John Mearsheimer: The Tag Team Fails in Iran

The Tag Team Fails in Iran 

JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER

JAN 20, 2026

From John Mearsheimer's substack

The mainstream media in the West is committed to portraying the protests in Iran as strictly an internal affair. The people of Iran, so the argument goes, spontaneously rose up against their government because they were in desperate straits due to their leaders’ corruption and mismanagement of the economy, as well as their oppressive policies. Virtually all the protestors in this story were peaceful, but their protests were met with government violence. Outside forces had little to do with causing the protests.

This interpretation of what happened in Iran is wrong and contradicted by an abundance of evidence. None of this is to deny that there were many peaceful protestors who had legitimate grievances against the government, but that is only part of the story.

If fact, what happened in Iran is an attempt by the Israeli & American tag team to overthrow the government in Tehran and break apart Iran, much the way the US, Turkey, and Israel fractured Syria. The playbook in Iran is one we have seen before. It has four elements.

First, the US has long been working to wreck the Iranian economy with sanctions. Indeed, President Trump redoubled those efforts after moving into the White House last January (2025). His aim was to bring “maximum pressure” to bear on Iran’s economy and he did just that. There is no question that Iran’s leaders mismanaged their economy in certain ways, but Western sanctions did far more damage than government ineptitude. The ultimate goal of the sanctions, of course, is to inflict so much pain and punishment on the Iranian people that they rise up and overthrow their government.

Second, the tag team went to work in late December 2025 to foment and support violent protests that would precipitate a violent government response, which would hopefully set off a spiral of violence that the government could not control. To be more specific, there is clear evidence that Mossad agents were on the ground in Iran and surely there were CIA operatives working alongside them. They worked closely with local agitators — the rioters who were bent on destruction and assassination — to turn the peaceful protests into violent protests, which would then lead the government to turn to violence. There is abundant video footage of the agitators at work.

Moreover, the tag team sent many thousands of Starlink terminals into Iran before the protests began. Should the government shut down the internet and the phone system – as expected – the Starlink terminals would allow the protestors to communicate among themselves and with the outside forces helping them.

Unsurprisingly, Trump was cheering on the protestors, saying on 13 January 2026: “Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING - TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!!... HELP IS ON ITS WAY.” Trump’s first CIA director, Mike Pompeo, said on 2 January 2026: “Happy New Year to every Iranian in the streets. Also, to every Mossad agent walking beside them.” And just as the protests were beginning in late December 2025, Mossad sent a message in Farsi to Iranians saying: “Go out together into the streets. The time has come. We are with you. Not only from a distance and verbally. We are with you in the field.”

Third, the Western media played along with the tag team and purveyed the story that the protests were principally a response to the policies of an evil government in Tehran, not because of outside interference. Moreover, the protests were peaceful and it was the government that initiated the violence. Naturally, Israel and the US were portrayed as the good guys. This propaganda was not only designed to win over support for the protests in the West, but also to influence events inside Iran by fostering the narrative that the regime was brutal in the extreme, yet the protestors were destined to topple the government.

Fourth, the US military (and maybe the Israeli military) was primed to attack Iran once the protests had reached critical mass, finishing off the regime and creating chaos in Iran that would hopefully break the country apart.

But the strategy failed, mainly because the Iranian government was able to shut down the protests quickly and decisively. A key element in the government’s success was shutting down Starlink, which made it extremely difficult for the protestors to communicate with each other and the outside world. Once that happened, the protests were doomed and both Prime Minister Netanyahu and Trump understood that the tag team could not use military force to deliver the coup de gras. The Iranian regime had survived.

In short, the tag team’s regime change campaign failed. Israel and the US lost this round to Iran. Of course, the results are unlikely to be portrayed this way in the Israeli or Western media.

These recent events have relevance for the 12-Day war between Iran and the tag team that took place 13-24 June 2025. That conflict is usually portrayed in the West as a great victory for Israel and the US. However, that is not an accurate description of the outcome of that earlier conflict. It was Israel more than Iran that wanted to end the 12-Day war, because Israel was burning through its inventory of defensive missiles while Iran was becoming increasingly adept at using its large inventory of ballistic and cruise missiles to pound Israel. In fact, some argued at the time that Iran should not have agreed to a ceasefire, because it was gaining the upper hand over Israel. That outcome does not look like an Israeli victory to me.

Relatedly, it is apparent from news stories in the West and from Israel itself that Netanyahu asked Trump not to bomb Iran last week (14 January 2026) because he feared that Israel did not have sufficient forces to defend itself from an Iranian counterattack. In other words, Israel is as exposed today to Iran’s missiles as it was when the fighting stopped on 24 June 2025. This is more evidence that Israel did not triumph over Iran in the 12-Day war or in the recent attempt at regime change.

A final point on the 12-Day war. One might argue that although Israel got the short end of the stick in its direct engagement with Iran, the US attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities on 22 June 2025 was a resounding success, which carried the day for both members of the tag team. Trump, after all, claimed that the US military had “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear facilities. The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) disagreed shortly after the attack, assessing that that it had not obliterated Iran’s nuclear program, but instead had set it back by only a few months. Trump and his allies trashed the DIA’s assessment and that was the last we heard from that intelligence organization about the effects of the US strike.

I find it curious that there is virtually no meaningful information in the public record about what the US attack on 22 June 2025 did to Iran’s nuclear infrastructure – especially its installations that enrich uranium – as well as the 400 kilograms of uranium that Iran had enriched to 60 percent. One would think that if everything had been destroyed, as the president claims, the tag team would be advertising that fact and backing up its claims with at least some data. Moreover, one wonders why the tag team is so anxious to attack Iran again if a stunning victory was achieved in the 12-Day war. One also ponders what Iran is doing these days in terms of developing or repairing its nuclear enrichment facilities. These are especially important matters because what the tag team has done to Iran – and is likely to continue doing – gives Iranian leaders a powerful incentive to acquire a nuclear deterrent.

The bottom line is two-fold: 1) the tag team failed to overthrow the regime in Iran, although it surely has not given up on that goal; and 2) there is good reason to think that Israel and the US did not win the12-Day war.

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Iran: the Spark of Revolution?

 Republished from the UK socialist website Left Horizons

Iran: the spark of revolution?

13 January 2026

By: Umar Shahid

History teaches that revolutions erupt not when oppression is at its peak, but when the ruling power reveals its brittleness. For Iranians, that moment is now. Following a devastating 12-day war with Israel that shattered the myth of an impregnable regime, and facing an economy in freefall, the state is at its most vulnerable.

The start of 2026 proved to be turbulent times for the Iranian regime hit by fresh protests. This time traders and merchants were playing a major role, although it has been joined by workers, youth and students. The protests ignited in December, when the Iranian rial hit a record low of approximately 1.45 million to the US dollar.

Spiralling inflation (nearly 50%), soaring food prices, and severe energy shortages including water and electricity cuts, initially drew shopkeepers and merchants from Tehran’s Grand Bazaar into the streets. Their demands were a for a stable exchange rate, inflation control, predictable economic activities and the prevention of losses caused by market fluctuations were overtaken by wider demands.

Initially, contrary to usual practice of concealing protests, the government media outlets covered these gatherings, while blurring the faces of protestors, calling them “just protests”. This has been done by the same regime which always attributes the protests of the working class to rioters and conspiracies.

The reason for this is clear, these markets and bazaars have traditionally been considered one of the regime’s main social bases, but no longer. As these lines are being written, protests are spreading to multiple universities.

Students from Tehran University, Sharif University of Technology, Khajeh Nasir Toosi University, Shahid Beheshti University, Amirkabir University, Tabataba’i University, Isfahan University of Technology and Yazd University have joined  in the protests which have spread to different parts of Iran.

Conflicting interests

At their core, these are two very different kinds of unrest. The shopkeepers and small business owners were frustrated by the economic crisis, but their goal is not to overthrow the system but to save it. They needed ‘stability’ to survive and earn profits.

The protesting workers, on the other hand, are calling for a fundamental change to the system itself. In the current situation, when the majority of people are bowing their backs under the pressure on their livelihoods, the protest of the bazaars becomes part of the general cry against the ruling neoliberal, rentier, and corrupt economy.

On the other hand, we should not fall into illusions. The interests of the bazaars are not necessarily aligned with those of the workers and the lower classes. We have seen how the mobilisation of the ‘guilds’ affiliated with the government tried to control and limit the path of the protest.

The working class will get no benefit from siding with any factions that aim to restore the capitalist system. As soon as this layer of the better-off middle class achieves its own interests, it will betray the people’s movement and once again compromise with the state.

Historically, we saw the same thing in the 1979 revolution. Even though there were reports of clashes, the merchants’ protest is more of a controlled, specific warning to the government. Their message was essentially, “Fix this, or we’re going under.” It was less a revolution and more a ‘wake-up call’ from a group that usually supports the state.

The government’s reaction proved this. They quickly fired the head of the Central Bank and had the Revolutionary Guards step in to calm the markets—they were making adjustments, not facing down an existential threat. This was unlike the earlier uprisings that directly challenged the regime’s foundation. The 2004 protest wanted better management within the existing rules, though that could change if their demands keep getting ignored.

Internal contradictions within the regime

The internal contradictions of the Iranian ruling state are at their peak. On one hand, President Masoud Pezeshkian says that the Interior Minister should listen to the protesters’ demands. On the other hand, institutions affiliated with the Supreme Leader (such as Tasnim) and other circles are labelling the public protests as a ‘conspiracy by enemies.’

This contradiction is a sign that a deep rift has formed in the ruling class alliance. However, this exists only because different segments of the ruling elite are strategising on how to preserve their own power. Their real goal is to maintain the capitalist system based on the exploitation of the working class.

Not every protest is the same; its meaning and purpose are determined by the interests of the classes involved. To understand the current protests, it is necessary to analyse some past protests in this context:

• The 2017 workers’ and 2019 protests were an expression of the anger of the working class and the most deprived, which started with basic economic demands and escalated to calls for the complete overthrow of the Islamic Republic system. These movements were fundamentally progressive and revolutionary.
• The 2022 “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement was essentially a struggle by women and youth for individual freedoms and gender equality. Its biggest weakness was the lack of organised links with the working class, which limited its impact. Furthermore, it faced the risk of being hijacked by right-wing political groups (including monarchists).
• The 2025 protests were initiated by merchants and shopkeepers, primarily demanding economic stability for their businesses within the existing capitalist system. Although these protests are also against the government, their goal is not to overthrow the system but to seek reforms within it. Therefore, their purpose and class basis are fundamentally different from the workers’ protests.
• This initial protest has developed widely across Iran and has included far wider layers of workers, women and youth.

Protest movements have to be examined on the basis of which class interests are represented. A mere protest does not automatically qualify as progressive or revolutionary. The western media often paints any Iranian protest as the spark of a coming revolution, while some opposition groups, even on the left, get swept up in the moment without really looking at the class-basis of the struggle and the need for a working class strategy.

Despite all the differences within ruling elite, it is clear that they would be united in cracking down against protests by workers to preserve the capitalist system and authoritarianism. Yet the ruling clique are completely incapable of running the country.

Below the surface – and increasingly now rising to the surface – there is the thunderous voice of the Iranian masse,s echoing through the alleyways and rooftops. This opposition voice is a seething indictment of this decaying theocratic-bourgeois state.

The workers are trapped between the anvil of a draconian regime and the hammer of a catastrophic economic crisis. It is a crisis not of their making, but born from the rotten core of capitalist plunder and imperialist subjugation.

Yet, within this immense suffering lies the seed of it’s the regime’s destruction. The yearning for freedom is not an abstract wish, but a material force forged in the factories, the classrooms, and impoverished homes. Every protest, from the guild’s warning to the worker’s revolt, is a link in the great chain of history being pulled taut.

No betterment without smashing the state machinery

The regime has maneuvered by sacking ministers, deploying its Guards, but these are desperate attempts to rearrange the deck chairs on a sinking ship. The working class, the youth, and the oppressed women of Iran are the gravediggers of the old order.

Their struggle for bread, for dignity, for life itself, is inherently a political struggle for power. There can be no real “betterment” without the revolutionary overthrow of the entire oppressive edifice—without smashing the state machinery of the mullahs and the capitalists who prop them up.

In this perspective an important question emerges, is it possible to build an independent, class-based alternative in Iran that neither accepts the current authoritarian regime nor becomes a tool of any foreign belligerent power?

The answer to this question is yes, because the Iranian working class has potential to overthrow this regime. However, it is only possible through the organised power of the working class, pulling along other oppressed layers of society.

A leadership within the workers’ movement is all the more necessary with the threats of military attacks from the USA – attacks which are not aimed at establishing ‘democracy’ but are to divert attention from domestic US crises and to facilitate the right-wing opposition in Iran. Such threats coming from Trump have not underminedthe mullah’s regime, but actually serve to strengthen it, by turning Iranian workers’ attention away from corruption at home to the threat from US imperialism.

Genuine revolutionary change is only possible when, under the leadership of the working class, the movement of workers, the deprived, women, and other oppressed groups unite under an organised, class-conscious programme that guarantees political freedom, social justice, and national sovereignty

Opinion: Some Thoughts on the Situation in Iran

I am sharing this piece for readers interests. It covers a lot of the events in Iran since the overthrow of Mossadegh by a coup backed by the US and UK and the installation of the murderous regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. I am old enough to remember the protests in London against the Shah's regime by Iranian students and exiles. The Shah's secret police Savak was a notorious barbaric force that was known for its torture and killing even of families of dissidents abroad. The students most often wore masks or scarves to hide their identity for this reason. RM. Admin

Theo Horesh

The recent protests in Iran resulted from Israel’s deliberate attack on its infrastructure, which dealt a blow to its economy; the western reenactment of sanctions, which dealt an even bigger blow; and the coordinated social media campaign, bolstered by Israeli bots, of their former dictator’s son, who has been a steadfast supporter of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

 

Israel’s attack on infrastructure, and the sanctions carried out on its behalf, caused Iran’s currency to crash, and this led to the frustrations that made the protests possible. In this way, the protests were deliberately fomented by economic warfare against the people of Iran, whose lives are being destroyed by it. Thus, whatever their legitimate frustrations with the regime, protesters should blame Israel and the United States for their economic hardships.

 

But a would be king has channeled those frustrations with the help of the very same powers who lit their savings on fire.

 

The demonstrations have been coordinated by Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s former dictator. Pahlavi literally set the time for the initial protests on his social media accounts. “Long live the King,” “This is the last battle, Pahlavi will return,” and such calls for a dictator have constituted a substantial portion of the chants. Meanwhile, opinion polls suggest that support for the creation of a secular republic just barely outpaces calls for a constitutional monarchy, with support for both together totaling a little less than 50 percent across multiple opinion polls.

 

The calls for Pahlavi’s return are laughable given that he has never actually participated in Iranian politics, having left the country when he was just 18 at the time of the revolution. And he recently supported Israel’s attack on Iran, which devastated its infrastructure, paving the way for the protests he initiated. So, his commitment to the people of Iran is dubious at best. Meanwhile, his ties to Israel suggest they have helped him coordinate every dimension of the protests.

 

He met with Israeli officials shortly before the outbreak of the protests. They have advised him on taking back the country. They have coordinated a bot driven social media campaign to improve his image, according to Israel’s oldest newspaper, Haaretz. He was frequently seen with Sheldon Adelson, the biggest donor to pro-Israel American candidates, and frequently fundraises among wealthy Zionist donors. And just a few months ago on his Twitter account, Pahlavi announced an “Israeli partnership” for economic development, as reported in the Jerusalem Post.

 

All of this can be easily dredged up with abundant sources through pointed questioning of AI about his ties to Israel.

 

In a move that can only be compared with an American presidential candidate, with zero political experience, swimming in Russian and Chinese cash, calling on their oligarchs to donate to his political action committees, Pahlavi even called on Israelis to donate to Iranian causes within the country. But this isn’t really a fair comparison, because neither Russia nor China have recently attacked the United States. Nor have they destroyed its economy, as Israel and the United States have with Iran. And they have never installed a dictator in the US, as America did with Reza Pahlavi’s father in 1953, when it paid demonstrators to foment a coup against Iran’s democratically elected liberal prime minister, Mohamed Mosadegh, because he nationalized the country’s oil.

 

As a close ally of Israel, the Shah has been largely immune from serious criticism in the United States, where a virtual cottage industry dedicated to overthrowing the Islamic Republic has arisen. So, it is easy to get the impression that the so-called monarchy, which was removed from power in 1979, practiced a kind of enlightened liberalism, which granted greater personal freedom without the voting rights.

 

But the Shah’s human rights record was “the worst globally,” according to Amnesty International’s Secretary General in 1975—the worst, amid the Guatemalan Genocide, South African Apartheid, the Argentine Junta, which disappeared 30,000, and the Pinochet regime in Chile, which used to sew live rats into the vagina’s of women critical of the regime—all armed by Israel, as was Iran, incidentally.

 

Amnesty reported that the Shah had “the highest rate of death penalties in the world;” that he held 25,000 to 100,000 political prisoners, the highest per capita rate anywhere in the world; and that the torture practiced upon them was “beyond belief.” Compare that with the roughly 15,000 political prisoners today, in a population 2.8 times larger than in 1975, and it turns out that, if we take the midpoint of the Shah’s widely cited prisoner count, the per capita rate of imprisonment for political offenses under the Shah was 12 times greater than the current regime. Even if Amnesty’s typically conservative figures were a wild exaggeration, this could hardly be conceived of as a better climate for human rights.

 

While many of the current protesters are undoubtedly in the streets risking their lives for freedom, and while I have spent substantial time fighting for their freedom online, the facts suggest that the protests they are participating in are part of a coordinated foreign attack on their state—almost exactly like that of Pahlavi’s father, only more sophisticated and intense this time. The conditions for it have been carefully set by what is arguably the most Islamophobic state in the world and the most murderous regime of our time, operating through an agent who seeks to re-establish a notoriously savage dictatorship.

 

That may be all well and good to many who are out in the streets, but the United States shattered Libya and Iraq with far better intentions than anyone imagines Israel or Trump to possess. Never mind the fact that the Shah’s regime was renowned for being one of the most unequal in the world, that the diaspora monarchists fueling support for these protests spring from the elites of that regime, and that many could profit handsomely with a return to it. Never mind that elections for the weak presidency in Iran have been about as competitive as those in the United States, and that Iran is maintaining a critical balance of power, however slight, to the Nazis of our time in Israel, who in the last two years alone have invaded eight nations, stolen huge tracts of land from three, and committed genocide against one in what is increasingly the forgotten wasteland of G•za.

 

The Islamic Republic of Iran requires a complete overhaul to express the genuine aspirations of its people. But that is unlikely to come from the son of a dictator, backed by a state that would just as happily see all of his compatriots dead, just so they might more quickly move on to the next victim. And it is takes total naïveté to think that Netanyahu and Trump might initiate a democratic transition in Iran, when they have identified the dictator they need to end resistance to Israel.

 

Let us hope no more Iranians corrupt their cause by trying to make an ally of the devil, who would just as soon eat them for lunch.

 

America’s support for the genocide in Gaza under both major parties should serve as a reminder of its long history of destroying nations through its interventions—that is, if we have forgotten Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Guatemala, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Brazil, the Congo, Chile, and let us not forget Iran itself. But unlike Israel, the United States has also aided in the development of several states. Israel has never helped liberate another people, never helped them build a democratic state, never lifted a country out of poverty, and never stopped a civil war. The idea that such a rogue state would do so now for a people whose lives they have destroyed, through the sanctions that were enacted on their behalf, is simply absurd.

 

Iranians deserve better, and the last thing the world needs is another vicious dictator, who is happy to see the economy of his people destroyed, and to risk their lives in the attack of a sociopathic state, in alliance with the Third Reich of our time, just to grab the ring and wield his power with the killers of children.

 

~ Theo Horesh is the author of The Holocausts We All Deny: The Crisis Before the Fascist Inferno 

Maga Movement Implodes. Workers Have No Side in That Squabble

Richard Mellor

June 25, 2025

 

As the Maga movement implodes from within, workers have to think carefully before we align ourselves with nationalists like Tucker Carlson; remember, a broken  clock is right twice a day. What we are witnessing is a division, what is amounting to a chasm, opening up in the enemy camp. 

Workers have nothing in common with people like these opportunists who do no productive labor and are worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The idea of America first means American capitalism first, which has wrought death and destruction to working people and our communities throughout the world. Carlson's stance on Zionism, and Israel, is because the Zionist regime is becoming a serious threat to U.S. capitalism's influence and power in this vital area of the world at a time when its global dominance is being undermined by China. 

 

There is already a new rail link between China and Iran and this is a threat to U.S. capitalism as well. When the Western mass media, and the U.S. mass media in particular, talk of Chinese aggression, it is referring to being outcompeted by China economically, not physical aggression. You see, there is no such thing as fair trade or fair competition as the notices in trendy coffee shops love to claim when they advertise their coffee sources. Like so called religious tolerance, economic competition is only tolerated by the one leading the pack, the dominant power or religion in question. The pecking order must not be rearranged.

Israel is not serving U.S. capitalism’s interest anymore. So, after millions of deaths and total destruction in the region, the U.S. rogue regime is reconsidering its options.

Carlson's racism, xenophobia, and support of both capitalist parties at different times in his life has contributed to the decline of U.S. workers' living standards regardless of which one of the two parties were in power. His policies alienate U.S. workers from our brothers and sisters at home and throughout the world, making international solidarity and the building of a united global working class movement against the brutality of capitalism much harder. Whether it's American, Russian, or Chinese -- capitalism matters not.

Another issue of concern for working people is the issue of anti-Semitism, or hatred of Jews. This has become more complicated as the Zionist regime, supported by Jewish and Christian Zionists in the U.S. and Europe, equates Zionism with Judaism. Judaism is a religion, Zionism is a political formation, a form of Jewish extremism. All Germans weren’t Nazis and all Jews aren’t Zionists and those that are, are generally atheists. 

 

This weakening of the link between the U.S. and the Zionist regime that Carlson and now Megyn Kelly are contributing to, while a good thing, also has real dangers. Over time, I have warned some of my Jewish friends of the dangers of supporting the disastrous idea that the Zionist regime, and Israel, are the only guarantee against a repeat of the Nazi Holocaust; is the only safe haven for Jews in the face of antisemitism. This is a dangerous trap. The Zionist regime's existence, and present genocidal war against Gaza, is dependent entirely on U.S. capitalism and the generosity of the U.S. ruling class. 

 

But the U.S. ruling class's support for Israel has nothing to do with a fondness for Jews or their religion. The U.S. ruling class is rampant with anti-Semites, the Christian Zionist Evangelicals among them. I have always argued that if there was another regime in the area that was stable, and could be relied upon to defend U.S. interests there, Israel's support would vanish. We are seeing that develop in real time as the U.S. racist settler colony has, as one Israeli academic Ori Goldberg apparently said, gone rogue. 

Goldberg told 972 Magazine, “I’m not sure what the English equivalent is to the Hebrew expression להשתין מהמקפצה [“pissing from the diving board,” meaning acting brazenly], but Israel really is doing just that. It’s doing whatever the hell it wants, with absolutely no regard for anybody else’s interests. And that includes the United States. My added emphasis.

 

It's important to recognize that given the reality of the situation, and the continued crisis U.S. capitalism finds itself in, will inevitably result in increased attacks on the working class at home. Throwing billions of U.S. taxpayer funds at the Zionists has the potential to increase anti-semitism as millions of U.S. workers struggle to make ends meet.  Many Americans  receive food and/or medical care via credit cards and while the U.S. security state is running around grabbing people off the streets.  Anti-semites will blame Jews using Israel as a cover. What can counter this is a clear break from Zionism. This is why the prominence of young U.S. Jews in the forefront of the movement against Zionism, Israel, and the U.S. role in the Middle East is so important. 

 

To be honest, there’s nothing more repulsive than the guilt laden support for Jews and proclamations about the need to fight against anti-semitism from European states and leaders, like Starmer in Britain and Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European commission. 

 

After centuries of European violence and discrimination against Jews, from Jacob’s Tower in York to the concentration camps on the European continent that resulted in the Nazi Holocaust, European leaders were quite happy to export their “Jewish” problem and support the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. After all, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire left a vacuum that needed to be filled and there were many competitors. 

 

Palestine has historically been a place where Jews, Muslims, Christians, and people from various communities settled or passed through. It is that pathway between the African, Asian, and European continents. Even under Ottoman rule, Jews lived relatively well compared to their never-ending persecution in Europe.

 

It sounds a bit strange perhaps, but the sacrifices the Palestinian people have made, particularly in Gaza where as many as half a million of them may have been slaughtered by the Zionist regime backed by the U.S., has changed the world and introduced a new era. It is easy to criticize the Palestinian resistance, more specifically its leadership in Gaza, but the world will never be the same. The mask has been pulled off and revealed clearly the phony diplomacy of the U.S., the Europeans, and the Zionists and all the talk of two states and this or that agreement. The U.S. proxy has always had a policy of a greater Israel and the U.S. has always supported it. Billions of taxpayer money has been spent in phony talks as the Zionists stole more land, introduced more settlers, imprisoned more children, and destroyed more homes and farms.

 

Huge historical events shatter political parties, bring down regimes, and open new fronts in the struggle of humanity for freedom and a future without war. Revolutions that actually change the social system of production are very rare. But a change in the global system of production is what is necessary if the human species is to survive. If climate catastrophe doesn’t wipe our civilization out, nuclear conflagration can, and it cannot be ruled out in capitalism's end days.

 

But great lessons have been learned over the past 20 months and there will be those that draw the conclusion that we cannot sit idly by. It is inconceivable that there will not be huge movements ahead as the dust settles and young workers in particular draw these conclusions. The truth is that it is only the working class, those hundreds of millions of us that live off the fruits of our labor and the wages system, that can resolve the globe of a social system in decay.

 

The horrors in Palestine and the Middle East is a product of capitalism and can only be solved through the intervention of a united working class. Jews, Christians and Muslims have lived there peacefully in the past and can again. 

 

There is nothing radical about the slogan,“workers of the world unite,” except for the capitalist class and its supporters like Tucker Carlson and his ilk. Their "America" is not our America; we live in different worlds.

 

Yesterday, there was a very significant win for a left leaning candidate for mayor in New York City; it too is a product of the system’s decline. It is important but not the first time we have witnessed such an event. History teaches us that there is no way forward through this capitalist party and Mamdami, the victor, will have to confront that.

 

For a global federation of democratic socialist states.

The F-Bomb Presidency: Trump’s NATO Clown Show and Iran Strike Collapse

From Mary Geddry's Substack

As the whistleblowers come forward, the lies unravel, and the tantrums escalate, Trump’s foreign policy strategy boils down to one word: profanity.

MARY GEDDRY

JUN 25, 2025

Good morning! The NATO summit in The Hague was always going to be a spectacle, but even by Trump-era standards, this one delivered the full package: diplomatic isolation, policy incoherence, adolescent boasting, and of course, a 3 a.m. social media meltdown.

Trump arrived to a chorus of boos in the Netherlands, where European leaders had spent days quietly tightening their own alliances while preparing for the Trump Show to roll into town. Canada sealed a defense pact directly with the EU, a not-so-subtle way of saying, “We’ll handle our sovereignty ourselves, thank you.” And as the grown-ups huddled behind closed doors, Trump did his usual pirouette between self-congratulation and threats. When asked about NATO’s foundational Article 5 commitment to mutual defense, Trump replied, “There are numerous definitions of Article 5. You know that, right?” (For the record, there aren’t.) But later, standing beside Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof, Trump declared that he obviously supports Article 5, because, well, he showed up. Presidential leadership apparently boils down to attendance these days.

Then came the “historic” agreement: NATO leaders endorsed a plan to raise defense spending to 5% of GDP. Trump immediately declared victory, gushing that it was “tremendous.” Never mind that several countries are already grumbling about the sheer impossibility of hitting that number, that much of the new target is padded with creative accounting, or that they still haven’t fully met the previous 2% goal they agreed to more than a decade ago. But for Trump’s Instagram audience, facts are irrelevant and the crowd cheers, even if they aren’t.

Behind the pageantry, the Iran strike disaster keeps metastasizing. Trump’s bunker-buster bombing, which he insisted had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear sites, is now confirmed by multiple intelligence leaks to have done no such thing. Iran had moved much of its uranium stockpile in advance. Key centrifuges remain intact. Iran can likely restore the sites within months. Israeli intelligence has confirmed the same. Yet Trump, with his usual toddler-in-a-sandbox bravado, compared his Iran strike to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, declaring: “That hit ended the war.” No, it didn’t. The war is ongoing. Israel’s military openly acknowledges the campaign against Iran is far from over.

But none of this has deterred Trump’s fixation on his Nobel Peace Prize fantasy. The MAGA machine, Don Jr., Fox, Caroline Leavitt, and the usual gang, has been in full spin mode demanding that Trump be handed his peace prize immediately, preferably before anyone reads the intelligence reports. Trump’s own propagandists posted headlines quoting his own lies as proof of their truth. Iranian state media, meanwhile, is happily circulating propaganda videos of Trump “begging like a dog” before Ayatollah Khamenei. The optics, it’s safe to say, are not exactly projecting strength. Even the prize pursuit itself has become a miniature farce: Republican Rep. Buddy Carter dutifully nominated Trump for brokering his shaky Israel-Iran ceasefire, while on the same day, Ukrainian lawmaker Oleksandr Merezhko withdrew his prior nomination in disgust, citing Trump’s refusal to pressure Russia and his growing hostility toward Ukraine. The peace prize that once lived in Trump’s fever dreams is now dissolving in real time.Back in Washington, the cover-up machinery kicked into gear. 

Trump abruptly canceled a scheduled classified intelligence briefing for Congress, which would have forced his own officials to answer awkward questions about the strike’s actual results. The regime simply doesn’t want Congress, or the American public, looking too closely at the smoking crater that is Trump’s latest foreign policy disaster. After all, how can you hand out peace prizes if anyone is allowed to read the actual data?

Even MAGA loyalists can’t keep the lies straight anymore. Speaker Mike Johnson now admits “you can’t eliminate a nuclear program overnight”, which was literally what Trump claimed he had just done. Intelligence Committee loyalist Mike Turner tried to pretend that Trump never even said the sites were destroyed, despite the fact that Trump spent days screeching “obliterated” in all caps from his hotel suite in Europe. As Ron Filipkowski put it, “the firehose of lies is now so cartoonishly incoherent it borders on parody.” If only it weren’t playing out against the backdrop of nuclear diplomacy.

And then, as if on cue, came the real bombshell: a whistleblower complaint that could blow the roof off the entire operation. Arez Ruveni, a longtime DOJ attorney, has come forward with a 27-page filing alleging that Trump’s own Justice Department instructed staff to flat-out ignore federal court orders in the run-up to the mass deportations under the Alien Enemies Act. According to Ruveni, senior DOJ official Emil Bove, Trump’s former criminal defense lawyer and current nominee for a lifetime federal judgeship, told subordinates at a secret March meeting that judges should “go f*** off” if courts intervened. Bove will testify this week at his Third Circuit Court of Appeals confirmation hearing. The Senate may soon have the chance to elevate an attorney who openly suggested the Department of Justice defy judicial authority by force.

If you’re having trouble keeping up, you’re not alone. Between the NATO grift, the Iran debacle, the unraveling ceasefire, the whistleblower bombshell, the canceled intelligence briefings, and the increasingly unhinged late-night social media outbursts, we are watching in real time as a reality TV presidency collapses into pure farce. And through it all, the Trump regime has developed a remarkably consistent diplomatic language: if you can’t explain it, scream it; if you can’t spin it, swear at it. Court orders? “Go f*** off.” Foreign leaders? “They don’t know what the f*** they’re doing.” Reporters? “Gutless losers.” Allies? “You better f***ing pay up.” For an administration obsessed with projecting strength, they sure sound like a pack of flailing, red-faced tourists trapped in an airport meltdown. The tragedy, of course, is that the stakes aren’t fictional, even if the dialogue increasingly feels like bad improv.