More on Iran
Published at 19:06 on 10 March 2026
Why the Weakness?
It’s not just Mark Carney refusing to give the fascist Trump regime the sort of full-throated denunciation it deserves. The German chancellor has been equally weak. The United Kingdom started out weak but then backpedaled in response to domestic pressure. In Western Europe, only Spain can as of this time be said to have stood tall. I have several theories as to what is going on here.
Old habits die hard. The U.S. empire has always had its ugly side, but it has only been relatively recently that it has been this ugly. And the business end of the ugly has traditionally been aimed at the Second and Third worlds, not the First. For whom, I might add, the U.S. Empire has generally been a good deal since the end of World War II. The new reality is unpleasant, unpleasant facts are not nice to face, and to reiterate old habits die hard.
Ukraine. One of the reasons the old empire worked out well for Europe was they got to benefit from high U.S. defence spending without having to spend so much themselves (this has long been a sore point on the U.S. political right). Now that Ukraine needs military help, Europe is not in a position to do it all by themselves (not yet, anyhow). European leaders correctly perceive the risk of letting Russia get away with its aggression, and are afraid that a U.S.A. both preoccupied with a war in the Middle East and snubbed by Europe will snub Europe back by directing materiel from Ukraine to the new Iran War.
Their nationals. There’s a lot of expats living in the region, particularly in the U.A.E. (home of Dubai). The war puts them at risk, and they want to cooperate with U.S. forces in evacuating their expats to safety.
For whatever reason, it is imperative that the weakness come to an early end. The U.S.A. cannot be counted on to help Ukraine indefinitely, and alternate measures need to be put in place (the Europeans already realize this and are working on it). Those at-risk expats should be offered rides home; if they refuse to accept, the consequences are then on them.
Iran, after all, whatever the many faults of the regime there, has not threatened the territory of any European nation the way the U.S.A. has been repeatedly threatening the Danish territory of Greenland. (And one can say the same for Canada.) To ignore this is beyond foolish, and calls to mind how Hitler’s expansionist rhetoric was similarly downplayed.
It is the U.S.A., not Iran, that is the greater threat to world peace here here. Which brings me to my next point.
Nuance and Complexity
The world is a complex and messy place that tends to defy easy classification into simplistic categories. Just because the regime in Iran is truly awful does not make it automatically the No. 1 threat to world peace everywhere. This is particularly the case now that Iran’s military is being seriously degraded.
One must look beyond raw malicious intent and figure in power to actualize that intent. Once this is done, the conclusion in the final paragraph of the previous section becomes inescapable.
It is Iran that is now doing the world the useful service of preoccupying that No. 1 threat and depleting its weaponry reserves. Whether this is being done as an expression of international goodwill (it is not) is beyond the point. The service is being rendered and it is useful. Saying this does not make the internal human rights record of that regime any less awful.
The Iranian Diaspora
Many of them have been enthusiastic supporters of Trump and Netanyahu’s war. This is understandable for two reasons.
First, we have the loyalists of the old absolute monarchy to contend with. They had no problem with the Shah’s secret police ripping out the fingernails of their opponents. They only have problems when someone else oppresses them. They are nothing more than the ghouls of the old ruling elite. Their pathetic bleatings are not to be taken seriously.
That doesn’t describe the entire disapora, of course. But it does describe some of them. Again, nuance and complexity. Conflicts are not always good versus evil. Sometimes it’s evil versus evil.
Regarding the rest of the diaspora, a lot of them are true victims and refugees of a brutal regime. It is possible to be both oppressed and wrong. Personally, I cut them some slack. They’ve been waiting for the fall of the regime for decades. Now, at long last, events start turning in ways that imperil that regime. Of course a lot of them are going to be happy.
But, ultimately, it does not matter. The naïve and unrealistic hopes of the oppressed are still naïve and unrealistic. Look at what Trump is doing within his country’s own borders with masked secret police and concentration camps. Look at how eager he was to cut a deal with the oppressive and undemocratic regime in Venezuela. To assume that his motive in Iran must be human rights is, quite simply, preposterous.
This Has Fractured Trump’s Base
I did not expect this. It turns out that there are limits to how much at least some of Trump’s MAGA base are willing to play the role of the fascist follower. I’ve seen it online and you can see it in the news. Figures like MTG and Tucker Carlson are not happy about this turn of events.
It turns out that Iraq and Afghanistan war burnout, and anger at the neocon establishment for getting the U.S.A. involved in two simultaneous conflicts, really was a big part of the equation that led many on the right to Trump.
Trump has, despite all his boasting about “landslide” wins, never really won by that much. Particularly now that he’s lost a lot of fence-sitting low-information voters, he can’t afford to lose a significant chunk of his formerly loyal base. This is a real opportunity to break Trump once and for all.
Revolution, not Reform
Because that ship has already sailed; the U.S.A. in in the midst of a fascist revolution already. The only question now is whether it is possible to have a prompt counterrevolution to that fascist revolution.
Even Democratic Party strategists are starting to admit that electoral politics won’t be enough: absent a groundswell of support from below, they won’t be able to turn this ship around. That is about as close an admission of the obvious as you are going to get from that crowd.
Minneapolis has shown the sentiment is out there. My money is on the Trump regime trying to stack or suppress the 2026 midterms, and having far more success in this endeavour than many now realize is possible.
Once that happens, there may be enough nationwide outrage for things to start getting interesting.
In other words, it’s all going to get significantly worse. Then it’s either going to get significantly better, or get worse yet.