There is a lot of symbolism here. From the beginning of the week, the Jews celebrated Purim, a holiday commemorating the liberation of the Jewish people from Haman, the favorite adviser of the Persian king Ahasuerus, who in the 5th century BC planned to kill and destroy all the Jews in one day. Three millennia later, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on the eve of a holiday that is a symbol of the struggle for the survival of the Jewish people, sent planes and missiles towards Iran in order to destroy the regime in Tehran, which he perceives as a contemporary existential threat to the Jews.
While both were looking for shelters, the Middle East, as during similar confrontations in June 2025, was ushered into a new era of dangerous armed escalation between Israel and America on the one hand, and Iran on the other. Donald Trump, accepting open invitations from allies in Jerusalem and covert advice from Riyadh, bombed the Islamic Republic and launched a war for regime change in Tehran. This is the most risky foreign policy move of the false American peacemaker.
LIES, SCAMS, CYNISM
Having assembled the largest air and naval forces in the Middle East since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Trump has not resisted the use of force. He threatens that a new major strike is yet to come, says that the war will continue for at least another four to five weeks and that the US has the capacity for the conflict to last "much longer". The goal is to destroy Iran's missile capabilities and navy so that the "world's number 1 sponsor of terrorism" never gets a nuclear weapon. Not only did Trump break all the promises that the US should not intervene in the world with "stupid wars", but for the second time, he fraudulently attacked Iran in the midst of diplomatic negotiations on the renewal of the nuclear agreement that was unilaterally terminated in 2018.
The credibility of the US has been seriously damaged and Trump certainly cannot be considered the leader of the free world, much less a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize.
The intention to change the Iranian regime is contrary to the declarative principles of his predecessors and represents the crescendo of Trump's policy of "maximum pressure" towards Tehran during both mandates.
The American-Israeli operation against more than 130 Iranian cities is described as a pre-emptive strike, although there is no evidence of imminent danger, so it is a direct violation of international law. Once again, lies were used to justify an attack on a sovereign country. Trump repeats that Iran is close to producing an atomic bomb, although Tehran has denied for years that it has that ambition.
Why does Trump attack when he claims that in June 2025, all of Iran's nuclear facilities will be destroyed? Why is he declaring today that Iranian ballistic missiles can reach America, even though his military and security experts deny him? Once again, the UN, international law and public opinion were ignored. Chaos is once again spreading throughout the region and the world. The seeds of hatred are sown again, which implies a spiral of revenge.
Claiming that Iran is responsible for a "dangerous escalation" due to retaliatory attacks, and keeping silent about the aggressor rockets that took the lives of more than a hundred girls in an elementary school in the south of Iran, is the height of hypocrisy and cynicism.
"Trump represents an exponentially greater threat to America and the world not because he is a historical anomaly, but because he reflects the worst impulses of the American past," recently warned Ben Rhodes, a former adviser to Barack Obama whose administration signed the nuclear deal with Iran in 2015. All of this is reminiscent of the 1953 coup in Iran, which the CIA organized to remove the power of Prime Minister Sadek Mossadegh. It also recalls the time when the George W. Bush administration fabricated evidence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction to justify the 2003 invasion and overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime.
Mossadegh and Saddam were removed, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whom Trump describes as "one of the worst people in history", after 36 years in power was liquidated by Israeli rockets, along with the heads of the military and intelligence services, but the question is, can intervention from the air change the regime on the ground?
photo: ap photo...and the burning of posters with the image of Netanyahu in Tehran
THIS IS PERSIA
While not ruling out sending ground troops, Trump is appealing to 90 million Iranians to seize the opportunity and replace the theocratic regime that has ruled authoritarianly since the Islamic revolution in 1979. Will they listen? Difficult. The recent riots caused by the difficult economic situation have shown that there is a capacity for discontent, which was further magnified by the regime's brutal response that killed thousands of protesters. It is clear that Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are counting on further inflaming discontent with the bombs. They rely on the (very rare) celebrations of Khamenei's liquidation inside Iran, but ignore that the proud Persians will not be replaced by anyone from outside.
Military aggression also gathers them around the new Supreme Leader, who ensures the continuity of the policy of the Islamic Republic, whose system is unquestionable, at least for a while.
The entire Middle East is on fire as Iran prepares to strike and is retaliating by targeting Israel, which is living under siege and burying the first victims of Netanyahu's ambition to eliminate once and for all the Iranian threat to the Jewish state under its neo-colonial terms.
In Israel, the decision to launch a new attack is the culmination of a multi-year campaign not only against Iran, but also against the Lebanese Hezbollah or the Palestinian Hamas. Israel immediately, expanding the fronts of the war, launched military actions against Hezbollah.
Iran is also targeting the countries where the US military bases are located in the Gulf, as well as Iraq and Jordan. Tehran can only ensure a ceasefire with retaliatory actions, regardless of the risk of worsening relations with the Gulf countries with which it was on the road to normalization. The long-term damage has already been done.
CANDIDATES FOR RELIGIOUS LEADER
Iranian missiles and drones are exploding in Dubai, Bahrain and Kuwait. A refinery in Saudi Arabia was set on fire, and many tankers in the Persian Gulf region are also on fire. Qatar has suspended production of liquefied gas. Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world's oil passes, has been reduced by 80 percent, it is effectively blocked, and we are just waiting for a big jump in the price on the world stock exchanges.
Trump achieved his short-term goals, although after the first four American victims he had to announce that there would be more, considering that the campaign would last for an uncertain time. Israel agrees, and how long will it take to achieve the goal of this campaign - the overthrow of the theocratic government in Tehran?
Although power in Iran is concentrated in the hands of the Supreme Leader, the regime of the Islamic Republic did not collapse with the death of the "martyr" Khamenei. The slain ayatollah had earlier instructed the Assembly of Experts, the body of 88 religious leaders who elect a new leader. Which does not mean that the government does not now have to save what is left of it in order to avoid the scenario of Libya after the execution of Muammar Gaddafi.
The new leader, as the third unchanging symbol of the state which is a unique combination of theocracy and republicanism, must be the embodiment of the foundations of the Islamic revolution, but the question is what will the people around him be like. Will President Massoud Pazeshkian, who has been given to govern the country until the election of a new Supreme Leader together with the Speaker of the Parliament and the head of the judiciary, gain allies from the reformist bloc, or will the leading role be retained by the conservatives embodied by Ayatollah Khamenei and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps?
Prolonged military pressure, losses and destruction, economic troubles and internal rivalries can weaken the central government, which in the coming time will have to answer the question of what compromises it can accept. The Islamic Republic will most likely survive, but it will have to change. While the grandson of the leader of the revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini, is often mentioned as Khamenei's successor, the name of Ali Larijani, a veteran of national politics, former speaker of the Parliament, secretary of the Supreme Council for National Security, one of the key negotiators for the nuclear agreement and, above all, pragmatist, is also mentioned in political combinations. Iran's goal is to survive the initial shock, preserve enough military and political cohesion, and continue to fight back.
REMEMBERING IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN
Trump expects a decisive victory to show that after 47 years he has neutralized America's greatest enemy in the Middle East. Israel's goals agree with America's: to ensure that Iran is strategically weakened, that nothing comes of the atomic bomb and that Iran's missile arsenals are destroyed, although the question is how much the Israeli public, which supports "total victory", is ready to sit in shelters because of a prolonged war.
The US and Israel have clearly defined the target and provided enough weapons. They count on short-lived spectacular successes of their military superiority. They mobilized propaganda to portray Iran as the aggressor. Only one thing is missing: the consent of the Iranians to change their regime. Under the bombs, it is unlikely that the militant duo will get it. They should have remembered Afghanistan and Iraq, but the arrogant power and sense of hubris do not allow Trump and Netanyahu to think rationally.
