Caitlin Johnstone
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Politics
cryptoflovecraft — 1 month ago(February 27, 2026 01:53 PM)
Caitlin Johnstone
February 26, 2026
White House officials reportedly want Israel to provoke Iran into attacking US military bases in the region, because it will make Americans more willing to go to war.
Politico reports:
“Senior advisers to President Donald Trump would prefer Israel strike Iran before the United States launches an assault on the country, according to two people familiar with ongoing discussions.
“These Trump administration officials are privately arguing that an Israeli attack would trigger Iran to retaliate, helping muster support from American voters for a U.S. strike.
“The calculus is a political one — that more Americans would stomach a war with Iran if the United States or an ally were attacked first. Recent polling shows that Americans, and Republicans in particular, support regime change in Iran, but are unwilling to risk any U.S. casualties to achieve it. That means Trump’s team is considering the optics of how an attack is conducted in addition to other justifications — such as Iran’s nuclear program.”
“There’s thinking in and around the administration that the politics are a lot better if the Israelis go first and alone and the Iranians retaliate against us, and give us more reason to take action,” an anonymous White House source told Politico.
So according this report the plan is to let Israel initiate the war, draw out an aggressive Iranian response against Israel and US military assets in the area, and then let the media saturate American airwaves with photographs of slain US soldiers so that Americans will support a new war in the middle east.
As a plan to drum up domestic support for war, it would probably work. Israel would certainly be all too happy to initiate another war. The US media would certainly be all too happy to drum up support for American retaliation. And many Americans, God bless them, would be dumb enough to swallow it.
We all saw how easily the American public can be persuaded to sign off on any US military operation after 9/11. We know the drill: Americans get killed, the imperial propaganda machine kicks into hyperdrive, and all of a sudden you’ve got every war plan and domestic surveillance agenda ever dreamed up by Washington’s nastiest swamp monsters being advanced at breakneck pace.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio is already laying the groundwork for this narrative push, literally doing the “look how close they put their country to our military bases” meme during a press conference on Wednesday.
“Iran possesses a very large number of ballistic missiles, particularly short-range ballistic missiles that threaten the United States and our bases in the region and our partners in the region, and all of our bases in the UAE, in Qatar, in Bahrain,” Rubio said. “And they also possess naval assets that threaten shipping and try to threaten the U.S. Navy. So I want everybody to understand that, and beyond just the nuclear program they possess these conventional weapons that are solely designed to attack America and attack Americans, if they so choose to do so.”
They’re already blatantly lying to the American public about this thing. In addition to the propaganda narratives we discussed recently like Steve Witkoff claiming Iran is “probably a week away” from having the materials necessary to make a nuclear bomb and The New York Post publishing evidence-free atrocity propaganda about Iran cutting out the reproductive organs of female protesters, President Trump falsely claimed during his State of the Union address on Tuesday that Iran refuses to say it will never develop a nuclear weapon.
“We are in negotiations with them; they want to make a deal but we haven’t heard those secret words: We will never have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said during his speech before Congress.
As Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp pointed out, Iran has been explicitly saying they will never develop a nuclear weapon this entire time, and they literally said it again on the day of Trump’s speech. Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi tweeted on Tuesday that “Our fundamental convictions are crystal clear: Iran will under no circumstances ever develop a nuclear weapon.”
Whether or not you believe Iran’s claims that it has no intention of developing nuclear weapons, it is an indisputable fact that Trump and his speech writers brazenly lied to the American public about Iran refusing to say the words “We will never have a nuclear weapon”.
The fact that they would lie so blatantly about something so significant means they’ll lie about anything, and nothing these people tell us about Iran and its activities can be trusted.
Trump made other evidence-free claims in the same speech, as DeCamp explains:
“Trump also said that Iran was ‘working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States of America,’ a claim that lacks any evidence, and repeated that 32,000 people were killed in the recent protests, an inflated number that lacks real sourcing and is far beyond the 3,317 acknowledged by the Iranian gove -
cryptoflovecraft — 1 month ago(February 27, 2026 06:40 PM)
Trump and his minions are "retarded" for wanting to attack a sovereign nation that's never attacked us.
The right-wing media is "retarded" when it lies about Iran being a week away from having a nuclear weapon.
Oh, and Mark Levin has gone one better and claims that Iran
already has WMDS
that can reach NYC or L.A. - talk about "retarded"! -
Yermom_Is_God — 1 month ago(February 27, 2026 06:45 PM)
That's all well and good, but you really seem to like that retarded "journalist."
"I am Kamala Harris, my pronouns are she and her, and I am a woman sitting at the table wearing a blue suit." -A fucking idiot -
soapbox original gangster — 1 month ago(February 27, 2026 06:48 PM)
Iran probs read the article and the military reassessing its response.
can they be this retard to take double bait offered by trump and israel?
I dont think israel is our ally: i cant recall since 1948 any time that Israel sent troops to fight alongside US. beyond this there's the fact that israel attacked USS Liberty during 1968 war and killed … i dont recall. The ship was clearly flying US flags and radioed its position and identity to israeli planes, which nevertheless fired anyway.
then following imposition of embargo on arms exports to Iran after embassy takeover, israel for decades supplied its ' mortal enemy' Iran with spare parts taken from isreali's fleet of F-14s and sent those parts to Iran to replace its own F-14 fleet.
then the NSA master spy Pollard who god knows what he stole beyond the treasure chest he was nabbed with
doesnt sound like an ally -
Soul_Venom — 1 month ago(February 27, 2026 07:31 PM)
Do you deliberately seek out the dumbest possible take on the issue or are you just lucky?
I promise if Iran ****s around they will find out and no it won't be on us.
They are oil rich. They dont need nuclear power. They damn sure dont need uranium enriched beyond 60%. They dont need long range ballistic missiles. They dont need any of the damn things they are refusing to give up.
Those things are only necessary if you expressly intend to attack someone a considerable distance away.
If Iran quit funding terrorists and quit trying to destroy Israel they would be having these problems. Their neighbors dont have these problems. You know what their neighbors dont do? Iran's neighbors dont play chicken with two of the world's most powerful nations.
You dummycrats may believe the taco myth but if Iran does they are suicidal.
Trump is still your President. Charlie Kirk still Wins! -
cryptoflovecraft — 2 months ago(January 30, 2026 01:47 PM)
Caitlin Johnstone
Jan 30
It’s just incredible how quickly and aggressively the US is advancing longstanding agendas of global conquest under the Trump administration. Now they’re racing to take out Cuba.
The US president has signed an executive order to impose new tariffs on countries which supply oil to Cuba, even indirectly, which is expected to dramatically increase the pressure on the already struggling island nation. This comes as Financial Times reports that “Cuba only has enough oil to last 15 to 20 days at current levels of demand and domestic production” after the US cut off the supply from Venezuela and Mexico shelved a planned oil shipment.
Trump’s order itself contains the usual excuses we’ve come to expect from the empire of propaganda and lies, with its authors babbling without evidence about Hamas and Hezbollah and “transnational terrorist groups” receiving support from Havana, thereby making this crushing act of siege warfare a self-defense measure implemented in protection of the American people.
We’re being asked to believe that Cuba is Hamas, so Washington needs to strangle it to death in self-defense. The fact that the US has been pursuing regime change in Cuba for generations, we are told, is merely a coincidence.
The lies get dumber and dumber with each new imperial power grab. It’s just insulting at this point.
Last week The Wall Street Journal published an article titled “The U.S. Is Actively Seeking Regime Change in Cuba by the End of the Year” which cited anonymous senior US officials saying they viewed the operation to remove Maduro from Caracas as a “blueprint” for bringing down Havana.
Here’s an excerpt:
“Emboldened by the U.S. ouster of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the Trump administration is searching for Cuban government insiders who can help cut a deal to push out the Communist regime by the end of the year, people familiar with the matter said.
“The Trump administration has assessed that Cuba’s economy is close to collapse and that the government has never been this fragile after losing a vital benefactor in Maduro, these people said. Officials don’t have a concrete plan to end the Communist government that has held power on the Caribbean island for almost seven decades, but they see Maduro’s capture and subsequent concessions from his allies left behind as a blueprint and a warning for Cuba, senior U.S. officials said.”
The Wall Street Journal reports that administration officials have been meeting with “Cuban exiles and civic groups in Miami and Washington” with the goal of “identifying somebody inside the current government who will see the writing on the wall and want to cut a deal,” in a way similar to how assets within the Maduro government were recruited to facilitate his removal.
In a new segment on Trump’s frenzied efforts to topple Havana, CNN’s Patrick Oppmann reports from Cuba that he’s “heard from a US embassy source that diplomats there have been advised to quote ‘have their bags packed’ as the Trump administration explores new ways to destabilize the communist-run government.”
The US likes to immiserate the populations of targeted nations using economic strangulation with the goal of fomenting unrest and turning people against their leaders. In 2019 Trump’s previous secretary of state Mike Pompeo openly acknowledged that the goal of Washington’s economic warfare against Iran was to make the population so miserable that they “change the government”, cheerfully citing the “economic distress” the nation had been placed under by US sanctions. Economic distress has been widely cited as a primary factor in the deadly protests that have rocked Iran in recent weeks.
Starvation sanctions are the only form of warfare where it is widely considered both normal and ethical to deliberately target a civilian population with deadly force. Deliberately impoverishing an entire nation so that it erupts in conflict and civil war is one of the most evil things you can possibly imagine, but it’s the go-to Plan A for the US empire when it comes to removing foreign leaders who refuse to kiss the imperial boot.
From Palestine to Lebanon to Yemen to Syria to Venezuela to Cuba to Iran, these last couple of years the US has been in a mad scramble to eliminate governments and resistance groups which attempt to insist on their own sovereignty. There’s a new excuse every time, but the end goal is always the same: the furtherance of planetary domination.
The US empire is the single most tyrannical and murderous power structure on this planet. If any regime is in need of changing, it’s that one.
https://substack.com/@caitlinjohnstone -
WarrenPeace — 2 months ago(January 30, 2026 02:18 PM)
The US likes to immiserate the populations of targeted nations using economic strangulation with the goal of fomenting unrest and turning people against their leaders.
Right.
Turd Face likes to "brag," how he is not a war president but he is.
He may not invade and start combat wars, yet, but he is making sure to do enough damage and death to non white countries.
I am guessing he wants to dominate Cuba to punish them for real estate and because he is racist.
(Ha ha! White man put his American flag on top of his big, beautiful hotel in your country.)
Unless you have another idea or saw one for this motivation?
From Palestine to Lebanon to Yemen to Syria to Venezuela to Cuba to Iran, these last couple of years the US has been in a mad scramble to eliminate governments and resistance groups which attempt to insist on their own sovereignty. There’s a new excuse every time, but the end goal is always the same: the furtherance of planetary domination.
The US empire is the single most tyrannical and murderous power structure on this planet. If any regime is in need of changing, it’s that one.
Yeah, we are never the good guys.
There are just certain levels of evil we are always at.
Dumbya Bush was a 10.
Turd Lump is very close with him declaring war and executing everyone who is not MAGA which moves him up the charts.
It is unfair that we punish other countries making those innocent and impoverished ppl suffer for things they didn't do and the country did things way less terrible than us.
(They didn't drop two atom bombs on innocent populations of a war that was about to end anyway. Did they?)
We need sanctions put on us.
Why does that never happen?
I really hope that other countries turn away from us as much as they can and start trading deals with others as Canada is now doing with China.
"Please vote to preserve the unique character of Warren…" - Robert Duvall