COMMENTARY: By Michael West

We are led by fools and sycophants. The illegal, unprovoked invasion of Iran is not just garden-variety stupidity. This is stupidity on a grandiose, stratospheric scale.

The Israeli propaganda narrative that Iranians would sprinkle rose petals at the feet of their invaders has not come to pass. It has already been demolished in fact.

Instead of bringing freedom and democracy — “regime change” — we have brought chaos, possibly a world war, and definitely the destruction of the Middle East.

• READ MORE: War rages in the Middle East as Trump vows to continue Iran attack — death toll tops 1000
• Iran mourns 165 girls, staff killed in school strike during US-Israel war
• Other US-Israel attack on Iran reports

The world economy is being hit hard as we write; oil prices spiralling, energy prices about to soar, and the inexorable spectre of inflation and recession.

And it didn’t have to happen.

This was a war of choice. Even without the “Epstein Coalition” — as the Iranian media so aptly dubs their invaders — murdering 165 Iranian school girls on day one, “peace through strength” was never going to happen.

Quite the contrary. The illegal and unprovoked invasion of Iran has hardened the resolve of Iranians, who are massing in their hundreds of thousands across the country to mourn their dead and chant “Death to America”, to back their regime.

Where was the advice?
The Epstein Coalition killed the Ayatollah, who was actually against nuclear power; he was a moderate.

Did Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong not seek advice from Foreign Affairs that attacking Iran was folly, that the anti-regime protesters were a minority, that the pre-invasion protests were a Mossad and CIA psyop, that Iran might attack US proxy states in the region, that invasion would be a Brobigdadgian mistake?

Or did they ignore the advice in favour of a Washington regime compromised by the Epstein pedophile scandal?

And now, we see the feeble, hypocritical whining by Israel and its supporters about Iran attacking the Gulf states. Is that our only moral defence?

Decades of supporting these regimes: Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates — US proxy states all — regimes now unravelling, the oil price is soaring, inflation and recession are beckoning globally.

Images are emerging from Bahrain of locals cheering on the Iranian missiles. Were DFAT and our politicians unaware of popular angst in the Gulf states against American imperialism?

And what did they expect Iran to do in the face of this existential threat? Not blow up American bases and infrastructure while the US attacked them; after the US betrayed them at the very negotiating table when they were offering significant concessions on nuclear enrichment, all to avoid war? This war.

War drums over Tehran.             Video: The West Report

Australia, the US flunkies
Yet here was Australia, Saturday night, first out of the blocks worldwide to throw its support behind Donald Trump and his preposterous “Operation Epic Fury”, a probable pedophile being blackmailed and led around by the genocidal Benjamin Netanyahu like a pony at the fairground show.

“Operation Epstein Fury”, it was fast labelled. The soaring, craven stupidity is hard to grasp. Both major parties backing it.

Albo first, then Angus Taylor rushing to tow the Donald’s line. Then, One Nation’s Pauline Hanson, too, who even congratulated and praised Netanyahu. We are led by fools and sycophants.

The flawed defence of atrocity
To address the empty rhetoric of the pro-war lobby, criticism of this war does not equate to support for the regime in Iran. Defenders of the US-Israel atrocity are busy with their swarms of social media bots peddling the argument that “you are an Islamist terror supporter” if you criticise the invasion.

This is the 2026 version of “You are a Hamas supporter” if you argue against genocide in Gaza.

The cold facts of this debacle are that regime change does not work, that Iran did not want this war, that Iran appears to be exceptionally well prepared, that the Epstein Coalition, which Australia supports, is daily backing war crimes: blowing up hospitals, schools and civilian infrastructure.

This is a war which has already been lost.

The obvious reality is that regime change wars are a demonstrable failure. Vietnam. Iraq. Afghanistan. Iraq — a million dead, irretrievable regional stability. In Afghanistan, 20 years, trillions of dollars spent, four US presidents, six Australian PMs — all to replace the Taliban . . . with the Taliban.

And here we are, the world’s busybodies, doing it again.

Who would ever negotiate with the US in good faith again, or Israel for that matter? Iran did not want this war. Iran has not attacked another country in 300 years.

The US lured them to the negotiating table, then, without warning, murdered their leadership. This echoes last year’s 12-day war, where Israel and the US lured them in on the premise of good faith talks, then murdered them and now play the victim.

What did they expect Iran to do in the face of this existential threat?

The record speaks for itself. The US is the biggest invader of other countries in history. Israel has, last year alone, attacked Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, Jordan, Palestine, Qatar, Tunisia, Malta, and Greece.

Six illegal attacks of sovereign nations, as well as three illegal attacks in international waters equals nine all up. In one year.

And now they are invading Lebanon again, seizing more territory as their puppets, America, fight their campaign against Iran.

Albo, what are you doing?
We know who the warmongers are. We are the warmongers. Yet, in his bizarre statement of support, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was the fastest out of the blocks of all the allies on the weekend, issuing a false statement.

Australia stands with the brave people of Iran in their struggle against oppression.

For decades, the Iranian regime has been a destabilising force, through its ballistic missile and nuclear programs, support for armed proxies, and brutal acts of violence and intimidation.

Iran…

— Anthony Albanese (@AlboMP) February 28, 2026

The claim, echoed by the usual warmongers of the Lib-Lab establishment, is that Iran is guilty of attacks on Australian soil, referencing alleged attacks on a deli in Bondi.

Apart from the common sense, why would Iran commit an act of terror on a deli in Bondi? Senior police have conceded that there is no evidence of this.

The nuclear furphy
Then there is the age-old claim that Iran is about to produce nuclear weapons. The US and Israel’s nuclear risk claims have been so roundly discredited it’s a joke.

Benjamin Netanyahu has been trying to instigate a war against Iran for 30 years — claiming Iran is days away, weeks away, months away from nuclear missiles.

And they were at the negotiating table again when the Epstein forces murdered them.

The propaganda
We are now seeing mainstream media decry the “illegal attacks” on Israel and the Gulf states. Yet the ‘victim card” is tapped out.

Around the world, outside the legacy media propaganda, there is little sympathy for Israel having razed Gaza and slaughtered between 72,000 and 700,000 Palestinians while stealing more land in the West Bank daily.

It will continue. The media and political classes have failed so majestically that they can only try to salvage their authority with more propaganda.

The deplorable coverage of the murdered schoolgirls in Iran is a case in point. The “40 beheaded babies” and the “mass rapes” of Hamas filled the headlines in the West on October 8, 2023. Yet real murders — 165 murdered schoolgirls — have hardly rated a mention. Yes, a mention perhaps, but a side story, buried, no headlines of outrage.

Can’t handle the truth?

Is the truth too hard to handle? Is it not evident to everybody except the most brainwashed advocate of the Epstein lobby that Israel — the government, the state — is the problem here?

Netanyahu has won his ambition to drag America into a war against Iran, and if you follow the money, while world stock markets teeter, the stock market in Tel Aviv is surging, replete with weapons companies as it is.

Meanwhile, the ASX is tanking, ergo our savings. Oil prices are surging, ergo higher energy prices and inflation. The Houthis, Iran’s allies, are shooting again in the Red Sea while, on the other side of the Arabian peninsula, Iran has blocked the Straits of Hormuz, choking off a large chunk of the world’s oil supply.

Higher prices in India and China will mean higher prices for imports and inflation around the world.

The lessons of history have not been learnt; in fact, they have been discarded in spectacular fashion.

> 70 years ago, Iran looked just like any Western country.
> Short skirts, rock’n’roll, open universities.
> It’s 1953. Iran elects a secular socialist: Mohammad Mossadegh.
> He nationalizes oil. That pisses off BP.
> Cold War excuse.
> CIA and MI6 stage a coup. Operation Ajax.
>… pic.twitter.com/ZNWaLdBlCN

— Dr. Simon Goddek (@goddek) March 1, 2026

Michael West established Michael West Media in 2016 to focus on journalism of high public interest, particularly the rising power of corporations over democracy. West was formerly a journalist and editor with Fairfax newspapers, a columnist for News Corp and even, once, a stockbroker.

The joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran represent a further erosion of the international legal order. Under international law, these attacks are neither preemptive nor lawful.

Israel and the United States launched Operation Shield of Judah and Operation Epic Fury while diplomatic negotiations between Washington and Tehran were actively underway on Iran’s nuclear programme.

Just two days earlier, the most intense round of US-Iran talks concluded in Geneva, with both sides agreeing to continue. US President Donald Trump indicated he would give negotiators more time.

• READ MORE:  Death toll in Israeli strike on southern Iran school rises to 165
• Luxon defends NZ’s position on Iran attacks – same as Australia
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• World leaders react cautiously to U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran
• Critics say weak NZ response over US-Israel attacks on Iran a ‘disgrace’
• UN’s Guterres condemns US-Israeli strikes, retaliatory attacks by Iran
• Other US-Israel attack on Iran reports

Then came the bombs.

The illegality of the attack
Israel said the strikes were “preventive”, meaning they were to prevent Iran from developing a capacity to be a threat. But preventive war has no legal basis under international law.

The UN Security Council did not authorise any military action, meaning the sole lawful pathway for the use of force for self-defence was never pursued.

Article 2(4) of the UN Charter prohibits the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. Preemptive self-defence, as we have argued previously, has extremely narrow prescriptions under the Caroline doctrine. It requires a threat to be “instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice of means”.

No such conditions existed with Iran on February 28.

Central to the current crisis is that it was Trump who ended the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2018, which had regional support for controlling Iran’s nuclear program. The US Director of National Intelligence testified in March 2025 that Iran was not pursuing nuclear weapons, which the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency affirmed.

US intelligence also reportedly indicated it would take three years for Iran to build a nuclear weapon. Moreover, US and Israeli strikes on Iran last year had put the program back by months. Trump claimed Iran’s nuclear programme had been obliterated.

Regime change by force is unlawful
Trump said the attacks were intended to end Iran’s nuclear weapons program and bring about regime change. Trump urged Iranians to “take over your government”, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared the goal was to “remove the existential threat posed by the terrorist regime in Iran”.

Forcible regime change violates the foundational principles of state sovereignty and non-intervention under the UN Charter.

The strikes targeted Iran’s supreme leader, president, and military chief of staff, as well as military infrastructure. Deliberately targeting heads of state also crosses a threshold that distinguishes military operations from acts of aggression.

Attacking heads of state is illegal under New York Convention, for obvious reasons of stability. With the death of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the power vacuum will only increase the hardship on the ground for Iranians.

We obtained the first known satellite image of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s compound in Tehran. There are several destroyed buildings. While the current whereabouts of Iran’s supreme leader are unknown, the compound is generally used as his official residence. : @Airbus pic.twitter.com/48krjclMBL

— Christiaan Triebert (@trbrtc) February 28, 2026

In addition, promises to return the Shah — Iran’s previous monarch — have not considered the authoritarian implications of such rule.

Reports that an airstrike on an elementary school in Minab killed at least 100 girls aged between seven and 12 underscore the human cost of unplanned regime change.

US and Israeli statements imply that regime change is prioritised over any plans of a replacement. But just like the aftermath of the death of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi that saw slavery return to Libya, or how Islamic State filled the power vacuum after the death of dictator Saddam Hussein in Iraq, regime change requires extremely careful planning.

In this case, there is no obvious plan to rebuild or stabilise Iran after these strikes. Western allies have expressed concern that Washington lacks a coherent strategy for the aftermath of the attacks, noting the minimal preparation for post-conflict reconstruction and government transition.

As Mexico’s representative stated at the UN Security Council following recent US actions in Venezuela, the historical record of regime change shows it has only “exacerbated conflicts and weakened the social and political fabric of nations”. According to The Atlantic, “complete chaos” is likely.

Strikes in Iran

Diplomacy as deception
Launching strikes during active negotiations violates the principle of good faith in Article 2(2) of the UN Charter. As the Arms Control Association noted, Iranian policymakers had already accused the US of bad faith after the June 2025 strikes disrupted previously scheduled talks.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry denounced the February 28 attacks as striking during negotiations, violating international law.

World leaders’ response
We should be dismayed by the worrying acceptance of increased brazen illegality by Western leaders, including Australia’s own prime minister. Anthony Albanese has supported the strikes as “acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon”. This places Australia, once again, in open contradiction with basic principles of liberal international order.

Australia stands with the brave people of Iran in their struggle against oppression.

For decades, the Iranian regime has been a destabilising force, through its ballistic missile and nuclear programs, support for armed proxies, and brutal acts of violence and intimidation.

Iran…

— Anthony Albanese (@AlboMP) February 28, 2026

France, Germany, and the United Kingdom issued a joint statement urging Iran to negotiate a solution, condemning Iranian retaliatory attacks. However, they did not directly comment on the US and Israeli strikes on Iran.

Their silence is deafening.

Russia and China criticised the US-Israeli actions and urged an immediate end to military operations and a return to diplomatic negotiations.

The international legal order is now in free-fall. When powerful states conduct illegal wars under the guise of prevention, weaponise diplomacy as cover, and openly pursue regime change, the “rules-based order” is literally dead.

Dr Shannon Brincat is senior lecturer in politics and international relations, University of the Sunshine Coast; Juan Zahir Naranjo Cáceres is a PhD candidate, Political Science, International Relations and Constitutional Law, University of the Sunshine Coast. Republished from The Conversation under Creative Commons.

For decades, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and American neoconservatives have dreamed of only one foreign policy goal — having the United States fight a regime-change war against Iran.

With the Oval Office occupied by Donald Trump — who campaigned for a full decade on a vow to end regime-change wars and vanquish neoconservatism — their goal has finally been realised.

Early Saturday morning, the United States and Israel began a massive bombing campaign of Tehran and other Iranian cities.

• READ MORE: US, Israel attack Iran live: Israel claims Khamenei killed, Iran denies
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• Other US-Israel attack on Iran reports

President Trump posted an eight-minute speech to social media purporting to justify his new war, dubbed “Operation Epic Fury.”

Trump’s war cry was filled with the same slogans and clichés about Iran that Americans have heard from the carousel of bipartisan neocons dominating US foreign policy for decades: Iran is a state sponsor of “terror”; it is pursuing nuclear weapons; it took American hostages 47 years ago (in 1979); it repressed and kills its dissidents, etc.

As if to underscore how fully he was embracing the very foreign policy dogma he vowed to reject, Trump invoked the Marvel-like “Axis of Evil” formulation that White House speechwriter David Frum wrote for George W. Bush at the start of the War on Terror.

Iran’s government, President Trump proclaimed, is one determined to “practise evil”. This is how Bush — speaking of Iraq, Iran and North Korea — put it in his 2002 State of the Union address: “States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil.”

Not quick targeted bombing
Trump left no doubt about the scope and ambition of his new war. This will not be a quick or targeted bombing run against a few nuclear sites, as Trump ordered last June as part of Israel’s 12-day war with Iran.

There is nothing remotely constrained or targeted about any of this. Instead, this new war is what Trump called a “massive and ongoing” mission of destruction and regime-change, launched in the heart of the Middle East, against a country of 93 million people: almost four times the size of Iraq’s population when the US launched that regime change war back in 2003.

That Trump claimed to have “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear programme last June — just eight months ago — was not something he meaningfully acknowledged in his new war announcement, other than to vaguely assert that Iran somehow resumed their nuclear programme.

In fact, Trump seemed to delight in repeating the same triumphalist rhetoric that he used last year when he assured Americans that Iran’s nuclear programme could no longer pose a threat as a result of Trump’s triumphant Operation Midnight Hammer.

In lieu of outlining any clear mission statement for this new war, let alone a cogent exit strategy, Trump offered a laundry list of flamboyantly violent vows.

The US will “totally obliterate” Iran’s ballistic missile programme (which Iran could not use to reach the American homeland but which Trump admitted last June caused Israel “to get hit very hard” in retaliation).

Trump also promised that the US would “annihilate” Iran’s navy. And he told Iranians: “the hour of your freedom is at hand . . . bombs will be dropping everywhere.”

Prepared for US body bags
Trump also attempted to prepare the nation for caskets and body bags of American soldiers returning to the US.

“The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost; we may have casualties,” the President said. But, said the man who did everything to avoid military service including during the Vietnam War, mass death of American soldiers “often happens in war”.

In sum, Trump just launched the exact war that most of his MAGA movement professed to oppose. That included one of Trump’s most influential supporters, the late Charlie Kirk, who repeatedly maligned the neocons’ drive for war with Iran as “pathologically insane,” and warned that grave disaster of historic proportions would be the result:

The false claims behind this new war with Iran are ones we have extensively documented.

In Trump’s war announcement, he claimed — as he did at Tuesday’s State of the Union address — that Iran refuses to promise that it will not obtain nuclear weapons. The exact opposite is true: Iran has stated this clearly, unequivocally and repeatedly, and did so as recently as this week.

“Iran will under no circumstances ever develop a nuclear weapon,” proclaimed Iran’s Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi.

The consequences of this new Trump/Netanyahu war of choice cannot be predicted with any degree of certainty. Already, Iran has launched numerous retaliatory ballistic missiles at Israel, as expected, and has also attacked US military bases in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait.

But the lack of predictable outcomes is, of course, precisely the point. If the US and Israel succeed in their stated goals of widespread “annihilation” and regime change, then they will create, at the very least, a huge power vacuum in the middle of the world’s most volatile region that will require US resources and a sizable military presence for years if not decades to come.

One of the world leaders most responsible for the Iraq War, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, admitted that it was the invasion of Iraq that gave rise to ISIS.

Massive fraud
It is hard to overstate what a massive fraud Donald Trump, his campaign and his political movement are. For more than a decade, Trump has ranted and raved against the evils of regime-change wars and neoconservative dogma, only to launch a new war that most perfectly encapsulates and aggressively advances both.

He spent years falsely warning that former President Obama would start a war with Iran because of how weak and inept Obama supposedly was at negotiation and diplomacy, only to now do that himself (rather than start a new war with Iran, as Trump predicted, Obama entered a diplomatic agreement with them which major nuclear bodies attested was effective in monitoring Iran’s nuclear activities: a deal which Trump, at Israel’s insistence, tore up in 2018).

Throughout the 2016 campaign, Trump mercilessly mocked Marco Rubio for receiving millions in donations from Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, money that Trump said would “mould [Rubio] into [their] perfect little puppet,” only for himself to become not only the largest beneficiary of Adelson funding in history, but to become the ultimate puppet of the Adelsons’ agenda, one which Trump has clearly acknowledged — when speaking in Israel last year — is an agenda that puts the interests of Israel atop everything, including Americans’ interests:

“I get her in trouble with this, but I actually asked [Miriam] once… ‘What do you love more? The United States or Israel?’ She refused to answer.

“That might mean Israel,” Trump says, smiling, while looking at the dual Israeli-American national.

And it is not an exaggeration to say — in fact, basic honestly requires one to say — that the 2024 Trump/Vance campaign is one of the most fraudulent political campaigns in American history:

Just one week before the 2024 election, Tulsi Gabbard proclaimed that “a vote for Kamala Harris is a vote for Dick Cheney and a vote for war, war and more war.” Conversely, Gabbard said, “a vote for Donald Trump is a vote to end wars, not start them.”

Other than immigration, this “no-new-wars” theme was the most central to Trump’s political appeal and his political promises since he emerged on the political scene a decade ago.

One can rehash the decades of now-trite arguments about Iran as much as one wants. But such endless debate cannot alter the facts here that are indisputable and fundamental.

Iran has not attacked and could not have attacked the United States at home. No such attack was even arguably imminent. The new war that Trump just started with Israel is thus the definitive war of choice.

In contrast to the lie-driven 18-month public campaign of Bush and Cheney to convince the American public to support an invasion of Iraq, there has been virtually no attempt made, as I documented this week, to even explain to the American public why a new war with Iran is necessary or desirable.

There has been no Congressional approval sought let alone obtained, notwithstanding the US Constitution’s exclusive assignment of war-making powers to the Congress.

In his novel 1984, George Orwell highlighted the dangerous insanity of war propaganda with this leading example: “WAR IS PEACE.” Yet that is precisely the rationale invoked by various Trump supporters to somehow depict this new war as aligned with Trump’s vows of peace (starting massive new wars is merely “peace through strength”).

This is, obviously, the war that Israel and Trump’s largest Israel-loyal donors most wanted and have long been pressuring him to start. Pro-Israel billionaires like Bill Ackman, long-time pro-Israel warmongers like Lindsey Graham, and Israel First activists like Mark Levin are of course already boisterously celebrating this new war against Israel’s primary adversary.

But this is ultimately an American war, one that Trump unilaterally started and for which Trump is responsible. Notably, of course, it is not Trump or his family, but instead everyone else in the world, who will bear the costs and burdens of the war.

This was the point Trump famously emphasised shortly before the 2024 election — on November 1 — when explaining why Washington is full of sociopathic warmongers such as Dick and Liz Cheney who constantly start wars in which other people’s families, but never their own, must go fight and die.

As Trump’s senior White House advisor Stephen Miller said about those comments, “warmongering neocons love sending your kids to die for wars they would never fight themselves.” Indeed they do, Stephen Miller.

Do not expect meaningful opposition from the Democratic Party. Some of them, perhaps most, will make loud noises in protest. But the party’s senior leader, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), this week urged Trump to make the case to the public about why this war was necessary, whereas Schumer last June mocked Trump for attempting to obtain a peace deal with Iran and accusing him of “chickening out” of the war with Iran that he prosed.

Some Democrats, such as Senator John Fetterman (D-PA), are effusively praising Trump and his new war.

This new war against Iran is as pure a continuation of the bipartisan DC posture of endless war that has, more than any single cause, destroyed American prosperity, standing, and future over the last six decades at least.

The only question now is how many people will die, for how long the damage will endure, and what new unforeseen evils will be created in its wake.

Republished under Creative Commons.