Kevin Duffy on U.S. aggressions against Iran

The world doesn't trust Iran because it has memory-holed past U.S. aggressions: 

1953 - CIA-led coup overthrows democratically elected prime minister of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh; installs U.S.-friendly Shah, authoritarian monarch. 

1957 - SAVAK (secret police) is established with CIA and Israeli (Mossad) assistance; this becomes the Shah’s primary tool of repression. 

1979 - U.S. first imposes sanctions after the Shah is overthrown; these undergo a major expansion in 1995 under Clinton. 

1980-1988 - U.S. backs Saddam Hussein in Iran-Iraq War, costing hundreds of thousands of Iranian lives 

1988 - USS Vincennes “mistakenly” shoots down civilian Iran Air Flight 655 on July 3 over the Strait of Hormuz. All 290 aboard are killed, including 254 Iranians and 66 children. The US calls it a tragic error in a combat zone; Iran views it as deliberate. 

2025-2026 - US and Israeli strikes on Iran (starting late February 2025/early 2026) cause thousands of Iranian deaths, including a missile strike that hit the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in southern Iran, costing 156 lives, 120 of them schoolchildren.

~ Kevin Duffy, tweet, April 28, 2026

 

Scott Horton on the Iran War: "It's an asymmetric fight"

 They [the Iranians] have more offensive missiles than we have defensive missiles.  And so it only makes sense, from their point of view...  We have bases in Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Saudi and Oman, and the Iranians have hit every single one of them.  In the first day, they attacked every single one of those countries, including economic targets..., all up and down the [Persian] Gulf.  So far they're not hitting oil, but they're hitting 5-star hotels.  They're causing all kinds of damage.  They closed the Straight of Hormuz.  So it's not quite worst case scenario, but it's pretty bad already.  And it only makes sense that they would decide for strategy to make this hurt the United States enough that it hurts Donald Trump enough that he doesn't do this anymore...  It's an asymmetric fight, so Iran just has to hang in there long enough for Trump to be humiliated enough that he really has to stop and that, I guess from their point of view, feels so stung that he doesn't want to try it again for the next 2 1/2 years.

~ Scott Horton, "The Moronic Neocon War With Iran, With Scott Horton, Jon Hoffman and Brandon Buck," Tom Woods Show, 40:50 mark, March 2, 2026

 

Philip Giraldi on America being drawn into Israel's 12-Day War with Iran

The fog of war may have lifted for now and the phony ceasefire between Israel and Iran has paused the immediate bloodshed, but don’t be fooled.  The respite is to allow an exhausted Israel to rearm with US provided weapons so the neoconservatives and the Israel Firsters aren’t done.  The war drums are still beating, and Trump’s America First movement is starting to fracture under the strain, with a growing divide inside MAGA over America’s pointless wars for Israel.  One group wants to stay out of foreign conflicts while the other is ready to back Israel completely, no matter the cost.  Trump is either consciously or inadvertently playing his usual role of spewing contradictions and sowing confusion and instability every time he speaks or acts.  Israel cannot retreat, it can only continue on its path of blood and slaughter, and Iran will not surrender.  This might create in the near and long run the potential for a major false flag operation by Israel to draw the US in and trigger a full-blown war against Iran. 

~ Philip Giraldi, "Trump Rolls Over for a New War," The Unz Review, June 30, 2025