The devastating attacks on both Iraq (2003) and Libya (2011) were launched on symbolically significant dates. So too with this war on Iran.
I’ll get into that aspect of this in a moment.
But while the US/Israeli attack on Iran is a surprise to absolutely no one, we might note that this assault once again came while the US and the Iranians were still in the process of negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programme.
Just as in the ’12 Day War’ last year, this appears to have been an attack launched at the most dishonest or dishonourable moment.
So-called ‘Operation Epic Fury‘ was launched in the morning hours of Saturday 28th February. Reportage from just the day before suggested, contrary to President Trump’s statements, that progress was being made in negotiations.
As this Guardian report from February 27th detailed, for example: ‘Oman’s foreign minister, Badr Albusaidi, who was the key mediator in the talks between the US and Iran, said the latest discussions had made significant progress and that a “peace deal is within our reach”…’
It continued, ‘Iran had agreed to “never, ever have … nuclear material that will create a bomb” and that its existing stockpiles of enriched uranium would be “blended to the lowest level possible” and converted into fuel…’
And further, ‘Tehran was willing to grant inspectors from the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) “full access” to its nuclear sites to verify the terms of the deal…’
Multiple other news sources on February 27th reported basically the same thing.
Again, this is what was being said on February 27th: the US and Israel attacked in the morning of February 28th.
The timing of the attack therefore has little to do with a supposed breakdown in negotiations or with any real threat being posed by the Iranian regime.
We’ve already discussed before the ridiculousness and the hypocrisy of Israel’s and the United States’ policy towards Iran’s nuclear programme overall.
But there was clearly no urgency or necessity for attacking at this time.
But it was clearly coming. As Wall of Controversy says in a recent post: ‘I have been telling friends throughout the whole of last week that US-Israel (same difference) would attack Iran on Saturday. How did I know? Well they have moved most of the US navy and air force into the Indian Ocean and Trump reliably launches his bombing and air strike campaigns in the middle of negotiations and at the start of weekends – presumably to lessen the shock to the stock market. War is a racket. Never forget that.’
On that note, the notoriously suspect Polymarket saw $529M traded on bets tied to the bombing of Iran. As Tech Crunch explains, ‘$529 million was traded on contracts tied to the timing of the attack, according to Bloomberg. An analysis by analytics firm Bubblemaps SA found that six newly created accounts made a profit of $1 million by correctly betting that the U.S. would strike Iran by February 28 — behavior that could indicate insider trading…’
It also adds, ‘Back in January, analytics firm Polysights also noted an apparent spike in bets around the likelihood that Iran’s now-deceased Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei would no longer hold that role by the end of March…’
Note that Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., sits on Polymarket’s board.
At any rate, Trump has never been a good faith actor in regard to Iran: ever since he pulled the US out of the Obama era agreement that had been painstakingly reached between Iran and multiple countries in 2015.
Regardless of whether the Iran Deal was itself even trustworthy, Trump’s opposition to the JCPOA wasn’t based on any US interest – but solely on Israel’s and Netanyahu’s opposition to the agreement, which is indeed what caused the bitter rift between Israel and the Obama administration.
Trump was groomed by Israel for the White House for the primary purpose of dealing with Iran.
What Trump is now doing – totally at odds with the wishes of his own MAGA fanbase – is what happens when US foreign policy is determined not by national interest but by the whims of a foreign entity with a stranglehold on Washington.
But that’s not new. We’ve been here before, of course. The script is all too familiar.
That this attack is illegal under international law – as is the targeted assassination of a foreign leader (which is even illegal under American law, let alone international law) – is mere semantics these days.
I observed the end of international law here as far back as 2018. These kinds of events were always the inevitable direction of travel.
The old rules stopped applying quite a while ago. It’s the wild west now – anything goes.
The question of timing is still curious though. Some will (rightly) say that Trump was again looking to create massive distraction from the Epstein problem (which the Israelis would also want).
The logical moment for this nonsense war on Iran would’ve been weeks ago, when the Iranian anti-regime protests and accompanying Mossad operations were at their height – and when Trump had literally urged Iranians out onto the street and promised that “help” was on the way.
Why he then backed off and went back to negotiations, only to then abandon the negotiations and launch an attack, is unclear. Is this some ‘art of the deal’ type thing? Or was he just toying with the other side, trying to keep them uncertain and off-balance?
The question of timing has a whole other dimension to it, however: which may have nothing to do with Trump at all.
So, the Jewish festival of ‘purim’ is on March 2nd or 3rd. It’s significance to the timing of the Israeli/US attack on Iran shouldn’t be underestimated.
Which is why it was cited by Benjamin Netanyahu himself in his speech.
Rather extraordinarily, a CNN post freely notes that the timing of the attack on Iran ‘bears symbolic meaning in Judaism’. The post’s author, Tel Shalev, notes that Netanyahu cited the Jewish holiday of ‘purim’ in his initial statement on the operation.
‘Twenty five hundred years ago, in ancient Persia, a tyrant rose against us with the very same goal, to utterly destroy our people,’ Netanyahu proclaimed. ‘Today as well, on Purim, the lot has fallen, and in the end this evil regime will fall too.’
Netanyahu’s reference, and the ‘Purim’ celebration in general, marks the victory over ‘Haman’, a Persian descendent of Amalek who plotted to commit genocide against the Jewish people.
This has been a recurring theme in conflicts.
The Gulf War against Iraq in 1991 ended on Purim; and at the time Saddam Hussein was even likened to Haman.
If you look up ‘purim’ on Wikipedia, you find some very interesting history that I was previously unaware of.
The Cave of the Patriarchs massacre took place during Purim of 1994. We’re informed, ‘According to one writer, killer Baruch Goldstein saw the Palestinians as Amalek and “carried out the massacre on Purim, one week after he would have heard the biblical retelling of the command to wipe out a rival nation. As the journalist Peter Beinart and others have written, the timing was not a coincidence…’
The ‘purim’ was also apparently of concern or interest in Nazi Germany, where the festival was banned by Hitler. Again, the Wiki tells us, ‘In a speech made on 10 November 1938 (the day after Kristallnacht), the Nazi politician and prominent anti-Semite Julius Streicher surmised that just as “the Jew butchered 75,000 Persians” in one night, the same fate would have befallen the German people had the Jews succeeded in inciting a war against Germany…’
‘Jews would have instituted a new Purim festival in Germany…’
And again, ‘Hitler stated in a speech made on 30 January 1944, that if the Nazis were defeated, the Jews would celebrate “a second Purim”… Indeed, Julius Streicher was reported to remark ironically “Purimfest 1946” as he ascended the scaffold to the gallows after Nuremberg…’
This is all just to note the religious and military significance or resonance of ‘purim’ – and why Netanyahu and co probably chose this precise moment to attack Iran (Ancient Persia).
We should note as well that the Nazis used Purim for some of its most heinous massacres of Jewish people – and presumably did so as a kind of perverse irony or insult to the victims.
This use of symbolic dates for war is common. As I’m sure I’ve noted elsewhere, both the Iraq War in 2003 and the Western military intervention in Libya in 2011 were initiated in March in their respective years – because the third month represents Mars the God of War.
I don’t think these dates are chosen at random.
We’re also of course continuing to manufacture the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy, with the attack on Iran framed as relating to the Gog and Magog war preceding the end times. Baptist News did a good piece on that subject here, discussing Iran’s insertion into the end times prophecies stemming from dispensational theology and the Scofield Bible.
I just want to quote some of the article here to demonstrate the scripted significance. For example: ‘This slow movement of Iran from the periphery of prophecy to central figure culminated in the work of Mark Hitchcock, who presents Iran as a central figure in end-times apocalyptic prophecy in several books… ‘Iran and Israel’ begins with an extended passage from Yaakov Katz and Yoaz Hendel’s 2012 book ‘Israel vs. Iran: The Shadow War’ imagining Israel launching a preemptive strike against Iran to prevent them from obtaining nuclear weapons… In ‘Iran: The Coming Crisis’, he asks “How long will we wait to launch a preemptive attack to cripple Iran’s nuclear ambitions? How much longer can we wait…?”
This is to highlight the reality that, aside from the basic geo-politics, this is all also a scripted programme to simulate the fulfilment of prophecy.
In that scenario, the timing really has nothing to do with Trump. He’s just the useful idiot being puppeteered from Tel-Aviv. Whatever Netanyahu and Miriam Adelson prompt him to do, the anointed ‘Prince of Peace’ is ready to act – albeit framing it in his own chosen narrative.
So, what now?
The Supreme Leader and multiple senior figures have been assassinated: but the regime fights on.
By the way, the targeted killing of the Ayatollah isn’t just the killing of the regime’s figurehead, but of the religious leader of the Shia religion – it’s equivalent to assassinating the Pope.
Trump seems to not have a clear plan. But we can assume Netanyahu and co do: and their plan will become Trump’s plan.
Unsurprisingly, as the US/Israeli attacks were unfolding, Israel’s chosen puppet, the heir to the Shah’s monarchy (Reza Pahlavi) addressed the Iranian people, saying: ‘Stay vigilant and ready so that, at the appropriate time—which I will announce to you precisely—you can return to the streets for the final action. Follow my messages through social media and satellite media. If there are disruptions to the internet and satellite, I will stay in touch with you via radio waves. We are very close to final victory…’
As discussed here recently, Pahlavi – who has been frequently presented in Western media as the popular choice for leading the new Iran – was being pushed to the fore for many months by a concerted Israeli social media operation.
More about that here.
It was already evident that Mossad activity was involved in the January protests and unrest: one assumes therefore that Operation Epic Fury will culminate in more mass public uprising, this time culminating in a stage-managed return of the Shah in the form of Pahlavi.
This would be under the banner of what Netanyahu last year called ‘Operation Rising Lion‘; invoking the historical Persian “Lion and Sun” emblem associated with the Shah’s monarchy.
It might simultaneously evoke the Book of Numbers (23:24): ‘Behold, the people shall rise up as a great lion, and lift up himself as a young lion: he shall not lie down until he eats the prey, and drinks the blood of the slain.’
Of course, so much of what’s appropriate to say here at this point feels redundant: those of us writing in these subject areas for years now have already exhausted this whole subject long before reaching this apparent climax.
Again I’ll quote from Wall of Controversy’s recent post (which is possibly the most scathing response to these events you’ll read), where he says: ‘I started writing this blog mainly because for two decades, I’d known all this was coming… Specifically, I knew war on Iran was the endpoint – the final neocon war of conquest in the Middle East before the “pivot to Asia” to take on China. General Wesley Clark openly announced it shortly after 9/11…’
Indeed, Clark’s reveal of the list of seven countries the US was going to take down after 9/11 is pretty much fulfilled now, with Iran and Lebanon the last domino pieces.
In a matter of barely eighteen months, we’ll have witnessed a new Syria, a new Gaza, and a new Iran and Lebanon. Literally the “new Middle East” that Netanyahu had pronounced just before the October 7th staged operation in 2023.
What else to say at this juncture that hasn’t been said before?
Well, we may as well finish with Trump’s own words from his own Truth Social statement after the attack began: “PEACE THROUGHOUT THE MIDDLE EAST AND, INDEED, THE WORLD!”
