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"The 2015 Iran nuclear deal was working fine; anyone who says otherwise is a lying warmonger. Trump and his handlers torched the JCPOA in 2018 because it was the primary obstacle preventing them from getting to the war that is currently happening."

-- Caitlin Johnstone

News and Opinion

Nothing changed about the reasons not to attack Iran

Iran is reportedly preparing to lay mines in the Strait of Hormuz to block shipping, which will surprise nobody who knows anything about why the US empire held off on waging this war in the first place.

Sean McCarthy writes on Twitter, “For literally 45 years US planners have discussed this exact scenario and always decided against war with Iran for this reason. It took an incredible combination of blackmail, graft, lobby money and end time prophecy lunatics for Israel to make the US commit imperial suicide.”

This is what’s so crazy about all this: every reason it was a bad idea to go to war with Iran in the past is still a very valid reason why it’s a bad idea to go to war with Iran.

It didn’t surprise anyone when Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz; they always knew that would happen if this war started.

It didn’t surprise anyone when Iran started destroying US military assets in surrounding Arab states; they always knew that would happen if this war started.

It didn’t surprise anyone that Iran would dig in and rely on its powerful military and invasion-proof terrain to repel a US-Israeli offensive; they always knew that would happen if this war started.

None of this is catching anyone who knew anything off-guard. It’s playing out exactly how leaders, military officials and analysts on both sides have always said it would.

Nothing changed about the reasons not to attack Iran. All that’s changed is Washington’s willingness to try putting a very bad idea into practice.

Prof. Mohammad Marandi : LIVE From Tehran: Iran Unites Under Pressure

Iran escalates attacks on infrastructure and transport networks across the Gulf

Iran dramatically escalated its strategy of striking civilian infrastructure and transport networks across the Gulf on Wednesday, attacking commercial ships and targeting Dubai’s international airport as US and Israeli warplanes launched new waves of strikes on the Islamic Republic. Senior Iranian officials struck a defiant tone, warning of a long “war of attrition” that would threaten global economic chaos as energy supplies from the region were throttled.

In what appears to be a growing stalemate in the 12-day conflict, violence continued across a swath of the Middle East, with Israeli strikes on what it says are Hezbollah targets in Lebanon and barrages of Iranian missiles and Hezbollah rockets targeting Israel. Israeli strikes on Lebanon have killed at least 634 people and injured 1,586 in less than 10 days of fighting. More than 816,700 families have registered as displaced with the Lebanese state.

On Wednesday night, in a sharp escalation, Israeli warplanes bombarded Beirut’s southern suburbs and south Lebanon after Hezbollah launched drones and rockets at northern Israel. The rockets were launched in tandem with Iranian missiles, the first time the two have coordinated their attacks against Israel since the Iran war started. In the Gulf, Kuwait said its air defences had downed eight Iranian drones, and Saudi Arabia said it had intercepted five heading toward its Shaybah oil field.

Despite growing pressure for the US and Israel to consider reining back their joint offensive, decision-makers in both countries appeared to continuing the campaign for now. Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, said on Wednesday that it would continue “without any time limit, as long as required, until we achieve all objectives and win the campaign”. Donald Trump has sent more mixed messages in recent days, going from calling the war a “short-term excursion” that could end soon to proclaiming “we haven’t won enough” in the same speech in Washington on Monday.

On Wednesday the US president told a rally in Hebron, Kentucky that “we won” but the US would stay in the fight to finish the job. “You never like to say too early you won. We won. In the first hour it was over,” Trump said. He claimed that the US had destroyed 58 Iranian naval ships but indicated they would continue to fight. “We don’t want to leave early do we?” he added. “We got to finish the job … We don’t want to go back every two years.” Governments across the world fear economic turmoil from surging oil prices which would anger many voters.

Historic levels of oil released - why are prices still rising?

COL. Lawrence Wilkerson : Netanyahu Under Pressure: Is Israel Losing Control of the Escalation?

US intelligence sees direct attacks by Iran on oil tankers as greater risk than mines

US intelligence reporting sees direct attacks by Iran as the greatest threat to oil tankers going through the strait of Hormuz, the key transit passage for the global oil trade that has been effectively shut down by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard since the start of the US-Israeli war against Iran. The Trump administration, spooked by possible preparations by Iran to mine the strait, carried out strikes against 16 mine-laying vessels near the strait on Tuesday. US Central Command posted a video showing munitions hitting nine vessels, most of which were moored as they were struck.

But the more potent threat remains the risk of a direct attack by Iran at scale – for instance, a swarm of one-way attack drones or a series of shore-to-ship ballistic missiles, according to two people familiar with the intelligence who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details.

The problem comes because just one missile or drone slipping through defenses could decimate or sink a tanker, giving Iran leverage even as the US launched what a senior administration official described as its largest attack against Iran in the conflict to date. As a result, even if US navy destroyers escorted the tankers, they might not be able to intercept every incoming missile, and even in the event the Trump administration provides risk insurance directly to operators, ships’ crews would still need to be convinced to pilot the vessels through the strait. ...

The issues with protecting oil tankers in the strait was discussed by US military officials in a classified briefing to top lawmakers on Tuesday, according to a person familiar with the matter. Democrats emerged from the briefing deeply critical of the administration. “I can’t go into more detail about how Iran gums up the Strait, but suffice it say, right now, they don’t know how to get it safely back open,” the senator Chris Murphy wrote in a social media post after its conclusion.

COL. Douglas Macgregor : Is Washington Overplaying Its Hand? : The Pentagon’s False Bravado

US responsible for deadly missile strike on Iran school, preliminary inquiry says

A preliminary US military investigation has reportedly determined that Washington was responsible for a deadly Tomahawk missile strike on an Iranian elementary school in February that killed scores of children. According to the New York Times, quoting unnamed US officials and others familiar with the initial findings, the investigation has concluded that the strike on 28 February on the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school building was the result of a targeting mistake by the US military planners.

Iranian officials had put put death toll from the attack as at least 175 people, the majority of them children, in one of the worst and most shocking American strikes producing civilian fatalities in recent memory. The findings appear to confirm assertions by Tehran, which had produced video footage of the US missile strike and fragments of US-made missile parts, despite Donald Trump’s efforts to suggest Iran had hit the building.

According to the report, the inquiry – which has yet to be completed – has found that officers at US Central Command created the target coordinates for the strike using obsolete data provided by the Defense Intelligence Agency. While independent analysis of the strike had pointed strongly to US culpability, the Trump administration has continued with a policy of evasion around the attack that hit the school in the town of Minab close to buildings used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) naval forces.

Trump IS TRAPPED In Iran Escalation Nightmare

Israel bombards Beirut suburbs and southern Lebanon as conflict with Hezbollah escalates

Israeli warplanes bombarded Beirut’s southern suburbs and southern Lebanon after Hezbollah launched drones and rockets at northern Israel on Wednesday night in a sharp escalation of the 10-day conflict. Hezbollah let off successive volleys of rockets and drone swarms at Israel on Wednesday night, injuring two people, with most of the projectiles either being intercepted or falling into open areas. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said later that they had carried out some strikes with Hezbollah.

In a statement carried by the Fars and Tasnim news agencies, the Guards said the “joint and integrated operation” involved a missile attack by Iran carried out in conjunction with missile and drone fire from Hezbollah. The operation focused on “more than 50 targets” on Israeli territory, the statement added, including Israeli military bases in Haifa, Tel Aviv, and Beersheba.

The attack by Hezbollah was the most intense launched by the pro-Iran group since it first fired rockets at Israel 10 days earlier, triggering a retaliatory military campaign by Israel. The rockets were launched in tandem with Iranian missiles, the first time the two coordinated their attacks against Israel since the Iran war started. Hezbollah’s operation, dubbed “Operation Chewed Wheat” – a reference to a Quranic verse about reducing one’s enemies to chewed wheat – was a sharp escalation by the group, believed to be battered by nearly two years of daily airstrikes by Israel.

Wednesday night’s escalation took place as Israeli officials signalled a possible widening of its campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel’s security cabinet met on Wednesday night to discuss Lebanon, where officials sought to stop the group’s ability to launch rockets into Israeli territory. On Wednesday, head of the Israeli military Lt Gen Eyal Zamir ordered reinforcements to its northern border with Lebanon, redeploying the Golani Brigade from Gaza to the north. The Golani Brigade is specialised in offensive ground operations, and analysts said the force’s redeployment could signal a larger ground invasion of Lebanon. Hezbollah is reportedly preparing itself for a full-scale Israeli invasion of south Lebanon.

Hezbollah fighters have been fighting with Israeli troops in south Lebanon, particularly around strategic points in the eastern parts of the country such as hilltops around al-Khiam. Small units of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan force have been acting autonomously to ambush Israeli troops, which have been conducting in-and-out raids in southern Lebanon.

Why Israel is Fixated on Destroying Lebanon

The US-Israeli strategy failed to defeat Iran quickly – now they are moving to plan B

Given the wall-to-wall coverage of the US and its war on Iran, it looks very much like Trump is the key player. He is not. The United States may have far more military power than Israel, but the key player is Benjamin Netanyahu. Moreover, the Israeli prime minister has fallen into a trap of his own making, and is dragging Trump and the US military into that same trap. For Israel, and indirectly for the US, the war has to end in total victory. Anything less is pointless.

If it ends with the Iranian regime surviving but terribly damaged and with great loss of life, that cannot be enough for Israel. Iran’s crucial task then will be to concentrate its technical capabilities on developing and testing a crude nuclear device to prevent being attacked again in the future. To make that impossible, Israel and the US would have to have such complete control of Iran that they would be able to access every part of the state. This would include the deeply buried bunkers and the stocks of semi-enriched uranium that survived last June’s attacks. Even further airstrikes, including B-2 stealth bombers flying from UK territories, would not be enough.

Meanwhile we are bombarded with claims that the war is almost won, even as the US navy prepares to deploy a third aircraft carrier strike group to the region. Meanwhile we are now into plan B, a strategy with two elements. The less significant is to weaken the state by working with minority groups such as the Kurds and perhaps the Baluchis to revolt and catalyse the fragmentation of Iran. The other element – much more significant – is concentrating more on Israel’s traditional approach in such circumstances: destroying an enemy’s domestic support. This is the Dahiya doctrine: if an insurgency cannot be ended or the leadership of a state cannot be subdued, the route to victory lies with the relentless punishing of the civilian population.

It is being used in Lebanon, as Israel’s destruction of Hezbollah’s stronghold in the southern Beirut suburb of Dahiya gets under way, the suburb having given its name to the doctrine back in the 2006 war against Hezbollah. Critics point out that the doctrine has been used on a huge scale against Hamas in Gaza over the past 30 months. That resulted in at least 70,000 Palestinians being killed, an even greater number wounded and most of the territory reduced to ruins. Yet Hamas survives, and parts of Gaza are still under its control. Despite this, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the US air force are now applying the doctrine to the war on Iran, with mounting evidence of attacks on infrastructure. ...

It is just possible that a degree of sense will prevail. Trump’s claim that the war is already nearly won may be wishful thinking. There are, though, some suggestions that some Israelis may be having second thoughts and are looking for a way out. In Washington too, such heresy may be gaining ground. That may be very cautious optimism, but better than the current prospect which is weeks and months of this horrific, escalating war.

Max Blumenthal : Trump’s War: Bombing a School and $8 a Gallon Gasoline

Dubai faces existential threat as foreigners flee conflict

In the playground of the rich, nobody wanted this war. For decades, Dubai built itself up as a sanctuary of unadulterated consumerism visited by tourists the world over. But now, the city in the United Arab Emirates faces an existential threat, as the war between the US and Israel and Iran has shaken the foundations of the “Dubai dream” that so many foreigners had bought into.

The UAE has borne the brunt of more than two-thirds of Iran’s strikes; the state targeted in part, say analysts, for its deep military and intelligence partnerships with western powers, and Dubai’s reputation as a favoured centre for global finance and western holidays. “The shine has definitely been taken off,” said John Trudinger, a British resident of Dubai for 16 years, who is a headteacher at an Emirati school in Dubai. He employs more than 100 teachers from the UK and said most have been so “deeply traumatised and really struggling to cope” with the sudden arrival of war in Dubai that they have left and won’t come back.

They are among the tens of thousands of residents and tourists that have fled Dubai since the US and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran almost two weeks ago. ... On a daily basis, alerts ping on everyone’s phones, warning of “potential missile threats” and telling them to seek safety and stay away from windows. More than 90% of the 1,700 Iranian projectiles have been rebuffed by UAE’s defence systems, but some have struck significant targets, including military bases, industrial complexes and Dubai airport, shutting down one of the busiest aviation hubs in the world. Attacks on two datacentres briefly left Dubai residents unable to use their phones for digital payments.

The Fairmont hotel, located on Dubai’s famed artificial palm tree-shaped island, home to mega-mansions, lavish hotels and upmarket beach clubs, was also dramatically hit. Zain Anwar, a taxi driver from Pakistan, saw his car destroyed in the strike on the Fairmont after he had parked it while he went to pray. “I am the luckiest person in the world to have survived,” he said. “But now my family are telling me to come home. I don’t want to be in Dubai any more, there is no business, we are earning nothing since this war, and I don’t see the tourism coming back. A lot of taxi drivers like me, we are thinking to go to a different country now. Everybody knows that Dubai is finished.”

US Caught LYING ABOUT CASUALTIES In Iran War

Americans withholding their federal income tax to protest against Trump

“I’m not paying my federal income taxes this year,” Rachel Cohen declared in a recent Instagram video that received more than 140,000 likes. The 31-year-old lawyer in Chicago plans to put the $8,800 she owes the federal government in a high-yield savings account instead. She doesn’t want to fund wars in Iran and Gaza or immigration agents detaining her neighbors, she said.

Many commenters said they wanted to do the same. Others worried about her. “I’ve gotten a lot of people saying: ‘Rachel, this is illegal,’” Cohen said. “To which I say, with gentleness: ‘I am a competent attorney!’” Cohen is part of a new generation of Americans refusing to pay some or all of their federal income taxes. It’s not a new form of dissent – one of the first protests in the United States was, after all, a protest of unfair taxation – but it’s also one that’s gaining steam, as Americans reject how their tax dollars are being spent under Trump.

Lincoln Rice, who leads the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee (NWTRCC), said in Donald Trump’s second term, more and more people are removing their money from the federal tax base. In January, NWTRCC – which has been around since the early 80s – held its largest-ever “War Tax Resistance 101” training. A few years ago, such trainings would draw about a dozen attendees; two months ago, nearly 500 people showed up, and the group’s website traffic had over 110,000 unique visitors.

“Some methods of tax resistance are not legal, and anyone who attempts them should be prepared to face the risks of civil disobedience,” Rice explains in his trainings. Penalties can range from threatening letters, to wage or bank-account garnishment, to – in one famous case – the seizure of a person’s home.

To Cohen, these risks are not deterrents when about 13% of Americans’ federal income taxes are spent on the military, and 1% goes to federal law enforcement, including subsidizing Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE). “In a vacuum, I would certainly run the risk of a misdemeanor, as opposed to actively supporting concentration camps,” she said of ICE detention centers.

Nearly 4,000 US meatpacking workers to strike at plant run by top Trump donor

About 3,800 workers at JBS USA, the world’s largest meat producer, are set to strike on Monday in what will be the first labor strike in the industry in decades. The walkout threatens to put further strain on US meat prices – ground beef prices soared 15% last year – and could prove a headache for the Trump administration as it struggles with poor polling on cost of living issues.

Pilgrim’s Pride, a subsidiary of the JBS Brazilian meat processing conglomerate, donated $5m to the Trump-Vance inaugural committee, making it the largest single donor.

Workers at a JBS USA beef processing plant in Greeley, Colorado, are set to begin an unfair labor practice strike on 16 March. The decision came after 99% of workers represented by United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7 voted to authorize an unfair labor practice strike after nine months of negotiations over a new contract. Kim Cordova, president of UFCW Local 7, who was a union organizer when the plant workers first unionized in the early 1990s, said it will be the first strike action ever carried out at the plant.

Workers say JBS has forced them to pay out of pocket for expensive personal protective equipment, discriminated against immigrant workers and tried to force through low-ball contract options. “We have never had a labor dispute at this plant,” Cordova told the Guardian. “The industry hasn’t had a labor dispute for a very long time and it’s because they hire a very vulnerable workforce and the expectations are they keep their head down. They’re doing the work frankly no one in this country wants to do.”

Cordova accused JBS of dragging out negotiations, noting the company has offered less than 2% in average annual wage increases, while not addressing rising healthcare costs or allegations of systemic wage theft at the plant. Many of the workers at the plant are immigrants, many with refugee or protected immigration statuses. About 57 different languages are spoken at the plant.

Foreign hacker reportedly breached FBI servers holding Epstein files in 2023

A foreign hacker compromised files relating to the FBI’s investigation of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein during a break-in at the bureau’s New York field office three years ago, according to ​a source familiar with the matter and recently published justice department documents reviewed by Reuters. The details of who accessed a server at the FBI’s New York field office, ‌including the allegation that a foreign hacker was involved, are being reported here for the first time.

In a statement, the FBI said what it described as a “cyber incident” was “an isolated one”.

“The FBI restricted access to the malicious actor and rectified the network. The investigation remains ongoing, so we do not have further comments to provide at this time.”

Although the source said the intrusion appeared to have been carried out by a cybercriminal rather than a foreign government, ​the incident underscores the files’ potential intelligence value, one academic said. The legally mandated publication of US justice department documents has exposed the dead financier’s ties to prominent people in politics, finance, academia and business, ​triggering investigations in numerous countries around the world.

The breach was reported contemporaneously by CNN and Reuters on 17 February; the connection to Epstein materials was made by the French magazine Marianne. The hack occurred after a server at the child exploitation forensic lab in the FBI’s New York field office was inadvertently left vulnerable by Aaron Spivack, a special agent who was trying to navigate the bureau’s complex ​procedures for handling digital evidence, according to the source and the documents.

New satirical statue depicts Trump and Epstein as doomed lovers from Titanic

A woman’s heart is a deep ocean of secrets. The appearance of a golden statue depicting Donald Trump and the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein as doomed lovers from the movie Titanic is confronting Washington with a murkier mystery. The nearly 12ft sculpture, unveiled on Tuesday on the National Mall, is the third piece of guerrilla art satirising Trump’s past relationship with Epstein attributed to The Secret Handshake, a shadowy collective whose members remain anonymous.

It is not known if the statues are related to a “Jeffrey Epstein Walk of Shame” recently installed in Farragut Square, a public park close to the White House, that featured Hollywood-like stars with the names of prominent figures tied to Epstein.

But together the interventions appear determined to keep the Epstein files, where Trump’s name appears thousands of times, in the public spotlight despite the war in Iran and myriad other distractions. The latest sculpture recreates the famous scene from the 1997 blockbuster Titanic in which the lovers Jack and Rose, played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet stand at the prow of the ill-fated ocean liner, with Jack proclaiming: “I’m the king of the world!”

Trump stands behind Epstein with arms outstretched as the pair face the distant spire of the Washington Monument, mounted on a replica of the bow of the ship. The installation, titled “King of the World” and spray-painted gold, is accompanied by plaques offering a pointed commentary on the pair’s past association.

“The tragic love story between Jack and Rose was built on luxurious travel, raucous parties, and secret nude sketches,” one reads. “This monument honors the bond between Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, a friendship seemingly built on luxurious travel, raucous parties and secret nude sketches.”

Trump hits back at Republican Senate majority leader over Save America act

Donald Trump hit back at Republican Senate majority leader John Thune over the latter’s refusal to alter rules to force a vote on the Save America act, a sprawling bill that would upend elections for American voters amid the midterms. Trump delivered a blunt message for Thune to reporters outside the White House on Wednesday: “He’s got to be a leader.”

The comments came after Trump put on a full-court press over the bill, saying he would not sign any other legislation until the Save America act came to his desk to sign.

While the House approved a version of the bill, the Senate does not have the votes, because it would need 60 votes to move forward because of the filibuster rule. Conservatives who support the bill have pushed for Thune to mandate a so-called “talking” filibuster, which would force Democrats to hold the floor to block the Save America act.

Thune, from South Dakota, said he planned to bring the bill up for a vote next week, but that would mean it would fail – he does not have 60 votes to overcome the filibuster rule and vote on the bill outright, and the talking filibuster isn’t a feasible option.

“We don’t have the votes, either to proceed [to] a talking filibuster nor to sustain one if we got one,” Thune said Tuesday at a press conference. “That’s just a function of math. There isn’t anything I can do about that.”

Coalition Demands Schumer, Jeffries Step Down Over Failure to Fight ‘War-Crazed’ Trump

A coalition of peace groups on Wednesday launched a new national campaign calling for the top Democrats in Congress—Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries—to resign from their leadership roles, citing their failure to sufficiently fight back “against a war-crazed Trump administration.”

The coalition, which includes Peace Action and RootsAction, launched a petition declaring that it is “time for congressional Democrats to replace Schumer and Jeffries with leaders who are willing and able to challenge the runaway militarism that has dragged our country into launching yet another insanely destructive war,” this time against Iran.

“Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries have not acted to prevent war on Venezuela or the current war on Iran,” the petition reads. “They worked to delay a vote on Iran until after the war had started, while failing to clearly oppose it before or after the launch of the war. Schumer and Jeffries have shown that they cannot be trusted to prevent more wars, more threats of wars, or the transfer of another half a trillion dollars a year into the war machine.”

Kevin Martin, president of Peace Action—the largest grassroots peace network in the US—said in a statement that he doubts “at this point whether many people look to Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries for ‘leadership’ in Congress, but we would settle for them getting with the program and representing their base, and the majority of Americans, who want them to stand strongly against Trump’s illegal wars and domestic terror campaigns against the American people.”

“They need to speak out loudly and clearly, and get their caucuses in line, to oppose the upcoming $50 billion or more for Trump’s illegal war of aggression on Iran, and to cut off US weapons to Israel,” said Martin. “Failing to do so will only increase calls for them to step down or be replaced by colleagues who understand where the American people are on these and other critical issues.”

Since the start of the illegal US-Israeli assault on Iran, Schumer and Jeffries have focused largely on procedural objections to the war, the Trump administration’s incompetence, and the president’s failure to clearly articulate his objectives, rather than explicitly opposing the military onslaught.

In an appearance on NBC‘s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Jeffries declined to say whether he would oppose the Trump administration’s expected push for $50 billion in new funding for the unauthorized war on Iran.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” Jeffries said, chiding the administration for failing to “make its case as to the rationale or justification for this war of choice in the Middle East.”

Sarah Lazare and Adam Johnson wrote for The Nation last week that “it’s not enough to check the box, to do the bare minimum, to reinforce every argument for war only to balk at the process and ask whether there’s a ‘plan’ for after the myriad war crimes have already been committed.”

“The only way to read this half-hearted response from the Democratic Party leadership,” they argued, “is de facto support.”

Countries must seek energy independence through renewables and nuclear, says John Kerry

Countries must seek energy independence through renewable resources and nuclear energy for their national security, and to avoid the “choke points” of fossil fuel supply, the former US secretary of state John Kerry has warned. The war in Iran has sent oil prices soaring, as refineries and fields have closed down in several Middle Eastern countries and many tankers are stranded in the strait of Hormuz, with economic impacts beginning to be felt around the world.

“The key takeaway here is that it has emphasised, again, the degree to which fuel – oil and gas, particularly – is a security challenge. Energy independence is even more important going forward, because you don’t want to be the prisoner of a choke point or your economy being greatly disrupted as a result of that,” he told the Guardian.

Kerry said the war in Iran, led by the US and Israel, was not an oil war “per se”, in that it was not based on competition for oil resources, but the conflict was revealing a dependence on oil that had made many developed economies fragile. “The lesson in the early days here is that people have started to figure out: ‘Whoops, how do we not be dependent on other countries for our energy?’” he said. “They now have all understood what these choke points mean to their economic viability. We have to be more aggressive in our transition [to clean energy], for sure.”

China embarked on this strategy in 2019, he said, and had moved “at a staggering pace” to remove its reliance on fossil fuels in favour of renewable energy, he said. The economic and national security impacts of the oil shock could do more to push the world quickly to clean energy than calls for climate action have done, he suggested. “In the 1970s with the oil embargo, there was a massive interruption, and it resulted in a speed up of the transition to finding other sources of energy. On the other hand, in the 1990s you had a [situation] where the climate issue began to take hold and people were setting goals and targets, things didn’t move as fast as they did when it was based on security,” he said.

Also of Interest

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

Iran War ‘Biggest Opportunity’ for US Oil Lobby

‘It Was More Fun’ to Kill Than Capture Iranians

Iran War: Iran Seeks Decolonization of Gulf Region; IEA Proposes Emergency Release of Reserves; Nuclear Strike Risk Assessment; Iran Escalates Strikes

War On Iran: Bank Attacks – Mine Fakes – Price Manipulation – More THAAD To Destroy

‘Severe water stress’: why desalination plants are the Gulf’s greatest weakness

Iran’s Control of Strait of Hormuz Means It’s Exporting More Oil Than Before the War

Democrats demand investigation of claims US-Israeli war on Iran is biblical prophecy

El Salvador’s mass arrest policy may have led to crimes against humanity

Argentina grants asylum to Brasília rioter in move that may sway Brazil vote

California billionaires up political action with multimillion-dollar donations

HUMAN SHIELDS? Israel Limits Flights to Stop Colony Collapsing

A Little Night Music

Omar Sharriff (aka Dave Alexander Elam) - The Rattler

Dave Alexander with Albert Collins and George Smith : Love's Just For Fools

Dave Alexander - Lonesome Train Blues

Dave Alexander - Highway 69

Dave Alexander - Hoodoo Man

Omar Sharriff (aka Dave Alexander Elam) - Cold Feeling

Omar Sharriff (aka Dave Alexander Elam) ~ San Francisco Can Be Such A Lonely Town

Omar Shariff (aka Dave Alexander) - House Built By The Blues

Dave Alexander - Good Soul Music