Soheila Zarfam
Tehran Times

Millions of Iranians flood the streets for Quds Day under US-Israeli bombardment, declaring they will not yield

The woman lost her life during one of multiple bombings carried out in central Tehran by the U.S. and Israel, as around three million Tehrani residents, according to unofficial estimates, marched through the capital’s streets. The woman’s identity was still unknown to the Iranian public at the time this report was written. But everyone had seen the flag she had been holding, drenched in blood, raised by another demonstrator and presented to the crowd after her death. A picture of the woman on the ground, with a man—probably her husband—crouching down and hugging her lifeless body, also circulated around the Internet.

This harrowing account of a U.S.-Israeli crime, however, did not make the Iranian people want to leave the streets that day and take shelter in their homes, which have also been coming under attack by the U.S. and Israel since February 28, the day the two regimes assassinated Iran’s Leader, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei. Now that his son, Ayatollah Seyyed Mojtaba Khamenei, has been elected to continue his mission, people say they will march in the streets and chant slogans against America for as long as their Leader needs them to.

Alexander Staver
Top War

Events are moving so quickly that there's simply no time to analyze and dig deeper. Just recently, I wrote about how the US is pushing Pakistan into war with Afghanistan and, conversely, Afghanistan into war with Pakistan.

Today, we can already see why the US, and most importantly, Israel, wanted this war. What's hidden always comes to light. However, most people notice it too late, when the train has already left the station.

So, yesterday Israel began a military operation, or more precisely, an occupation, against Lebanon. They wrapped their desires in the beautiful packaging of creating a buffer zone and began the seizure. It will go unnoticed.

No one cares about Lebanon today. Tel Aviv is claiming no less than 15% of the territory. Not a bad “piece of the pie.” Moreover, the Jews are acting according to the model of the fascists in the late 1930s and early 1940s. "The Lebanese must leave this territory, or they will be destroyed!"

Caitlin Johnstone
Caitlin’s Newsletter

They Lied About The School Bombing In Iran, And They're Going To Keep On Lying. And Other Notes

An ongoing internal US military investigation has reportedly found the United States responsible for a Tomahawk missile strike on an Iranian girls’ school which killed at least 175 people at the beginning of the US-Israeli onslaught.

Remember all the hasbarists and empire apologists who said it was a misfired Iranian missile that hit the school. Remember how aggressively and uniformly they all pushed this lie, including the president of the United States. Then understand that they’re going to keep lying like this throughout the entire war.

Remember Secretary of War Pete Hegseth boasting about how the US has gotten rid of “stupid rules of engagement” intended to protect civilians, tough talking about how “This was never meant to be a fair fight, and it is not a fair fight. We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.”

Those words land a bit different now that we know he was talking about mass murdering little girls.

Elena Panina
Елена Панина (Telegram)

Washington threatened Madrid with a trade embargo for refusing to grant access to Spanish military bases. European leaders should seize this moment to show that they are capable of defying Washington when it conflicts with their interests, argue Carl Hobbs and José Ignacio Torreblanco of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR, undesirable in Russia).

 ■ The authors claim that the situation concerns not only Spain. According to their logic, using Madrid as an example, the United States is testing whether it can force a European country to change its geopolitical and military position through economic pressure. Accordingly, the EU's response will show whether it is capable of protecting its members' interests.

According to Hobbs and Torreblanco, Spain was chosen because it is considered to have little influence within the EU and is easier to pressure than France or Germany. Therefore, the conflict can become an example of “punishing” a weak ally as an example to a stronger one. Based on this, Europe should collectively support Spain and warn the United States that pressure against one country will be perceived as pressure on the entire union, analysts urge.

Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

This war might be about to get a lot uglier.

Residents of the Iranian capital of Tehran awoke on Sunday to an apocalyptic scene after the US and Israel bombed Iran’s oil storage facilities. A sky-high flaming pillar emerged in the aftermath, toxic smoke clouded out the sun, and blackened rain fell on this city of around 10 million people. The environmental consequences alone could push Tehran to the breaking point after it’s already been struggling with a severe water shortage that earlier led President Masoud Pezeshkian to consider an evacuation.

That might be exactly what the US and Israel want, however, in order to place maximum pressure on Iran to unconditionally surrender like Trump recently demanded of it. In pursuit of this, the new policy of bombing critical infrastructure like oil storage facilities will make it much more difficult for the authorities to maintain everyday life in Tehran, while bombing police stations like has recently happened as well will make the city much less safe. Many residents might therefore soon leave and depopulate the capital.

Even if Iran still doesn’t unconditionally surrender, the optics of the US and Israel doing this to its capital could be presented by them to their respective publics as further proof that they’re winning the war, thus boosting morale at home amidst continued questions about the endgame.

Elena Panina
Елена Панина (Telegram)

The war in Iran is only a week old, but the side effects for the US and the West are already so significant that they haven't yet had time to process them. More accurately, they were predicted, but they arrived unexpectedly, like winter for utilities. Costs are mounting, even though the Pentagon will try to avoid a ground operation, which it considers the most undesirable scenario. Regardless of what Trump says about it.

❖ Both this and other factors indicate that even if the US wins a protracted war against Iran, its exorbitant cost will be a major political defeat for Trump. Trying to save himself, he will escalate the escalation, becoming its hostage, which will bring him closer to Zelensky. For now, Trump wants to resolve everything with air strikes. He is currently adding a third carrier group to his two. But this is a dead end; it's limited in resources and, above all, in time.

The point is that the sanctions regime against Russia is cracking. The West doesn't believe it, but it has. It's completely in line with Chernomyrdin's "Never before has this happened, and here it is again." The "coalition of the willing" is in shock, but it's already clear that something has gone wrong for the US. The genie is out of the bottle, and no one knows yet what to do about it.

Caitlin Johnstone
Caitlin’s Newsletter

● It’s not okay for grown adults to believe the United States wages wars to promote humanitarian interests and bring freedom and democracy to oppressed populations.

● It’s not okay for grown adults to believe that US soldiers fight and die to protect their country and its citizens.

● It’s not okay for grown adults to believe US military interventionism in the middle east has anything to do with women’s rights or making life better for women.

● It’s not okay for grown adults to believe good things come from the US military attacking middle eastern nations and toppling their governments.

● It’s not okay for grown adults to believe the US government tells the truth about its wars and the reasons it wages them.

● It’s not okay for grown adults to believe the US are the Good Guys who are fighting evil Bad Guys like the heroes in a children’s cartoon show.

● It’s not okay for grown adults to believe the US government is less murderous and tyrannical than the Iranian government.

● It’s not okay for grown adults to swallow obvious atrocity propaganda about horrific actions allegedly perpetrated by a US-targeted government.

● It’s not okay for grown adults to consume western news media about a war without extreme skepticism about all the information they’re being fed.

● It’s not okay for grown adults to believe the US fights wars for self-defense.

Al Mayadeen English (AWIP)
Al Mayadeen English

A man walks away after watching a black plume of smoke
rising from a warehouse in the industrial area of Sharjah
City, United Arab Emirates, Sunday, March 1, 2026, fol-
lowing reports of Iranian strikes in Dubai (© AP Photo)

Drone strikes on Amazon data centres in the UAE and Bahrain have exposed the vulnerability of US tech infrastructure in the Gulf, and threatened the region's AI ambitions.

The drone strikes that knocked Amazon Web Services facilities offline in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain this week were not random acts of escalation. They were, according to analysts and industry insiders, a calculated strike on infrastructure that the United States has quietly woven into its military architecture across West Asia.

Amazon and Google hold a $1.2 billion contract with the Israeli government to provide cloud computing and artificial intelligence services to entities, including the Israeli occupation forces.

That contract, largely absent from Western coverage of the strikes, may explain why AWS facilities, and not the dozens of data centers operated by local Gulf companies on behalf of US tech giants, were the ones that were hit.

"It would be easier to target AWS," Ed Galvin, founder of data center research firm DC Byte, told Bloomberg, noting that other US tech services are typically housed within locally operated facilities, making them harder to identify and strike. Of approximately 230 data centers built or under development across Gulf Arab states, only a handful are wholly owned and operated by a US company, according to DC Byte. All three struck this week belong to Amazon.

Strategic Culture Foundation (Editorial)
Strategic Culture Foundation

Humanity has to realize, and is realizing, that for the world to survive in peace, the United States and its Empire of Lies must be defeated.

The orgy of violence and war crimes being inflicted on Iran over the past week is truly shocking. Yet it is not surprising. This is what an empire that repeatedly commits genocide does.

The U.S.-backed Israeli genocide that has been going on constantly for more than two years in Gaza is now expanding to Iran. The Trump administration is openly talking about destroying Iran and its people. Tehran and other cities across Iran are enduring carpet bombing. “It is not only a war against Iran – it is a war against the UN Charter, against all of us, against civilization,” commented the renowned international legal expert Alfred de Zayas. His voice has resonated with the anger and disgust of billions of people worldwide, including many U.S. citizens. This is an abomination, an affront to humanity.

Caitlin Johnstone
Caitlin’s Newsletter

Iran is better than the United States. The United States is worse than Iran. This is true not because Iran is especially good, but because the United States is especially evil.

Iran isn’t blanketing a major metropolis with military explosives, killing over a thousand people, including hundreds of children. The United States is doing this with its partner in crime, Israel.

Iran isn’t continuously bombing and invading countries around the world, toppling governments, circling the globe with hundreds of military bases, targeting civilian populations with siege warfare, and brandishing nuclear weapons at its enemies in the name of securing planetary domination. Only the United States is.

The US empire is the single most murderous and tyrannical power structure on earth, by an extremely massive margin. No one else comes anywhere remotely close. Not Iran. Not anybody. Every government in the world is morally superior to the most evil government, and the most evil government is the United States.

Whenever I say this, I get US empire apologists going “We’re only the ones fighting the wars and dropping the bombs because we happen to be the ones with the power to do so!”

But that’s false. The US isn’t the world’s most vicious government because it happens to be the most powerful; it’s the most powerful government because it’s the most vicious. It’s the power structure that was willing to do whatever it takes to rule the world, no matter how profoundly evil.

Reidar Kaarboe
Hva Mener Partiene (.pdf)

Since World War II, the US has been almost continuously involved in conflict and war.

According to the late William Blum:

❖ The US has attempted to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments.
❖ The US has interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries.
❖ The US has attempted to assassinate more than 50 leaders in other countries.
❖ The US has dropped bombs on the people of more than 30 countries.
❖ The US has attempted to crush popular or nationalist movements against intolerable regimes in more than 20 countries.

So how does the US facilitate regime change around the world?

    1. Reasons why the US replaces regimes

The desire to replace the regime has nothing to do with what kind of regime or government the country has, nothing to do with a desire for “democratization,” nor anything to do with whether the country carries out executions, smuggles drugs, or kills “Christians.” It's about oil, gold, resources, and the US's access to do whatever it wants in the country.

And for Iraq, Libya, Venezuela, and Iran, it also has to do with these countries' desire to move away from the petrodollar, something the US fears more than anything. And we must not forget the US's hatred of Russia. This results in an eternal desire to weaken and dismantle this enemy, to install a new government, and divide the spoils between the US, the UK, and the EU.

Caitlin Johnstone
Caitlin’s Newsletter

The US-Israeli war on Iran rages on. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been killed. Iran has been hammering US military bases in the region with missiles and drones, and oil prices are already beginning to rise as the IRGC cuts off the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation for the attacks.

US soldiers have already begun to die. US Central Command reports that three American service members were killed in combat, with five seriously wounded — and it should here be noted that “seriously wounded” can mean permanently brain damaged, comatose, or otherwise rendered severely handicapped for the rest of their lives.

Trump said during an interview with The Daily Mail that he now expects this war to last “four weeks or so”, and that he expects US casualties to continue. I have said it before and I will say it again: every single American soldier who dies in this war was killed by Trump and Netanyahu. The US and Israeli governments bear sole responsibility for their deaths.

Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

The goal is to obtain proxy control over Iran’s enormous oil and gas reserves so that they can be weaponized as leverage against China for coercing it into a lopsided trade deal that would derail its superpower rise and therefore restore US-led unipolarity.

Trump claimed that the US’ military campaign against Iran is to “defend the American people”, while many critics have alleged (whether in jest or not) that it’s to distract from the Epstein Files, but few observers realize that it’s actually all about China.

It was explained here that Trump 2.0 “decided to gradually deprive China of access to markets and resources, ideally through a series of trade deals, in order to imbue the US with the indirect leverage required to peacefully derail China’s superpower rise.”

To elaborate, “The US’ trade deals with the EU and India could ultimately result in them curtailing China’s access to their markets under pain of punitive tariffs if they refuse. In parallel, the US’ special operation in Venezuela, pressure on Iran, and simultaneous attempts to subordinate Nigeria and other leading energy producers could curtail China’s access to the resources required for fueling its superpower rise.”

The resource dimension that’s relevant to Iran is a major part of the US’ “Strategy of Denial”. That’s the brainchild of Under Secretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby, and it was expanded on in this analysis here from early January.

As was written, “US influence over Venezuela’s and possibly soon Iran’s and Nigeria’s energy exports and trade ties with China could be weaponized via threats of curtailment or cut-offs in parallel with pressure upon its Gulf allies to do the same in pursuit of this goal”, which is to coerce China into indefinite junior partnership status vis-à-vis the US through a lopsided trade deal.

Elena Panina
Елена Панина (Telegram) (Part 1)
Елена Панина (Telegram) (Part 2)

Trump miscalculated. The death of Ayatollah Khamenei did not affect Iran's firm stance to defend its sovereignty. Moreover, the martyrdom of the Rahbar united the nation and brought thousands of people onto the streets across the world. Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and continues to carry out targeted strikes against US bases. Trump's actions are clearly influenced by the "dizziness of success" following the capture of Maduro, the scandal in Davos, and the piracy against tankers, where he got away with everything. But Iran turned out to be no Venezuela.

❖ It's unlikely that Trump's entourage didn't consider this scenario. However, capturing Iran is too tempting a target. The strategy here is clear: by dealing with Venezuela (ranked first in oil reserves) and then Iran (ranked third), the US will get a de facto monopoly over oil reserves. This is already world domination, that is, the real embodiment of the MAGA program. Perhaps in the eyes of the US President, such an end justifies the means. But it could also turn out like this: "It looked good on paper, but they forgot about the ravines."

From the first hours of the attack, Iran has performed admirably. Clearly, the lessons of the summer war of 2025 and the uprising of this winter have been learned. Despite Khamenei's death in a morning strike, a large-scale response immediately followed—both against Israel and against American targets in the Middle East. Moreover, unlike in previous years, all threats were carried out. From this, we can conclude that disagreements among Iran's top elites have currently faded into the background. Aggression is perceived as a threat to everyone, as a potential state collapse that would bury everyone. So, for now, together. For the duration of the conflict, of course.

Elena Panina
Елена Панина (Telegram)

The strikes were carried out from the air and sea. The Israeli Foreign Ministry hypocritically called it a "preemptive strike to eliminate the threat." The official name of the operation is "Operation Judah Shield."

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu stated that the Israeli-US operation is supposedly intended to create conditions for the Iranian people to "take their destiny into their own hands."

Israeli sources report that Iran has launched a retaliatory strike.

❖ Trump also announced the launch of a large-scale military operation against Iran. The goal is "to protect the American people by eliminating the immediate threats posed by the Iranian regime." The White House incumbent emphasized that the US will destroy Iran's missiles, raze its missile industry, and destroy its navy.

Trump called on the IRGC to lay down its arms, claiming that then they will be "treated fairly" and receive full immunity. Otherwise, "they face certain death." He added that "Americans could die, and the US could suffer losses."

According to preliminary reports, the US-Israeli attack is primarily aimed at Iran's governance system.

Elena Panina
Елена Панина (Telegram)

Today [02/26/2026], the third round of indirect talks between the US and Iran is taking place in Geneva. Meanwhile, Washington is rehearsing various scenarios for aggression against Iran.

❖ Politico's American editorial staff, citing its sources among American officials, writes that US military action will almost certainly target Iranian nuclear facilities—or what remains after the US strikes in June 2025.

Iran's ballistic missile infrastructure, which Israel views as a serious threat to its security, will also likely be targeted. Regarding "damage to the regime itself," the publication clarifies, a "decapitation strike" is possible—that is, a strike against Iran's aging Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The White House is also considering some ideas on how best to launch an attack on Iran. It's estimated that more Americans would agree to war with Iran if the US were attacked first. This opinion is based on recent polls showing that Americans, including Republicans, support regime change in Iran but are unwilling to risk their own soldiers to achieve it.

Caitlin Johnstone
Caitlin’s Newsletter

President Trump has shared a text message that was sent to him by Mike Huckabee, the deranged Christian Zionist who serves as the current US ambassador to Israel, and it is one of the creepiest things I have ever seen in my life.

The text reads as follows:

There are so many weird, creepy things about this message. The intensity. The religious fanaticism. The groveling, self-debasing obsequiousness, clearly designed to appeal to Trump’s enormous ego. But by far the most disturbing part was the reference to Truman in 1945 — a nod to the last and only time a national leader used nuclear weapons against an enemy state.

Trump claims to have experienced a religious transformation after surviving an assassination attempt last year. Nuclear weapons and doomsday cultism are poor bedfellows. I really hope this is just some bizarre madman diplomacy and not an accurate reflection of something that is actually occurring inside the president’s mind as he pushes toward direct confrontation with Iran.

Elena Panina
Елена Панина (Telegram)

A ceasefire in Ukraine will not restore balance, but will transfer the entire system of relations between Russia and the West into a phase of long-term confrontation, write Samuel Charap and Hiski Haukkala from the RAND Corporation (undesirable in the Russian Federation) in the influential Foreign Affairs.

The authors proceed from three basic premises:

    1. Pre-war architecture has been destroyed irreversibly. The Russia-NATO Council is virtually dead, the OSCE has lost its functionality, the economic interdependence of the EU and Moscow has been dismantled, exchange channels have been nullified, and trade has collapsed.

    2. Russia will not be “reformatted” in case of defeat (the authors do not explain why our country should lose). The government in the Russian Federation is not collapsing, nor is the economy. This means that the reliance on internal collapse as a condition for a new détente should be removed from the Western agenda.

    3. Europe is moving towards systemic remilitarization, while Russia is moving towards the restoration and regrouping of its forces. This means war is inevitable, and there are only two questions: when will it happen, and how to maintain control over it?

❖ A deliberate Russian attack on a unified NATO is unlikely, Charap and Haukkala say. They see the risk in something else - in uncontrolled escalation through the “gray zone”, all kinds of incidents, cyber strikes, attacks under the guise of sudden exercises.

And, for some reason, amid the political crisis in Belarus, where Russia will “intervene,” which will trigger a mirror reaction from Poland and Lithuania, with the activation of NATO mechanisms. In addition to Belarus, Georgia and Moldova are also mentioned.

Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

Donald Trump and Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart
Tokayev, right, at the Oval Office. Kazakhstan has had
diplomatic relations with Israel for more than three decades.

He’s doing a series of favors for Trump so that he’d have his back if trouble ever arises with Russia, which is an increasingly realistic scenario given Kazakhstan’s recent decision to produce NATO-standard shells and its new military-logistics corridor with NATO via Azerbaijan and TRIPP.

Up until the first Board of Peace meeting last week, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif was considered to be the foreign leader who’s behaved most obsequiously towards Trump, with his adulation of him during last fall’s summit in Sharm el-Sheikh widely being seen as excessive and self-humiliating. Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev is now giving Sharif a run for his money after proposing during the first Board of Peace meeting the creation of a special peace prize in Trump’s honor.

In the immediate run-up to it, an article was published under his name at The National Interest about how “Reliability Is the New Power”, but it suspiciously reads as AI-generated given the language and style employed or at the very least written by someone else. Most of it is just generic reflections on the evolving world order, predictable praise of Trump, and a commitment to continue expanding relations with the US. The backdrop concerns Tokayev’s last visit to the US in November for the C5+1 Summit.

Not only did Kazakhstan sign an MoU on critical minerals cooperation with the US, which was followed up on by its Foreign Minister participating in the US’ first Critical Minerals Ministerial in early February, but it also joined the Abraham Accords despite having already recognized Israel for over three decades. The preceding hyperlinked analysis assessed that “[he] likely did this as a personal favor for Trump so that he’d have his back if trouble ever arises with Russia”.

Krondor Analytics
Krondor Analytics (Telegram)

Examining contemporary European politicians, one cannot help but notice how unimpressive they appear compared to their predecessors.

Starmer is nowhere near Churchill, Macron is no De Gaulle, and Friedrich Merz is no Konrad Adenauer. One gets the impression that this is some kind of freak show and the result of negative selection. And that is largely the case.

To understand this fact, we must examine the origins of the modern European elite.

After the end of World War II, most of Western Europe came under the influence of the United States, thanks to the Marshall Plan for the reconstruction of Europe. West Germany was simply occupied, and American military bases appeared on its territory. And in general, Europe, rebuilt after the war, developed actively, spent part of its money on defense against the “red threat,” and lived in relative peace. The US, in order to maintain control over Europe, set about cultivating a Western European elite loyal to itself.

This process took place through education (the Fulbright program), the creation of a network of NGOs influencing the public policy of allied countries, a system of grants from the Ford and Rockefeller foundations, and support for the most loyal and potentially useful political figures and civil activists.