As ominous ‘black rain’ was falling over Tehran, the US/Israeli Holy War in Iran entered week two.
There’s a lot else too. All we can do at this stage is keep taking notes: documenting the insanity as it continues to unfold, as we will do here a little.
And predictably, the lies have kept coming. The kind of lies familiar from past regime-change misadventures in the Middle East.
Among them, President Trump has now claimed the United States itself was in imminent danger of being hit by Iranian ballistic missiles – a claim that had never previously been made.
Politico debunks the claim quite easily here, explaining ‘Iran is not known to have ballistic missiles capable of reaching America’s shores, and so far the administration has not provided any evidence to suggest they soon could.’
But it’s obviously reminiscent of the ’45 minute’ claim by Tony Blair before the Iraq War in 2003, regarding Iraq’s fictitious ability to target the UK with its non-existent WMDs. Trump was obviously trying to retroactively offer further justification for launching the war against Iran.
A lot of what we’re hearing is a Greatest Hits package, paying homage to golden oldies from the glorious regime change wars of yesteryear.
What’s new is that no one believes anything Israel says anymore, and the current White House is a clown show populated by a heady mix of compromised individuals, big-time grifters, and general incompetents, who can’t get their story straight.
The embattled Trumpowitz is now facing the heat for slavishly attaching himself to Netanyahu’s purim war. A war that Netanyahu gleefully referred to as “what I have yearned to do for 40 years“.
Let’s not forget that it was also Netanyahu who told Trumpstein to abandon the Iranian Nuclear agreement (the JPCOA) in the first place, as he himself boasted.
But Israel’s anointed ‘Prince of Peace‘ is too embarrassed to admit he’s not calling the shots here.
All the Jesus or Armageddon citations in the world haven’t been able to frame this misadventure in a way that makes sense to anyone but psychopaths. Psychopaths like Lindsey Graham: who, as was the case in Libya, seems to be close to orgasm whenever a new American war arrives. He has predictably joined in the ‘Holy War’ masturbation circle.
And here, for anyone who can stomach it, is a horrendous war-gasm video put out by the White House, misappropriating various blockbuster movie moments and pop culture references to glorify an illegal war that nobody except Zionists and apocalypse fantasists wanted.
JUSTICE THE AMERICAN WAY. 🇺🇸🔥 pic.twitter.com/0502N6a3rL
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) March 6, 2026
This is what war is now, apparently. And this is the mindset.
And in no one is this mindset better personified than in former Fox News host and now white-nationalist Crusader knight cosplayer Pete Hegseth. “Death and destruction from the sky all day long,” Hegseth told reporters at the Pentagon. “This was never meant to be a fair fight, and it is not a fair fight…”
Hegseth, with his Jerusalem Cross and other fascist tattoos, is the embodiment of this current psychopathy.
As The Guardian notes in this interesting profile of the ‘Secretary of WAR’, Hegseth not only cut his teeth in Iraq and Afghanistan, but was stationed at the illegal prison camp and torture facility Guantanamo Bay: and ‘revealed in a book that he told soldiers under his command in Iraq to ignore legal advice about when they were permitted to kill enemy combatants under their rules of engagement…’
Yep, he really is the perfect symbol for this moment in history.
Meanwhile, this idea of Iran attacking American soil has also been raised by reported FBI warnings of an Iranian drone-based attack on California. Officials in California appear to have very much been dismissive of the idea, however.
But this might raise the spectre of a possible false-flag attack on US soil to help reinforce the perception of Iran as a threat to US citizens. Something to watch for.
The black rain, by the way, was caused by Israeli strikes on Iranian oil facilities: and aside from releasing dramatic toxic clouds and causing immediate health risks and breathing problems, various environmental agencies, as well as the UN, have warned of both long-term health risks and environmental effects.
But the black rain seems to be a perfect symbol for the toxic nature of this war that was launched for no defensible reason.
Then there’s US sinking of Iranian naval vessels. Trump boasted that the US had sunk 46 ships in just a few days.
Mehdi Hassan made the point that even Nazi Germany’s policy was to try to rescue sailors after attacking their ships, in keeping with Geneva Conventions. Trump, when boasting of the sunken Iranian ships, claimed he asked one of his military officials why the ships had been sunk and not captured.
He claimed the answer he was given was that “It’s more fun to sink them“.
Whether this exchange ever happened or it’s just more Trump fiction, who knows? It pretty much sounds like something Hegseth would’ve said. But keep that answer in mind and then go back and watch the above-mentioned war-gasm video: the mindset is truly horrific.
But the sinking of the IRIS Dena off the coast of Sri Lanka very early in the war was an unprovoked attack against a target that appears to have been no threat, and that saw the ship – and its 130 mostly young men – end up at the bottom of the Indian Ocean.
The Sri Lankans say they had to attempt to rescue survivors themselves, as the Americans didn’t.
Meanwhile, Palantir AI has reportedly been used by the US military in its targeting operations in Iran: unsurprising, given Palantir’s role in streamlining the Israeli slaughter in Gaza.
This does raise further questions, however, about the deadly strike on a girl’s school that killed a reported 175 people, most of them children.
Is that what this dystopian Palantir technology accomplishes? Well, yes: we already know that from the sheer number of civilians killed in Gaza, including the many thousands of children. The fact that this strike on the school happened on the first day of the war doesn’t bode well for what kind of casualties would be racked up in a prolonged conflict.
Which again isn’t new: we’ve seen that comprehensively in Gaza. Even in Libya, a mass casualty strike involving children was reported very early on, raising questions about precisely what NATO was targeting and why.
Joshua Scheer wrote an interesting analysis of how AI systems are essentially expanding the industrial assassination algorithm, concluding that just day one of this Iran War saw ‘the murder of 175 children because AI thought it was a military site.’
This is the bold new future of warfare though. Striking school children, I guess.
This AI-run war tech is being tested overseas first, before it eventually becomes incorporated into domestic law enforcement and population control. Remember, Palantir is already practically everywhere: fully embraced by the Trump regime for domestic use in the US, and already heavily embedded in UK domestic systems.
It’s still curious, as noted a while ago, that Peter Mandelson arranged an off-the-record meeting between the British Prime Minister and Palantir in Washington: or that Palantir is headquartered so close to the White House.
Meanwhile, claims that Israel has been covering up the extent of the damage it has taken from Iranian or Hezbollah rockets – or that the Golden Dome is completely failing – are difficult to verify. Social media is largely unreliable when it comes to these types of viral claims.
It seems unlikely to me that the Israelis would be on the offensive in both Lebanon and Iran if they were also suffering serious losses in Israel. However, there does seem to be legitimate indications that they’re trying to hide some of the damage they’re taking.
As explained here, for example: ‘Since the start of the war with Iran, the Israeli military has imposed strict censorship regulations on local and international media outlets operating inside the country, severely impeding journalists’ ability to cover the situation on the ground… Reporters and networks are prohibited from publishing the precise location of Iranian missile impacts, or even filming or photographing the extent of the damage…’
The article goes on to illustrate how journalists are being deliberately prevented from having a true sense of the reality on the ground.
But, you know, I keep thinking about the ‘black rain’. Partly because it’s a particularly awesome Soundgarden song that I’ve been listening to for years.
But I’ve just looked for any possible symbolic undertone to ‘black rain’ on Google, and its AI gave me an interesting response: ‘In the Bible, black rain, or more commonly, “black clouds” and “darkened skies,” symbolizes divine judgment, wrath, and the onset of intense suffering or calamity, often appearing as a sign of impending destruction…’
Which almost makes me wonder if even these strikes on the oil facilities were partly designed to create apocalyptic imagery: which would of course be in keeping with the religious mania and Armageddon enactment involved in this war (as discussed here last week).
With that in mind, Google AI also suggests the blackened skies can be interpreted ‘…as signs of the Apocalypse and the final, overwhelming judgment of God.’
Which is a pretty appropriate backdrop to manufacture for a ‘Holy War’, isn’t it?
You know, I’m probably clutching at straws with this. But then I’m not the one telling US military personnel that this war is ‘God’s divine plan to spark Armageddon.’
When world affairs are being conducted by psychopaths and maniacs, nothing seems too far-fetched anymore.
