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"Friendly reminder that last year the official Democratic Party platform slammed Trump for choosing not to go to war with Iran in 2018, 2019 and 2020 during his last presidency.

Americans aren’t allowed to vote against war."

-- Caitlin Johnstone

News and Opinion

Trump Has Bombed Iran. What Happens Next Is His Fault.

The US military has bombed multiple Iranian nuclear sites on the orders of President Trump, immediately putting tens of thousands of US military personnel in the region at risk of an Iranian retaliation which can then escalate to full-scale war.

Earlier this month Iran’s Defense Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh explicitly warned the United States that a direct US attack would result in Tehran ordering strikes on US bases in the middle east, saying “all US bases are within our reach and we will boldly target them in host countries.”

In the lead-up to Trump’s act of war on Iran, the president told the press that an attack on American troops will mean a harsh response from the US, saying, “We’ll come down so hard if they do anything to our people. We’ll come down so hard. The gloves are off. I think they know not to touch our troops.”

The US Bombs Iran pic.twitter.com/ZzI0BQbek3

— Dave DeCamp (@DecampDave) June 22, 2025

Trump reiterated this threat to Iran in his announcement of the US attack today.

“There will be either peace, or there will be tragedy for Iran, far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight days,” Trump said. “Remember, there are many targets left. Tonight’s was the most difficult of them all, by far, and perhaps the most lethal. But if peace does not come quickly, we will go after those other targets with precision, speed and skill. Most of them can be taken out in a matter of minutes.”

So you can see how we might already be on our way toward a war of nightmarish proportions as a result of the president’s unprovoked act of aggression. Tehran now has to choose between reestablishing deterrence with extreme aggression or opening the floodgates to a whole host of existential threats from both outside and inside the country. Add to that the possibility of Iran blockading the Strait of Hormuz and the fact that Iran has now been strongly incentivized to actually obtain a nuclear weapon, and it looks very likely that we are plunging into a situation that could unfold in any number of horrific ways.

Right now American political discourse is rife with the narrative that the US has been “dragged” into Israel’s war, which I reject entirely. Every step of the way this entire thing has been signed off on by US leadership. We are at this point because Trump and his regime knowingly chose to take us here.

US military now briefing troops that its strike on Iran "will likely result in counterstrikes on US bases and facilities" in the Middle East, and "likely activate Iran and other foreign terrorist organizations cells abroad including the US to conduct strikes against US persons…

— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) June 22, 2025

US troops within reach of Iran’s missiles are reportedly being briefed that they can expect to be on the receiving end of retaliatory strikes in the coming days.

Again, Iran explicitly warned it would attack the US military if the US military did the thing it just did. If and when these retaliatory strikes come, the warmongers will try to argue that this is a valid reason to escalate this war. They will be lying. They chose to make this happen.

Whatever transpires from this point on is the fault of Donald Trump and the unelected thugs he listens to. If US troops are killed, the war sluts in Washington and the Pentagon propagandists in the press will list their names and bandy about their photos and demand that their deaths be avenged with further acts of war — but it will not be Iran’s fault that they died.

It will be Trump’s fault. It will be the fault of everyone whose decisions led up to bombs being dropped on Iranian energy infrastructure, and the fault of everyone who put those soldiers in harm’s way.

None of this needed to happen. Iran was at the negotiating table. The Iran deal was working fine before Trump shredded it to put us on this terrible trajectory. The warmongers artificially manufactured this situation and knowingly inflicted this horror upon our world.

I am really not looking forward to all the melodramatic victim-LARPing if and when Iran kills US military personnel stationed in west Asia. The US is the only nation on earth that can rival Israel in its ability to play the victim when the ball they’ve thrown at the wall bounces back.

Alastair Crooke : Trump's Grave Miscalculations

Iran says US ‘must receive a response’ after Trump’s strikes on nuclear sites

Iran has warned the US to brace for retaliation after Donald Trump’s administration joined Israel in its war against Tehran, tearing up his isolationist foreign policy and launching the most consequential intervention in a conflict in a generation.

Almost a day after US strikes targeting three key Iranian nuclear sites, Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, told France’s Emmanuel Macron: “The Americans must receive a response to their aggression,” signalling a potential Iranian reprisal that could drag the US into a new, protracted conflict in the Middle East.

Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said he planned to fly to Moscow to meet Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, on Monday morning for consultations. Ali Akbar Velayati, an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, said any country used by the US to strike Iran “will be a legitimate target for our armed forces,” the state-run IRNA news agency reported. ...

Iran’s UN ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani called the US and Israeli strikes “a clear and flagrant breach of international law”, and suggested Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had managed to get Trump to do the west’s “dirty work”, “dragging the United States into yet another costly and baseless war”.

Russia’s UN ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said “the US has opened a Pandora’s box” and “No one knows what new catastrophes and suffering it will bring.”

US Strike Debacle Iran Hides Uranium Fordow Survives; Trump Wants Regime Change; Russia To Help Iran

Hegseth claims US ‘obliterated’ Iranian nuclear sites despite lack of assessment

The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, on Sunday repeated claims by Donald Trump that US strikes had completely destroyed Iran’s nuclear facilities and its ability to acquire nuclear weapons even as the Pentagon acknowledged it was too early to provide a full damage assessment.

At a news conference, Hegseth and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Dan Caine, said the strikes, codenamed Operation Midnight Hammer, devastated the Iranian nuclear program.

The remarks from Hegseth in particular amounted to repeated praise for Trump and the operation that targeted the nuclear enrichment sites at Natanz and Fordow, the key facility buried deep underground, and a third site at Esfahan where Iran was seen to store enriched uranium.

“It was an incredible and overwhelming success. The order we received from our commander in chief was focused,” Hegseth said wearing a blue suit and US flag motif pocket square in the Pentagon briefing room, the first time he has appeared there since becoming the secretary.

“Thanks to President Trump’s bold and visionary leadership and his commitment to peace through strength, Iran’s nuclear ambitions have been obliterated,” Hegseth said. “The operation President Trump planned was bold and it was brilliant.”

Larry Johnson : Netanyahu Calls the Shots

Price of oil could spike after Iran’s parliament votes to close key shipping route

Iran’s parliament has voted to shut down the vital Hormuz shipping channel in retaliation against Donald Trump’s attack on the country, prompting fears of a sharp spike in oil prices that could cause a global recession. A barrel of Brent crude was selling for about $77 on Friday, having risen by more than 10% since mid-June when Israel’s attack on Iranian nuclear sites prompted missile strikes from Tehran against Tel Aviv.

But Trump’s decision to follow Israel by launching a US attack on Iran has set off a chain of events that analysts warned could drive prices up much further when markets open at 11pm UK time on Sunday. A fifth of the world’s oil consumption flows through the strait of Hormuz, which is a gateway out of the Persian Gulf.

The vote, reported by Reuters, is not binding because the final decision rests with Iran’s supreme national security council. But analysts were already predicting an spike of up to $5 before the result of the vote was known. “An oil price jump is expected,” said Jorge León, the head of geopolitical analysis at the energy intelligence firm Rystad and a former official at Opec, the group of major oil-producing nations. “In an extreme scenario where Iran responds with direct strikes or targets regional oil infrastructure, oil prices will surge sharply. Even in the absence of immediate retaliation, markets are likely to price in a higher geopolitical risk premium.” ...

Iranian officials have said they would block the strait if Tehran’s interests were threatened. A prolonged closure could have huge knock-on effects for the global economy. An oil price shock would risk a period of high inflation, as motorists pay more for petrol and the cost of transporting goods soars.

Larry C. Johnson: U.S. Attacks Iran… And Triggers MASSIVE RESPONSE!

Iran Firing More Advanced Missiles as Israel Is Running Low on Interceptors

A senior Israeli intelligence official told NBC News on Thursday that Israel intercepted only 65% of the missiles Iran fired at Israeli territory over the previous 24 hours, as the Iranian military has started firing more advanced weapons. ...

“Until yesterday, we got an early warning of about 10 to 11 minutes before the missiles actually fell. But this morning, it was six or seven minutes. It means that the missiles were probably much faster than the previous ones,” he said. ...

He also threw cold water on the idea that regime change was imminent, saying that Iran has the “resolve and the ability to continue and to sustain the attacks, so we have to be much more careful whenever we speak about the imminent collapse of the regime, which is far from being true.”

Will the US FORCE Iran into World War III?

Gaza slides into lethal chaos as desperate Palestinians fight to survive

Just after midnight on Thursday morning, Abdullah Ahmed left his sleeping wife and children in their small and crowded home in the battered al-Bureij camp in central Gaza and headed north. The 31-year-old vegetable seller had heard that the nearby food distribution site recently opened by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a secretive Israeli- and US-backed private organisation that began operations in the territory last month, would be handing out food at 2am. To get there early and maximise his chance of grabbing a box of flour, oil, beans and other basics, Ahmed and some friends set out across the dangerous rubble-strewn roads.

Just reaching the vicinity of the centre, one of four run by the GHF, was dangerous. “All the time we could hear the sound of shells and stray bullets flying over us. We kept taking cover behind the ruins of houses. Whoever doesn’t take cover is exposed to death,” he said. All last week, every night and most mornings, there were similar scenes across Gaza, as tens of thousands of hungry, desperate people converged on the GHF sites or waited at points where trucks loaded with UN flour were expected.

Every day, somewhere in the devastated territory, these gatherings had a similarly lethal conclusion when Israeli forces open fire. The exact toll over the last 12 days is unclear. Medical authorities in Gaza say about 450 have died and thousands more have been injured. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) admit that some have been hurt by their fire but have not admitted any deaths in shootings, which they say are directed at “suspects” who have posed a threat to their forces and only ever follow warning shots.

The GHF on Sunday said its model was working: “The Gaza health ministry, operated by Hamas, has been putting out false information on a daily basis which unfortunately media outlets have not verified before publishing.” But 10 witnesses interviewed by the Guardian last week all broadly corroborated reports of repeated lethal incidents involving high numbers of casualties, as do the records of medical aid groups working in Gaza.

Mahmoud Khalil renews devotion to Palestinian freedom at New York rally

Mahmoud Khalil, the Palestinian rights activist, freed from Ice detention on Friday, returned to Columbia University on Sunday to renew his commitment to the cause of Palestinian freedom and opposition to both the university and the Trump administration. Khalil arrived back in New York on Saturday after being released from more than 100 days in detention in Louisiana by a federal judge who ruled that punishing someone over a civil immigration matter was unconstitutional and ordered his immediate release on bail.

Just outside of Columbia’s gates and reunited with wife Noor Abdalla, Khalil thanked his supporters, legal team and “to salute the courage of all students at Columbia and across the nation who had continued to protest”. Khalil made clear that following his release from detention he would battle what he called the “shameful trustees at Columbia that are currently attempting to expel 15 more students and to suspend tens of others, basically conceding their future, their degrees and labor because they are not afraid to stand for Palestine”.

The university, he added, “would do anything and everything it can to ensure that the words “free Palestine” are not uttered anywhere near it. “But while we are here, Free, Free Palestine.” The crowd followed in a chant.

Khalil went on to accuse Columbia of attempting to prevent the rally at its gates “just so we cannot remind them that they fund the killing in Gaza” and he described himself not as someone who is violent, as he claimed he has been portrayed, “but as a human rights defender”....

The Trump administration has said it will appeal the order to release Khalil.

Russia advances faster and faster

Judge orders release of Kilmar Ábrego García as he awaits federal trial

A Tennessee judge on Sunday ordered the release of Kilmar Ábrego García, whose mistaken deportation has become a flashpoint in Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, while he awaits a federal trial on human smuggling charges. But he is not expected to be allowed to go free.

At his 13 June detention hearing, prosecutors said US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) would take Ábrego García into custody if he were released on the criminal charges, and he could be deported before he has a chance to stand trial.

US magistrate judge Barbara Holmes has scheduled a hearing for Wednesday to discuss the conditions of Ábrego García’s release. The US government has already filed a motion to appeal the judge’s release order. Holmes acknowledged in her ruling on Sunday that determining whether Ábrego García should be released is “little more than an academic exercise” because Ice will probably detain him. But the judge wrote that everyone is entitled to the presumption of innocence and “a full and fair determination of whether he must remain in federal custody pending trial”.

Holmes wrote that the government failed to prove that Ábrego García was a flight risk, that he posed a danger to the community or that he would interfere with proceedings if released. “Overall, the Court cannot find from the evidence presented that Ábrego’s release clearly and convincingly poses an irremediable danger to other persons or to the community,” the judge wrote.

Ábrego García has pleaded not guilty to the smuggling charges that his attorneys have characterized as an attempt to justify the deportation mistake after the fact.

PATHETIC Dems Absent On Iran As Base DEMANDS Action

Fuel firms can challenge California’s emission limits, supreme court rules

Fossil fuel companies are able to challenge California’s ability to set stricter standards reducing the amount of polluting coming from cars, the US supreme court has ruled in a case that is set to unravel one of the key tools used to curb planet-heating emissions in recent years.

The conservative-dominated supreme court voted by seven to two to back a challenge by oil and gas companies, along with 17 Republican-led states, to a waiver that California has received periodically from the federal government since 1967 that allows it to set tougher standards than national rules limiting pollution from cars. The state has separately stipulated that only zero-emission cars will be able to sold there by 2035.

Although states are typically not allowed to set their own standards aside from the federal Clean Air Act, California has been given unique authority to do so via a waiver that has seen it become a pioneer in pushing for cleaner cars. Other states are allowed to copy California’s stricter standard, too.

But oil and gas companies, as well as Republican politicians, have complained about the waiver, arguing that it caused financial harm. The waiver was removed during Donald Trump’s first term but then reinstated by Joe Biden’s administration.

Last week, Trump again moved to end the waiver, signing a congressional disapproval of California’s move to cut pollution and shift new cars and trucks to become electric over the next decade. Gavin Newsom, California’s governor and a Democrat, who is in a huge head-to-head battle with the White House over the Los Angeles protests and state power, amid Trump’s immigration crackdown, has called this move illegal and has said the state will sue.

Nigerian communities to take Shell to high court over oil pollution

Residents of two Nigerian communities who are taking legal action against Shell over oil pollution are set to take their cases to trial at the high court in 2027. Members of the Bille and Ogale communities in the Niger delta, which have a combined population of about 50,000, are suing Shell and a Nigerian-based subsidiary of the company, the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria, which is now the Renaissance Africa Energy Company.

The two communities began the legal action in 2015, claiming they had suffered systemic and ongoing oil pollution for years due to the companies’ operations in the African country, including the pollution of drinking water. They are seeking compensation and asking for the companies to clean up damage caused by the spills.

The companies are defending the claims, saying that the majority of spills are caused by the criminal acts of third parties or illegal oil refining, for which they are not liable.

On Friday, Mrs Justice May ruled on more than 20 preliminary issues in the claims after a hearing held in London over four weeks in February and March. She said that “some 85 spills have, so far, been identified”, but added that the case was “still at a very early stage”. Her findings included that Shell could be sued for damage from pipeline spills caused by third parties, such as vandals, in efforts to steal oil, a process known as bunkering.

She also said that, while there was a five-year limitation period on bringing legal claims, a “new cause of action will arise each day that oil remains” on land affected by the spills. The cases are due to be tried over four months, starting in March 2027.

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

Israeli Forces Slaughter 48 More Palestinians in Gaza Over 24 Hours

Trump official to The Grayzone: CIA’s Ratcliffe acts as ‘Mossad stenographer’ on Iran

The perilous U.S. attack on Iran is the culmination of a projection of America’s own existential dread

Michael Hudson: Why America Is at War with Iran

Tic-Toc No. 8 On The War On Iran

Ex-Israeli Peace Negotiator Slams U.S. Bombing of Iran, Says Israel Seeks Chaos in Middle East

A Little Night Music

Willie Love - Seventy Four Blues

Willie Love - Feed My Body To The Fishes

Willie Love - V8 Ford

Willie Love and his Three Aces - Falling Rain

Willie Love - Vanity Dresser Boogie

Willie Love - Willie Mae

Willie Love - Lonesome World Blues

Willie Love - Way Back

Willie Love - Everybody's Fishing