Uncertainty Rules (Update 1)

Almost any discussion on our geopolitical crisis currently should be prefaced with the acknowledgement of the unfolding catastrophe of Gaza, which is testimony not just to the evil and incompetence of this generation of Western leaders, and to the dismaying collapse of something we may have foolishly once thought of as Western “civilization” into anarchic, comic-book barbarism, but is a signatory mark of the historical failure of all of us who have lived through this era to have contributed significantly or sufficiently to the structure of this small planet that we share to have stopped this monstruous and horrific war crime that is “not in our name,” yet, I’m afraid, carries our name and will carry our name through eternity (not so long as it used to be, you guys).

For myself, I am deeply mindful of this even as I express thanks that, undeserving, I am extremely fortunate nonetheless, to celebrate with my family and this weekend my 80th birthday. I was born at the tail end of World War 2. In Dublin, I was marked by the sights and smells of the poverty of a land that, though independent and neutral in that war, had nonetheless suffered from it as it had from the preceding wars of independence and of civil war.

When, at the age of four, I was moved to London, I saw at first hand the devastation of the East End, experienced the final stages of food rationing, and was gradually anglicized into that strange and ominous blend of cultures of war victory and imperial decay, tutored sternly by the BBC and other mainstream media and their ubiquitous, stuffily oppressive narratives of the Royal Family and the glories of the Commonwealth (its denizens still being subject to massacres across what remained of the Old Empire).

All soon to find their own versions of expression in the USA.

Having been born into the tail end of World War Two I have spent a good part of the final decades of my life in directing my efforts to trying to raise awareness of the imminence of World War Three but, to be frank, I am not altogether sure that we are not already well into World War Three.

Into it, or close to it. What a fuzzy notion that word “close,” is, fuzzy enough for Tulsi Gabbard to have thrown her integrity into its greyness, the greyness that separates the assertion that the intelligence community agrees that Iran neither has a nuclear weapon nor is it manufacturing one, to the assertion that relative to a whole lot of other scenarios one could dream up over a banana float about how far away Iran is from having a nuclear weapon it is now “closer” (just a tad closer? a bit closer, getting plausibly close….?) to having one.

Israeli sources claim that their recent. strikes have pushed Iran’s alleged nuke weapons program back by 3 years; Gabbard told the world in March that Iran was 3 years from a nuke weapon. So, not imminent then, not imminent now.

In this language I am “close” to having a nuclear weapon, and, because I recall God once promised it to me, I and my people have a right to Montecito in southern California. And those rich white people who have been occupying it since they killed all the brown ones will just have to leave. I recommend Palm Beach, Florida.

Thank you, Tulsi. As Trump’s dismissal of anything you had to say before, implies, he didn’t really need you to surrender your integrity and that of the community that you represent. But you have helpfully sealed the legal fiction that Israel and the US is justified in pretending that Iran is a nuclear “threat,” whereas Israel, with hundreds of nuclear warheads and without being a signatory to the non-proliferation treaty and without being subject to the discipline of frequent, relentless IAEA inspections (which in the case of Iran are used as intelligence-gathering opportunities for the benefit of Israel and the US), wouldn’t even hurt a mouse - if you disregard, that is, what I consider to be something in the order of 200,000 needless deaths in Gaza and the West Bank, and the fate of the Palestinian people in general since before there was even a nation of Israel, and more recently Israel’s illegal bloody advances into Syria and Lebanon and Netanyahu’s thirty year campaign for the US, on Israel’s behalf, to tear Iran apart.

Now, on this topic of tearing the 90-million population of Iran apart, there is serious disagreement in the “alternative” intelligence community, with some tending to take Trump seriously on the question of needing a further two weeks before engaging in mass murder on a scale quite impressive even for the US (3 aircraft carriers on the way; loads of F-35s in Diego Garcia) which these analysts read as an indication of Trump’s climbing down from his commitment to support Israel’s war of unprovoked aggression.

Why would he do that? Probably because he knows the MOABs will just be an embarrassment, that taking out Khameini will make no dent whatsover in Iran’s political and religious structure, that it will cost the US a huge amount of money and further deepen the US debt crisis (which otherwise Trump hopes, in addition to a tariff windfall, to solve by sellling off federal land to anyone who can afford to buy it - a lot of it quite close to where I live, incidentally). It will also give Russia plenty of time to crush Ukraine and build up its advantage over NATO to a conclusive degree, while allowing China similar leeway to crush any attempt by the US to destory China by creating an insurrectionist state out of Taiwan. But those are not considerations that Trump will find advantageous.

Others on the other hand, don’t think Trump is delaying, or diddling, but that he may at any moment now (perhaps by the time you read this) give the greenlight for a US invasion of Iran - an invasion, that is, by air and by sea (not by land, unless Trump wants to deal with a huge number of body bags he will have to try to distract attention from on their arrival back to the US). No air campaigns ever succeed in bringing about regime change. And these analysts think this because the evidence of US preparations for war have reached that point at which it is just impossible to apply reverse gear. And maybe they think it because they regard Trump as mad or demented or both.

We also know (and I will supply the source in a later update) that much of this is following a 2009 Brookings Institute war plan in which Israel definitely plays the role of proxy on behalf of US full spectrum dominance.

The rhetoric and diplomacy of Russia and China, in the meantime, are gearing up. The likelihood of actual, hardware participation by Russia and China is also under significant debate: some, rather derisively, don’t expect them to go much beyond words, since their “realist” interests are better served with silence; others, recognizing the danger to these powers of not seizing the moment to assert their leadership of the Global South and of the BRICS, and to give hope of justice to the rest of us, think that yes, they are at the Rubicon, their feet already wet.

Putin at the St Petersburg economic forum says it is still exploring with the US such ideas as taking custody of Iranian enriched uranium: or of an international consortium producing it in Iran; or of making sure this time round that the West actually delivers on lifting sanctions if Iran does not enrich. These are all pretty stale ideas that the US is not buying into and leave me wondering why Putin is still talking about them. More relevant would be a more compelling approach to Iran to jointly develop Iranian air defense in a way that is integrated with Russian. But Iran doesn’t trust Russia that much and I am beginning to understand why.

On the question of Iranian air defenses I was interested in the response of Dr Sadeghi to Max Blumenfeld a little while ago to the effect that she has not been hearing the sound of Israeli planes over Tehran - indicating that Israeli claims to control the skies are false; the Israelis are simply shooting missiles and drones from Iraqi air space. She is more worried about pro-Israeli saboteurs working from inside Iran.

Netanyahu claims that Iran has 22000 ballistic missiles left. A very good reason, one would have thought, for stopping the war now.

The Iran-E3 meeting yesterday in Geneva was a bust. The E-3 fags are still demanding zero enrichment even though Iran has already rejected that. Iran is totally entitled under the NPT to enrich for peaceful purposes. All signatories are. The only reason Iran is enriching is that the US made it impossible for other countries to export enriched uranium to Iran

I expect to come back to this with a further one or two updates over the weekend, if I can find the time. Please watch out for these and, in the meantime, I thank you for reading, and I thank you for caring enough to read.

In Solidarity,

Oliver

Postscript

At around 5:00pm, today Saturday June 21, Trump claimed the US had successfully dropped a payload of Moab’s on Fordow, Natanz and Esfahan.

If the US leaves it at that then Iran’s uranium enrichment capability may have been set back, or may not have been, and either way everyone can go home. Just another day of idiocy in the US dominated global system