Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair
Over the weekend, vice president J.D. Vance sojourned to Islamabad to negotiate an end to the Iran War. Given that the U.S. and Israel sabotaged the two previous negotiations with the Persian nation, Iran had good reason to be skeptical. It was correct. The U.S. diplomatic amateurs utterly failed to understand who has the upper hand in this imbroglio, namely Iran, and thus made shockingly unrealistic demands. Now we’ll see whether Tehran’s diplomats survive the usually fatal process of negotiating with Trump’s team of jokers.
After Vance called it quits and despite Trump’s threats to blockade the Strait of Hormuz, which would tank the world economy pronto, and his vociferations against China supplying weapons to Iran (Hello? Where has he been for the past month? Napping? Who does he think has been unpacking literally dozens of planeloads of military equipment in Tehran? I can tell you it’s not Santa Claus, unless he’s moved to Beijing), Washington wants peace, because, suffice it to say, its little “in/out” war on Iran did not go as planned. By the second month of the Iran War, the U.S. had lost planes – a not insignificant number – while six Russian submarines patrolled the Strait of Hormuz, two of them nuclear. On April 7, Russia and China vetoed a UN security council resolution to open the Strait, thus finally striking back at the Empire’s security council abuses. This veto just might have had something to do with Donald “Stone Age” Trump’s fulminations the day before about terminating Iranian civilization. After all, Russia, China and Iran are de facto allies, regardless of the fine print in their security pacts, and Moscow and Tehran have lately been on the receiving end of some of Washington’s very bloody nastiness, while Beijing knows full well its number is up next.
None of these contortions – bloviations about the stone age, lousy security council proposals targeting Iran or the sudden appearance of Russian submarines – were a recipe for global harmony leading to American success, if not renewed hegemony. No. With seven planes shot down over Iran, three pilots extracted, at least one seriously wounded, the IRGC hammering Israel and the Gulf sheikdoms, while literally champing at the bit for an American invasion, for which they’d been training for decades, the U.S. was ready to throw in the towel. American assets in the region were torched, while Hezbollah, the Houthis, the IRGC and Iraqi militias all shocked Washington and Jerusalem by turning out to be formidable opponents. Well, live and learn. Maybe next time the geniuses in the white house will listen to the Cassandras wailing “don’t do it!” about attacking Iran. Like they should have listened during Trump’s first term about exiting Tehran’s nuclear pact, because oh, bye the way, there’s a new ayatollah in town, since the U.S./Israeli nitwits assassinated the old one, and he wants nukes.
On April 5 came news that approximately 100 U.S. special forces were stranded inside Iran “after both MC-130 extraction aircraft suffered mechanical failures and would not take off, per Reuters,” reported the HormuzLetter on X. “The mission entered Iran to extract the downed F-15 WSO, identified as a colonel, who evaded for 48 hours with a sprained ankle in a hilltop crevice. The U.S. jammed electronics and struck key roads around the site to prevent anyone from getting close.” And if you believe this American “save the pilot” song and dance, don’t forget the tooth fairy. What should you believe? Let me make a suggestion: the U.S. was very possibly attempting to filch enriched uranium from Natanz, which would explain the very large number of rescuers and their proximity to Natanz and Isfahan. But don’t take my word for it. It was all over the freakin’ internet. Read military expert Will Schryver on X April 6 or another military expert, Armchair Warlord on X April 5.
Bolstering the uranium treasure hunt theory was the sheer size of the so-called rescue effort. As RT reported April 6, “it involved an immense armada of 155 U.S. aircraft, including four bombers, 64 fighter jets, 48 refueling tankers and 13 specialized aircraft. The operation also involved hundreds of special operations troops, including Navy SEAL Team 6 commandos…the U.S. suffered significant material losses. At least two transport planes became disabled at a remote Iranian airbase…and were deliberately destroyed by U.S. commanders…Two Black Hawk helicopters were reportedly struck by Iranian fire and an A-10 Warthog attack plane was hit but managed to limp back to Kuwaiti airspace where its crew ejected.” Overall, the mission was not, ahem, a stunning success, if saving this pilot was even the mission’s main objective rather than snatching Iranian uranium – because why else send in “hundreds” of special ops troops? For one pilot? I don’t think so. Trump had announced he was going after the uranium, and I think that’s what he tried to do.
Meanwhile, RT also reported April 4 that two U.S. planes, an F-15E fighter and an A-10 attack plane, were both shot down by Iran April 3. “The losses occurred less than 48 hours after U.S. President Donald Trump announced that Iran has ‘no anti-aircraft equipment.’” Well, uh, apparently it does, ‘cause how else is it shooting down U.S. planes? In addition to these two planes, Iran claimed “they downed five drones and missiles.” Sounds to me like Iranian air defenses are in good working order, no matter what clueless el jefe in the white house believes. As all this was going on, “Iran claimed to have destroyed a C-130 military transport plane and two Black Hawk helicopters.” Boy, that non-existent air defense sure is a doozy.
Before April 3, the U.S. already lost jets. There were the supposedly friendly fire shoot-downs March 1 of three F-15E Strike Eagles over Kuwait. Friendly fire? Ho! Ho! More like irascible Kuwaiti pilots or armed Iranian drones. Then, two KC-135 Stratotanker refueling aircraft had a midair collision over Iraq March 12. One crashed, killing all six crew members. “On March 19,” RT reports, “a U.S. F-35 fighter jet was hit by Iranian ground fire…The pilot, who suffered shrapnel wounds, managed to land the aircraft at a U.S. airbase.” Then on March 27, Iranians destroyed an E-3 Sentry AWACS command and control aircraft at a Saudi Arabia airbase. These planes cost up to $500 million. The one struck literally split in two. So the price-tag for this imbecilic war, due to lost military hardware, is big, and that’s not even counting the cost of the world’s economy circling the drain.
The rescue of the stranded airman got some play in American media, though you may be sure the chance that the massive deformity mounted to “extract” him was actually part of a mangled attempt to make off with Iran’s enriched uranium – that got zero attention. After all, as the New York Times reported back on March 14, FCC chair, Brendan Carr threatened to revoke broadcasters’ licenses over Iran War coverage. Carr decried liberal bias in broadcasts and accused broadcasters of “running hoaxes and news distortions.” So nobody in corporate media was taking any chances on a steal-Iran’s-uranium-mess-up story.
To boost this bogus claim about hoaxes, “Carr shared a Truth Social post by president Trump that criticized the news media for its coverage of the war with Iran. Mr. Trump referred to a story, published by the Wall Street Journal that reported five American refueling planes had been struck in Saudi Arabia, claiming its headline was ‘intentionally misleading.’ He accused the news media of wanting the United States to lose the war.” Well, what if it does? Hello? Who’s got the high moral ground here? The government that launched an unprovoked war of choice on a peaceful nation of 92 million people and promptly commenced committing war crimes, bombing a girls’ school and universities, or those citizens who would like to see this nauseating enterprise fail? And who says the news media needs to lie? That the U.S. and its proxy attack dog Israel are committing atrocities is unquestionable.
Corporate media have likely been cowed by threats from Carr and Trump, so while they’ll cover daring rescues of American airmen, bungling efforts to seize Iran’s uranium is a reportorial no, no. Never underestimate the chilling effect of the white house’s menacing bombast. Besides that, mainstream journalists have a sixth sense for exactly what’s acceptable to their masters and anything exceedingly embarrassing to the American military sets off alarm bells.
And just in case they needed any encouragement, they got it on April 6, when Trump threatened to jail the journalist he called “a sick person,” over the Iran rescue raid leak. “We’re going to go the media company that released [the information about the search in Iran for the pilot] and we’re going to say ‘National security, give it up [the source] or go to jail. The person that did the story will go to jail if he doesn’t say.’ It became a much more difficult operation because a leaker leaked. All of a sudden, the entire country of Iran knew that there was a pilot that was somewhere on their land that was fighting for his life.”
All this unpleasantness could of course have been avoided had Trump, in his first term, not yanked the U.S. out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, i.e. Obama’s nuclear pact with Iran. It evidently offended Trump that anyone else, particularly Obama, whom he loathed, had negotiated a successful deal with Iran, and he claimed he’d get a better one. Well, a decade on and that hasn’t happened. Instead, we’ve got a disaster with Iran that is destroying our vassals in the region, to say nothing of the world economy, to say nothing of thousands of innocent Iranians.
In truth, the JPCOA was one of the very few decent things Barak “Assassinator in Chief and Don’t Forget to Evict the Homeowners” Obama did. So it’s doubly lamentable that Trump trashed the JPCOA, and frankly, I find it incomprehensible, since it led in a blindingly clear path straight to the current catastrophe. Sometimes it’s better to leave well enough alone – no matter how much you hate your predecessor.
