Why the American Empire Is Ending Now

12 March 2026, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

On March 11th, I headlined “The American Empire Ends Today. China, Russia, & Iran Have Now Done It.” Earlier that day, I had headlined about the brilliant weapons-technologist who was explaining the U.S. Government’s enormous technological failure which had led to this outcome, “Ted Postol Reveals the Fraudulence of America’s Military”.

In the following, the prediction specialist Professor Jiang Xueqin explains the geostrategic situation of each of the war’s three participants:

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“The Escalation Trap: How Iran’s 3-Dimensional War Strategy Will Redraw the Middle East by 2027”

prof jiang briefing

Mar 11, 2026 #ProfJiangXueqin #JiangXueqin #PredictiveHistory

This video features a re-edited and simplified version of Prof. Jiang Xueqin’s

original lecture.

I [one of Professor Jiang Xueqin’s students] carefully re-edit his lectures to make his deep research and analysis more accessible and easy to understand for a wider audience. This channel serves purely as an educational bridge — bringing Prof. Jiang’s brilliant work to those who might otherwise struggle to follow it.

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Let me tell you something that most people fundamentally misunderstand about war. Size doesn’t win conflicts.

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8 seconds

Firepower doesn’t win conflicts. The country with the most advanced military on the planet can find itself completely

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paralyzed, bleeding resources, losing political will, watching its alliances quietly fracture, all without ever

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suffering a single decisive military defeat. And to understand how that’s possible, you need to understand one

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principle. The side that controls the structure of escalation controls the outcome of the war. Not necessarily who

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wins each battle, not who has the most missiles, who controls how the conflict escalates, who decides what kind of

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fight this becomes. Once you genuinely internalize that principle, the entire confrontation between Iran and the

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United States stops looking like a mismatch between a superpower and a midsize regional nation. It starts looking like something far more complicated and far more dangerous.

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Here’s the strategic core of it. In any conflict, the side that gets to choose the dimension of the fight holds a structural advantage. If your opponent

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locks you into one predictable battlefield, your options collapse.

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You’re playing their game. But if you can continuously shift the terrain of the confrontation, if you can move pressure from one domain to another

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before your opponent can adjust, you force them to burn through resources while you conserve yours. You force them to react while you dictate tempo.

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Strategists call this escalation flexibility. And Iran has spent four decades building a national strategy around maximizing exactly this kind of

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flexibility while simultaneously minimizing every dimension in which American power is most effective. That is the key insight. Iran is not trying

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to defeat the United States through strength. Iran is trying to design a conflict structure where American strength becomes difficult to apply.

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Those are the completely different strategic objectives and they require completely different responses which is precisely why American strategy in the

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region has struggled so consistently to produce durable results despite an almost incomprehensible military advantage on paper. So let’s go through

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exactly how Iran does this because the architecture is actually three separate games running simultaneously. Each operating in a different dimension each

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exploiting a different crack in the American strategic system. The first game is what you’d call distributed conflict. Classic military doctrine, the kind American forces are built around,

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assumes a certain shape of war. Two sides, clear front lines, identifiable command structures, fixed bases,

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logistics networks, headquarters you can locate on a map and destroy. American military doctrine is extraordinarily lethal against that kind of war. Shock

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and awe. overwhelming technological dominance, precision strikes that collapse an enemy’s command infrastructure before they can adapt. If

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Iran tried to fight that kind of war against the United States, it would be over in days, and everyone involved knows it. So, Iran doesn’t fight that

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war. Instead, Iran has spent decades building a distributed network across the region. militias in multiple

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countries, proxy forces with varying degrees of independence, political movements, aligned governments, loosely

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coordinated but not centrally controlled pressure points that can be activated in different combinations depending on what

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the situation demands. And what this produces is a genuinely strange strategic environment for American planners. When American forces strike

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Iranian interest somewhere, the response doesn’t have to come from that location.

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It doesn’t even have to come immediately. Pressure can emerge through a militia hundreds of kilometers away,

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through rocket attacks on a base in a different country, through political destabilization, through economic disruption in a neighboring state. The

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battlefield stops being a place. It becomes a condition that exists across an entire region. And you cannot destroy a condition the way you destroy an army.

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There’s no headquarters to eliminate.

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There’s no central logistics chain to cut. The network degrades and regenerates. American forces win engagements constantly and the strategic

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situation barely moves. Resources pour in. Attention fractures across a dozen simultaneous pressure points and the

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constant reactive posture slowly exhausts the political will to stay engaged. The second game is economic

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endurance. This one is particularly elegant because it inverts American technological superiority into a

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structural vulnerability. The American military is the most expensive machine ever built. Aircraft carriers, stealth

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aircraft, integrated missile defense systems, satellite constellations,

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precision munitions that cost more per unit than some countries spend on their entire defense budgets annually. And all

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of this technology is designed around a specific assumption about how wars work. that they will be short, decisive,

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controlled, achieve overwhelming dominance fast, accomplish the objective, exit. The entire system is

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optimized for that scenario. What happens when the conflict refuses to be short? What happens when an opponent is specifically designed to prevent

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decisive outcomes? The technology that was an advantage starts becoming a liability because maintaining that level of capability while fighting an

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indefinite grinding conflict is economically brutal. And Iran exploits this through saturation. Drones costing tens of thousands of dollars force the

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deployment of interceptor missiles costing millions. Fast attack craft in the Persian Gulf can threaten vessels worth billions. The math is straightforward. You spend a little,

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your opponent must spend a lot. You regenerate quickly, your opponent’s industrial replacement cycle takes months. The cost curve starts grinding

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the technologically superior force down in ways that have nothing to do with battlefield outcomes. But the economic dimension is also psychological in a way

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that’s just as decisive. Democracies are structurally sensitive to prolonged economic stress in ways that authoritarian systems simply are not.

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When wars become expensive over years,

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when supply chains strain, when the financial cost starts showing up in domestic politics, public opinion

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fractures and fractured public opinion eventually destroys the political coalition sustaining the war effort. Not through military defeat, through

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exhaustion, through the gradual erosion of the argument that this is worth continuing. Iran’s strategy was never

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designed to win quickly. It was designed to outlast to remain intact and functional past the point where the political will on the other side

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collapses under its own weight. The third game is geographic pressure and geography is the one variable that no amount of military spending,

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technological development or strategic ingenuity can alter. The physical map just is what it is. And in the Middle East, the physical map is

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extraordinarily favorable to Iraq. Sit with a map for a moment and really look at it. Iran sits along a northern edge of the Persian Gulf, directly

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overlooking the strait of Hormuz, the narrow maritime choke point through which an enormous portion of the world’s

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daily oil supply must pass. Every day without exception, because there is no alternative route that makes economic

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sense for most of that volume. The United States has maintained naval dominance in the Persian Gulf for decades. Specifically, the guarantee

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that corridor stays open, but the geographic reality underneath that dominance is deeply uncomfortable. That entire shipping route sits within range

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of Iranian missiles, drones, and layered coastal defense systems. Iran doesn’t need to defeat the American Navy in open water to threaten global energy markets.

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It just needs to make the corridor dangerous enough that commercial shipping refuses to transit it voluntarily. Insurance premiums explode.

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Tango companies reroute. Energy markets panic globally. And suddenly, a military confrontation that started as a regional

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conflict is producing economic shock waves in countries that have no direct stake in the fight and no particular desire to absorb the consequences. Those

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countries then start applying pressure for deescalation, not out of sympathy for Iran, but out of pure economic self-interest. the cost of the conflict

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radiates outward and so it’s coming back as political pressure from America’s own partners. Now, here’s where the architecture becomes genuinely

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sophisticated. These three games don’t simply run in parallel. They interact.

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They reinforce each other. They create compounding pressure in ways that are extremely difficult to address through any single strategic response.

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Distributed conflict spreads American attention and resources across an entire region. Economic endurance bleeds the

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financial and political capacity to sustain engagement. Geographic pressure drags global actors into demanding

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resolution on terms that aren’t purely favorable to American objectives.

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Address one dimension and pressure increases in another. Win a tactical engagement and the strategic environment doesn’t actually change. Destroy a proxy force and the network reconstructs.

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Every action generates reactions across multiple domains simultaneously.

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Strategists have a term for what this creates, a stalemate spiral. The militarily superior power keeps winning

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individual engagements, keeps achieving the tactical outcomes its doctrine is designed to produce, but cannot translate those victories into strategic

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movement. Cannot convert local dominance into durable regional control.

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Meanwhile, the structurally weaker power absorbs damage, regenerates, and incrementally increases the cost of continuing. Over a long enough timeline,

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the question transforms completely. It stops being who can win the war. It becomes who can endure the war longer.

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And endurance contests almost never favor the side carrying the highest cost structure. They favor the side that can

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generate sustained strategic pressure at the lowest resource expenditure per unit of effect. And underneath all of this is

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the deepest layer of the strategy, the one that most analysis misses entirely.

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Iran does not need to defeat the United States militarily. That outcome was never the objective. The objective is to alter the regional balance of power

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incrementally and durably. If American forces become chronically overstretched,

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if allied governments begin quietly doubting whether American security guarantees will hold under pressure, if global markets and regional actors begin

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adjusting their behavior to a new strategic reality, the geopolitical architecture of the region starts shifting without any single decisive

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military event causing it. And those shifts once they begin are self-reinforcing. They compound. They become very difficult to reverse.

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Smaller states start hedging their alignments. Energy buyers explore alternative supply arrangements.

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Regional powers negotiate new security frameworks that reduce American centrality. None of this happens in a

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single dramatic moment. It happens gradually, almost invisibly, through thousands of small decisions made by

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governments and companies and investors who are simply adjusting to what the strategic environment appears to be becoming. Perception drives those

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adjustments and perception is enormously powerful in international politics. Once the image of unchallengeable dominance

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begins developing visible cracks, every rival starts probing where the new limits actually are. Here is the paradox sitting at the center of all of this.

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American military superiority is real,

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overwhelming. No other nation on Earth approaches American capacity to project conventional military force at global

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scale. But superiority does not automatically translate into strategic control. Not when the structure of the conflict forces that power to operate

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inefficiently at every level. Not when bombing campaigns destroy infrastructure while simultaneously generating

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narratives that drive recruitment and harden resolve. Not when economic sanctions weaken target economies while

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simultaneously pushing lial states to construct alternative financial architectures that reduce American leverage over the long term. Not when

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military deployments reassure allies while stretching supply lines across vast distances and generating local

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political backlash that complicates the alliances they were meant to strengthen.

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Iran’s strategy is built entirely around those contradictions around forcing America to fight the wrong war. A war

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where technological superiority matters less than political patience. A war where geography constrains rather than

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enables. a war where economic endurance becomes the deciding variable rather than precision firepower. And once a conflict fully enters that structure,

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once those dynamics take hold across multiple dimensions simultaneously, the outcome stops being predictable from the military balance sheet. Because wars are

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decided by the structure of escalation that unfolds across years. By which side can sustain pressure longer, adapt faster, absorb costs more efficiently,

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and maintain the political cohesion necessary to keep fighting. And when escalation is operating simultaneously across the economic, geographic,

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political, and proxy dimensions all at once, the side that looks strongest at the beginning doesn’t always control how the story ends. Most people watching this are still counting tanks.

IN SHORT, THIS IS AN ATTRITIONAL WAR; SO, IRAN IS LIKELY TO WIN IT.

——

“Why America is Losing the War With Iran (w/ John Mearsheimer) | The Chris Hedges Report”

The Chris Hedges YouTube Channel, 11 March 2026

To summarize: Trump was the first U.S. President so stupid as to believe Netanyahu

0:00

Information

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in war is weaponized. This is true for the United States. It is true for Israel and it is true for Iran. But reading through the fog of war, the conflict

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with Iran does not appear to be going well for Israel or its US ally. Iran’s closing of the strait of Hormuz and

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threats to mine the waterway is triggering the largest energy supply shock in decades. This energy crisis

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will only get worse. Iran has degraded the region’s military infrastructure,

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taking out sophisticated US radar stations in the Gulf and in Israel. This has left the US and Israel increasingly

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unable to track incoming missiles and drones. Iran has carried out successful strikes on US bases and ports as well as

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energy infrastructure, desalination plants, and diplomatic compounds. The longer the war continues, and Iran shows

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no signs that is interested in negotiations, the more it erodes the security arrangements in the Gulf, ones built on the premise that America will

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protect the Gulf countries from Iran in the event of a conflict. The Trump administration has no clear goals for

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the war other than the unrealistic calls for unconditional surrender and bombastic threats. It has clearly made a

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terrible miscalculation about what the US could achieve by killing the top leaders in Iran, including the Supreme

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Leader. This war, as it drags on, with no discernible exit strategy, has the potential to see the US forced as the

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global economy goes into crisis to meet Iranian demands. This humiliating defeat would potentially mean the end of US age

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in the region. Joining me to discuss the war in Iran is Professor John Mearsheimer. He is the R. Wendell Harrison,

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Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. Professor Mearsheimer, who

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graduated from West Point and was a captain in the Air Force, is the author of numerous books, including Conventional Deterrence, Nuclear

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Deterrence, Ethics, Lidal Hart and the Weight of History, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, The Israel Lobby, and US

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foreign policy, and why leaders lie, the truth about lying in international politics. Let’s begin with this fact

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that the Pentagon for three decades has vigorously uh fought back against Israeli pressure

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to go to war with Iran. Uh whether that was Obama, Bush, Biden,

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uh and and for some reason, for all of the reasons of course that are now evident, uh the Pentagon didn’t want

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this conflict. How was that reticence or resistance overcome?

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Yeah, it’s quite remarkable, Chris, that uh none of uh Trump’s predecessors uh took the bait when the Israelis tried

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to trap us into going to war against Iran. And you want to remember in 2024,

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Joe Biden’s last year as president, uh the Israelis twice, once in April and then second in October of that year

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tried to trap Biden into going to war against Iran. And he refused to do it.

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Uh and Trump is the first president who fell into the trap. And of course, he did it last June uh during the 12-day

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war. You want to remember in the 12-day war, uh the Israelis by themselves started that conflict on June 13th and it ended on June 25th. But on June 22nd,

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uh we bombed uh three nuclear targets in Iran, but it was a one-day bombing. We talked about one and done at the time.

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And you remember that when uh the evening came on June 22nd, the bombing was finished, uh President Trump

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declared victory. Uh so although he got involved for the first time, uh it only looked like he was putting his ankle in

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the water uh that he wasn’t becoming uh deeply committed to fighting a war in Iran. But that all changed on February

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28th. um the United States and Israel together, what I like to refer to as the tag team, uh decided to attack Iran and

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we are now in a war of attrition with the Iranians. Uh in which case it’s hard to see how this war ends. So Trump uh

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took the bait and I think to put it in more specific terms, I think basically that Prime Minister Netanyahu, who has been working overtime for decades now,

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literally decades, uh to get the United States to uh attack Iran for Israel uh

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finally succeeded with Trump. Uh as I said, there was a tiny step taken forward in that regard last June. Uh but

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now uh Trump has jumped uh full body uh into the water and yet you see even with this

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sickophatic uh head of the joint chief’s Ka uh every time he’s trotted out in front

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of the cameras he doesn’t look very happy. Uh it I think the military foresaw the Pentagon foresaw what is

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coming and is quite perplexed about how to deal with it.

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I think that General Kaine has actually behaved quite well here. You want to remember that when Trump came into

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office uh January of uh last year, January 2025,

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he fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Brown. And he brought General Kaine out of retirement.

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Kaine was only a three-star general. He wasn’t even a four-star general, but Trump liked him. And Trump made him a four-star general, and he made him the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

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Now, given that he was in effect Trump’s general, uh that he owed his position uh

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to Donald Trump, you would think that he would tell Donald Trump what he wanted to hear about going to war against Iran.

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But on the contrary, uh what Kaine did before the war, this is before February 28th, was he made it very clear to

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President Trump uh that we did not have a viable military option. So when you say that uh General Kaine every time

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he’s trotted out looks very uncomfortable, I think that’s true. And I think there’s a simple explanation for

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why he looks so uncomfortable. He knew from the get-go that this one was not going to work out uh the way Trump and

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Netanyahu thought that it was going to work out. and he understands that he is the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and he was the chairman when we

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entered this foolish war on February 28th despite the fact that he had warned against it.

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Is it too simplistic to say that Trump and Netanyahu naively believed that by

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taking out the supreme leader and some of the hierarchy there would be regime change and the war would be over.

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I think that’s clearly the case with Trump. I think that that was the argument that Netanyahu sold to Trump

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and Trump liked the argument. I think given what happened in Venezuela, he thought that we had the ability to float

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like a butterfly and sting like a bee and when BB told him that the uh regime

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in Iran is weak and all we have to do is decapitate it and really hit hard on that first day or two uh that the regime

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would crumble and we would end up with a pro-American, pro-Israeli regime in its place. Uh I think Netanyahu was very

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successful at telling Trump that story and Trump is not exactly surrounded by wise advisors uh save for General Kaine

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uh who would tell him otherwise. Uh so he fell into the trap. Now Netanyahu is

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a more complicated case. One could argue uh that Netanyahu understood that uh a

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decapitation strike wouldn’t work. uh that this would not be a quick and decisive victory uh and that instead

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what he was trying to do was trap uh Trump into a long war uh in which case

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uh Iran would be destroyed. In other words, Netanyahu understood uh that the regime would not fall quickly, but once

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we committed to fighting the war, we would have no chance but to no choice but to see it through. and uh a and that’s the situation that we’re in now.

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So that’s a possible argument. It’s hard to know for sure whether it’s true, but it’s also possible uh just having

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watched Netanyahu over time that he too bamboozled himself into believing that the Iranian regime was fragile and that we could easily affect regime change.

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You know, he’s been saying that for a long time, as you well know, Chris, and sometimes when people repeat particular arguments, after a while they even begin

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to believe their own arguments, although they initially did not. So, uh it’s possible that uh that uh BB uh fooled

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himself or it’s possible that he was just just tricking Trump into getting into this war.

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Well, the Israeli goal is different from the American goal. Americans want regime change. Um, you know, the the Israelis

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want to create a failed state. They want to fragment Iran the same way they fragmented and destroyed Iraq. Uh, the

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same way they turned Libya into a failed state. Those are very different goals. I agree with that. I agree with that.

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But, uh, the Israelis don’t advertise that fact. I think the Israeli view is if they got regime change and uh they

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got a pro-American pro-Israel regime in place that then they wouldn’t have to worry that much about destroying the

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country. But I think that they probably understand that that’s not going to happen. That Iran’s not going away. And

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given that Iran is not going away, let’s wreck it. Let’s do to Iran what we did to Syria and then we’re we’re done with

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Iran. we can turn to Turkey and break Turkey apart as well.

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Well, let’s talk about a country that does have a strategy which isn’t the United States and that’s Iran. And what I found interesting is that rather than

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confront the uh American military might i.e. the ships and they have decided

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quite astutely and quite methodically to destroy the economic machinery not only in the Gulf but globally.

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Yeah, the Iranians are pursuing a smart strategy. And to go back to General Kaine, General Kaine has made a number of comments about the Iranians uh that

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make clear that he respects their ability uh to strategize in this war. He is not contemptuous of the Iranians.

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When you listen to Hagsith and Trump talk, they talk uh about the Iranians like they’re a bunch of country bumpkins

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and we’re the strategic geniuses. And not only do we have an advantage in material power, we Americans have an advantage in how to think strategically.

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Uh I think that’s not the case. And I think if you listen carefully to General Kaine, uh he’s making that point. We are

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up against a formidable adversary. Uh given what you said, given what u General Kaine said, uh they have a lot of cards to play. The key here, Chris,

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is that Iran has a huge arsenal of short range

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ballistic missiles and drones that it can use against the Gulf States.

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And the Gulf States present a target-rich environment. Uh it’s easy to use those

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drones and those short-range ballistic missiles to do great damage to all of the countries in the Gulf, including

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Saudi Arabia. The Iranians also have a lot of long range missiles and also long range drones that can hit Israel. Now,

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they’ve not done much of that up to now.

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It’s very important to understand that in the 12-day war last June, the Iranians fought almost exclusively

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against Israel. They did not target American military bases in the region.

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Uh and they did not target the Gulf States in this war. They’re targeting Israel, uh American military

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installations in the region, and the Gulf States. And in the first part of the war up to pretty much now, they’ve

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concentrated mainly on attacking American installations and attacking the Gulf States. But they have announced um

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that they are now beginning to switch the focus and they’re going to concentrate much more on attacking

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Israel. And they have the long range ballistic missiles and they have drones uh which they can use to hit Israel. And

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14 minutes, 5 seconds

the problem that the Israelis face, and of course this is a problem that the Americans face, is that we only have a

14:11

14 minutes, 11 seconds

finite number of defensive missiles that can be used to shoot down those incoming ballistic missiles. And even when we use

14:20

14 minutes, 20 seconds

those defensive missiles, they often times don’t hit the incoming Iranian ballistic missile. So, we have this

14:29

14 minutes, 29 seconds

situation in the Gulf and in Israel where the Iranians have the capability

14:37

14 minutes, 37 seconds

to pound all of those countries for a long period of time and there’s nothing we can do about it. And in fact, as time

14:45

14 minutes, 45 seconds

goes by, our ability to shoot down those missiles, shoot down the drones decreases. It doesn’t flatline and it

14:52

14 minutes, 52 seconds

certainly doesn’t increase. It decreases. So the Iranians have a serious set of military options against

15:00

15 minutes

us. And what this means, Chris, is that as we walk up the escalation ladder, and

15:08

15 minutes, 8 seconds

that’s what we’re likely to do if we can’t find an off-ramp, and I don’t think we’re going to find an off-ramp.

15:14

15 minutes, 14 seconds

If we don’t find an off-ramp, I think what we’ll do is march up the escalation ladder. And of course, Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump will say, “We have

15:22

15 minutes, 22 seconds

escalation dominance as you go up that escalation ladder.” But I don’t think that’s true. I I think the Iranians have

15:29

15 minutes, 29 seconds

powerful cards to play and therefore we are in a really terrible situation.

15:36

15 minutes, 36 seconds

What is that escalation ladder look like? What will that mean? They’re already carrying out virtually saturation bombing of Tehran.

15:43

15 minutes, 43 seconds

Not yet. Uh they’re pounding uh they’re pounding Iran. There’s no question about that. And they’re p pounding Tran. Uh

15:52

15 minutes, 52 seconds

but uh they have not killed uh more than 1500 people. Uh I mean it’s terribly

16:00

16 minutes

regrettable that they’ve even killed one person, much less 1500 or whatever the number is. But uh they have not gone

16:07

16 minutes, 7 seconds

that far. The Israelis and the Americans have not gone that far up the escalation ladder. And in a very important way,

16:14

16 minutes, 14 seconds

there’s evidence that the Americans are discouraging the Israelis for going too far too far and too fast up the

16:20

16 minutes, 20 seconds

escalation ladder because we understand that the uh uh the Iranians have a second strike capability. The Israelis

16:29

16 minutes, 29 seconds

don’t care that much because the Israelis want to see us get deeply involved in this war and destroy Iran.

16:36

16 minutes, 36 seconds

They’d like us to level every city in Iran, break the country apart. But Trump does not at this point want to go down

16:43

16 minutes, 43 seconds

that road. But I think what happens here, Chris, as we march up the escalation ladder is that we target

16:52

16 minutes, 52 seconds

civilian areas, we end up killing larger and larger numbers of people. Uh and furthermore, we begin to flirt with the

17:01

17 minutes, 1 second

idea of tearing apart uh Iran’s uh petroleum infrastructure and maybe uh

17:09

17 minutes, 9 seconds

their desalination plants as well. We begin to really try to throttle the regime uh to strangle it. And and again,

17:18

17 minutes, 18 seconds

this involves not just simply killing people uh which I think if you get desperate enough, you’ll do. The Israelis of course would have no problem

17:27

17 minutes, 27 seconds

doing that. Uh and ultimately I think if we got desperate enough we would not either. But again the problem is is we

17:34

17 minutes, 34 seconds

do those things um the Iranians will retaliate. uh if we go after uh energy

17:42

17 minutes, 42 seconds

infrastructure in Iran, the uh Iranians will go after more and more energy

17:49

17 minutes, 49 seconds

infrastructure uh in the Gulf uh in Gulf States. Uh if we go after desalination plants, they’ll

17:58

17 minutes, 58 seconds

go after desalination plants in places like Saudi Arabia and Israel itself. Uh,

18:04

18 minutes, 4 seconds

I think the Israelis have four or five big desalination plants that they depend heavily on and I think the Iranians will

18:12

18 minutes, 12 seconds

be incentivized to take them out if we or the Israelis or both of us go after their desalination plants. Uh, so you

18:21

18 minutes, 21 seconds

can see that as we go up the escalation ladder, uh, the Iranians will go up with

18:27

18 minutes, 27 seconds

us. And I don’t see how you can make the case that we have escalation dominance in any meaningful way. Especially when

18:36

18 minutes, 36 seconds

you take into account the fact that the historical record is quite clear here that countries can suffer enormous

18:44

18 minutes, 44 seconds

amounts of punishment in these sorts of air campaigns and the population does not rise up against the government and

18:52

18 minutes, 52 seconds

overthrow it. Uh and in fact what happens in most of those cases if not all those cases is that the population

18:58

18 minutes, 58 seconds

rallies around the flag. So if we think or the Israelis think that killing Iranian civilians is going to put

19:06

19 minutes, 6 seconds

pressure on the government to quit the war, I think that is uh erroneous thinking.

19:13

19 minutes, 13 seconds

Well, we tried that in Vietnam.

19:15

19 minutes, 15 seconds

We tried it in Korea. If you ever look at what we did to North Korea during the Korean War, it’s horrific. is much worse than what we did in Vietnam. And then

19:24

19 minutes, 24 seconds

you go back to World War I, World War II, excuse me, not World War I, World War II in Europe and World War II uh in

19:32

19 minutes, 32 seconds

East Asia against Japan. I mean, number of people that we killed. It’s just hard to believe. Uh but it’s very hard, if

19:40

19 minutes, 40 seconds

not impossible, to get, you know, uh those air campaigns to cause a government to quit. Well, they is there

19:47

19 minutes, 47 seconds

an example of uh an air campaign that does break a government? I don’t think so. Historically, is there?

19:54

19 minutes, 54 seconds

No. I think the only case you could make is the dropping two nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6th and

20:02

20 minutes, 2 seconds

August 9th got the Japanese to finally quit. Uh the Japanese were at the edge of the cliff by August of 1945. And the

20:12

20 minutes, 12 seconds

question was the question is what pushed them off the cliff? And some people would argue it was the two nuclear weapons on those uh two dates. I

20:20

20 minutes, 20 seconds

actually think that’s not true. I think it was when the Russians came in on August 8th. Remember the war in Europe is won on May 8th, 1945.

20:30

20 minutes, 30 seconds

And at Yalta, the Russians or the Soviets had said that they would come in three months after the war in Europe

20:39

20 minutes, 39 seconds

ended. In other words, they would come into the war against Japan 3 months after the war in Europe ended. And the war in Europe ends on May 8th, 1945.

20:50

20 minutes, 50 seconds

And three months later, on August 8th, 1945, the Soviets uh invade against the

20:58

20 minutes, 58 seconds

Japanese Quan army in Manchuria and quickly overrun it. Uh I believe that

21:05

21 minutes, 5 seconds

it’s the Soviet decision to attack Japan uh on August 8th, which is in between

21:12

21 minutes, 12 seconds

the two bombs on August 6th and August 9th, that is the critical factor that gets the Japanese to throw up their

21:19

21 minutes, 19 seconds

hands. But that’s the only case you can make uh where one could say uh that air power helped uh a bit to uh end the war.

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21 minutes, 29 seconds

But just quickly, Chris, on that case, because it’s important to understand it,

21:34

21 minutes, 34 seconds

uh, we start firebombing Japan on the evening of March 10th, 11th, 1945.

21:41

21 minutes, 41 seconds

And the first night that we firebomb Tokyo, this is March 10th, uh, we kill more Japanese than are killed at either

21:50

21 minutes, 50 seconds

Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Just think about that. That’s the first night we firebomb Tokyo. Uh and then we’re working our way

21:58

21 minutes, 58 seconds

down the list of large Japanese cities and firebombing them, murdering huge numbers of people. Just truly remarkable. Uh and the Japanese don’t

22:07

22 minutes, 7 seconds

quit. They don’t quit until August. And that of course is when the two nuclear weapons are dropped and the Soviets come into the war. And that’s sort of the

22:16

22 minutes, 16 seconds

coup-de-gras. But firebombing just didn’t work. And it supports the basic point that I’m making that you can murder and

22:24

22 minutes, 24 seconds

this is really murder because you’re purposely targeting civilians. You can murder huge numbers of civilians and it

22:31

22 minutes, 31 seconds

doesn’t work. Uh the historical record is remarkably clear on this. And here we are in Iran. We’re not going to send

22:40

22 minutes, 40 seconds

ground forces in, right? We’re going to rely on air power. We’re going to bomb and we’re going to bomb Iran uh and win

22:48

22 minutes, 48 seconds

the war. We’re going to create regime change without sending ground forces in.

22:53

22 minutes, 53 seconds

Just going to do it through the air. The historical record makes it unequivocally clear that this is almost impossible to

23:00

23 minutes

do. Uh absent a miracle and I don’t believe in miracles. Uh it’s hard to get regime change or impossible to get regime change uh using air power alone.

23:11

23 minutes, 11 seconds

You got to send boots. You got to put boots on the ground. This is what we did in Iraq. we had to invade Iraq to get

23:18

23 minutes, 18 seconds

regime change. Uh and if you want regime change in Iran, you’re going to have to invade that country. And that’s not

23:26

23 minutes, 26 seconds

going to happen. Uh country is much too big. Uh they’re too many people. And furthermore, we’ve been there before. It

23:34

23 minutes, 34 seconds

doesn’t work very well. And even Donald Trump is smart enough to know that sending an army into Iran would be a real prescription for disaster.

23:45

23 minutes, 45 seconds

Let’s talk about the economic impact of shutting down the strait of Hormuz. And just on the issue of desalination plants, having worked in Saudi Arabia,

23:55

23 minutes, 55 seconds

you take these out, you and you have a huge humanitarian crisis.

24:01

24 minutes, 1 second

I mean, cities like Riyadh are almost completely dependent on desalination.

24:06

24 minutes, 6 seconds

Absolutely. Absolutely. A and and the administration, the Trump administration

24:13

24 minutes, 13 seconds

uh has told the Israelis to stay away from desalination plants. Um and we do

24:19

24 minutes, 19 seconds

not want to get into uh a war where both sides are uh attempting to destroy the

24:26

24 minutes, 26 seconds

desalination plants on each side. This would not be good. uh because as you say it would be you know catastrophic

24:35

24 minutes, 35 seconds

disaster for the people in all of those countries in the uh in the Gulf region and I believe it would have devastating

24:43

24 minutes, 43 seconds

effects inside Israel as well if the Iranians were able to take out those four or five desalination plants that

24:50

24 minutes, 50 seconds

the Israelis have. Uh so I I think that you know uh for the time being anyway we’ll stay away from that.

24:59

24 minutes, 59 seconds

the economic consequences, you know,

25:01

25 minutes, 1 second

have not been fully felt yet. And uh we’ll see what happens with the passage of time. Very interestingly, the

25:09

25 minutes, 9 seconds

Iranians are still shipping oil out of the Gulf. Needless to say, Iranian uh

25:16

25 minutes, 16 seconds

tankers or tankers carrying Iranian oil uh are not going to be sunk by the Iranians and they can make their way

25:24

25 minutes, 24 seconds

through the straits of Hormuz. So the Iranians are still selling oil which I think 80% of their sea-borne oil goes to China. Is that correct?

25:32

25 minutes, 32 seconds

Uh I think that’s right. Yeah. uh but I think that if you look at China’s

25:40

25 minutes, 40 seconds

present situation in terms of you know how much oil it has in reserve uh where

25:47

25 minutes, 47 seconds

it gets its additional oil from uh China is not going to be hurt that much at

25:54

25 minutes, 54 seconds

least initially if the oil is cut off it’s Japan and South Korea that are going to be clobbered Japan and South

26:01

26 minutes, 1 second

Korea are more dependent on oil coming out of the Gulf uh than the Chinese are. It’s quite

26:09

26 minutes, 9 seconds

interesting here, Chris, but if you think about it, the Europeans are really going to be hurt badly if the oil is cut off uh for a sustained period of time.

26:19

26 minutes, 19 seconds

And you want to remember the Europeans are already in trouble because they’re not getting oil and gas uh in in in the

26:27

26 minutes, 27 seconds

way they used to from Russia. Uh and now they’re depending more on the United States and the Middle East. So if you

26:35

26 minutes, 35 seconds

cut off the flow of oil and gas from the Middle East to Europe uh on top of the fact that all that oil and gas coming

26:42

26 minutes, 42 seconds

out of Russia uh has been curtailed uh you can see where the European economies which are already struggling

26:50

26 minutes, 50 seconds

are going to be even in more trouble. So Europe is going to be hurt. It looks like Japan and uh u South Korea are

26:57

26 minutes, 57 seconds

going to be hurt. And then there are countries, you know, that are less developed like Nigeria that are going to pay a real price as a result of what’s

27:06

27 minutes, 6 seconds

happening here. Uh and uh so the economic consequences which are just beginning to be felt uh could be

27:16

27 minutes, 16 seconds

significantly worse and the consequences this for the world economy could be catastrophic. Uh and of course the Trump

27:23

27 minutes, 23 seconds

administration fully understands that uh they understand that you know to some extent it’s hard to predict exactly how

27:31

27 minutes, 31 seconds

this plays out but they surely understand that you can tell plausible stories as to how this ends up being one

27:39

27 minutes, 39 seconds

giant nightmare. Again it’s not to say that will happen but you can tell plausible stories about how this becomes

27:46

27 minutes, 46 seconds

a nightmare. you know, we go far enough up the escalation ladder and the Iranians really go after the Gulf States

27:53

27 minutes, 53 seconds

and really go to great lengths uh to destroy their uh oil infrastructure and gas infrastructure. Uh the consequences

28:03

28 minutes, 3 seconds

could be disastrous for everyone on the planet. And the Trump administration understands that they don’t want to take any chances here. This is why you see

28:11

28 minutes, 11 seconds

evidence that the Trump administration is looking for an offramp.

28:16

28 minutes, 16 seconds

Well, the Iranians aren’t going to give it to them, are they?

28:19

28 minutes, 19 seconds

They’d be crazy to give it to them unless they get a good deal. Uh you

28:26

28 minutes, 26 seconds

hardly see any talk about this in in the mainstream media, but all all of the

28:33

28 minutes, 33 seconds

talk revolving around the question of an off-ramp and ending this war has to do

28:40

28 minutes, 40 seconds

with how we think we fared in the end and how we think the Israelis fared in

28:48

28 minutes, 48 seconds

the end. In other words, the Israelis are fearful that if we cut a deal now without regime change or without

28:55

28 minutes, 55 seconds

destroying Iran, uh this will be a victory for Iran. And uh uh and the Americans might be happy, but we’re not

29:03

29 minutes, 3 seconds

happy. And President Trump and his people are thinking that given that we have the midterm elections coming up,

29:10

29 minutes, 10 seconds

the war is not going well, we have to end it. And even if we don’t have a decisive victory, so be it. It’s just

29:16

29 minutes, 16 seconds

important uh that we get this war uh put to bed and uh declare victory and then start worrying about the election in

29:24

29 minutes, 24 seconds

November. That’s the way the discourse is evolving in the West. But nobody seems to understand that to get the

29:31

29 minutes, 31 seconds

Iranians to quit, you have to offer them a deal that they find acceptable because they’re in the driver’s seat now.

29:43

29 minutes, 43 seconds

They’re the war is playing to their advantage. They’ve figured out that they have leverage over the United States and

29:50

29 minutes, 50 seconds

over Israel. The fact that they have all these ballistic missiles and all these drones and they’re operating in a target-rich environment, they understand that they don’t want to quit here,

30:01

30 minutes, 1 second

right? They want to use this capability to give them leverage. Now, you say to yourself, leverage for what? leverage to

30:09

30 minutes, 9 seconds

get a deal at the end of this conflict to get some sort of arrangement put in place that leaves them much better off

30:18

30 minutes, 18 seconds

than they were before February 28th. So what exactly does that mean? First of all, they’re going to want sanctions

30:25

30 minutes, 25 seconds

relief. They’re going to want major sanctions relief. They’re probably going to want reparations.

30:31

30 minutes, 31 seconds

and they’re probably going to want some sort of arrangement that guarantees that the Israelis and the Americans can’t pay

30:39

30 minutes, 39 seconds

them a return visit in six months or a year. Remember last June there was a war

30:45

30 minutes, 45 seconds

against Iran and here we are in March with another war against Iran. This is in less than one year Iran has been ta

30:55

30 minutes, 55 seconds

attacked two times by the tag team. They don’t want a third war. And the question is, how can they prevent a third war?

31:05

31 minutes, 5 seconds

How can they get these sanctions finally taken off of Iran? Uh these are issues that they care greatly about. And when

31:14

31 minutes, 14 seconds

they negotiate an armistice or a peace agreement or some sort of deal to put an end to this war, they’re going to have

31:22

31 minutes, 22 seconds

demands. And we’re going to have to meet those demands. And if we don’t meet those demands, they have an incentive to

31:30

31 minutes, 30 seconds

continue upping the ante until we do agree to certain of those demands. And

31:37

31 minutes, 37 seconds

this is why I say it’s hard to see where the United States has a clear off-ramp today because it’s not just getting the

31:46

31 minutes, 46 seconds

Israelis on board with quitting this war. You have to work out a deal with the Iranians. And given the balance of

31:53

31 minutes, 53 seconds

uh what looks like the balance of power now between Iran on one side and the United States and the Israelis on the other side in terms of the conduct of the war, they have no incentive to quit.

32:05

32 minutes, 5 seconds

They should continue to fight.

32:08

CHRIS HEDGES AS THE INTERVIEWER FAILED BECAUSE IN THE REMAINING 20 MINUTES OF THE INTERVIEW HE FAILED TO ASK THE INEVITABLE QUESTION: What do you think are the likely scenarios that might escalate any of the three direct participants in this war to become so desperate as to escalate it to the nuclear level — nuke the enemy?

…

52:23

52 minutes, 23 seconds

Great. Thanks, John

——

MY COMMENTS:

On March 10th, I headlined “Lawrence Wilkerson: Why Netanyahu Will Nuke at Least One Iranian City”. We’re heading in that direction. Would Trump be willing to lose his Iran war? Would Netanyahu be willing to lose his Iran war? Would Iran’s Government be willing to surrender to those Governments? Would Russia not retaliate nuclearly against whomever would nuke Iran? Would China not retaliate nuclearly against whomever would nuke Iran? Is this a war that will be able to be won by purely conventional (non-nuclear) weapons? We all hope so, but wishing doesn’t make it so.

For America, what’s at stake is continuance and continued expansion of the American empire.

For both Israel and Iran, what’s at stake is continuance of their nation and its Government. But only for Israel is the continued expansion of their control over the Middle Eastern Governments at stake — further expansion of Israel’s empire. Iran is the ONLY anti-imperialistic Government among the three participants. Consequently, Iran’s Government is the only decent Government that is participating.

From an ethical standpoint, this was a war-of-choice by both the Israeli and the American Government (both of the imperialistic Governments); so, they invaded; but for the Iranian Government, this was NOT a war-of-choice; this war was forced upon it by the two evil Governments: Israel and America. For Iran, this is a defensive war.

If Russia and/or Iran would not retaliate against any evil Government that continues its aggression all the way up to and including nuking Iran, then the evil (i.e., imperialistic) Governments will have established the precedent that they enjoy immunity for their evilness no matter how far it will go. And such a precedent would be toxic to the entire world, because after that precedent, every Government will exist in constant terror of the global imperial Government and its then-hundreds of colonies (‘allies’). In such a situation, even China and Russia would be compelled to become merely yet another U.S. colony. Iran is now resisting the empire; and, if it becomes nuked as a result, then I believe that whatever nation has done it will by nuked, in return, by China and/or Russia. It would be a necessary defensive action, in response to America’s having initiated WW3.

Will America finally establish what has been, ever since 25 July 1945, its ambition of ultimately ruling over the entire world, establish such all-inclusive hegemony by again nuking in order to conquer another country? If so, I would expect that, this time, America would become nuked in return. But the basic question is: Is the U.S. Government’s evilness without any limit at all? Is it truly Hitlerite? Only history (if it will continue) will be able to answer that question. The world cannot yet know how evil the U.S. Government actually is.

Trump’s best option right now is for him to issue a brief statement that he is resigning, effective today, from the Presidency, in order to leave his Vice President to set the nation’s course, without the commitments that Trump has made, so that his successor will be free to continue as he sees fit. In that announcement, Trump should say he deeply regrets having brought America into Israel’s invasion against Iran. He should blame Netanyahu and Trump’s own neoconservatives in his Administration, especially Wiles, Hegseth, and Rubio. He should leave up to his successor to determine who should occupy their posts in the new post-Trump Administration. It’s essential for Trump to hand the reins to a successor now, so as to minimize the harms from Trump’s catastrophic decision to join Netanyahu’s war against Iran. America will then be able to withdraw from that war. Simply withdraw from it. And if his successor won’t do that, then he will be getting the blame for it.

—————

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.