Iran at STRANGE TIMES

Iran

Published

on January 3, 2026

. 91 Comments

The money is not working so the revolution is now ‘game on’! What a great start to the new year! The regime obviously can’t solve the problems…so the regime is doomed! Even their low life henchmen types can’t do anything with their pay! So, the fact that the jig is up is slowly beginning to dawn on them and this will spread quickly! It is now in US and western interests to ensure that the Iranian masses ‘drain this swamp’! How this unfolds is beyond any outsiders grasp but I am sure that Turkey will again be the most central Johnny on the spot! But as Mao said if there is to be a revolution then there must be a revolutionary army and there is not one yet and without a peoples army the people have nothing!

91 Responses to “Iran”

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1 Patrick Muldowney
January 8, 2026 at 9:40 am

The days roll on, and the regime is not yet able to prevent the spread of demonstrations let alone shrink the problem. Basics like bread are becoming the issue! Death to the regime is now a prominent chant. This is still preliminary rather than early stages of regime death yet.
2 Patrick Muldowney
January 9, 2026 at 10:21 am

The revolution to overthrow the clerics has clearly now begun and apparently will be televised! No going back now.
3 Patrick Muldowney
January 10, 2026 at 4:27 pm

Big news out of Turkey! Re Turkey, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia military alliance negotiation! That is a population of 370+ mil. It surrounds Iran and is Islamic in culture. It speaks to both the US and the rest of NATO, as well as Russia and Israel. (Syria is still in the news about the reintegration process re the SDF -PKK- in Aleppo.)

‘All political power, grows out of the barrel of a gun.’ and it now looks like the Iranian armed forces are cracking (otherwise the army would have been on the streets by now, so the slaughter and fightback is about to break out but with a split. What will the west led by Trump and Erdogan do? How will Europe show up?

The swamp will drain dramatically in 2026!
4 Patrick Muldowney
January 16, 2026 at 6:21 pm

The regime will be gone in weeks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_n1LYGGoy0

The Kurds are being protected and that will mean the US will be involved with a big air war!

The pseudoleft are about to disgrace themselves yet again.
5 Patrick Muldowney
January 29, 2026 at 11:16 am

The US military is still moving their units into place and developing their plan; but a big start to this now IMV inevitable war is not far away. My guess is now days or weeks rather than months. When it starts it has to be big and precise and it can’t then stop only for the regime to regroup. The ‘thunder run’ on Bagdad that saw the fall of the statue (following the longish air war period) is not quite the model but IS part of the background learnings of THE very fluid 2026 plan.

Anyhow the US will NOT be willing to do very much of the required ground fighting (and virtually none in cities) and they will get out of Iran ASAP. Yet a small number of forces supported by the US airpower could very well liberate the whole country and the Turks, Armenians, Kurds and all the rest ARE going to get involved (but only after the US has destroyed the Iranian big ‘stuff’) and a ground offensive becomes not only required but viable. So, I say a powerful and effectively ‘peoples’ army is on the way.

Very small intervention forces would make a very big impact simply because they would be liberating the vast majority (9-1) of the now angry -at the regime- masses and if the target is the hated regime forces (and that will be the systematic targets) liberation will quickly be seen to be the goal of any ‘thunder run’ rampages (from whatever friendly forces) essentially designed for cutting off any big communities and thus liberating them. Big ‘protest meetings’ will then become -like the Maidan events in Ukraine- big ‘town-hall’ meetings and a new revolutionary control will be established, and this process rapidly expand the revolutions writ.

This will be history making because about all that will be required is for largish cities to be cut off from the regime’s direct exterior control and the ‘protesters’ will then essentially liberate themselves as the rats that terrorized them are forced to run and get exposed to the US air power! So, they will run without their heavy stuff! A chessboard approach WILL then produce a cascading effect.

Roll on the democratic revolution. The ‘hands off’ ‘anti-imperialist’ brigade already has their placards prepared! As with Iraq and so on the revolution will come despite the pseudo-left and the other stability loving openly rightwing conservatives. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/4IwBAatbZmg

BTW Russia has just pulled out of their airbase in the SDF controlled northern region of Syria! That is a big signal of the bad leadership of the PKK. Whatever happened to Rojava? Assad fell and so did the prospects for the Rojava project.
6 Steve Owens
January 29, 2026 at 2:09 pm

Well you are nothing if not an optimist. The US has placed a large carrier in the Persian Gulf. It looks like the US will hit Iran with air assets and may decapitate the regimen but what then? Who is going to put troops on the ground? The anti regimen forces are large but unarmed. Somehow the pro regimen forces will need to be neutralised. These forces include the 340k strong Iranian Army, the 125k strong Islamic Revolutionary Guard and the 100k strong Popular Mobilisation Forces usually stationed in Iraq. So that’s half a million+ well armed battle hardened troops up against who?
History is against this new adventure being a success. The US put hundreds of thousands of troops on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq without much success. They put no troops into Libya and that was a disaster.
7 Steve Owens
January 29, 2026 at 7:28 pm

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn0kpk3drgjo
8 Patrick Muldowney
January 30, 2026 at 12:34 pm

Nice to hear your thoughts. You sound like the ghost of Mao with his line that ‘without a people’s army the people have nothing’ and I agree BUT if you read what I have said above US airpower is the key to the rise of that peoples army and thus a more rapid victory of this democratic revolution and that is what is unfolding.

My wild guess (and that is exactly what all this will be from me and most others not even operating with any coherent theory) is that the hated regime might have 1 out of 10 support in the population not including (for clarity double your realistic numbers) 1million armed forces. So, we can further agree that 1mil is the number that counts for the short term. They have murdered many thousands in the last few weeks and consequently pessimism has descended on the people and is rampant in the west notably among the ruling elites and their lying mass media and the pseudo-left.

However, IF war breaks out (up to Trump and no one else as it was with Putin in his later wars) with the US coming to the assistance as it were, then the Iranian central command and control, air forces and navy will be the 1st forces targeted and I think that will go on till their effective destruction. They will be out of the war.

The necessarily widely dispersed ground forces will break apart (I think we probably both agree on this) the only questions are to what extent and to what timetable. I don’t know the answers to either but the picture for that 2nd point will look very different to the current picture simply because of the 1st victory.

When those breaks begin to happen the pro revolution elements (whatever their size at first) will then stand (where they are) with the masses and then make contact with the US and receive not static air cover over that area, but air attack as they advance to agreed goals (the US big plan). This type of support could start say with the Peshmerga who will be involved out of Iraq, and the Kurdish regions of Iran will then fall to local control very quickly!

1 million regime troops may well turn into 800,000 V 200,000 as those who rebel join the revolution’s side and this might be quicker than even I might guess but however long it does take it won’t take 4 years and Ukraine, Syria, Libya and Iraq have reminded us that revolution requires us to ‘cast aside illusions and prepare for struggle’. However, that new number would be decisive with the addition of the last superpowers air power and logistics putting further war in favor of the now 1 v 4 odds.

So, I repeat.
‘Anyhow the US will NOT be willing to do very much of the required ground fighting (and virtually none in cities) and they will get out of Iran ASAP. Yet a small number of forces supported by the US airpower could very well liberate the whole country and the Turks, Armenians, Kurds and all the rest ARE going to get involved (but only after the US has destroyed the Iranian big ‘stuff’) and a ground offensive becomes not only required but viable. So, I say a powerful and effectively ‘peoples’ army is on the way.’

Those currently in control of the armed forces will eventually begin to run for their lives as increasing numbers of those that they command begin to desert and the jig is seen to be up. The regimes ‘die-hards’ will not be fighting step by step back to anything like the Berlin Bunker. A rot will IMV rapidly set in.

We are about to conclude the 4th year of the escalated Ukraine war. My 5-year prediction may well prove optimistic, but I am still hopeful. I do not think the Iranian revolution will take 5 years.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/4IwBAatbZmg

You should make some detailed comments on the article you have posted above without any. Then we might know what YOU think about the issues (and you could then hold yourself to account).

I will post on a Ukraine thread some links I use that you may already use or know of but if you have any others to add feel free to recommend your additions.
9 Patrick Muldowney
January 30, 2026 at 4:09 pm

Today everyone is talking but IMV no one really gets it especially the foreign policy elites and the pseudo-left that parrot the same guff in different bottles. What they get right is that war is now on the table.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GfXJXPIEsQ others are talking revolution.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZ7wE3XOwFU but what is the broader theoretical thinking?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rU2QPIwOQs 24hr deadline?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMFrrP0ilQw Piers Morgan
10 Patrick Muldowney
January 30, 2026 at 6:03 pm

I honestly hope this does not turn into the very big revolutionary war that I think it will, but only armed struggle could possibly end this theocratic fascist regime that is backed by China and Russia.

What I am confident about is that the genocide in Gaza and the continuing war for greater Israel is not going to escape peoples notice! Our western political, cultural and media elites are losing the youth.

‘for the times they are a changing’
11 Patrick Muldowney
January 31, 2026 at 9:48 am

We are indeed living in strange times https://www.youtube.com/shorts/LHICJ271mNo
12 Patrick Muldowney
January 31, 2026 at 12:51 pm

Sam Kiley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Kiley has made his views very clear. Why Iran is the wrong war for Trump to back. and I wonder how much of this Steve agrees with? https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/other/why-iran-is-the-wrong-war-for-trump-to-back/ar-AA1VjlIg?ocid=msedgntp&pc=U531&cvid=697d5bc3a6ea42bb897631a3eb3771f3&ei=26

I have to admit that the US could very well stuff this up, after all they are not led by the sharpest of tools. But the Iranian masses will have to press on with the revolution because there is no going back now.
13 Steve Owens
January 31, 2026 at 7:54 pm

I don’t want to appear rude but maybe the US has helped enough in Iran. In 1953 the CIA overthrew the democratic government in Iran. They then helped Iran by training and equipping Savak. The CIA has had a hand in the 1979 protests, the 1999 2003,2009, 2011, the 2016 Cyrus revolt the 2017, 2018,2021, 2022,2023,2025 and 2026 protests. Many of these protests have been stimulated by the US “maximum pressure campaign” Then there is operation Praying Mantis and Operation Nimble Archer along with the flight 655 tragedy. Add to this the murder of Soleimani who at the time was co ordinating the campaign against ISIL. Then there’s the bombing of the Iranian embassy in Syria by Israel and the joint bombing campaign last year. Given how much the US has helped the people of Iran do you ever think that maybe the way forward is to stop helping and just let the country run it’s course.
14 Steve Owens
January 31, 2026 at 10:46 pm

I listed 22 times where the US has interfered with the internal workings of Iran. Of the 22 it is hard to identify any that improved the situation for the people in Iran but that’s OK maybe 23 will be the charm. I should point out that my knowledge of Iran is a bit sketchy I counted 22 interventions but I’m sure anyone who has knowledge about Iran could point out a few more, just off the top of my head I could point to the policy of providing intel to both sides during the Iran/Iraq war because US foreign policy aimed at a stalemate but yeah who knows 23 might work out fine. How many people died in that war? Estimates start at 1,000,000 that’s some shit right there.
15 Patrick Muldowney
February 1, 2026 at 9:00 am

Curious why you have not mentioned the US British Australian etc and Soviet invasion and occupation of Iran in WW2. I would be interested in your views of this.
16 Steve Owens
February 1, 2026 at 9:06 am

There have been 13 massive protest movements in Iran and of course we support the right of the Iranian masses to free speech and free assembly but we need to be clear, protests are not likely to topple the regimen. History is clear on this. During July 1917 in Petrograd there were massive armed protests which rallied around Bolshevik slogans. Lenin’s advice to the protesters was “The Bolsheviks appealed to the soldiers who had started the demonstration to act peaceably and in an organised way.” Lenin collected works
17 Steve Owens
February 1, 2026 at 9:26 am

I am aware of but have not studied the British/Soviet occupation during WW2 but I am of the opinion that during war sovereignty of neutral states is often breached ie Nazis bombing Dublin, US bombing Switzerland, Churchill’s threat to Irish ports these things happen during war and the decisive factor is do you support or oppose the war. I assume that the British and Soviets decided that it was a necessary measure to defeat the Nazis so my immediate response without much information would be to support this. If you could prove that it was counter productive to the war effort then I would reverse that judgement.
18 Patrick Muldowney
February 1, 2026 at 9:27 am

I have already agreed with your views that all political power grows out of the barrel of a gun and thus the requirement for a people’s army – just like the free Syrian Army that developed and won in Syria (long after you declared the war lost as you will recall).

But what of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Soviet_invasion_of_Iran and occupation of Iran I am very interested what and how you think about it.
19 Patrick Muldowney
February 1, 2026 at 9:55 am

I don’t think you are a racist, so why were you so dismissive of invading the fascist powers Spain and Portugal and starting the second front much sooner? When the Soviets were being bled white the US sent millions of troops to Britain rather than fight fascists. Seems like a double standard.
20 Patrick Muldowney
February 1, 2026 at 10:10 am

Steve Owens, as his consistent policy choice, tries his level best to obfuscate on what i’m (a communist putting the maoist inspired ‘drain the swamp’ argument) is saying; he does not make any genuine attempts to elucidate on the issues that arise from that viewpoint but rather hides from these issues and return to the well known crimes of the great Satan and the above 2 comments January 31, 2026 at 7:54 pm January 31, 2026 at 10:46 pm demonstrate my point.

1/ It is well known by ALL anti imperialists / revolutionary democrats / progressives that the US over the years has had various policies that were rotten to the core, and that I have referred to every year since well before 1991 and the US led international COW war to liberate the country of Kuwait from the Iraqi Baathists and consequently, at least partially liberate, the people of that country. Below is the same old style by another pseudoleftist anti war activist who even thought herself a communist!

patrickm said July 9, 2008 at 10:02 am
What are we to make of the comments from LindaD on this thread? She is not able to conduct a rational debate with someone that she believes is wrong about the war in Iraq and instead resorts to insults and a pointless rant. Why is she listing the great Satan’s long list of crimes going back to the atom bombing of Japan in WW2? How can this long list of issues that we agree about, help her in making an argument about what we disagree about? It can’t, and the other eight people that have taken part in this thread know this.
So the question arises why the silence from them? They all ought to know that LindaD is not conducting herself in any manner that is appropriate for any communist. Her inability to deal with any point in a manner that even resembles an effort to seek truth from facts is right up front. Every point made by me against her position has simply been avoided.
People who have read this thread all know that my position is that the U.S. has had rotten to the core policies since WW2, and they all know that they have led to the actions that were pointlessly listed by Linda D. Yet they are silent while their comrade invalidly tackles her opponent by either deliberately or completely ignorantly implying that I think the former policies of the ‘realists’ such as that untried war criminal Kissinger were to be supported. They were not.
The ‘realists’ whole life’s work of propping up the tyrannies of the Middle East is being undone and they are screaming mad about it. But LindaD hasn’t noticed.
The following is a point by point breakdown of what she has just done and what others are liberally tolerating.
‘Hate to even dignify your ramblings, rantings and diatribes Patrick’ = insult
this is NOT a revolution. = assertion; if LindaD had never voted in a free and fair election she might see the new freedom to do so, and to form a political party and to publish a newspaper and hold meetings etc., as quite revolutionary.
‘And … ad nauseum.’ = pointless reminder of the Great Satan’s post 1941 crimes.
‘The slaughter of over 300,000 Iraqi civilians in W’s war’, = phony pacifism; It has to be phony because maoists have never been any sort of pacifists. I wonder at what point LindaD will blame market place bombers for the casualties of their bombs going bang!
‘…and a recorded 200,000 in Daddy Warbucks’ war, = more phony pacifism (I take this to be Kuwait) but note that this was not ‘the Baathists war of aggression’ and note that the casualties are not sheeted home to Saddam! It’s the fault of those that put a stop to the annexation of a sovereign state. This is really strange because LindaD was just called out on walking two sides of the street on this issue.
‘…and the now 5,000,000 Iraqi refugees…no way in my (or millions of others) name.’
= reconfirmed opposition to the liberation of both the people of Kuwait and Iraq without any argument except to be generous an implied one that the cost was too high perhaps. But I can’t think of any realistic alternative to war to bring on this liberation as Paul Wolfowitz was quoted as saying in the silly video. No sanctions and economic measures were going to work with the Baathist dictatorship sitting on a sea of oil to fund their tyranny.
‘A rose by any other name…” It’s gonna take a whole lot more than a bar of Boraxo (Reagan’s soap of choice) to wash the blood of millions from the hands of the U.S. imperialists, for all their crimes against humanity–under the guise of bringing “democracy” to the world.’
= refusal to deal with the argument that the U.S. formerly used to rave on about democracy while actually supporting tyranny, but after 9/11 have changed policies and are now supporting the spread of bourgeois democracy rather than being the biggest barrier to that revolution.
Now LindaD’s inability to hold up one side of a debate and deal with the issues that I have argued in reasonable detail is not surprising. But the liberalism demonstrated by those who call themselves communists as they say nothing and continue to promote video’s dribbling on about oil and do so while mistating the analysis of other communists is more than disappointing.
This is not just the era when ‘nations want liberation, countries want independence and the people want revolution’. It is also the period of lowest tide for the western left.
With people who can’t admit to the heroic liberating efforts of U.S. troops in WW2, because to do so would open a Pandora’s box, and out would pop the possibility that the U.S. ruling-elite could order them to act heroically in another war, nothing much can be done.
But the dead end is obvious.
Prime Minister Maliki negotiating the withdrawal as region after region come under the full control of Iraqi soldiers is just another signpost on the way to the political death of those who will not stand up and even notice the revolutionary changes even after they have happened.
Video: Noam Chomsky asks What About the Iraqis? « Kasama

So Steve knows about WW2 and the fact that Japan, Italy, Germany, France etc are not now US ruling class ‘possessions’ run by puppets!

The invalid method of Linda D is replicated by Steve Owens.
21 Steve Owens
February 1, 2026 at 11:23 am

The USA was forced into WW2 and once in played a progressive role in liberating France, Holland, Germany and Japan. This was progressive but afterwards they lapsed back into reactionary Imperialism Guatemala, Cuba, Chile, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and on and on. Somehow after Saddam invaded Kuwait you decided that the USA had flipped back into progressive mode and you supported the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq and urged for war in Syria and bombing Libya. The neo-cons running this policy were also keen to wage war on Iran but that was a bridge too far. I guess that if Iraq had been more of a success then we would have seen war against Iran and logic would indicate that you would have given this war your support.
My position is that the USA never flipped back into progressive mode as can be seen by the genocide in Gaza.
Honestly what is the role of the USA in Iran? There is no opposition vying for power there are just people impoverished by the regimens incompetence and by US sanctions.
All America can do is bomb and hope that regimen change emerges from the rubble. That is their policy and to hell with them.
22 Steve Owens
February 1, 2026 at 11:51 am

I’m trying to understand our differences and I think I can make these differences most clear with historical analogies. I think you see the world as being in a pre WW2 situation one side fascist and one side democratic with Putin in the role of Hitler and China as Japan and Iran as Italy.
I see it more like pre WW1 with numerous great powers attempting to dominate.
So you think the answer is to encourage war and I think the answer is to oppose war.
23 Steve Owens
February 1, 2026 at 8:10 pm

Did I really say that the Syrian civil war was over? I remember saying that the rebels had the initial upper hand but then Assad gained the upper hand with the use of tanks. The positions reversed when Saudi Arabia started to supply the rebels with TOW anti tank missiles only for Assad to be on top once again with Russian air to ground support. The Free Syrian Army virtually disbanded in 2016 and remnants got protection through the Turkish intervention and the free area of Idlib that the Turks protected. Turkey rearranged the military opposition with ex al-Qaeda/ISIL people in charge. No one anticipated that Russia with it’s forces occupied in Ukraine and Israel decapitating Hezbollah would leave the road to Damascus open.
24 Steve Owens
February 1, 2026 at 8:20 pm

I think it’s a serious misreading of history to think that the allies attacking Spain was a good idea. One Spain had an army battle hardened. Churchill went to great lengths to keep Spain out of the war. England was bribing senior Spanish authorities exactly to keep Spain out of the war. Hitler made a huge mistake by not recruiting Spain. An Axis Spain would have closed the Mediterranean and allowed Nazi submarines to have bases much further West. Hitler and Franco could not come to terms. Franco wanted a cancellation of debt and Hitler should have said absolutely yes but you persist in the nonsense of bringing Spain into the war.
25 Patrick Muldowney
February 2, 2026 at 4:19 pm

‘The fall of the ayatollahs might merely usher in more chaos and conflict – a terrible, counterproductive outcome analogous to those that followed Western interventions in Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq.’ As we see from Steve Owens the above is a widely held view of the pseudoleft and open right.

But let us assume that the situation in Iran is twice as difficult as I have speculated. So, the problem would be that only 1 in 5 (so 1 v 4) of the population would favor the democratic revolution and the armed forces faced by the unarmed masses would swell to 2million. The population is, from memory, about 92million. So, that would make about 72 democratic revolution supporters for every 18 Islamofascist supporters. However, one lot -the fascists- are armed and the democrats and any fellow travelers are not. These raw statistics are consequently hopeful only in the very long term and then only perhaps, but they are undoubtedly grim in the short term.

People who want to see the regime defeated and the democratic revolution victorious given the magnitude of the arms differential are thus faced with dilemmas in all directions.

That would seem a reasonable reflection of the basic fear that the Iranian people are up against a much bigger enemy than my first guestimate BUT according to Steve they would be best left to work it out for themselves. US ‘Hands off’ is Steve Owens loud and clear message.

This view logically admits that this presents the revolutionaries with a problem that the lawful tyranny does not have. The Chinese will still be backing them and so will the North Koreans and to the extent he now can Putin! I am also aware of significant elements from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and others who have a vital interest in preventing a democratic revolution in this strategically vital country. So, the external support for the Islamo-fascists is both broad and very powerful and will not be stopped by a ‘hands off’ from the west approach but obviously encouraged. This one-sided approach seems to me a fatal flaw to the claimed moral high ground ‘support’ for the currently unarmed Iranian masses.

Even when fascist armies turned up and blatantly enslaved people and annexed their territories you would not countenance war to undo what they were doing. Falkland invasion, Kuwait invasion, Georgia invasion, Ukraine invasions, Syrian Intervention all spring to mind. Russia is currently intervening in several countries in Africa for example and fascist China is meddling all over the world. Indeed, many pseudo leftists have blamed the current Russian ‘response’ of invading Ukraine on NATO expansion no less ie. if smaller countries unite in a collective security structure, they are the problem!

Now I think these ‘other side of the coin’ issues are often hidden behind the fact of the long litany of imperialist wrongdoing. As Linda D pointlessly spelled out above. Further the issues get very muddled when a fucking act of genocide is currently underway as the Zionist desperately try to make and ‘win’ their war for greater Israel backed by the US. So, the little and big Satan thinking has more than a bit of evidence to confuse people. I am reminded of Thacher doing the right thing in fighting fascism after all those years of doing the wrong thing in Ireland’s northeast. Not one of my Irish comrades correctly analyzed the Falkland war. None understood the necessity for democrats to unite with the right wingers to defeat the fascists.

However, Mao’s ability to unite with Chiang Kei Shek (more properly a mass murdering fascist himself) but who led forces that were not just fascists and rightists but also vitally required to stand up to the greater current danger of the Japanese Militarists shows us the correct approach.

The US ruling elites are not now saints nor have they ever been! To point this out in Linda D manner is as silly as it gets. One only has to consider the atomic bombing crimes in the context of their WW2 ‘on the side of the angels’ activity to understand the constant juggling required to defeat the enemies of the people one by one that you are already prepared to do! Stop pretending that you’re not doing this.

If you want to even see where the medal podium is, you have to get out of your phony moral high ground gutter just for a start.

Repeating all the wrong doings of Chiang Kei Shek from 1927 till the Sian incident would only lead the foolish to hang him rather than set him free to fight the Japanese. Difficult as the method is to apply when dealing with such scoundrels, victory is won by uniting the many to defeat the few and by first working out what is the principal contradiction right now.

If I were you, I would read Mao selected works starting from vol 1 page one and read to vol 4 last page. People who want to think about revolutionary wars and how to win them have a duty to study those who have won them.

You are currently making no sense, as usual.

Even a rotten lying Zionist is making more sense Crisis with Iran | Lt. Col. (Res.) Jonathan Conricus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUp6A7H4aHU
26 Steve Owens
February 2, 2026 at 5:33 pm

So you’re calling for military action against Iran. Who else is calling for military action? There’s the would be king. So that’s you and the king anyone else on this crusade for democracy. Starmer is on board but last I heard Netanyahu was edging away. Saudi Arabia is a no as is the United Arab Emirates and Turkiye is a no.
27 Patrick Muldowney
February 3, 2026 at 10:10 am

I don’t think the king has any real prospect of winning mass support for a British style constitutional system when the time for that choice arises after the victory over the islamofascists.

But I note that a large number of the Iranian people would welcome their direct enemy being attacked and themselves assisted. I have no idea what % of the population that would be, but I think it’s notable that you have forgotten about these millions and instead mention the ‘king’ and thus his supporters also a small but measurable %. Then there are the Iranian masses who -like the ‘king’- are already in exile in the west. I know that a large number of them would think that their enslaved people require military assistance and who better than the US to destroy their enemies’ big assets and leadership, and to disrupt their ability to co-ordinate the ongoing mass deaths and enslavement that seems to have slipped your mind.

Anyway, you must remember this is still down to 1 man and he has a TACO tag so who can say. I hope 1 way and you apparently hope the other. I just think that a person like you who wants to see the Iranian masses armed and fighting back against the actual enemy of any change ought to start telling us where the arms and training is going to come from and over what time span you would estimate your preferred method to the same change project and given that the enemy command and control and ‘big stuff’ would not be disrupted under your preferred method, what your estimates for the resultant casualties are for your method.

I won’t go into the detail re your silly thinking about WW2 and where a 2nd front could or could not have been launched all I will say for now is that my proposal would have seen the demise of 2 more fascist regimes and millions fewer Soviet casualties just for starters. Naturally the US, British, French, Spanish and Portuguese, especially the Vichy and the Fascists in the other 2 would have suffered more casualties. Anyway, you show no sign of even having contemplated the alternative thinking but like with the atomic bombing -that was not done to save US soldiers lives as claimed- there were alternatives and they ought to be speculated upon sometime. Unfortunately, not now; but here is an item of some interest to add to your new knowledge about the WW2 era. https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/other/spain-s-forgotten-soldiers-why-thousands-volunteered-to-fight-for-hitler/vi-AA1VwhPB?ocid=msedgntp&pc=U531&cvid=6981245f8b7b462aaf4c99b019353f4a&ei=39
and https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/other/spain-s-forgotten-soldiers-why-thousands-volunteered-to-fight-for-hitler/vi-AA1VwhPB?ocid=msedgntp&pc=U531&cvid=6981245f8b7b462aaf4c99b019353f4a&ei=39
and
https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/covering-the-azores-gap-in-world-war-ii/
as food for thought.
28 Patrick Muldowney
February 8, 2026 at 2:26 pm

A mixed bag of thoughts https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/other/extremely-weak-focused-us-strikes-on-ayatollah-could-spark-resurgence-in-iranian-uprising/ar-AA1VTxbl?ocid=msedgntp&pc=U531&cvid=6987fcf5d6b54045bebb4235869082b3&ei=40

Good re Iran and the Trump known unknown issues then typically sloppy sky news junk re ‘Kurds’. The Turkish government is NOT the enemy of the Kurds but rather have in various forms of a Turkish government been at war with the PKK led element of the Kurds for the last 40+ years. Syria is now being fully reconstituted by the Syrian majority and thus the Assad aligned Rojava authorities are being integrated into the new Syria. It’s complex and there are those that present as democrat by day and come out as fascist by night but then the democratic revolution like all revolutions is like that!
29 Patrick Muldowney
February 21, 2026 at 1:51 pm

Steve Owens
February 1, 2026 at 8:10 pm Edit
Did I really say that the Syrian civil war was over?
Stephen Owens October 29, 2019 at 11:55 am
The Syrian civil war is over it is dead. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZw35VUBdzo
There are 3 areas still in contention Iblid currently run by al-Nusra and soon to be overrun by the SAA
The eastern desert oilfields currently run by the USA but soon to be reluctantly handed over to Assad
And thirdly the Rojava area to which negotiations between Russia and Turkey will eventually hand the area over to Assad as Erdogan’s only wish is for no autonomous Kurdish area to be created as it was in northern Iraq.

Patrickm October 29, 2019 at 1:17 pm
If I were wanting to bring down the Assad tyranny I would rather start from this point than from the unarmed deserters who ran to the border to save their own lives 8 years ago.
You say your not anti communist but this is very basic Mao protracted war. Even the Russians are now unable to just do what they like as they like as they used to do when they first turned up! You haven’t noticed that they can’t just bomb anywhere now. All you see is the glorious victories of the HIRISE cow.
To me they don’t look as tough a nut to crack as they used to look. But then I forget that people who believed that the Iraqi People’s could overthrow SH think in a very strange way.
I think the longer the people fight the stronger they become. I think that protected by a massive army is good. I think that years of fighting was producing a win till uncle vlad turned up and changed the maths. But I also know that Russians are not supermen. They have a week economy and low level war commitments all over the place and so anti Putin sentiment has grown and will continue to grow. At home and in the ME more surprises are in store for everyone!
If the PKK leaders would pull their heads in a return to rapid progress would be possible but as always I’m not holding my breath that they might join the SNA/FSA.

Patrickm October 30, 2019 at 10:52 am
So what does a claim that a genocide is underway followed days later by an assertion that ‘The Syrian civil war is over it is dead.’ actually reveal? It simply demonstrates that the person who is spinning from one pole to the other is not thinking clearly.
Obviously there is an ongoing war in what used to be Syria (and probably will be again) but now is a series of -still at war but- unstable enclaves. There are for example millions of refugees that are often as not currently outside Syria, and millions more IDP’s and that is just one issue. There is the questions of finance and the trade required to make any modern enclave function. An Assad led tyranny is not all that is on the chopping block of this war. No swapping out of the leader will work now. We might rather be inclined to think that all of HIRISE is in for a shake-up just in passing. They are all going to pay some price for what they have been up to. Just as one small example the west negotiates with Putin if it even now bothers with a very different attitude than it used to. This thug is now shunned, and rightly so.
The extremely lucky refugees have left the horror and drama all behind and now go shopping in western shopping malls; but the vast majority are stuck with their unresolved problems. So too the governments that are hosting these refugees and the armed groups that they generate.
The chunk of Syria that is rubble-stan is pretty big and there are now all these foreign troops scattered about in the various enclaves. That could mean a long new cold war or it could just indicate slow developments in the big picture that underpins war-making. It’s just that an armed reality is not usually a good indicator that the war has been won when the weapons are not being stacked up and the training of fresh troops is ongoing.
Indeed the current MSM in these last few days has been resplendent with very big demonstrations in Lebanon and in Iraq, right next door on either side of Syria while there is the simultaneous Turkish incursion from the north. It may be sound and fury indicating nothing, or that the issues are once again spreading through the region. After all, these issues and protracted war more generally has a well known tide like quality to it.
The region is, after all, a cesspit of ruling class depravity from one end to the other. That depravity is quite obvious from the outside looking at any of these tyrannies. So currently they all look like real tigers and it is harder to see the paper tiger lurking underneath those fierce appearances. However, the masses make war.
Now as it happens the masses of Turkey are now caught up in the Syrian conflict and broadly approve of their government sending many thousands of their troops over the border. Turks after this 4th incursion now constitute the biggest of the external deployments. Indeed the Russian supermen are now starting to look like a very thin trip wire force for those with the eyes to see it.
Arthur used to laugh about such a piddling Russian effort and mistakenly thought that this HAD to mean that these forces were there for another purpose – to end the regime and bring on the change of government no less. Well, being wrong about the latter is not the same as being wrong about the strategic weakness on full display! That was there for all to see and it required a different conclusion. My conclusion was a huge disaster for the democratic revolution and a long term strategic blunder typical of Putin.
Putin had inherited a collapsing empire and has lashed out on every occasion that presented. Consequently, he is today stretched thinner and his tinpot economy generates less for his own people as they wake up to him and suffer under his anti-democrat and brutal rule.
There is IMV currently no negotiating way out for him and so he has tried to double up on his threatening stance but Erdogan has shrugged and gone ahead with larger and larger deployments.
Clashes will eventuate between the SAA and the SNA.
I think NATO will then have to back Turkey and the war will become even more complex than now.
Over? Not by a long shot!
At some point, just like the more powerful looking Russian thug leaders of slightly earlier times in my life – Putin’s corrupt regime will drag his overextended troops back from club med and his whole grand Napoleonic style middle eastern strategic play will be just the latest of the ‘imperialist’ wreckage that we have been witness to over the last hundred years. Policies of imperialism are genuinely an albatross around political players.
If we just cast our minds back to 1968 the Prague Spring was crushed and the regional collapse was still a generation away. How time flies for Russian occupation troops. They weren’t just doomed in Czechoslovakia. I have watched the Russians withdraw from places all my adult life! They are not in Poland and they could drive there! They even lost most of the USSR itself. Putin’s thug troops are now a bunch of gangster troops that annoy almost all their neighbors who consequently shun them.
Even the pathetic liberal west has now got the message and began to push back after people were being poisoned in English parks! Even Arthur and Barry won’t be waving any more peace in our time documents from Putin. Erdogan has a better time frame to work with. Western liberals are all wrong and have been shown up by Syria. Club med for Putin’s thug force is not a long term holiday destination at all!
The Turks are not only the biggest army deployed they are the force with the most genuine national interests involved. They also have a valid political solution that they know will resolve the issues that cause the fighting in the first place.
The events that are exploding all around us are not anything like those of a ‘dead’ or concluded war in appearance. We ought not have any expectation of a period of peaceful development for the victorious side of HIRISE. HIRISE actually now has the smallest army in the field. Syrians backed by this large Turkish army are not going to forget about what has to be done. Despite any western liberal skepticism democracy is the way out of this war and the quicker the PKK get on board for the negotiations leading to that power-sharing outcome the better.
Once Syria was under the control of Assad and peaceful demonstrations started to express a well known 21st C desire for democratic and accountable government. This was part of what the MSM had begun to again refer to as the Arab Spring. The first time that expression was used was back in 2005! That earlier use of this expression ran out of steam just as the 2nd did. But the project still goes on, against all opposition from both Islamofascist and Kissinger style realists. Conservative Islamists will come to power! That is what is required and or the process starts all over again.
But the good news is we short attention span westerners can also reflect on the fact that the original Prague Spring was crushed by the Tanks sent by the Russian revisionists! Whatever became of that Russian ‘Victory’? Who could imagine our current Napoleon would try for this comeback. The originals comeback didn’t work either I might add.
Syria is now divided and the negotiations between the collections of well armed fighters is underway. I hope they talk a lot and now kill a little. But as this unfolds I am reminded of the military thinking that goes “slow is smooth and smooth is fast”.
People might also remember that not that far in the background lurks the annoyed US military and there is such a thing as western interests. NATO with Turkish leadership and the US at their back constitute more than just an annoyance for the HIRISE.
Back the Turkish/NATO/US/West/etc V HIRISE! Obama ensured they didn’t get in as early as I wanted them but they are still being dragged in by events. They still fight this war like a sad collection of amateurs but even slow learners can eventually learn to spot a collection of knuckle-dragging anti-democrats as enemies.

Patrickm May 26, 2020 at 4:40 pm
War over??? What do you know Steve got it wrong again !

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Yet another gold medal analysis from me! Yet another bout of forgetfulness from Steve! Just what was the casualty comparison between Syria and Iraq I wonder?
Trump seems to believe that the Islamofascists in Iran killed 32,000 heroes over just a few weeks and I think the democratic revolutionaries are undoubtedly in real trouble and will continue to be without external intervention. The pseudoleft have been unremarkably silent while the unarmed democratic masses have been copping this latest round of casualties and are only now beginning to stir in opposition to the credibly looming attack by US forces destroying the Islamo-fascists. I hope that fully 10 times that number of the enemy forces will now be destroyed along with all their heavy weapons. systems. 320,000 would make a good dent in the figures that you suggested Their death will weigh ‘as light as a feather’ for me if Trump orders the attacks to begin. I think he will and I guess probably in the next couple of weeks BUT just 1 man will decide…
Are there any guarantees that the outcome will be a ‘quick victory’ for the democratic revolution with a constitution and free and fair elections as solid as are now the reality in Turkey and Iraq? No. BUT if that is the result in as little as 3 or so years it would IMV be a world changing series of events that we would then have been witness to.
30 Steve Owens
February 22, 2026 at 7:34 pm

It is simple so follow closely. In 2019 the Syrian civil war was dead. The only area of active resistance was Idlib province where mainly Al Qeda and ISIS elements were holed up and only then through the protection of Turkey. Then in November 2024 some 5 years latter Israel destroyed Hezbollah. This act raised the dead and the anti Assad forces were themselves surprised that they could march on Damascus facing virtually no resistance. Well done if you think you have predicted any of this.
31 Steve Owens
February 22, 2026 at 11:16 pm

“Their death will weigh ‘as light as a feather’ for me…” See there’s your problem. You see the problem as resolvable by killing bad guys. You supported the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions as thought it’s just a matter of killing bad guys and the problem will be resolved. You supported the bombing of Libya, Serbia and the invasion of the Malvinas as though power comes from the barrel of a gun. Well wakey wakey Afghanistan is ruled by the Taliban, Libya is not ruled by anyone, Iraq tetters on becoming a failed state, Kosovo still needs KFOR to keep people apart and the Falkland’s are now an armed camp because Argentina continues to claim sovereignty. Tick tick tick.
Sometimes the only thing worse than having an evil dictator is not having an evil dictator.
32 Steve Owens
February 23, 2026 at 12:56 pm

Moved to Junk File.
33 Patrick Muldowney
February 24, 2026 at 1:53 pm

What you’ve done above, given your own words and the logic of being opposed to Assad and in favor of democracy is remarkable.

You are always theoretically in favor of democracy -as you are now in Iran- but how you propose to get to this goal well… according to you that just has to be left to the unarmed masses of the particular country to sort out. Hands off is your mantra…and meanwhile you freely admit that the unarmed are being butchered day by day by the Islamo-fascists and patently done with the external assistance from the likes of Russia, Nth Korea, China, Iran etc.

As before with Syria and Iraq you offer no time lines for your new Iranian wish project. You just wish a basic democracy into being, whenever the peoples of Iran manage to overcome their powerful oppressors and you are far from being Robinson Crusoe with this widely held sentiment.

YET above you pronounce that it was only after the genocidal Zionist leadership of Israel smashed Hezbollah that your previously declared losers in a dead war could then come back to life and overthrow Assad. Intervention was the event -according to you- that brought about the rebirth of the Syrian anti Assad forces! According to you, intervention rebooted the democratic process! WOW I now wonder what lessons you might draw from your own reasoning.

The Syrian struggle had earlier rebooted in 2011 in the context of the regional Arab Spring. After a slow and hard start it was eventually progressing well and Assad was in trouble till late in 2015 when Putin intervened. He did so with his anti-democratic mates that I soon named as HIRISE. This intervention as you know reversed the direction of the -not exactly civil war- that had arisen over rejected demands for democratic rights.

Even US led western forces (including Australia) were intervening and targeting ISIS, particularly assisting the Kurds that finally were reconstituted as the SDF. At one point even you were demanding the US intervene to rescue the Yazidi from ISIS when they were rampaging well into Iraq. It’s almost impossible to imagine such a rampage happening now given the growing strength of the democratic Iraqi governments yet that is what was happening about a decade ago.

In Syria the democratically elected Islamist Turkish government was backing the FSA and various Islamist groups that were more dominant and numerous. What do you know, a majority Islamic country produces an Islamist led revolution. Who would have guessed.

The intervention by the anti-democratic HIRISE brought on a predictable set back and eventually got so bad that there you were declaring the war for democracy dead in October 2019.

Only 5 years later Assad fell after Israel intervened against the Iran backed Lebanese force that itself could not even take full control of Lebanon. They were part of the HIRISE COW. Sort of an axis of evil you might say.

Assad’s fall had direct consequences for the SDF ‘Kurds’ and the Rojava project was ended. But according to THEM it was always supposed to end. In 2013 ‘The groups insisted the administration would operate only until Syria’s [then] nearly 3-year-old civil war is resolved and is not a step toward autonomy.’

‘After Assad’s fall in December 2024, relations between the country’s new rulers, led by al-Sharaa and the SDF remained cold, but a surprise came in March (2025) when SDF chief Mazloum Abdi arrived in Damascus and signed a deal with al-Sharaa.’

The Kurds of course are not a monolithic block and many who now live in Syria came from Turkey especially the leadership of the PKK but the SDF have agreed to being systematically integrated into the new transitional government forces.

This process is of course ‘messy’ and when areas get handed back some very good statues are being toppled but obviously these statues are not in the right place or time etc This reminds me of statues of Lenin coming down!

https://apnews.com/article/syria-sdf-kurds-ypg-abdi-alsharaa-army-951cdded2928565626101ef98a8dcbc9
The SDF leaders have in 2025 signed up to the project that I was saying many years ago was the right way forward. So good, let’s hope it goes more smoothly as time goes on (some early deadlines were not met and armed clashes did break out with the SDF then forced to withdraw etc) but remember there are no smooth straight roads to a modern democracy worthy of 2026 anywhere let alone in the heart of the mosquito laden ‘swamp’ of the Middle East.

You were anti-Assad but were nevertheless pro his ‘buddies’ in the ‘Rojava’ project, the footprint of which you could not discuss then nor can you now for fear that it might not make any logical sense. You can’t now point to any map that would not be a land grab as blatant as the one Zionists have been up to for far longer and with just as little credibility. After all, only about 10% of the starting population of Syria were Kurds and no claim to a chunk of the major cities were -obviously- valid. Many of those Kurds were now living in the cities! Yet the SDF/PKK leadership did not hand over control and integrate even after an agreement was signed and a fire fight erupted and then the SDF withdrew from the Aleppo suburbs they controlled and had done when Assad etc had their back. I have no insights into the rights and wrongs of these implementation matters and am only reminding you that integration is the goal!

So what were the ‘valid’ claims of Rojava? A purely Kurdish force was never going to be acceptable to countries like Turkey and Syria that are or were fighting a war against separatist Kurds such as the PKK. The US had to make the separatist Kurds acceptable in some way to the Turks etc. So the SDF was founded in 2015 with U.S. backing. The SDF included ethnic Arab, Kurdish and Turkmen fighters in addition to the main Christian militia in northeast Syria known as the Syriac Military Council, which includes Assyrians. With US air support and logistics these ‘fighters once ruled over nearly a quarter of Syria.’ So, they had a very large footprint because they had a very big external support structure. I don’t recall any complaint about that ‘US’ hands on activity. But either the country was going to be broken up and that would produce more war or a democratic solution and negotiated proportional power sharing would result. The latter has been agreed. There really was no alternative as Erdogan had pointed out.
Driving out jihadis, Syrian Kurds carve out zone | AP News
By Bassem Mroue
Published 3:32 AM GMT+10:30, November 15, 2013

‘The PYD is also the main faction behind the creation of the transitional civil administration for “western Kurdistan,” announced Tuesday. The agreement by the PYD and a collection of smaller Syrian Kurdish factions, announced in the northeastern Kurdish-dominated city of Qamishli, created an 82-member assembly along with three local administrative councils. The groups said in a statement that the administration will organize local elections. The groups insisted the administration would operate only until Syria’s nearly 3-year-old civil war is resolved and is not a step toward autonomy.’

Some western pseudoleftists missed this and started jabbering about their support for Rojava as if it were a good idea to break up Syria. That was never a good idea.
Only 2 small and widely separated regions in the mountains (far nth West and far nth East were traditional Kurdish territories and they were linked through Turkish territory no less! Remember all these borders were ‘drawn’ by Britain and France after WW1 when the spoils of the former Ottoman empire were being carved up by those once mighty imperialists. But the SDF lay claim to much more than that as they were supposed to be not just the Kurds but other Syrian’s interested in establishing Rojava.

You say that Turkey protected Al Qaeda and ISIS. They didn’t. But it is difficult to tell if a self proclaimed islamist fighter is actually an Islamo-fascist or if they will become one. Sometimes it’s by day one thing and by night another! Duplicity and treachery are all around us. So the peoples must be cautious as we work through these difficult issues.

You appear to be jumping from the proverbial frying pan into the fire.
‘Did I really say that the Syrian civil war was over?’ ah yes you did. I took the opposite view and thought the war was going well and that ALL of HIRISE would be defeated and that the period of enclaves would end with the country reconstituted (a project still only slowly underway and most probably, given where this is and who are involved, not going to be without further conflict).

Assad could have accepted the people’s demands and all the bloodshed of course been avoided, but we all know that that is not the way that tyranny gets replaced by emerging democracy. It’s a broom for dust process.

IMV Kurds will be the first to move on the ground when the Iranian regime meets the US air power broom and you might now be more favorably disposed to the US knocking out the anti-democratic might of these Islamo-fascists. The unarmed Iranian masses are facing a mighty foe that is about to be brought down like a statue. I’m going to bet this will be far less costly than were the cases of Germany, Japan, Italy, Syria and Iraq to name just some of the previous efforts.

When the reported death toll in Syria had reached 3,000 I wrote that I thought it was going to be a very big and complex war. Unfortunately that is how it turned out. This revolutionary war for democracy in Iran will also be costly as reported right now. But leaving the fascist army alone to be supported by their mates like China etc would impose a far more vicious enemy on the currently unarmed peoples of Iran. Smashing them and arming the people is undoubtedly the road to democracy. The more a fascist army is destroyed the more the enemy of that army -the only now forming up peoples army- becomes relatively stronger. Death to the fascists! Glory to the US forces that help the Iranian peoples liberate themselves.
34 Steve Owens
February 24, 2026 at 2:04 pm

Moved to Junk File.
35 Steve Owens
February 26, 2026 at 2:42 pm

Moved to Junk File.
36 Steve Owens
February 28, 2026 at 10:49 pm

I gotta hand it to Israel when the state of Israel was founded in 1948 I think that their survival was about 0 chance, less than a million Israelis surrounded by about 40 million enemies. There were more Arabs inside Israel than there were Jews. But over the years they have managed to defeat or neutralise the PLO, Hamas, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Hezbollah, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and now their only enemy left standing is Iran and Iran is going down. What ever you think of Israel their survival and now dominance of the middle east is pretty impressive. Yeah yeah I know their bacon was saved by at first the USSR and then by the USA but they still had to organise these super powers into doing their bidding.
37 Patrick Muldowney
March 1, 2026 at 4:58 am

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2e8ejvh-3M (1991) ‘That’s a war’ Afghanistan expert on the escalations between Pakistan and the Taliban | DW News – YouTube ‘That’s a war’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pj0p1-IbosE John Mearsheimer (clip): Why Does Israel Want Another Failed War? Does Israel want to wreck and break up Iran? Possibly but that won’t be what happens even if they want it and neither will the Iranian regime hold. Instead, just like Syria and Iraq, democracy will result from the destruction of the Iranian people’s powerful enemies no matter how long it takes to generate the people’s army required to overthrow them.

Mearsheimer just prior to the 2022 invasion described Putin and Lavrov as first class strategists!

Black Flag operation sets of a monstrous career When young Putin destroyed an entire city – just to prove a point | Watch https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/other/when-young-putin-destroyed-an-entire-city-just-to-prove-a-point/vi-AA1VPl8G?ocid=msedgntp&pc=U531&cvid=69a2804822bb459db35e35972f28e6e9&ei=35

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https://iranproteststimeline.com/ Iran Protests Timeline ‘Day 1 — Dec 28, 2025
Tehran’s bazaar merchants and market workers closed or partially closed shops and protested in central areas amid a sharp currency collapse and price shock. The protest began as a livelihood and inflation-driven rally, signaling early mass participation from the market sector. The use of tear gas against the protesters was reported.’

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I happened to notice the events on day 1 & so paid close attention over days 2-6 so much so that on Day 7 I posted this thread as a starting ‘comment’ just to keep track of my developing thoughts. Events were unfolding fast and this type of revolutionary upsurge struck me as exactly what would reboot, explicitly drain the swamp practices by the US led west. Unexpected events like these demonstrations of massive opposition to the regime can drive people into taking actions that, in the absence of these events, they would otherwise not dream of doing and it’s obvious to me that Trump, who is a classic opportunist, has been swept along by events. Netanyahu is now in desperate gambling land as far as I can see. This war will not fool very many about what the Zionists are trying to do to the Palestinians! Hard to hide a genocide in the 21st Century.

So yet another couple of hot wars have started so where is the world heading now. There is much speculation that we really are already in a type of WW3. I don’t think that’s exactly true but the worldwide democratic impulse of the masses is not slowing down.

All varieties of democratic theory predict such internal periods of resistance by the oppressed (I prefer the term enslaved) masses that are always murderously repressed by the tyrannical regimes that our theories ALL want rid of. The anti-democrats even refer to these upsurges as periods when it’s ‘time to mow the grass’. The worse than prison-like existence that the Zionists have imposed on their Palestinian captives is currently the starkest of all examples of what we democrats are up against. Just as the apartheid state of South Africa was brought down by a combination of external and internal efforts so too can and will the anti-democratic Zionists be defeated despite how powerful they currently look. https://www.facebook.com/reel/2835670523310398 (20+) Facebook A war crime they wouldn’t do if this were not accepted practice among them!

But we all eat a banquet mouthful by mouthful and only as the dishes arrive at our table.

Trump would not have moved the external US military into place around Iran but for the internal events because ‘no amount of heat would turn a rock into a chicken, but the right external heat can turn an egg into a chicken.’ The forces are in place now and if the regime even just survives the Trump presidency it will be Trump and the next republican candidate who will look weak. Clearly this is an historical ‘moment’. The ‘dish’ has arrived at history’s table. We can all see that the Iranian people are in the overwhelming majority wanting their freedom and getting put in body bags for their unarmed efforts. So they pushed the go button.

I argue that for an internationalist like me there is no real choice other than to take full advantage of any opportunity that arises from attacks launched by the US -even with the Israelis against our common enemy. The enemy of the Iranian peoples is their fascist government and its gun carriers, not the western world and our current big gun carriers, who are but the Johny on the spot US forces and their little Satan assistant/master.

The ground fighters -if the plan and there has to be one, makes any sense- will start their work after X number of days of this 1st stage preliminary air war.

The Anzio experience suggests speed of movement is the lesson but what that actually means only people with real on the ground understanding could possibly even guess. I think sooner rather than later but whatever time it takes the door to door salesman are essential. People are first going to start getting control of areas where the regime is just absent and then drive to the next town and help the local people take control there. This could be weeks or months away for all I know but at some point when people realise they can then they will start to take and hold territory. The chess board pattern to this revolutionary war will finally appear and we will get to see just how good the generals who are planning this war are. But eventually it has to be about assisting those on the ground to take and hold a strategically significant path to a big city. Once the revolutionaries get just one big city the regime will be in deep shit. They ARE hated by their people! The masses want revenge! AND they are fixed by the external heat! This regime is doomed! I don’t know how many democratically minded Iranians they are going to take down with them, but they are going down as sure as Assad or Saddam and far quicker!

Groups like the Kurds who will be among the first to arm within Iran will start taking actions and then so forth as the revolution’s footprint expands across what would be effectively self liberated Iran. When they run into the fascists regime’s gun carriers they will be assisted from the land and sea but US boots will be effectively zero on the ground. Our question is; are the US ruling elite carrying the fight forward with imperialist intent or are they simply obliged to recognise the extent of their power in 2026 and do we now know they can only benefit if the Iranian people are liberated? This is not the world of 1953 when the CIA was up to no good in overthrowing Iranian democracy. CIA 1953 Iran – Search
38 Patrick Muldowney
March 1, 2026 at 9:56 am

Good news for Ukraine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTuusScoMT8 but Anna is suitably worried and this will take some time perhaps months before the way forward become clear even to insiders; outsiders will catch on quickly only after that.

The pseudoleft will of course remain in their clueless side show as (starting off with big demos that reduce) a dwindling group holding their tattered hands off (insert country name) placards. Nothing ever changes for them. It’s all about the oil!
39 Patrick Muldowney
March 1, 2026 at 10:13 am

Even the MSM types can work out how it could be done! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fDSuBmh50g but it is going to be done is the only valid conclusion that they could draw from their own reasoning.

If we leave aside Monash, we can remind ourselves that ‘no plan ever survives contact with the enemy’ but the enemy plans are in the same bind and they have to face the masses as the real enemy after they get shattered by the outsiders! Oh happy day everybody now gets that regime change is the goal!
40 Patrick Muldowney
March 1, 2026 at 12:21 pm

Steve says ‘I gotta hand it to Israel … and now their only enemy left standing is Iran and Iran is going down.’ and there is his problem right up front. Iran is not ‘going down’ it is being stood up to its full and mighty height as again one of the most important countries in not just the region but the whole world! The Egyptian tyrant can now start worrying. All the monarchies in the region can shudder! Democracy is what they all fear!

The people of Iran are going to soon be ruling a vibrant growing and peace-loving democracy that is re-connecting with the democratic world. The Iranian masses will not forget about the Palestinian people and the horrors they are suffering under Zionist terror and will not include the apartheid state of Israel as a fellow democratic state.

It is the Palestinian people and the rest of the world that are the Zionists enemies. No more Iranian distraction. No more atom bomb distraction. Just a naked war for greater Israel and murderous ethnic cleansing. The whole world is watching.

As a democratic Middle East stands up (as it slowly is) the horror of the ongoing war for greater Israel just becomes starker. The US ruling class running some kind of imperialist project is not becoming more the case and entrenched but rather the opposite. Just like the British and French empires their time is now ending. Imperialism no longer functions. Vietnam indicated how it just ends in tears more than 50 yrs ago and the trend has not turned around nor will it.

Keep your eye on Bahrain after this stage of swamp draining is over.
41 Steve Owens
March 1, 2026 at 1:14 pm

With all democratic revolutions the question that must be asked is what is the army going to do. Famously when the army was ordered to fire on protestors in Petrograd Feb 1917 the army refused and the revolution proceeded. In Belgium 1918 the Kaiser said he would lead the army to Berlin and crush the Jews and the labourers. Groener stepped forward and said “You don’t have an army” Hindenburg was a little more diplomatic and said that he could not provide troops because he couldn’t guarantee the Kaiser that the troops wouldn’t arrest him before they got to Berlin. The Kaiser stayed in Belgium and the revolution proceeded. What will the army do in Iran? I have no idea. When the Shah fell he fell because the army refused to defend him. My best guess is that Israel and the US will be OK with a badly mauled Islamic state. Soon Trump will be complaining that he gave the people an opportunity but they failed him.
42 Steve Owens
March 1, 2026 at 2:31 pm

From twitter
“As an Iranian, I can tell you the situation is no longer just political—it’s existential. We are trapped between two collapsing structures: one internal, one external. On one hand, we face a deeply dysfunctional government, led by the Supreme Leader and the Islamic Republic’s unelected institutions.

Decades of economic mismanagement, suppression of dissent, and brutal ideological control have alienated multiple generations. No one believes in reform anymore—because every attempt has either been co-opted or crushed. But here’s the paradox: We are also terrified of regime collapse—because we’ve watched the aftermath of Western intervention in countries like Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Afghanistan. Each was promised freedom; each descended into chaos, civil war, or foreign occupation.

So no, we don’t trust the U.S. or Israel. Not because we support our regime—but because we know how imperial powers treat ‘liberated’ nations in the Middle East.

Freedom, in their language, often means vacuum, fire, and permanent instability. Right now, many Iranians live with three truths at once: The Islamic Republic is morally and politically bankrupt. The alternatives offered by foreign actors are not liberation—they’re collapse.

A bad government is survivable. No government is not. We are not silent because we agree. We are cautious because we’ve learned—too well—what happens when superpowers decide to “help.” In a sentence: Iran is a nation held hostage by its own regime, but haunted by the fate of its neighbors. We are stuck in a house we hate, surrounded by fires we fear more.”
43 Patrick Muldowney
March 1, 2026 at 7:04 pm

The work of destroying the Iranian fascist regimes armed forces has only just passed the 24hr mark and out you come with this drivel and point to Venezuela as your model. But that temporary deal (that is what Venezuela is) has nothing to do with what is even possible in Iran.

Even when you have already explained on this thread the existing divisions in the contending Iranian armed forces you now swap horses and yabber about what ‘the army’ will do. You know that this single ‘army’ does not even exist but like an arthritic card sharp you now make a sad attempt to deal this card about ‘the army’ from the bottom of your marked deck. Right now you can be certain that even the known divisions are now divided and that they will divide even more as further command and control as well as structure and personnel continue to evaporate!

You already know that the Iranian masses were filmed some months back shouting death to Khamenei and so forth. The war has just started! Already the leader has gone on his annual holidays but this time he is taking them everywhere and permanently! Command and control are the prime targets right now and the Iranian air-force is no doubt heading for oblivion but so is their navy and their extensive missile forces. Rome was not destroyed in a day you know!

Is someone game to even try to step into Khamenei’s now spare shoes at this point or is the ‘just warming up’ US now dealing with a headless chook of a regime? What faction will this next -proposed by you as acceptable to the US- theocratic dictator come from? How will he currently give out his new orders? When he tries to enforce his will, who is certain to salute and then be capable of carrying them out? Who will he trust not to betray him?

I say this mythical he can’t even order a surrender and that’s because the US will demand that those pesky next elections be not only open ‘honest’ and above board but free and fair and internationally supervised! How about that for my claim! Yep you heard it. Trust worthy elections under a constitution as reliable as South Africa or Iraq perhaps. Up to this point the Iranian people could only vote for people that the dearly departed approved of! That method is what kept the theocratic terror regime in actual power so it obviously has to be dismantled!

I would bet that the Iranian masses are even more angry now with the forces that have been butchering them than they were 2 days ago. and I contend they will not go back to living under the rule of these still organised and active theocratic thugs. I contend that they in overwhelming numbers are cheering the reported death of Khamenei. His forces include but are not limited to
the 125k now not so strong Islamic Revolutionary Guard
the 100k now not so strong Popular Mobilisation Forces
the 340k now not so strong Iranian Army,
The numbers are apparently falling by the hour!

When 320,000 of them no longer murder democrats for a living -because they won’t be- maybe then you will consider the quality of life now enjoyed by the Kurds in Iraqi Kurdistan! I know you remember them even if you are a little forgetful. Iraqi Baathists used their army to gas Kurds in Halabja and the western world led by the US turned a blind eye! The 20% Kurds advanced with the COW and helped to defeat that same army way back in 2003 and have lived in a peaceful and developing part of Iraq virtually every day since! Stunning how forgetful people are about such a large segment of the Iraqi masses who have for so long been doing so well.

Now you (a well known self proclaimed supporter of the Kurds) keep totally silent about these Kurds as but the most stunning example of your repetitive brain injury! Instead of pointing out their flawed, yet still mighty by comparison, strides forward towards a more western industrialised world level of democracy you spread rubbish from an Iranian whiner about Syria being somehow the fault of western imperialists instead of Iranian theocrats etc.

But posting your own pseudoleft views from a 92,000,000 population -and an already outdated one at that- is just talking to the voices in your head. You can find and repeat an Iranian view that mirrors your view but those that took to the streets are mostly not going to think like this.

You’re really quite determined to not see what’s coming!

The volunteer Basij militia cannot be just theoretically disbanded. Look what happened when the Baathist army melted away in Iraq! They must be accounted for, caught up with and fully brought to book by the Iranian masses.

The Iranian Kurds know what they want to see happen to the IRG and they don’t want to lose their fighters doing this job if the airpower now in play can get them first! As is said, ‘never let a soldier go where an artillery shell can go first’. Steve has not mentioned the Kurds why is that I wonder?

As for the Iranian army, when it fully breaks apart under this attack a chess board appearance to Iran will suddenly appear even to the currently blind. A shattered army with no control, communications or effective logistics (I remember someone who said professional talk logistics) and hated by its own people will get eaten piece by piece square after square.

you could have quoted one of these voices https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESDu6pv1_Cw
44 Steve Owens
March 4, 2026 at 11:57 am

I keep repeating that the regimen without an invasion will continue in control because they control the guns. On Trigonometry they had an expert who said that about 25% of the population would kill to overthrow the regimen and about 25% are prepared to kill to defend the regimen but and here’s my spin the 25% prepared to kill for the regimen are the people who have guns. Back in 1917 Russia had an election and the Bolsheviks scored 24%. This election was in the euphoric wake of of October. In 1918 support for the Bolsheviks clearly took a dip their hold on power was fragile at one point Lenin threatened to resign unless his own central committee backed him. In the regional Soviets the Mensheviks were resurgent as were the Left Social Revolutionaries. The critical factor in the Bolsheviks remaining in power was the fact that they commanded people with guns. In August 1917 Kerensky had given the Petrograd Soviet 30,000 rifles plus the Kronstadt garrison had another 10,000. Trotsky was able to turn the Red Guards into the Red Army and the rest is history.
45 Steve Owens
March 4, 2026 at 9:04 pm

There’s upside and downside to arming the Kurds https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-in-talks-with-iranian-kurds-on-potential-cia-backed-op-for-uprising-sources/
46 Patrick Muldowney
March 4, 2026 at 11:59 pm

Patience young Paduan. The force is not strong in you, so training you must have.

Look at the dates on the comments on this thread. I only started it on the 3/01! That was day 7of the mass demonstrations. It took another 5 days or so for the regime to close down the people’s communications and let loose with the mass slaughter. This is moving at a cracking pace. Try to remember how events in Ukraine unfolded and Syria etc! Think what all those revolutionaries and enslaved peoples have had to endure.

Since -what I had termed the inevitable- war got underway I have been VERY happy with developments. I can’t think of a more fortunate assistance for the clearly revolutionary minded peoples of Iran who were suffering mass casualties for their unarmed demonstration troubles. Now it will be their turn to fight back and so ‘guns’ will be found, you can be quite sure of that. Epic Fury is a well named operation. Just remind yourself that fascists have been slaughtering the people and must now pay for what they have been up to for all these years.

Stop getting ahead of yourself. Artillery will need some time to do the conquer bit of war and only then infantry will come into play. Remember the fascists are not playing the role of 300 Spartans. but from a coherent force they are being divided and broken up into a disorganized rabble of self-interested thugs. The brain, eyes, ears and voice of the coherent force get taken out first and only then the uncoordinated ‘muscles’. What revolutionary force could possibly hope for more direct help than what this one is currently getting? What have the planning Generals told Trump? Well undoubtedly, they told him that when he pressed the go button it would take them weeks to destroy the regime’s vitals. From my POV the destruction of those vitals is so far going to plan.

The largest of the fascist forces in the region are now being driven underground by the attacks of the lastsuperpower and its curious and growing group of allies including the little Satan. The Theocratic Empire’s once powerful ‘death star collection of weapons systems’ is already a smoking ruin and in Iraq the Shia forces -that have always had an Islamofascist element lodged within the country and the government- are dividing and IMV the government forces will both hold and be supported by the Kurds and Sunni elements as they deal with any of these pro-Iranian elements that wish to somehow assist this (hated by the masses 3 or 4 V 1) regime survive.

At some point the Iraqi border will ‘leak’ weapons into the pro revolutionary people; it will not work the other way round. This will also be the case from Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan. The Caspian Sea will I think not be a border of much help from a weak Russia.

It’s now year 5 of the fight against the resumed Putin warmaking and he is starting to wobble!

All the airports are now closed as regime supply ports for Chinese and Russian material transfers and no ground forces are coming to the rescue from these directions! What the regime had at the start will start to fall day after day. Their power will drain away, and they will ‘go broke slowly at first then all at once’.

Space is already under US control and the skies, and the sea will at some point fall to these forces that will continue supporting the rebels.

From the other side of this planet, I have nothing to add to the basic plot that the Iranian masses have already got their heads around. Lots of them would agree that this really is their chance and they will take it. They have been shown no mercy and, in their turn, will show none. The fascists have indeed as the saying goes ‘sown the wind and must now reap the whirlwind.’

The Kurds as 1 example, after a week or 2 of the fascist regime’s destruction will assist their cross-border brethren within Iran to seize power where they can and I have no doubt move forward under US air cover. This force multiplying effect of having the world’s leading military ‘in your corner’ cannot be underestimated. No regime forces will be able to concentrate as they used to. Just a few days ago the regime could see and hear their enemies and speak to each separate arm of their widespread forces. Now they do so at their own risk; and it will get much worse. They had an air force and a navy and missile forces as well as well-known command and control structures and NOW, day by day they are losing all these strengths. The formerly easily terrorised masses will soon enough get hold of some weapons and then the regime will lose control of prisons etc.

Watch and learn as a revolution unfolds before your very eyes. But even after the regimes been consigned to histories dustbin the struggle for democracy will go on. The Iranian peoples will still be fighting fascists in a decade’s time but they just won’t be the current crop. They will however unlike now by then be fighting from a position of overwhelming strength.

The world is turning upside down and the pseudoleft seeks the false safety and security of stability when all that could preserve is the current reality of an enslaved population. Trump is 100% right to back this revolution and that is what he is doing.
47 Patrick Muldowney
March 5, 2026 at 6:58 pm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjtcrZ6gCNw well who would have guessed that the Iranian Kurds would have been the first to move?? Modesty forbids; but now I have to think what will be the target of the first thunder run? My guess is Kermanshah and straight on to Hamadan. Perhaps then on to Tehran the US air cover could ensure a liberating column reaches the capital to be greeted by the masses that want rid of this rotten fascist regime. We just have to be patient and let the plan unfold.

What we know is that there is a plan and it is being implemented!
48 Patrick Muldowney
March 5, 2026 at 8:15 pm

On reflection and a closer examination of the map the thunder run probably has to go through Sanandaj as the first step. Anyway, one has to admit that the liberation of the Iran peoples is very exciting! Lots of fascists are about to get what they are owed! Glory to the heroes. Glory to the Kurds. Onwards to liberation. And when the fighting gets tough we will remember those who were slaughtered when unarmed and protesting and remember who supplied the arms for this fightback.
49 Patrick Muldowney
March 5, 2026 at 10:30 pm

https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/2178519/azerbaijan-live-nakhchivan-airport-iran-war and news just in. I wonder when will they get involved? It won’t be long me thinks.
50 Patrick Muldowney
March 6, 2026 at 2:31 pm

Australia has another Petrov moment on our hands.

The Iranian women’s soccer team must not be permitted to leave Australia. They ought to be placed in what amounts to protective custody. Until their genuine status can be established and that can’t be till after this war is concluded with the fall of the regime AND until it then becomes safe to return to Iran. Even Steve will be forced to agree with this, I hope.
This is what an Iranian protester at the game had to say
‘”They have been using these football players to normalise their crimes.

“Finally after 47 years there is some help, some intervention, some humanitarian support to rescue Iranians.

“I’m 100 per cent sure they have already punished them for not singing the Islamic Republic’s anthem [against South Korea]. I’m sure they are under so much pressure, being punished not just themselves, but their families.

“I understand and I am supporting them, because I’m sure they wouldn’t keep the mandatory hijabs on their bodies if they didn’t have to.”

Nasrin Vaziri is an Iranian Australian and women’s rights activist who has lived on the Gold Coast for over 30 years.

She wanted to show her support for the players.

“I think they are brilliant because they haven’t had many chances to play [friendlies],” Ms Vaziri told ABC Sport.

“They are real people, even under pressure.

“We are proud of them. As a woman I’m proud of them.

“Under a lot of pressure they still deny to sing national anthem, because the national anthem …. is advertisement for the Islamic regime, so we don’t like it.”‘
*********************
In order to protect all of the players and officials involved and their families etc. back in Iran ALL must be placed under the protection of Australian immigration authorities and held irrespective of their stated will. Even if they were wanting to go to a 3rd safe country they should not be permitted as they are now obviously part of a criminal investigation where some are victims and some are perpetrators!
51 Steve Owens
March 6, 2026 at 9:46 pm

I don’t think the Australian government should do anything about the football team. I can’t see that they can return even if they want to. Can they get a flight back to Tehran? Can anyone? Doing something theatrical like taking them into protective custody is at this time just that theater. I imagine their itinerary was fly from Iran to Aust. play the tournament and return to Iran. They now can’t return end of story.
52 Patrick Muldowney
March 7, 2026 at 10:08 am

Is the Iranian regime a terror regime? For example, do they stay in power with mass murder and hang 16 year old girls from lamp posts as standard operating procedure? Would they let a sporting team out of their sight without a political guard? Would that team not have first been told that their loved ones will pay if they were to seek political asylum in the west? Has this team not fucked up in the eyes of the regime? Did they ALL then not just stand to attention in game 2 and salute as ordered? How would Steve Owens get to Iran? Could he fly to Islamabad or even Moscow? Could he take a bus from the airport to the border? For goodness sakes think.

These girls ARE in danger! There is a crime underway right in front of your nose. The Petrovs were being forced to return against their will! These girls could not all want to return but even if 1 wanted to defect the result would be terrible for her family. The only solution is to hold them all in protective custody.
Think about this. Put a hands on to protect these terrorized young women who all now are forced to wear their hijab but who ALL wear it in the way that only a few years ago would have seen them imprisoned.
************************
BTW I don’t think the ALP will do the right thing by all concerned over the women’s soccer issue. I just hope they don’t stuff it up completely.
***********************
53 Patrick Muldowney
March 7, 2026 at 10:23 am

Just saw the ABC presenting the issue of the soon to be opening ground operations on the Kurdish front. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vxa3jBnNTg They are presenting this as basically an insignificant dads army operation hardly worth mentioning and possibly even probably going to fight among themselves! They present the Kurds as the force that the Trumpists want to ‘use’ to overrun the whole of Iran. What a silly Trump! What an illegal war as the woke Government of Canada can tell us! Oh this is simply terrible! And it’s only going to get worse under the climate denier Trump! Oh woe, Oh woe the poor Iranian fascists are being bombed illegally around the clock when they were simply minding their own business and slaughtering their unarmed masses who wished to be rid of them but too bad for them had no guns. After Bush, Blair and Howard started this century’s spree of international crime, is there now to be no respect for international law at all? Someone immediately phone Geoffrey Robinson, what we need now is another pompous ass on the ABC!

Let’s start with the obvious fact that 10% of Iran are Kurdish and are overwhelmingly hostile to this fascist regime. Lets celebrate the fact that now they have the promise of an armed Kurdish force preparing to step in and help them overthrow their fascist overlords. And when they do come into Iran it won’t just begin the process of freeing the Kurds town by town city by city where the Kurds live in the mountains either. They will come into Iran under the direct air protection of the US. They will come as part of the flexible plan created by the US generals that covers ALL of Iran. These generals head up the most powerful military in the world. Instead of drawing the obvious conclusions from what is underway right under our own eyes, we get a typical ABC whinge.

This is what an utterly clueless jumble of anti US/Trump prejudice can be expected to come up with. They don’t even begin to get it.

You only have to start thinking from a positive POV over the issue of overthrowing the fascists to immediately realise that the US planning generals are bound to have a well-developed plan. A plan that is well understood by now for even the general public to know it to be all about regime change.

The regime cannot be permitted to defeat their own people and somehow stay in power.

The US would be seen to lose if the regime stays in power. Worse than that TRUMP would be seen to be a loser. He can’t have that. So the war will go on and the US will see to it that the Iranian people get the help they require to overthrow their hated regime. This help includes special forces and they are very good! Yes it includes the Kurdish troops that are available to liberate the Kurdish masses in Iran and that was perfectly predictable.
54 Patrick Muldowney
March 7, 2026 at 10:40 am

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQKU3SwJ6Wo They just don’t get it! They can’t look past their TDS. Months away from a steady diet of humble pie for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
55 Steve Owens
March 7, 2026 at 11:47 am

Have a look at flight radar over Iran https://www.flightradar24.com/airport/ika
No passenger travel is going in or out. The women’s football team can not return home. Once return is a theoretical possibility then it will be time to consider offering these women protection. Until then everything else posturing.
56 Patrick Muldowney
March 7, 2026 at 12:44 pm

‘How would Steve Owens get to Iran? Could he fly to Islamabad or even Moscow? Could he take a bus from the airport to the border? For goodness sakes think.’ You show no evidence of even reading anything that refutes you. This team will leave Australia, and these young women will then be at the mercy of whatever nasty Islamic regime they fly to. A real crime is underway, and you can’t/wont spot it. You know that they ARE being threatened and that once they fly out and are on the bus in Pakistan they will then be subject to a gun just like the one that put a bullet in Malala.

Refusing to think this issue thru and refusing to even think that it ought to be thought through is bad form.
57 Patrick Muldowney
March 7, 2026 at 2:39 pm

Zelensky has played yet another card he isn’t supposed to have. He has proposed a 1 month cease fire with the Russians so that “Those who guard our airspace can teach others how to defend themselves from Iranian threats,” Zelensky stated during a press appearance. Naturally the Russians won’t agree as usual! The Europeans must be grinning from ear to ear! Trump is pulling down one of Putin’s mates! TDS has made him out to be a Putin supporter and is has to be admitted he has a very bad record over Ukraine issues.

Nevertheless this is only day 10 and the world is profoundly changing.

The Iranian fascists are no longer able to be supplied from flights from China and Russia. They now must fight their people and the US only with what they started with and that huge pile is being found and destroyed by the day. One good day’s work after another.

Soon (whatever that exactly means by US planning generals standards) the US will be able to fly its various and numerous weapons platforms all over Iran and more directly destroy any regime targets that come to their notice. When they start doing that, the currently nonexistent ground forces will mysteriously appear. Then the ABC will scramble with the rest of the MSM and will start to produce reports on how territorial control is falling to the liberating forces. Currently there are by my back of an envelope reckoning 1 or 2 million armed fascists in Iran. So there will obviously still be several years of work for armed Iranian democrats after the regime falls. The new Iranian government that emerges from this revolutionary war will be fighting a much weaker bunch of disorganised theocratic fascists in a year or so than what the unarmed masses currently face right now.
58 Steve Owens
March 7, 2026 at 3:15 pm

My apologies you are correct. The plan is to fly them to Turkey and then bus them to Iran.
59 Patrick Muldowney
March 7, 2026 at 3:57 pm

My point is that they cannot be offered protection because if anyone were to accept it then the threat to their family would unfold in the usual manner. They ALL must be compelled both players and their minders so that no threat from back in Iran is actionable.

There is prima facia a crime being committed (deadly threat) and it is not known for sure who is involved as the perpetrators and who are the victims. I have no clue as to what the legalities in all this would be, but IMV there are always work arounds when war and threats are involved.
60 Patrick Muldowney
March 7, 2026 at 4:13 pm

https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/world/iranian-mathematician-missing-in-canada-may-have-been-targeted-by-tehran-activists-say/ar-AA1XFpvG?ocid=msedgntp&pc=U531&cvid=69abb15727e142cb879505b3fef2f96a&ei=27 Iranians in the west are being murdered.

The Turks will most probably find a method for delaying their return. At least I hope so. The ALP government will no doubt do nothing.
61 Steve Owens
March 7, 2026 at 10:08 pm

My go to guy for understanding the mechanics of combat is Cappy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwQ3q85A_MU
62 Patrick Muldowney
March 9, 2026 at 11:48 am

Manchester vigil for Khamenei crashed by Iranians celebrating Supreme Leader’s death
Looks like there are more than a few of us democratically minded types that want to make war on the fascists that are making war on us! And that is happy dance time when the enemy gets what they deserve. Trump has ordered the US military to join the fightback against the killer regime. Now the civil war -backed by the US- will unfold. Happy day!
Big call on Iran team’s ‘asylum’ question
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/other/big-call-on-iran-team-s-asylum-question/ar-AA1XJYir?ocid=msedgntp&pc=U531&cvid=69acfa4e725f4ae3957d5ec8ae737c5e&ei=29

What’s the bet they fly out with the ALP’s blessing and Penny looking very wise and doing nothing of substance?
************************
Steve recommends some ‘expert’ (2027) The Best Iran War Breakdown on the Internet with Aimen Dean & Richard Miniter – YouTube on the Triggernometry podcast who argued there is basically a dead heat involved with 25% willing to kill for the regime and 25% willing to kill the regime supporters and 50% who just want a peaceful life. I think that his assessment is too high for the enemy side because of the demonstrations that we saw unfold before the mass slaughter was unleashed. They would never have been possible with those statistics in that there would have been fighting in the streets from the word go and there was not. I can guess that much from a know nothing position on the other side of the world. But then you have to admit that by now I have had a lot of experience with this type of issue.

When did the war in Iran actually start? When an anti-fascist and revolutionary democrat like me poses this question, I am fully aware that 30-40 thousand deaths had already been racked up by the enemy just this year alone and all before the first bomb came back their way. The fascists were well and truly at war with the Iranian people and have been all along. I obviously side with the Iranian masses -as Steve Owens does- who I speculate are up against perhaps 2million armed enemies and a further 7million unarmed supporters backing them up. That would constitute about 9 million or about 10% of the Iranian population.

14 million would be about 15% spread across the country but now unable to properly communicate and concentrate their NOW disrupted and divided and no doubt below the surface split and contending forces. Once any special forces, spies and eventually the peoples forces that get US recognition identify the enemies position they will be targeted from the air! There is now no functioning government, and it will continue to be the case. Soon the people will have to take more responsibility because stuff has to be made to work and people have to have water and food etc. Even if we were to take the 25% estimate as realistic they are no longer functioning as a unified and directed force similar now (only still well armed) to the status of our side. The supposedly unarmed side (our side) will soon be calling up attacks on enemy concentrations and the less concentrated they are the more the masses will overwhelm them themselves.

The prospects for this revolution to rapidly progress to the stage of an internationally observed electoral process and new government are VERY GOOD. But Steve had the view that history is against the prospect of a good outcome! Hands off he cried while doing nothing to stop the Chinese fascist and Putin etc. putting hands on! Has Steve changed sides yet? Or are we now in the blank stare mode?

The fascists only hope is for the US to stop attacking them before they become too weak to ‘restore their order over the democratically minded masses of Iran’. They could only do that with the most bloody of repression as we saw last month! If the US do not stop hunting for, finding them and killing them, then nothing will prevent the masses from taking over Iran piece by piece as they are given the opportunity. If they do stop then that would be the terrible result and Trump will look bad. Some people hope Trump stops I think that Steve might now be in the predicament of hoping Trump does not stop!

US planning Generals will soon have total air control and some special forces on the ground to find and co-operate with willing locals. These locals will concentrate so that they are the overwhelmingly bigger ground force at the point of their chosen attack. Our starting figures will then start to make no sense as each battle is considered separately. If you remembered Mao, you could understand this process that ought to unfold. The bigger force overall will not be the bigger force for each battle of antihalation. The currently better armed force will if concentrated be attacked from above and if dispersed will be hunted down like fleeing Samuri in Japan’s era of civil war (See Seven Samuri).

When the reported deaths in Syria had climbed to only 3,000 I knew that a big war was underway; but unfortunately Obama was POTUS and the required western involvement was very badly handled; so HIRISE fascists got involved in the preservation of that fascist regime and the result is on the comparison score board. There was a functioning government in control of the enclaves that it was in control of. That will not be the case for Iran until the air war is over and it won’t be over until there is a surrender or a deal that applies to a new ‘interim government’ in control of the first of the enclaves that are no longer dominated by the fascists.

Now some heavily armed fighters have turned up to fight for and with the 90% of Iranians who want to be liberated from their deadly enslavers. They have turned up;
‘from the lands beyond the seas
Sworn to be free
no more our ancient Sire-land
shall shelter the despot or the slave’

This Marxist once more argues for a fight against fascists. Once more, I argue for armed struggle against those whose day job is killing and enslaving my side! It is a no brainer that workers of the world are once more behind fighters flying the stars and stripes. The more Iranian fascists they kill the less of them will be able to kill and enslave the Iranian masses that constitute the pro-democratic forces.

I am completely delighted that yet another aircraft carrier task force is heading towards the fight! I am thrilled that the 82nd airborne are reported to be on alert etc. I remind people how hard it is to get a peoples’ army, armed and trained and over the long struggle that is before them till victory is achieved. The Iranian masses have a mighty job before them. Send them help and prevent their enemies from receiving any help from the likes of China, Nth Korea and Russia!

All of this destruction of the enemy is welcome. Any assistance is going towards killing some more of these 2-million-armed fascists. Some people are mourning Khamenei! I am dancing with the revolutionaries! Death to these fascists.

What about the Palestinians I hear people say. Don’t shut up about that failed ongoing war for greater Israel! Don’t go silent about the genocidal attack that the zionists are involved in! Point to it every day if you can! But while you call for an end to that evil war for greater Israel and expose all those who are involved in such a crime don’t go silent about Iran.

I have no hesitation in supporting this fight but only reservations and hesitations about how it will unfold and this from the other side of the world with no local understanding is virtually worthless. My understandings for how this will go are in the same vane as with Syria, Ukraine, Iraq, Kuwait and the Falklands wars. The fascists have been defeated in all cases including Russia in Ukraine. In all cases external forces have helped in their very welcome destruction.

The nature of such a big war being what it is plus the fog of war and the sheer complexity of making war against such a powerful enemy still leaves me prepared to say (and yes even with the current reports of civilian casualties) So far so good! Could it all go pear shaped? Of course it could so… What is to be done? Hope the US persevere for start! Trump may fuck this up but his self interest would suggest the opposite.

Just as we expose Zionism we must make the case for fighting back against all fascists! If a Zionist bomb falls on the Islamo-fascists in Iran, so be it. It will never make one of their bombs in the war for greater Israel justified.
63 Patrick Muldowney
March 9, 2026 at 1:52 pm

‘Donald Trump may say that his polling has never been better, but the latest survey data on his job performance shows that it’s never been lower. The President has become a very big problem for Republicans just one year into his second term.’

So what must he achieve and by what date to change that weak polling around and make himself the second coming of George Washington instead! His enemies won’t want that result and won’t advise him to take the actions that would work but I don’t feel in the slightest constrained! Can it be done befor the mid terms? I think so.

Victory for the people of Iran would turn this weak poling right around! But it would have to be clear to all (both friends and enemies) that the timely result was indeed a victory for the Iranian masses. That would do it!

So how can he get that result? Well it’s war so first he must charge his planning generals with the task. They must liberate Tehran! They must keep the fascists under constant attack while they manage to organise and arm the masses to get control of the capital. They must then get the democracy ‘deal’ publicly agreed to and start to equip the democratic peoples’ army for the ongoing struggle as it spreads right across the country. Iranian democrats can then wage their fight from the front foot. With the forces available to them this is doable over the next six months!

Clearly the war will still be going but it will be unmistakably a war of liberation led by and fought as the main force by the Iranian people. The leading force will have been the US airforce etc. but the main force will be the Iranian working class. In China, the overwhelmingly main force was the peasants when the tiny class conscious proletarian forces were the leading forces. The situation is analogous.

The revolution in Iran is also not a socialist revolution but just a garden variety bourgeois democratic revolution and I see no reasons from any revolutionary or class ‘first principles’ that argue against it. Political parties will form and elections will be held. A western democracy is coming. And will have unfolded long before Trump’s term as POTUS is over.
64 Steve Owens
March 9, 2026 at 1:52 pm

Here is Shrek explaining that the Iranian regimen is like an onion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FtCTW2rVFM
An organisation built like an onion is very hard to defeat because there is always another layer.
Of course the Iranian people deserve democracy and of course the football players should be prevented from returning to a war zone. I struggle to see why the government doesn’t just say these people are our guests and we couldn’t possibly assist them onto a bus headed for a war zone.
Personally I prefer the old USA, you know Armitage and Le May who knew what bombs were for and would happily say that the US will bomb you back to the stone age. This new age thinking of we will bomb you into democracy is beyond me.
In 10 years the government of Iran will be decided by the number of of people holding AK47’s. So far the regimen has hundreds of thousands of those people and the opposition has thousands if the Kurdish intervention is true.
It’s also good to remember that when the US introduced a no fly zone over northern Iraq a blind eye was turned to the Turkish air force which flew through the no fly zone at will because they weren’t going to allow PKK bases in Iraq. If the PKK are now going to liberate northern Iran it is likely that the Turkish air force will again have a say.
65 Steve Owens
March 9, 2026 at 2:25 pm

As I keep pointing out it’s not your support in the community that matters , it’s your armed support in the community that matters. In the 2024 Iranian presidential election the reformer got 54% and the hardliner got 45% so clearly the majority hunger for reform but the hardliners have weapons and the reformer have none. Here’s an example from history. In 1917 the Russian empire had a population of 130 million. In April 1917 the Bolsheviks had 20,000 members. By October 1917 the Bolsheviks had 200,000 members about the same number as the Mensheviks but the difference is the Bolsheviks ran the Soviets and the Red Guards had guns. No one else had guns because the army had disintegrated. The SR’s were more popular but had no guns. You can always pick the winner they are the people with the guns. Popular support runs a distant second.
66 Patrick Muldowney
March 10, 2026 at 8:10 pm

As predicted the ALP and the bureaucratic authorities are dangerously incompetent! https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/insight/trump-slams-australia-over-iran-asylum-row/gm-GM6BB0CA08?gemSnapshotKey=GM6BB0CA08-snapshot-7&uxmode=ruby&ocid=edgntpruby&pc=U531&cvid=69afdf9a123041ffb6e848708987efcd&ei=13

The pseudo-left will resort to their familiar old blank stare!
67 Patrick Muldowney
March 10, 2026 at 11:54 pm

https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/iranian-women-s-soccer-team-flies-out-of-australia/ar-AA1XUcQF?uxmode=ruby&ocid=edgntpruby&pc=U531&cvid=69b0144335e14ceca83dfdb153aa8e32&ei=18 Hopefully the Turkish authorities will be better that the ALP in OZ but it does not look good! More a desperate hope now.
68 Steve Owens
March 11, 2026 at 6:41 am

“Australia has another Petrov moment on our hands.” And you say this without any hint of irony. Petrov was a KGB officer in the embassy of the USSR. He became concerned when recalled to Moscow as people he was thought to be close to were being rounded up and executed. The Australian government offered him 5 thousand pounds to defect which he accepted but didn’t tell his wife. Your politics are the politics of the people who were forcing Mrs. Petrov onto the plane.
69 Patrick Muldowney
March 11, 2026 at 3:41 pm

You are a liar as well as a continual fool! You know that is simply untrue meanwhile the fascists get to their work unmolested by your efforts. The ALP’s handling of this escapes your criticism; the fact that I could explain in detail with just a glance what the big issues were is not drawing favorable comment from you; you would rather spread lies about how I am a rotten communist and like all reds a supporter of anything you can point to done by the revisionists. You could not care what is the right way to think through the issues that directly affect these women so long as you can pretend to expose a rotten red.

Another gold medal for me another self-evident lie from you.
70 Alex Mc
March 11, 2026 at 8:27 pm

Loving this spirited (if one-sided) debate! I wish Patrick would rise above the petty insults and personal attacks, Steve is making a lot of really excellent and thoughtful points. Oh well, I guess that’s just internet discourse in a nutshell…
71 Patrick Muldowney
March 12, 2026 at 11:21 am

Before I address the topic of Iran directly, I will first point Alex to the foundational dispute that leads to the 2 schools of thought above.
*****************
The idea that the U.S. could be acting in the interests of the oppressed (try to remember WW2) is outside of your thinking. 60 years of rotten to the core policies in the Middle East, ended in defeat on 9/11. The left always said these rotten policies would have to be junked and they now have been. [but not completely or consistently]

You ought to know that other people claiming to stand on the left of politics have made arguments for waging war against the Baathist tyranny in Iraq, and continuing that fight against the Jihadists, and Shia death squads, just as you are also familiar with the work of Christopher Hitchens. [we now make the argument with respect to Iran]

So, let’s try an exercise–
Advise the U.S. President the day after 9/11.

This is my speculated U.S. war cabinet meeting after 9/11,
a question from the President.
What more can they do to us?
…Well, Mr. President they will, if not stopped, eventually get hold of a nuke and destroy Washington or some other city.
Now this cannot be known for certain but any President dealing with the reality of 9/11 would have had to consider this worst-case scenario as a distinct possibility and would be obliged to ask the following question.
What strategy must we adopt to defeat them?

To this question I would have replied–
Mr. President we must set down policies to turn every country in the world into a modern (bourgeois) democracy. If all countries look, and smell like Sweden and France, we will have won.

The world needs sewerage systems for the smell, and industrialization for the sewerage systems; it needs education for the industrialization, and it needs basic bourgeois political freedoms to permit the education…

We must stop doing what we have been doing for the whole post WW2 period. We must reverse all our old policies.

These mosquitoes are attacking us because we caused a swamp in the Middle East which breeds them!

We must drain that swamp, and then there will be no more mosquitoes.

Mr. President there is no other way of winning this war….
(That is what I would have said if I was in the war cabinet).

Note this is not saying that the U.S. must go from country to country overthrowing the local tyrants, but rather to establish policies different to the rotten ones that they were following in the past of propping up the tyrants and opposing the democratic development of the masses throughout the world.

Without a doubt there needed to be a war cabinet formed after 9/11, and all the old junk U.S. policies dumped! [where] They have been ditched and good riddance. [where they have not been they will still have to be]

Now, given that you oppose the attacks of 9/11 undertaken by Saudis; Egyptians; and others from various countries in the Middle East, what would you have told the President? (Bush)

The old policies of the U.S. were to keep the Sunni minority under Saddam in power rather than risk the Shia 60% majority and the 20% Kurds running their own lives in a federal democratic republic, where Islamists would be the largest political parties for a long time to come. So, though they were encouraged to revolt, they were sold out to be slaughtered by the Baathists, when the Baathists were appropriately driven out of Kuwait.

What I am saying is that the biggest opponent of the real trend to bourgeois democratic revolution worldwide has been since WW2 the USA. Under the so called ‘realist’ policies of the likes of that untried war criminal Kissinger, they have all this time been blocking progress and consequently built-up hatred against them globally. Sadly, the honorable U.S. soldiers of WW2 gave way to the hated oppressors of Indochina and everywhere else they trampled.

So, given you claim to be some sort of leftist yourself. You tell me what’s wrong with what I have said and then I will tell you why Iraq was, and remains along with Palestine, the key to kicking off this revolution that was and is being suppressed across the whole region.

I am saying the goal is nothing less than region change and that this represents a 180 reversal of former U.S. policies that was about stability and the suppression of communists and other democrats.

Now perhaps that is clear enough for a reasoned response.
patrick [I wrote that in 2008 and I think it still applies as foundational thinking for anyone who thinks of themselves as capable of fighting in the modern era against the type of evil that turned up ready or not on 9/11]
72 Steve Owens
March 12, 2026 at 1:13 pm

Joseph Schumpeter once said that the Swedish model will work anywhere, as long as you take the Swedish people there to run it.
There’s a huge problem with the drain the swamp model and it can be made perfectly obvious with Afghanistan, you need to look no further. The Americans attempted to drain the swamp in Afghanistan. At the time I argued that Al Qaeda was more of a police problem rather than a military problem but you Patrick and your friends at the time argued that a military invasion followed by democratic restructure was a much better idea. As I pointed out at the time all that military occupation would achieve was to reignite the Afghan civil war. The invasion put the Northern Alliance back in power you know those pedophile war lords whom the Taliban had defeated.
The war cost $2.3 trillion 2,455 US military deaths and 46,000 Afghan civilian deaths.
Drain the swamp was put into practice in Afghanistan and the result was the Taliban was replaced by the Taliban.
Drain the swamp does not work.
73 Steve Owens
March 12, 2026 at 4:03 pm

Hi Alex me and Patrick have been friends since we were 13 and we are now going on to 70. He introduced me to radical politics when we were in our teens. This particular argument has been in progress for the last 25 years. Patrick is firm in his belief that 911 was a wake up call for the US ruling class and since then they have been trying to spread democracy throughout the middle east. One of us is a crazy man but considering we are still stuck on the same argument for 25 years maybe we should say 2 crazy men.
74 Steve Owens
March 13, 2026 at 10:42 am

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obQsUn0G0U4
If you scroll passed the panel there is an interesting interview with Talabani
75 Patrick Muldowney
March 14, 2026 at 6:43 pm

Steve did not want Trump to start this US part of the war; but I got my wish and it’s a binary.

Now 2 weeks into this, we stand in a new place and who do we find directing traffic at a new fork in the road? We find Yogi Berra telling us to take it! What is to be done?

Steve must now tread lightly for he is in that ‘blank stare’ part of the mind minefield.

I have just been told wonderful news of attacks now unfolding in Tehran, where I think it will ‘soon’ become apparent is the most important focus of this war that will obviously have several simultaneous fronts. My friends are telling me of consistent reports of air strikes targeting concentrations of regime thugs at their ‘check points’ and so forth. I say the enemy can and will be hunted down and if that ramps up, and I think it must then that will force regime forces into small enough units to be vulnerable to even lightly armed rebels! So Basij are being found and killed with airstrikes! How wonderful is that! 2 weeks into this and those bastards are getting their heavenly reward! Win, win! We know there are millions of people involved in the killing machine that is the Iran fascist regime. Basij have to be killed in large numbers or they will kill the revolutionary masses in large numbers. This too is a binary.

What does Steve want now? I know what I want. But does Steve know what he wants? Is he willing to work the issues through now? The facts we are working with are now changed and ‘when the facts change, my views change’ what about Steve?

Steve can now state his new positions just as I do.

The very reason I keep a public record and made a new thread called Iran dated 3/01/26 in the first place is to hold myself accountable. I have learned over the years that further clear thinking inevitably requires a clear record to easily and regularly review.

Steve could be contributing at Strange Times to a proper systematic review of for example any of the Ukraine threads; or the Syrian threads; or the Pell threads; or it’s about the oil threads; or elections were not the plan threads (like Chomsky drowning). There is undoubtedly a lot to review and sum up. But Steve chooses not to. No medals for Steve’s analysis and the approach with the soccer team shows why. Steve turns up not to develop his thinking but oddly enough to drop in indiscriminate doses of contempt and rabid anti-communist reminders; and the track record of this is both extensive and quite boring.

If Steve gets to work we can all be subsequently held to account! So as Iran events unfold across this glorious year -2026- of swamp draining I intend to keep Steve on a closer lead, and dump further contribution free ‘comments’ into the Junk file. Posting links with ZERO effort to indicate what you think is correct or wrong or even interesting and how so, is NOT any way to be held accountable!

So far, we can see Steve has not pursued the Women’s Soccer team issue and that was a very poor example of thinking through an issue that was raised by me and then openly worked through. Steve would not work it through in any way. Cheap ‘shots’ were all he was interested in. However, this issue sadly has not ended! My example in the Soccer case is the very model of how to think through issues that I want to see from anyone.

Effort must be made. I have no interest in further low life cheap shot anti-communist sniping from Steve or anyone.

To be perfectly clear, I think Steve ought to now want this war to be won and he ought to now publicly state this or say no. Not in any Yogi Berra manner but actively choosing sides. This is not difficult really because he has done it before! Having worked the issue through years back and then over an extended period Steve has every reason to be able to quickly work it out now.

Trump will look good as a result of what I want to see if it comes about! That is a fact I am untroubled by! Steve may not want Trump to look good in any way but if the Iranian peoples (and there are multiples of them) are to ‘soon’ be free of their NOW under attack theocratic fascist overlords it will be directly as a result of Trump’s singular choice to start to make war on these fascists.

The casualties for this war mount up day by day. The total casualties are of interest especially as they must be compared to Ukraine and Syria and Iraq etc., but one side of this ledger is not troubling me. The fascists are getting what they fully deserve and ‘their deaths are as light as a feather’; the innocent civilians and the heroes who are working for the liberation however their deaths are as heavy as a mountain.

What must be done to increase one sort and decrease the other?

I require that any contribution in this thread be directed at criticism or praise as to how this war is going and I do not want any -no effort made- link posting. It must be clear in comments what you think about something if you want to draw a link to attention and place it on this body of record.

If the regime does not remain in any form of power and that the US and the Western world are seen to have a different relationship with the regimes that follow (after the theocratic fascists are fully defeated and I say they will be and well before August) then the US led by Trump will have a win on the board. My prediction is clear and I admit to being an ‘eternal optimist’ and things usually take longer than I think they should.

We already know that Trump has mid-term election issues that will be very heavily influenced by what unfolds with Iran etc., over the next few months, so this must influence our thinking as all the events have an interplay.

Steve can easily define what victory means for him and make a plain statement in favor of a Trump led victory as I think he is actually compelled to.
Or;
he can waffle on, hide and change the subject and try his level best not to be accountable.

The various greens and hands off types right around the world are in zombie like mode currently and incessantly prattling on about the illegality of any outsiders making war to liberate the Iranian masses from their local theocratic overlords. But nobody is listening to them.

The war WILL deliver a result and Trump will never be hauled before Justice Geoffrey Robertson to be duly convicted of this blatant disregard of international law!

Naturally there are the ‘on the one hand and on the other’ type issues that Steve can go into; and he can point to the mistakes that he thinks are being made etc., but the question is now squarely before him. Does he want this war to continue until the fascist regime is ended?

The Iranian fascists are no longer in full control of anything let alone Iran. 2 weeks ago they were murdering 10s of thousands of its people at their will.

That level of regime power has now ended (with a good many deaths for the guilty as well) The Iranian people are still far from ‘liberated’. When they are, it will be recognisable in them being able to move forward with an election process that will be internationally recognised as free and fair and some of us will know that more of the swamp will be draining!.

Does Steve Owens now want the US military to take sufficient control of the region so as to prevent disruption by any hostile fascist forces to the trade activities of Kuwait, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain. Qatar, UAEetc ? This control will obviously extend over the whole of the Persian Gulf and must extend over at least the rest of this year and so not be compatible with current anti war anti US sentiments. There is currently no basis for any demands for the US to draw down in any way on land, sea, air or in space. In Australia there is no basis for any ‘cooling’ of the connections we currently have with this Trump led US.

Abbas Milani – Wikipedia
88% of Iranians Want Change: Abbas Milani on War, Regime Collapse, and the Future of Iran
Courage and heartbreak: The story that united – and chilled – Australia
76 Steve Owens
March 14, 2026 at 7:58 pm

I don’t know why we are arguing about the football team. You said they should be taken into protective custody. I said I didn’t think they could leave because Iran is a no fly zone. You corrected me and said that they would be flown to a third country and bussed in from there. My position was that these people are guests in our country and we should not assist in sending them to a war zone. The government offered them asylum and half took the offer and the others got on the plane. Hopefully when they arrive in Turkey the authorities will refuse to allow them to enter a war zone and allow them to stay in Turkey until it is safe to travel.
As to me dropping the Talabani interview without comment I didn’t think I needed to comment. He said he supported the US invasion and if I was Kurdish I would share that opinion. It was good for the Kurds for the rest of Iraq it threw them into civil war and spawned a terrorist group so terrible that Osama Bin Laden distanced himself from them.
The other bit of the interview of note was where he said that Kurds won’t be invading Iran that Iranian Kurds are predominantly Shia that many Kurds are part of the government and that Turkey would definitely not allow Kurds to cross into Iran in any significant way.
When the US went into Afghanistan I was against and feel vindicated. When the US went into Iraq I was against and feel mostly vindicated. When the US bombed Libya I supported the bombing but I now realise that to be an embarrassing mistake where hope triumphed over reason.
77 Patrick Muldowney
March 16, 2026 at 8:31 pm

Here is a further report on the Soccer team https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fK12U8KOAP8

My position is that literally everyone has dropped the ball because they did not properly frame the problem in the, all sided, manner that I did.

Steve contributed nothing but his standard blank stare support for the ALP; but as far as I know no political forces had a correct line on this.

Probably some of the Australian based Iranians or former Iranians worked out what had to be done but I don’t know of them and have been busy with other issues. I guess we will now have to find out with the rear-view-mirror reports in 1 or 2 years what finally happened to ALL those involved in this case. Fascists continually have people like these women under this type of double threat.

Anyway, now the Australian authorities no longer have any ability to deal with the crime that was in progress while the team was in Australia. They are now just as powerless as Steve or me.
78 Steve Owens
March 17, 2026 at 9:18 am

Players now on way to Oman. The video you posted, can channel 10 and the Liberals be any more brain dead? The Liberal spokesperson blames the Australian government for not keeping the affair low key. The interviewer fails to ask how it can be kept low key when the US President is on social media demanding action. Do they really think granting asylum to an international sporting team can be kept low key? As to the ALP there are 2 traditions amongst Socialists about Social Democracy One is the position of Lenin and Trotsky who argued that the Social Democrats were representative of the working class who would in a crisis become enemies of revolution (see here the Russian and German revolutions) The other tradition belongs to Stalin and it is ultra left declaring that Social Democrats are the enemy at all times naming them as Social Fascists, the results of this are best seen in the German Red Referendum of 1931 where the Communists made common cause with the Nazis to bring down a provincial Social Democratic government. See the trick is not only to study history but to learn from it.
79 Steve Owens
March 18, 2026 at 9:13 am

The team has now arrived in Türkiye and under police escort to their hotel.
80 Steve Owens
March 18, 2026 at 11:45 pm

Almost home https://www.aljazeera.com/sports/2026/3/18/iran-womens-football-team-arrive-in-eastern-turkiye-on-home-border
81 Steve Owens
March 19, 2026 at 10:59 am

And they are home https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-19/iran-war-womens-football-team-returns-home-australia/106471200
82 Patrick Muldowney
March 21, 2026 at 4:29 am

1. One unavoidable fact is that Iran and the Persian Gulf are now under the most intensive military surveillance that has ever been brought to bear in any conflict. Consequently, the Iranian Islamo-fascist leaders are desperately hiding, or dead and have extreme difficulty with command and control of their shrinking regime’s murderous minions. ‘Soon’, what will remain is their abundant but widely dispersed ‘AK47’ carrying ‘infantry’. Pretty well all their heavy weapons will be either destroyed or used up and unable to be replaced. They will be down to the old roadside bombs routine so well known to all of us. That is simply a consequence of their defeat. The terror methods continue till the terrorists are no longer able or willing to keep it up.

2. For example, the air force that the fascists had working for them a month ago is now effectively extinct! Their ability to import sophisticated weapons etc., from China, Russia and others via airports is now ended and alternate land and sea routes are under close US space, air and naval based observations and precise attack. Ground observers are also bound to be in place. Observations are inevitable from locals who are implacable enemies of the fascists. There are now reports of this activity being fruitful in the direct destruction of regime forces. Very skilled special forces are also going to play their part calling in very precise air strikes and organising arms deliveries and so forth.

3. I am told the fascists hanged 3 people today and that one was a 19yr old athlete! So it remains the obvious case that the quicker the remaining members and supporters of this fascist regime are caught up with and their system ended, the less revolutionary people they will manage to kill.

4. The Iranian masses were 2 months ago taking to the streets to complain about the regime and being unarmed were killed in industrial scale numbers for their trouble. That’s what brought on this intervention ‘rescue’ war NOW and from my POV it couldn’t come fast enough.

5. The navy of the regime is also being systematically destroyed. I believe the US is undoubtedly capable of effectively destroying this part of the fascists power in a realistic time frame of several more weeks to a couple of months. The remnant regime navy still have hundreds of fast attack boats that the US will hunt down over the next several months just as they hunt down any helicopters etc. This is a complete mismatch. Sadly, the US will lose some of their ‘hunters’ just doing the work that must be done by someone.

6. Defeating the navy includes taking effective control of land regions that make up the relevant littoral in the critical gulf regions, particularly the Strait on everyone’s -oil focused- lips. So, we can expect that the US marines will soon be deployed and US casualties will unfortunately start to rise significantly but so will the far larger numbers killed in the fascist infantry.

7. The mostly woke, but also the openly conservative MSM won’t like it, but the US military will (without the help that ought -without any equivocation- to have been given by all western governments) do the job that must be done in clearing the sea lane and running it safely by itself! The US will dominate the gulf and the western refuse-nik governments will then offer to help and that will be fun to watch! Who will be first to turn up? I also wonder when the Chinese etc., will go for a cruise?

8. The sea trade route that is vital to virtually all BUT the US will be opened, and the oil will again start to flow. All the other countries in the gulf will thank the US for doing what they will have had to do and happily co-operate with them in the foreseeable future. All of them want to see the back of this fascist regime and that’s a double edge sword for them! But they are stuck with the problem. Democracy is spreading. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

9. IMV by June the ability of what is left of the former Iranian regime to disrupt the flow of oil will have reduced to negligible levels but the costs of that protective screening of shipping will mount and the US will demand that the rest of the free loading world pay for it! That is nothing if not the Trump style and he has in this case every right to demand the ‘tribute’ and that is what it is because the oil will only be getting to the end users because of the efforts of the US.

10. This payment will be worked out and paid and infuriate those suffering TDS but to be fair all the other governments had their chance and none took up the responsibility to protect the shipping (while all the western leaders condemned the Islamo-fascists for butchering the unarmed Iranian peoples’) so the shipping protection has to be paid for while it lasts, and it must last till a new Iranian regime ensures that there is no longer a threat! So, the quicker there is a full regime change in Iran so that a pro-democracy and thus pro-western Iran emerges, the quicker those charges end as the US draws down the fleets involved.

11. Apparently, insurance companies will finally tell us when that is (when they are forced by competition to drop their rates back to normal) and the price of oil will go back to January levels, or more probably much lower, because Iran will now be welcomed back into the world of good people! That should be the case by about July or August is my (Australian know nothing) guess. Politically that would suit Trump as well as all oil importers because cost would be substantially less even with a tribute tax than the current supply reduced prices.

12. But of course there will still remain the millions of small arms in the hands of Iranian fascists that Steve has brought to his own attention! I already know they have their guns and won’t willingly give them up. Some will just shift gears into democrat by day fascist by night mode. Gangsters will be gangsters and ‘let loose’ in any struggle for democracy as we have seen again and again in our short lifetimes. I don’t expect any particular change in that well known pile of troubles coming the way of a free Iran! As far as I can tell it was ever so. Just broom and dust reality.

13. Steve thought about 1/2 of a million gun toting fascists would be around to be dealt with but I thought that to be on the safe side we would have to say they would be starting with about 2 million of the beggars. So the longer civil war that Steve always wanted will soon be underway and at this point we could hardly be expected to guess how long that will go on for especially given the neighbors are Afghanistan and Pakistan!

14. Now somehow THEY (the fascists) have to be overcome and Steve suggested that this would take about a decade to come to a decisive point. All manner of events might now unfold and Steve of course could be right. But the current rate of destruction on the one side and intentional build up on the other would suggest that is an overly pessimistic time frame for even an indecisive punch up as Steve is postulating. He is not even nominating a decade for the defeat of the Islamofascists mind and I could at least agree with that time frame being a realistic probability.

15 It’s the start of Steve’s great civil war and the good people of Iran will know that, to form a democratic administration of this scale and complexity is a serious undertaking in itself, but it must be remembered that they are in the preliminary stage of one of the great battles for democracy and, that they are facing many ‘battle hardened’ (Steve’s reasonable words) fascists at many points, and are definitely under threat from theocratic nutters based out of Afghanistan and Pakistan, so they have to be prepared for years of terror attacks, and to those who have joined this democratic government and its army: “we have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat”. They have before them an ordeal of the most grievous kind. They have before them as Ukraine did and does many, many long months of protracted war. Years of struggle and of suffering and I well recall Steve agreeing with similar sentiments expressed in the past!

16 People might ask, what is the Iranian democrats policy? Steve would say: It’s to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all their might and with all the strength that their God can give them; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of Iranian crime. That will be their policy. People will ask, what is their aim? Steve can answer in one word: it is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival.’ After all such sentiments are not just for the British. Steve is not a racist so he knows this worked for the goose so it’s good for the gander!

17 But the turnaround from unarmed, to armed, to then being the winning side, is not something that outsiders can make much useful comment on. All we can say is that the people will arm themselves and will fight back. Without knowing the details, I remain confident in the same vein as I am with my support of the not yet end in sight Syria and Ukraine wars. Those wars have proven to have been a remarkable lesson in how to fight people’s wars in all the various stages they go through.

18 I have studied much about war over the last ½ century and well know how exceedingly complex they can be and how it often depends on the bigger world cycle as to how the fortunes of a small war will turn out in the short run. In the historically long run sense, the recent fights for democratic freedoms right across the world have been remarkably swift in delivering their targeted original goals.

19 Whatever setbacks the particular rebelling people experience, these have to be strategically thought of as short term defeats only. It seems to me quite often the case that generations cop a mauling and yet pick themselves up and have another go and if they fail again then the next generation will arise to open that old box and out pops hope again. The Irish are very familiar with this historical phenomena and the process has happened several times in Iran since 1979! So it seems that the battle for democratic rights for the majority in opposition to the powerful minority will always resume. ‘Twas ever so it seems’.

20 It’s 21/March and the Iranian Theocratic fascists have not yet been consigned to the dustbin of history and the revolutionary war is underway. Iran, with 93 million people, borders Afghanistan with 49.5 million and Pakistan with 257 million in what is now the world’s greatest collection of god botherers. This war is now at the very centre of what we have called the MENA swamp.

21 I think this effort by all those currently fighting the regime led by the US forces, is the right mix of heat for an egg. I think ‘this one is the charm’!

22 BUT THEN it most likely WILL draw in the whole region and affect both sides of all Iran’s borders including across the gulf and this would then become one of the great revolutions. Right up there with the English, French, American, Bolivarian, Russian and Chinese and if it then ran on for 30 or more years it would not surprise a Vietnamese historian either! The point is it is underway and now fascists are also dying just as they kill our heroes.

23 I have never believed in bothering the gods and base my thinking on what people do, not what they say. What the US is currently doing is crushing the Iranian fascists and thus giving the Iranian masses their chance to arm and fight back.

24 I could be happier! Australia and all the others could be helping etc

25 When I heard Zelensky’s speech I realised he was now contending to be an even more important political leader than Erdogan! These 2 are at this stage of history are 1 and 2 either way round people rank them.

26 But for now Trump has brought the power of the US on board this revolution and that is a real thumb on the scales for an emerging democratic solution to the demonstrating Iranian masses basic problem of trying out some new political thinking! The democratic revolution stalled by Obama and Biden and Trump in his first term is now in his second term picking up speed.

27 Every day brings good news of more troubles for the Russians and the Iranians and the Chinese and for those with eyes to see the Zionists as well.
83 Steve Owens
March 21, 2026 at 10:03 am

Ask yourself, who are the most oppressed people on the planet? I think the answer is the Palestinian people. Who is oppressing the Palestinian people? Well it’s Israel and the USA. So Israel and the USA are the most oppressive regimens. Iran is also a contender for most oppressive regimen. So your argument is that the 2 most oppressive regimes are in the process of overthrowing another oppressive regimen in the interests of the oppressed Iranians. Do you really think that Israel or the USA has the interests of the Iranian people at heart?
Like you I would like to see the Iranian people enjoy democracy but it is virtually impossible for the unarmed populous to overthrow a well armed totalitarian state. It’s not impossible but it is virtually impossible. It would need internal organising and external help.
We have been down this road many times. You thought that Afghanistan would work, you thought that Iraq would be a model and you thought that Libya would work.
And now Iran is being destroyed sorry liberated.
84 Patrick Muldowney
March 21, 2026 at 10:54 am

Iran is not being destroyed as you could work out for yourself so don’t just grab for something to say that sounds progressive. You have nominated the 10 years not me so it’s up to you to explain how your fight will unfold. Your inability to take me on indicates that I have really done a great job destroying your former ‘hands off’ trot chant stand! There’re gold medals in that post. You can’t hide up there on that fence Steve you have declared a fighting position and have to explain it!

I will now number the paragraphs to help you with your thinking because I say you are in full agreement with my paragraphs 1, through to 8. But we shall now see as I clean that slippery oil off your bedraggled wings.
85 Steve Owens
March 21, 2026 at 11:23 am

When I say Iran is being destroyed what I mean is that Israel and the US have gone beyond targeting the Iranian military and are also targeting civilian infrastructure electricity grid, desal plants, hospitals and schools. https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2026/03/11/bombing-of-civilian-infrastructure-aims-to-bring-iran-to-its-knees_6751333_4.html
86 Patrick Muldowney
March 21, 2026 at 4:10 pm

‘Naturally there are the ‘on the one hand and on the other’ type issues that Steve can go into; and he can point to the mistakes that he thinks are being made etc., but the question is now squarely before him. Does he want this war to continue until the fascist regime is ended?’ I am compelled to put words in Steve’s mouth. He has answered NO he wants the US to stop making war now! Yankee go home sums up Steves position.

Steve again resorts to covering his own eyes so nobody else can see him up on that old fence! Once again ‘The invalid method of Linda D is replicated by Steve Owens’ see above.
87 Steve Owens
March 22, 2026 at 11:44 am

What can I say? Netanyahu and Trump are genocidal killers and pathological liars but you are prepared to support them even though their actions bare no resemblance to their stated aims of bringing democracy to Iran.
There is no armed resistance on the ground in Iran, there is no second front of Kurdish fighters pouring over the Iraq/Iran border.
88 Patrick Muldowney
March 23, 2026 at 12:24 pm

1/ We are 24 days into this external led fightback against the theocratic fascists. Serious anti-regime demonstrations had begun on 28/12/25 and were both big and impressive in tone at least enough to cause me to start this thread on 3/01. Then quite predictably -and as usual- the Iranian fascists who were ‘minding their own business’ -on the orders of that supreme leader- began slaughtering their protesting but unarmed masses in big numbers. Only then the outsider -Trump- warned them not to and all the speculation as to what would happen started. I had a hope as well as a prediction and I spelt it out. This Iranian enemy is a regime that enslaves a population of 93 million people under 1 supreme leader and Steve is worried! Can’t say I am. I have never been more confident of yet another gold medal haul. Have not been able to stop dancing with the Iranians who understand better than most that the war can’t be avoided!

2/ The regime could not stop the massive and deadlyrepression otherwise the peoples would get better organised and they would soon fall; so they carried on as business as usual for these types of anti democratic regimes. Trump (and the little Satan) both for their own reasons responded and started a big attack on the fascists entire heavy weapons systems and command and control etc. They even killed the supreme leader! They managed the decapitation that Steve had speculated might happen. This has been a huge and complex undertaking and like any plan has not gone ahead flawlessly but it is going ahead to a very flexible plan. Trump has approved what the military planners said was doable and it is going ahead to the kind of timeline that they explained. Quite frankly from my POV so far, so good!

3/ Now 24 days after Trump said go to the plan of his generals Steve is worried that a second front has not been launched! He is worried that there is as yet no armed resistance on the ground. Steve does not even want me to take him seriously; Steve will tell us all that professionals talk logistics but he is not talking logistics. He would also mention that Generals produce a coherent strategy for any war that they are told to embark upon (right or wrong and successful or not). But Steve is not talking about the strategy that Trump has had delivered to him and that he has said go to. Steve can even talk about the tactics required in 2026 in all manner of different fields to deliver outcomes of a strategic nature for say 2027 but he says NOT A WORD. In effect just down with Trump yankees go home! The horror of the constant attacks on the Palestinian people -a clear case of a genocidal policy being brutally implemented – is dragged out to ‘prove’ that no good policy could ever be coming from Trump or Netanyahu even about IRAN where the interests of these 2 is to destroy the fascists that are murdering the democratically minded masses.

4/ So what have I produced in trying to read the tea leaves of this historically grand adventure? What makes this very thread a gold medal in itself? The date it was begun and the logic that’s been followed as the golden thread through it, that’s what. The Iranian democrats were being slaughtered in the thousands, and the surviving millions were visibly distraught when waiting for help but that wait ended on 28/02. The attacks from the US and even Israel have been very effective and there are plenty of Iranians who danced for joy as the regimes henchmen have come under attack. Steve saw them dance but did not dance with them. Instead, he has joined with the fascists in reminding everyone that these attacks are by the Great Satan and the Little Satan! Well, that part of what Steve says is true! But Steve goes further and pushes the barrow that really the US is targeting schools and hospitals THEY ARE NOT. It is blatantly not in their interests to do so. They did hit a school, and it is tragic that it happened, but Steve says this is policy and he is dead wrong.

5/ The opportunity to even spiritually or morally join the anti-fascist side is being rejected by Steve because of the other actions that some of the real armed forces that have arrived and are really fighting have done elsewhere. So Steve does not join the dance for joy group. I have. Every day I dance for joy and smile! Steve makes a fool of himself by avoiding all the arguments that do not fit his slowly rotting argument. Steve is just cherry picking and choosing what suits Steve. He is not trying to understand, even his own position! Steve is not interested in the search for truth; not interested in the contest for medals and that’s why he never even sees the podium. Here I am thinking perhaps I have more medals than Michael Phelps ( 28 over 4 Olympics I’ll have to count them up one day) and Steve is reduced to running away and climbing on the nearest fence!

6/ Why would he not return to any of the following threads?
Ukraine 2014, 2021, 2022, 2026,
Syria 2011, 2015, 2024, 2026

7/ For Steve the only thing I ever got right was my very confident assertion that the High Court would find in Pells favor 7-0! But there was that embarrassing Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 that I had said was already underway on Sunday and everyone finally got it on Tuesday! Oh yes and there was those issues of predicting the timeframe for a Ukrainian defeat of Russia well that is clearly in play still but it looks pretty good about now, 1 month into yr 5. Oh and there was that issue about Syria exploding into a big war! That happened and there was the understanding that there was no future for any separate Kurdish led Rojava that Steve praised and now is no more. Oh yes there was that issue of Steve declaring the Syrian war was over when I was declaring that it was looking very good at long last, because Turkey was the regional giant and the only real democracy other than Iraq! Then there was the issue of global warming / climate change and the role of the ABC and the ALP!

8/ And then there was Pell
Andrews at STRANGE TIMES Gold
The Stunt! at STRANGE TIMES Gold
Pell out May! at STRANGE TIMES Gold
Pell 2 at STRANGE TIMES Gold
Pell verdict – manifestly unsafe. at STRANGE TIMES Bronze

9/ I have awarded myself medals over Covid19 as well 2020 21 22 23 24 25 they can be challenged and that’s always good for a diversion! But all the diversions only destroy Steve’s credibility. We mature but still amateur observers from the other side of the world still have to make sense but Steve must stop trying to have it all ways; we all know you can run but you can’t hide. So diversions will be shut down for now. No good just throwing out the latest anti US propaganda rubbish. We have to ask ourselves whose interests are served by attacking this or that target. The Little Satan does complicate the issues in this case! But Trump is currently quite publicly mad at Netanyahu for the attack on the gas field. At any rate the focus on this thread will be strictly on what is good for the Iranian revolution and what is bad for it.

10/ We already know and already expose the Zionists for what they are doing in Gaza and what the US is turning a blind eye to etc. We have already got people like Mearsheimer pointing out how Israel is not acting in the interests of the US but is actually an Abatros around the US neck. Etc So while ‘the fog of war’ clouds our thinking as it must, we try to use logic in our ‘debate’. Where is the ethos that buttresses our locos and pathos combination that we attempt to stitch together to even try to make sense of events. So a greater focus than ‘normal times’ is currently required in directing attention to Iran and how events connected directly to this war unfold and how they affect the various people or institutions involved is required.

11/ My life has been a constant study of war but with not one bullet fired at me. There have been no bombs on my peaceful Australian streets. My understanding of war has come from a stream of history books all through childhood and the TV news etc. It’s from living contemporaneously with the events and learning about Biafra, through the ‘Six Day’ War, Vietnam and Northern Ireland etc It’s been through the popular culture of films and TV treatment of the subjects of war. I realise now how I took much more of an interest than other children so that even before I turned 14 the subject had substantially and permanently altered my life. It drew my attention early and has held it ever since. So at almost 70, I lay claim to have studied human conflicts more closely than most amateurs that live in peaceful countries. I’ve studied revolutions and wars of aggression such as Ireland both north and south, Suez Crisis, Spain, Portugal, Lebanon, Palestine, Egypt, Sudan, Rwanda, Kuwait, The Argentinian Dirty War and the Falklands war fought within this war period, Syria, Timor-Leste, Georgia, Ukraine, Libya, Turkey, Kurdish issues, Iraq, and the Yom Kippur war, not to mention study of WW1 and WW2 Korea, Vietnam, Kampuchea, Bangladesh, Nepal and many more. I have been reflecting over these bookshelves of mine and what 56years of reading on a subject has produced in the way I think about the issues involved each time they arrive in their fresh new form. Of course underneath it’s the same old blood splattered beast. But not one of those wars has been anything other than unique nevertheless. I think that is where a lot of people make their first mistake in that they don’t focus on the specifics of the war that they are really dealing with! Instead they tend to take an attitude to war and that disrupts their ability to think about the specific thing that they ought to be focused on. They fail to ‘try to stand in other peoples shoes and build up their thinking like any sensible brick layer from the specific foundation of that war.

12/ I mostly get it right because I do the work and do it in the right order. I do not want any fair fights for the soldiers I support. Ever. I would prefer that the outcome be so clear to everyone in advance as to prevent the fight in the first instance. But that is not usually the case and when push comes to shove I want class victory where that is on the agenda, and I want national liberation where that’s the issue and independence for countries where that’s what the fight is all about. It’s the foundations that I concern myself with long before I start on the walls. So I constantly remind myself what era I live in. Countries want their independence. Nations want their liberation and the people want revolution. How these three big issues swirl together and produce so many varieties of outcomes has been and still is the awe inspiring challenge of my theory-practice dance through life. I will again be standing on the podium because Iran is part of a draining of an undemocratic swamp project and the masses are swept up in this project and they are backed by powerful and now better experienced forces that have already brought liberation to the Iraqi masses earlier this century.

13/ Could events go wrong? Yes, they could. The Yanks could go home before the war is won for example. But it’s all worth the risk and it looks like the war will rage on for now and that is good for not just the Iranian peoples but the entire region and Ukraine etc. Steve had better like the taste of humble pie! 2nd front after 24 days! Oh dear, what was that about the inexperienced?
89 Patrick Muldowney
March 27, 2026 at 5:15 pm

If the Iranian fascists were to survive then Trump would have unmistakably lost and up with that he will not put. Trump can’t let this Iranian regime survive. Everything will now inevitably flow from this key point.

The US has now done the ‘impossible’ and in partnership with the little satan come to the rescue of the Iranian masses. They are now so regularly killing the enemies of the Iranian democrats that western people -more concerned with their petrol bills- are no longer noticing the ongoing destruction of the fascist forces. This killing spree is happening while Israel -with US support- is still deeply enmeshed in their genocidal oppression of the Palestinian people; it’s happening while the eyes of the world are unavoidably also fixed on them over in Gaza and the West Bank and East Jerusalem and the rest of the ongoing war for greater Israel. A ‘six day war’ that is almost 60 years on still IMV dragging on towards its eventual doom.

Nevertheless the rescue of the Iranian masses IS happening and when the new Iranian government arrives it will not be able to be hidden from the world!

How and when it will arrive is what people ought to be thinking about now because the Iranian masses are embarking on their very own democratic revolution and just like the US in their day being helped along by the imperialist minded French regime, the Iranian masses are getting some very useful help at just the right time from this lot. No help at all from the likes of the ALP or the British let alone the peace mongers around the world still calling for hands off when there are fascists to crush and a revolution to support.

But foreseeably down the track a new government will arrive because the fascists are being defeated and just as ‘nature abhors a vacuum’ so it is with wars in our era. Iran will stay an independent country and a very significant one at that. The various national issues will (what a surprise) all be happily resolved by the widespread acceptance of democratic rights for all the peoples and any political forces who would try to break up Iran would just drag that war out perhaps even over decades (but as a know nothing Australian I would guess that it would not last very long). In the end they would still fail simply because there is a solution to the various national questions already on the table. Democracy can solve these national rights issues, and I bet that the vast bulk of Iranians know this! Given that Syria has so far held together and so has Iraq now past 2 decades I think it fair to guess that there does not appear to be a viable break up in store for Iran either. If they try democracy as a political solution, then they ought to be just fine for this stage of humanity’s descent from the trees.

What about the current Egyptian example? Lots of commentators seem to think the theocrat fascists will be replaced by secular militarist fascists at this turn around. Perhaps even throwing a similar coup after elections. I think that result can’t deliver the solution to the national questions in Iran and would just result in a further civil war breakdown. The international community currently -with the western world now pitted against the rest- won’t encourage such an outcome and being still led by the US won’t put up with some kind of Russian / Chinese propped up regime emerging and that includes any meddling from any of the Stans.

So, complexity has been heaped upon complexity and apparently no commonly operating theory is jumping out at people to guide their thinking. Total confusion especially in the MSM is the inevitable result. Virtually everybody -not just the pseudo lefts- has this war muddled up.

It’s more a case of what Churchill described when he pointed out that ‘you can always count on the Americans to do the right thing after they have exhausted every other possibility’; well, they have.

About the same time as I started this thread, Trump told his top generals to go off and have their planners design a war that would see an end to the Iranian regime as it then stood. That’s about 12 weeks ago and that was not as -it turned out- enough time for the job. But the slaughter was underway and Trump had to act.

From the very start Trump made it clear that he didn’t want substantial ground forces involved so his top generals saluted and said yes boss. Off they went and told their planners to do just that, and they did! How do we know this? Well, we have the current delay apparent when the problems started to emerge after the first plan stalled rather than failed when the Ford had a fire. They are now playing catch up!

Reality sent Trump into an inevitable mission creep dance as events unfolded.

The US military is not worried about bringing down the Iranian regime, they are just worried about doing it with as close to zero US casualties as they can get. That policy position in itself causes inevitable mission creep. When massive armed forces are so risk averse in the sense of casualty shy in the first instance extra force becomes the go to answer to emerging problems.

Trump had given a political direction and military events were underway. The officers involved might not have liked it, but they had been given the job, and the blue team were doing THAT job! They were told to keep the ground troops out of this and that’s what they were trying their level best to do. Meanwhile red team is doing their level best to fuck them up.
90 Patrick Muldowney
March 31, 2026 at 10:31 pm

1/ Like a lot of his mates are also doing, I think Steve pointing to Trump as a ‘genocidal killer and pathological liar’ gives us a base context for thinking through yet another war that Steve is getting, and was always going to get, catastrophically wrong. No ‘tweedledee tweedledum’ thinking for Steve; it’s now all the way with the ALP for him.

2/ But this war has to be getting close to a record. One week along and Steve’s anti US stand is already in trouble and I’m prepared to call it now! Steve is the walking dead -a zombie form of politics- right now. His entire ‘hands off’ squad in all their bizarre forms can only tramp mindlessly on with no prospect of a US failure and that’s because this war IS a war of liberation in progress and even I can see from Australia how it will ‘in big brush picture’ now unfold.

3/ The ‘ALP’ in all its world wide variants will have shown how democratic revolution is simply not even on their radars. This war will last months only! That democratic outcome will be the soon clearly foreseeable result and the world will have changed with Steve and co having only ever got in the way!

4/ Then after the US etc have done such a heavy lift the Iranian masses will take to the stage and Steve will look like the garden variety reactionary suffering from TDS that he is. Zelensky has pulled the rug out from ‘hands off’; Zelensky is full hands on!

5/ The civil war that Steve wanted will -of course- then go on till the fascists are fully suppressed and the new democratic government is both established and seen by the international community to be fully legitimate and Steve will tail along behind complaining about every twist and turn that the fascist resistance brings about.

6/ Never a word of thanks will be coming Trump’s way and he was the single vote that brought it all about on this short time line.

7/ About a month after US troops arrive and that is about 1-2 weeks away I suppose so about 6-8 weeks max, the world’s fuel crisis will start to be over the worst, and supplies will be starting the rapid return to full throttle abundance that the greens hate so much! The US led forces will then be seen to be in full control of the Persian Gulf and the ships will be moving once again. Drill baby drill and lets see the price fall.

8/ By August (about another 3 months along) the Iranian regime will be a stain on humanity’s history and I guess Cuba will then be in all manner of trouble. Here is hoping for that one.

9/ Trump will be looking like the second coming of George Washington. MAGA bed wetters will be apologizing for ever doubting ‘the great man’ and the world will be shaking our collective heads.

10/ Steve is nowadays sort of a supporter of the Ukrainians sort of; it’s very hard to pin him down of course and he really doesn’t want to point to any of his work from 2014 but generally he has shut up about giving the Russians what they have grabbed and going for a ‘peace settlement’. After all that is Trump’s position and that makes it a bit problematic for Steve. So he has long ago dumped that stand.

11/ Trump has for the last year been pretty unhelpful on the issue of Ukraine. The problem for him is that it turns out that it’s the Americans that have very few cards and what is more they are tending towards losing even the few that they had. But the Ukrainians are correctly helping the US and the countries of the Middle East under attack from Iran.

12/ Oh woe, Oh woe, Steve has already hit a solid brick wall with his Iran analysis. Already! After only weeks. Ukraine is going to war with the Iranian fascists! Zelensky is helping with troops and so forth! Not just for one country but for the whole region! Can’t wait to hear the praise from Steve.
91 Steve Owens
April 1, 2026 at 11:10 pm

Well you have 12 points and name me 13 times. Steve derangement syndrome? Now I will give it to you that you have mentioned logistics in your points but but it’s the logistics of oil, no mention of the logistics of water. There are 56 desal plants along the Persian gulf that provide the Gulf states with 90% of their drinking water. So 56 well placed missiles could cut water off to millions of people. So far we have had 3 desal plants targeted first the US hit the one on Qeshm Island then there was a retaliatory strike on a plant in Bahrain because the Iranians say the first strike was launched from Bahrain. Now we have a strike on a desal plant in Kuwait which the Iranians accuse Israel of doing. If we have a war where desal plants are fair game it will be a nightmare for the gulf states. Granted it will be problematic for Iran but Iran is nowhere near as dependent on desalinated drinking water.
Just imagine Riyadh’s desal plant is hit. Riyadh’s population of 8 million have several days of drinking water. How do you think that will play out?
PS you don’t need to hit a desal plant with anything you can close them down by discharging oil in their vicinity.