"Jason Brownlee: The lesson, not just for Iran but other regimes in the past, has been that moderation and reasonableness is the danger: that the US wants to attack when a country is making compromises, when a country is negotiating in good faith. In fact, exactly as you described, Iran under Ali Khamenei was at most trying to enter what is known as the “Japan club,” where you have a solid civilian nuclear program that is permitted under international law, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and that does not produce nuclear weapons but would put you a few months away from nuclear weapons if you needed to get there. That’s what Japan has; that’s what a number of other countries that are US allies have. So there’s a kind of latent potential for weaponization, but it never needs to be acted upon. And it’s absolutely within the NPT — which Iran has signed, unlike Israel.

In that respect, the US pulling out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in Trump’s first term and really tightening the screws on Iran over the past few years, including under the Biden administration, points to an attitude of grinding down a country and a government that is not presenting a threat and, on the contrary, is actually operating according to internationally recognized norms and rules."

https://jacobin.com/2026/03/trump-iran-israel-regime-change

#Iran #USA #Trump #Israel #Militarism #RegimeChange

"As President Trump prepared to welcome conservative Latin American leaders to a summit in Florida in early March, U.S. officials released a video of a massive explosion — capturing the destruction of what they said was a drug trafficker’s training camp in rural Ecuador.

The video was meant to show that the U.S. military, which for months has bombed boats it says are carrying drugs from South America, was “now bombing Narco Terrorists on land,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote on social media.

The military strike appears to have destroyed a cattle and dairy farm, not a drug trafficking compound, according to interviews with the farm’s owner, four of its workers, human rights lawyers and residents and leaders in San Martín, the remote farming village in northern Ecuador where the strike took place.

And though the Pentagon said at the time that it had “executed targeted action” against the site at Ecuador’s request, U.S. troops had no direct involvement in the strike shown in the video, according to four people with knowledge of the operation, three of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.

In San Martín, which The Times visited over two days this month, residents told a different story about the bombardment and the actions by Ecuador’s military in the days leading up to the strike."

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/24/world/americas/us-ecuador-drug-camp-bombing-dairy-farm.html

#USA #Ecuador #Militarism #LatinAmerica #Warmonger #Neocolonialism

Oh.

(Gift link)

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/24/world/americas/us-ecuador-drug-camp-bombing-dairy-farm.html?unlocked_article_code=1.V1A.V84O.IHMJ4-IS_M4n&smid=url-share

#Ecuador #militarism #DonaldTrump #Hegseth

Sorry, but this is exactly my definition of STATE TERRORISM:

"As the United States and Israel prepared to go to war with Iran, the head of Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service, went to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with a plan.

Within days of the war’s beginning, said David Barnea, the Mossad chief, his service would likely be able to galvanize the Iranian opposition — igniting riots and other acts of rebellion that could even lead to the collapse of Iran’s government. Mr. Barnea also presented the proposal to senior Trump administration officials during a visit to Washington in mid-January.

Mr. Netanyahu adopted the plan. Despite doubts about its viability among senior American officials and some officials in other Israeli intelligence agencies, both he and President Trump seemed to embrace an optimistic outlook. Killing Iran’s leaders at the outset of the conflict, followed by a series of intelligence operations intended to encourage regime change, they thought, could lead to a mass uprising that might bring about a swift end to the war.

“Take over your government: It will be yours to take,” Mr. Trump told Iranians in his initial address at the war’s start, after saying they should first seek shelter from the bombing.

Three weeks into the war, an Iranian uprising has not yet materialized. American and Israeli intelligence assessments have concluded that the theocratic Iranian government is weakened but intact, and that widespread fear of Iran’s military and police forces has dampened prospects both for nascent rebellion in the country and for ethnic militias outside of Iran to launch cross-border incursions.

The belief that Israel and the United States could help instigate widespread revolt was a foundational flaw in the preparations for a war that has spread across the Middle East...."

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/22/us/politics/iran-israel-trump-netanyahu-mossad.html

#Israel #MOSSAD #Iran #StateTerrorism #USA #Trump #War # #Militarism

The #UnitedStates, a global terror regime.

#US #imperialism #militarism #tyranny #capitalism #violence

"Beyond this, the offensive against Iran might be interpreted as a violent displacement activity on the part of a declining empire confronted with a rival centre of capital accumulation in the Pacific, about which it seems able to do nothing rational or constructive. It is a symptom of secular decay – of the political authority of the American bourgeoisie, the political capacities of the permanent state and the intellectual calibre of its overseers. Now the US finds itself in what Robert Pape calls the escalation trap: it cannot achieve its stated goals by air war, but to declare victory and walk away would be a clear strategic defeat.

True to form, the Democrats immediately signalled their readiness to fund the war, on the assurance that there was a ‘plan’. As Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin put it, ‘we’re in it’. They had no disagreement of principle, having been fully complicit themselves in the Gaza genocide – all they offered was cavilling about process and tactics. And why not? The Democrats had long assimilated Trump’s first-term foreign policy lines regarding China and the Middle East. Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jefferies vied to out-hawk Trump on negotiations with Iran: ‘no side deals’ they insisted. The Democrats voted through Trump’s massive military spending bill; they gave a standing ovation for his sabre-rattling against Iran in the State of the Union address; there was also quiet admiration in the Democratic establishment – openly expressed by Hillary Clinton – for the way he bullied European vassals into bumping up their NATO spending.

Whatever reservations America’s vassals may have had about the war, they clearly hoped that unity of purpose against an old foe might temper some of Trump’s disdain for erstwhile allies."

https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/cognitive-dissonance

#Iran #Israel #USA #Imperialism #War #Militarism #Trump #DemocraticParty #Democrats

Iran’s Retaliation Reignites Discontent With US Military Bases in Middle East

https://murica.website/2026/03/irans-retaliation-reignites-discontent-with-us-military-bases-in-middle-east/

SCOTUS Case on Munitions in Guam Could Set Precedent for Indigenous Rights

https://murica.website/2026/03/scotus-case-on-munitions-in-guam-could-set-precedent-for-indigenous-rights/

"Silicon Valley made risky bets in recent years on developing defense-related technology and providing services to the U.S. military establishment. Now those bets are paying off. From behemoths providing data systems to smaller companies offering novel weapons, tech firms such as Google, Palantir and OpenAI have found themselves at the heart of the U.S. war effort.

Their central role amounts to an “I told you so” moment. For years, the tech industry’s efforts on defense-related offerings faced skepticism and opposition, with no clear or immediate business rewards. Many Silicon Valley engineers opposed the use of powerful technologies for killing, battles and other military purposes — concerns that persist.

Despite those fears, venture capital firms have poured billions of dollars since last decade into start-ups building drones, lasers and other military systems. In January, Andreessen Horowitz, which was founded by the entrepreneurs Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, closed a new, almost $1.2 billion fund to invest in defense technologies.

In recent years, defense tech start-ups often plowed ahead with weapons prototypes before they had official government contracts. At the same time, executives like Alex Karp, the chief executive of Palantir, and others started cultivating more ties with the government."

#USA #SiliconValley #BigTech #Defense #Militarism #Drones #DroneWarfare

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/18/technology/silicon-valley-war-defense-tech.html