Kyle Anzalone

March 15, 2026

A headline-friendly story says Iran tried to assassinate Donald Trump. We pull the threads and find a different picture: an FBI-driven sting targeting Asif Merchant, two undercover “hitmen,” no money to fund the job, and no credible evidence that Tehran ordered anything. When prosecutors invoke state secrets and the agents who proposed the idea also […]

John Mearsheimer

March 15, 2026

Reprinted from John’s Substack: Steve Walt and I originally published “The Israel Lobby” in The London Review of Books in March 2006. It was published on the internet on 17 March 2006 and then came out in a paper version on 23 March 2006. As Michael Massing said in “The Storm over The Israel Lobby,” […]

Dan Steinbock

March 15, 2026

The chaotic conditions created by the US/Israeli war against Iran are now in an escalatory phase. The reverberations will be severe worldwide. Expresso: U.S. President Donald Trump is scheduled to visit Beijing for a high-stakes summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the turn of April. Will the trade talks be threatened by the Middle […]

John Mearsheimer

March 14, 2026

Reprinted from John’s Substack:  On 11 March 2026, I was on Al Jazeera talking about: 1) why the US and Israel are doomed to lose the war in Iran as well as 2) the importance of the Israel lobby in shaping US foreign policy.

Thomas L. Knapp

March 14, 2026

You may have only recently heard: As of this coming December, all American males will find themselves “automatically registered,” upon the occasion of their 18th birthdays, for a prospective military draft. Given current events, that prospect understandably gives off sinister vibes — “but without a draft, who would do the necessary work of murdering Iranian […]

Kyle Anzalone

March 14, 2026

A president calls for Iran’s “unconditional surrender,” then floats picking the next government and rebuilding a nation of 90 million. We unpack how a mission that began as punitive strikes ballooned into de facto nation building, why timelines quietly stretched from days to months, and how the math of missiles versus interceptors exposes the limits […]

John Mearsheimer

March 13, 2026

Reprinted from John’s Substack: On 11 March 2026, I was interviewed on “The Chris Hedges Report.” Of course, Chris and I talked about the Iran war and what went wrong. In the process, we emphasized what history can tell us about where this war is headed.

Brett Wilkins

March 12, 2026

The Israel Defense Forces on Thursday dismissed the indictments of five soldiers accused of raping a Palestinian prisoner at the notorious Sde Teiman prison in July 2024 – an attack that sparked worldwide outrage. The IDF spokesperson’s office said the decision to drop the indictments of five reserve members of Force 100 – a special […]

Kyle Anzalone

March 12, 2026

Two million people flood central Tehran and an American reporter says he felt safe—so what else about Iran, the protests, and the path to war have we been getting wrong? We open with a vivid, on-the-ground account of Iran’s national day, where politics look more like a citywide festival than a fever dream of chaos, […]

David R. Henderson

March 12, 2026

Reprinted with permission from David Henderson’s Substack. I’ve been reading many people on many sites claiming that we have been at war with Iran for 47 years. I found that odd because I thought I distinctly remembered good relations between the Iran and U.S. governments after 9/11. So I asked ChatGPT, “What did the Iranian […]