanon. The traitorous Zionist regime of General Aoun has no forces capable of taking on Hezbollah; but the other Zionist puppet al-Jolani has concentrated forces on the border with the Bekaa Valley ready to attack Hezbollah from the East while they fight Israeli invading forces in the South. Macron has indicated he may send troops and armour to assist Aoun.

This entire conflict sounds like a dreadful regional disaster in which millions could die – and it is. But to the US and Israeli Zionists, the prospect of a devastated region is precisely what they wish to achieve to facilitate Israeli expansion and American seizure of resources.

There is an urgent need for regime change – in the West. The only way for this carnage to stop is for the people of the West to remove their Zionist-controlled ruling classes.

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