ANALYSIS: By Chris Hedges

The war on Iran and the obliteration of Gaza is the beginning. Welcome to the new world order. The age of technologically-advanced barbarism. There are no rules for the strong, only for the weak. Oppose the strong, refuse to bow to its capricious demands and you are showered with missiles and bombs.

Hospitals, elementary schools, universities and apartment complexes are reduced to rubble. Doctors, students, journalists, poets, writers, scientists, artists and political leaders — including the heads of negotiating teams — are murdered in the tens of thousands by missiles and killer drones.

Resources — as the Venezuelans know — are openly stolen. Food, water and medicine, as in Palestine, are weaponised.

• READ MORE: Trump threatens NATO if allies fail to help with reopening Strait of Hormuz
• War on Iran: Australia should put trust in its neighbours not a modern Titanic rogue state
• Other US-Israel War on Iran reports

Let them eat dirt.

International bodies such as the United Nations are pantomime, useless appendages of another age. The sanctity of individual rights, open borders and international law have vanished.

The most depraved leaders of human history, those who reduced cities to ashes, herded captive populations to execution sites and littered lands they occupied with mass graves and corpses, have returned with a vengeance.

They spew the same hypermasculine tropes. They spew the same vile, racist cant. They spew the same Manichaean vision of good and evil, black and white. They spew the same infantile language of total dominance and unrestrained violence.

Levers of power
Killer clowns. Buffoons. Idiots. They have seized the levers of power to carry out their demented and cartoonish visions as they pillage the state for their own enrichment.

“After witnessing savage mass murder over several months, with the knowledge that it was conceived, executed and endorsed by people much like themselves, who presented it as a collective necessity, legitimate and even humane, millions now feel less at home in the world,” writes Pankaj Mishra in The World After Gaza.

“The shock of this renewed exposure to a peculiarly modern evil — the evil done in the pre-modern era only by psychopathic individuals and unleashed in the last century by rulers and citizens of rich and supposedly civilised societies — cannot be overstated. Nor can the moral abyss we confront.”

The subjugated are property, commodities to exploit for profit or pleasure. The Epstein Files expose the sickness and heartlessness of the ruling class. Liberals. Conservatives. University presidents. Academics. Philanthropists. Wall Street titans. Celebrities. Democrats. Republicans.

They wallow in unbridled hedonism. They go to private schools and have private health care. They are cocooned in self-referential bubbles by sycophants, publicists, financial advisers, lawyers, servants, chauffeurs, self-help gurus, plastic surgeons and personal trainers.

They reside in heavily guarded estates and vacation on private islands. They travel on private jets and gargantuan yachts. They exist in another reality, what the Wall Street Journal reporter Robert Frank dubs the world of “Richistan,” a world of private Xanadus where they hold Nero-like bacchanalias, make their perfidious deals, amass their billions and cast aside those they use, including children, as if they are refuse.

No one in this magic circle is accountable. No sin too depraved. They are human parasites. They disembowel the state for personal profit. They terrorise the “lesser breeds of the earth.” They shut down the last, anemic vestiges of our open society.

‘Intoxication of power’
“There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life,” as George Orwell writes in 1984. “All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always — do not forget this, Winston — always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless.

“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.”

The law, despite a few valiant efforts by a handful of judges — who will soon be purged — is an instrument of repression. The judiciary exists to stage show trials. I spent a lot of time in the London courts covering the Dickensian farce during the persecution of Julian Assange. A Lubyanka-on-the-Thames. Our courts are no better. Our Department of Justice is a vengeance machine.

Masked, armed goons flood the streets of the United States and murder civilians, including citizens. The ruling mandarins are spending billions to convert warehouses into detention centers and concentration camps. They insist they will only house the undocumented, the criminals, but our global ruling class lies like it breathes.

In their eyes, we are vermin, either blindly and unquestionably obedient or criminals. There is nothing in between.

These concentration camps, where there is no due process and people are disappeared, are designed for us. And by us, I mean the citizens of this dead republic. Yet we watch, stupefied, disbelieving, passively waiting for our own enslavement.

It won’t be long.

The savagery we face
The savagery in Iran, Lebanon and Gaza is the same savagery we face at home. Those carrying out the genocide, mass slaughter and unprovoked war on Iran are the same people dismantling our democratic institutions.

The social anthropologist Arjun Appadurai calls what is happening “a vast worldwide Malthusian correction” that is “geared to preparing the world for the winners of globalisation, minus the inconvenient noise of its losers.”

Oh, the critics say, don’t be so bleak. Don’t be so negative. Where is the hope? Really, it’s not that bad.

If you believe this you are part of the problem, an unwitting cog in the machinery of our rapidly consolidating fascist state.

Reality will eventually implode these “hopeful” fantasies, but by then it will be too late.

True despair is not a result of accurately reading reality. True despair comes from surrendering, either through fantasy or apathy, to malignant power. True despair is powerlessness. And resistance, meaningful resistance, even if it is almost certainly doomed, is empowerment. It confers self-worth. It confers dignity. It confers agency. It is the only action that allows us to use the word hope.

The Iranians, Lebanese and Palestinians know there is no appeasing these monsters. The global elites believe nothing. They feel nothing. They cannot be trusted. They exhibit the core traits of all psychopaths — superficial charm, grandiosity and self-importance, a need for constant stimulation, a penchant for lying, deception, manipulation and the inability to feel remorse or guilt.

Virtues of empathy
They disdain as weakness the virtues of empathy, honesty, compassion and self-sacrifice. They live by the creed of Me. Me. Me.

“The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make these vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make these people sane,” Eric Fromm writes in The Sane Society.

We have witnessed evil for nearly three years in Gaza. We watch it now in Lebanon and Iran. We see this evil excused or masked by political leaders and the media.

The New York Times, in a page out of Orwell, sent an internal memo telling reporters and editors to eschew the terms “refugee camps, “occupied territory,” “ethnic cleansing” and, of course, “genocide” when writing about Gaza.

Those who name and denounce this evil are smeared, blacklisted and purged from university campuses and the public sphere. They are arrested and deported. A deadening silence is descending upon us, the silence of all authoritarian states. Fail to do your duty, fail to cheerlead the war on Iran, and see your broadcasting licence revoked, as the Chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Brendan Carr has proposed.

We have enemies. They are not in Palestine. They are not in Lebanon. They are not in Iran. They are here. Among us. They dictate our lives. They are traitors to our ideals. They are traitors to our country.

They envision a world of slaves and masters. Gaza is only the start. There are no internal mechanisms for reform. We can obstruct or surrender.

Those are the only choices left.

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for 15 years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East bureau chief and Balkan bureau chief for the paper. He is the host of show “The Chris Hedges Report”. This commentary was first published on the Chris Hedges Substack page and is republished with permission.

• The Chris Hedges Report

ANALYSIS: By Qasim Rashid

This week Donald Trump threatened more war crimes on the people of Iran.

We are now in the most dangerous phase of this crisis, and pretending otherwise is reckless.

As a human rights lawyer, I do not view war as an abstraction, a chessboard, or a television spectacle. I view it in terms of law, civilian life, state accountability, and foreseeable human devastation.

• READ MORE: Oil tankers in Iraq hit amid Iranian attacks on Gulf; Israel bombs Beirut
• Sanitising atrocities by the US or Israel and finding excuses is in the Western media’s DNA
• Other US-Israeli war on Iran reports

If we are honest about the present moment, there are only four plausible scenarios from here. Three are catastrophic.

The fourth is the only one consistent with constitutional government, international law, and basic human survival. It is also the one Donald Trump appears least willing to accept — but one our Congress must rally to ensure happens.

As of today the United States’ and Israel’s illegal war on Iran has killed more than 1300 Iranians, mostly civilians. Up to one third of them are children — including the near 175 children killed by a US military Tomahawk missile.

Iran’s response has targeted military bases, resulting in reportedly 8 US soldiers killed and 13 Israelis. Now, Trump is promising “Death, Fire, and Fury” and “twenty times” the damage if Iran does not unconditionally surrender.

In other words, we are running out of time to end this illegal war and prevent global and irreparable catastrophe. Right now we have four possible paths ahead of us. It is critical we rally and demand Congress act to enact Option Number Four.

Option One
The first scenario is that Trump eventually admits defeat and withdraws from Iran. In purely human terms, that would be preferable to escalation, but it would still come after an illegal war already launched without constitutional authority and under a pretext that has not been substantiated.

The geopolitical consequences would be significant.

A failed American war would further erode US credibility and likely accelerate a broader shift in influence toward China and Russia. Iran, having survived direct US-Israeli assault, would emerge emboldened.

Oil may no longer be pegged to the US dollar as the global currency, devastating the US economy. None of this is favourable, though this is the bed Trump has made so far. But also, compared with what comes next, it is survivable.

Option Two
The second scenario is a ground invasion. Trump has not ruled that out. He has not ruled out a draft either. The Pentagon is already reportedly preparing to seek roughly $50 billion in supplemental funding for Middle East operations, a strong indication that the administration is contemplating a longer and more expensive war footing.

A quick reminder that politicians lie when they say we cannot afford to fund universal healthcare, free public college, free school lunches, or affordable housing.

Anyone speaking casually about invading Iran is either ignorant of the facts or indifferent to the lives that would be destroyed. Invading Afghanistan and Iraq was already catastrophic. As I’ve cited before, a Brown University study documents an estimated 4.6 million civilians killed by Western wars since 2001.

And Iran is not Iraq. Iran is about 1.63 million sq km — which is triple the size of Iraq. I has a population that recent estimates place in the low 90 million range — which is double that of Iraq. It’s largest city, Tehran, has a population of 9.6 million — larger than New York City. It is geographically vast, heavily populated, politically complex, and militarily formidable.

A US ground invasion would not be a quick operation. It would be a regional inferno. Potentially millions could die. The global economy would likely be pushed into a prolonged recession. And because major powers would not passively watch such a war unfold, the risk of a broader world war would rise dramatically. Thus, option three.

Option Three
The third scenario is the use of nuclear weapons by Israel or the United States. That is the scenario many people still resist discussing openly because it sounds too horrible to contemplate. But refusing to contemplate it does not make it less real.

This is not hyperbole. Research published in Nature Food and highlighted by Rutgers found that a large-scale nuclear war could kill more than 5 billion people through famine and system-wide collapse, even apart from the immediate blast deaths. In ordinary language, that means the deaths of four to six billion human beings within a relatively short period are well within the range of expert projections in a full nuclear exchange.

It would be worse than any Hollywood film can imagine because movies still assume that civilisation survives in recognisable form. Nuclear war does not promise survival. It promises planetary ruin. Thus, we must push for Option Four.

That leaves the fourth scenario, which is the only morally serious option:

Option Four
Trump resigns or is impeached, the war is halted, and actual peace negotiations begin. With Trump removed from power, there is at least a possibility of returning to diplomacy, de-escalation, and meaningful non-proliferation efforts. History gives us a model. In the mid-1980s, the United States and Soviet Union moved from existential nuclear hostility toward negotiations that helped reduce the risk of annihilation.

That kind of diplomacy is still possible, but only if the men driving this escalation are stopped. The obstacle, of course, is political cowardice. This would require the Republican Party to develop a spine and fulfill its constitutional duty. It would require Corporate Democrats to grow a spine and demand an end to this war. Instead, Hakeem Jeffries refuses to rule out funding this illegal attack on Iran with another $50 billion.

At present, it seems unlikely that Republicans and Corporate Democrats will grow a spine or a conscience. But unlikelihood is not an excuse for silence when the alternative is mass death.

Here’s the bottom line. This is not red versus blue. This is not left versus right. This is working people versus billionaires, civilians versus war planners, constitutional government versus authoritarian impulse. This is why the culture wars must stop. Because as bad as things are, they can get much worse.

Trump has not ruled out the worst options. He has not ruled out sending American troops into a catastrophic ground war. He has not ruled out escalating further. He has already shown that he will ignore constitutional limits, and too many members of Congress still behave as though strongly worded statements are an adequate response to an unlawful war.

There is also a deeper pattern here that should disturb every serious observer. In 2013, Trump claimed Obama would bomb Iran to distract from his failures. In 2023, J.D. Vance warned against repeating in Iran the same mistake made in Iraq.

Now they are doing exactly what they accused others of doing. That is not irony. It is the operating logic of fascist politics: accuse the other side of the crime you are preparing to commit yourself.

The legal and moral stakes are immense. Congress must act now to stop this war, cut off funding for unauthorised escalation, and reassert that the Constitution is not optional. Military service members must also remember that “I was just following orders” did not excuse unlawful conduct at Nuremberg, and it will not excuse it now.

To those cheering this war from a distance, understand what you are cheering for: possible nuclear confrontation, higher prices for families already struggling, and the deaths of ordinary soldiers while the sons of powerful men remain far from the battlefield.

We need option four, and we need it immediately. Trump must be removed from the machinery of war before his recklessness becomes irreversible. If we fail to stop this now, history will not say we were uninformed. It will say we were warned and did too little.

Qasim Rashid is a Pakistani-born American author, activist, and human rights lawyer. He is a member of the Democratic Party. This article was originally published on his Substack page Let’s Address This with Qasim Rashid. under the title “The War On Iran Has Four Possible Outcomes”.

When I heard the terrible news that the Americans and Israelis had killed more than 165 children this week in an elementary school in Minab in Southern Iran it took me back to a wonderful day I spent in Isfahan in 2018.

I met lots of Iranian school children and their teachers that day. They were keen to practise their English and ask lots of questions. I want to share that day with you because it was filled with hope, with promise for a better world.

My wife and I were visiting Iran, both for the second time.

• READ MORE:  Death toll in Israeli strike on southern Iran school rises to 165
• After a sports hall in Iran was bombed, witnesses describe chaos and ‘continuous screaming’
• Luxon defends NZ’s position on Iran attacks – same as Australia
• Neither preemptive nor legal, US-Israeli strikes on Iran have blown up international law
• UN’s Guterres condemns US-Israeli strikes, retaliatory attacks by Iran
• Other US-Israel attack on Iran reports

Right at the end of our time there we spent a day in Naqsh-e Jahan Square in Isfahan. It is a massive square that could enclose a dozen football fields.

Built by Shah Abbas I in the 17th Century, during the Safavid period, it is a UNESCO World Heritage site with markets, palaces and other cultural sites framing its four sides.  At one end is the magnificent Imam Mosque where a string of memorable moments happened to me.

I even saw a most astonishing one-woman demonstration.

We were just approaching the Imam Mosque when I noticed a young woman removing her head scarf. A mass of black hair fell down to her waist and then she began dancing.

‘Is this a protest?’
Rhythmically she swirled her upper body in a circular motion that sent her hair out horizontally around her. I was gob-smacked.

After a minute or two she stopped and started talking to her male companion who had been photographing her. I approached.

“Is this a protest?” I asked, somewhat gormlessly.  Yes, against the clothing restrictions.

Today the courage and determination of such people has, to a degree, paid off. Those restrictions, particularly in the cities, have effectively been lightened.  I have seen lots of footage of Iranian women without any head covering.

I salute their courage and determination and know their struggle will continue.

I also salute the courage and determination of the millions of Iranians who have turned out this week to support their government against the violent assault on the sovereignty of Iran by the racist, fascist genocidal Israeli state and its powerful vassal the USA.

Following the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, I saw remarkable footage of that same vast square in Isfahan filled to the four corners with what must have been hundreds of thousands of people. As with millions around the country, they were defying the missiles to protest the violation of their sovereignty.

The inconvenient truth
The scale of the pro-government demonstrations is virtually never shown in the Western media but to understand the contested political landscape that is Iran you need to understand that inconvenient truth.

Iranian politics in the Western view has been reduced to a cartoon, to a Manichean world of black and white — which partly explains why Westerners, most particularly the leaders, fail to grasp the fierce nationalism that has seen millions of Iranians rally round their government as their state comes under an existential threat.

That day in 2018 in that square I chatted with pro-government and anti-government people; all incredibly nice and open and welcoming. Everyone was keen to discuss Iran and the wider world.

There were lots of school parties and both the teachers and their students were keen to speak with us. It was an unalloyed pleasure for us. Iranians are remarkably hospitable, cultured and kind. For me, they are the finest people in the Middle East.

That is partly why I felt sad and bitter when I watched the footage of the bombed-out Shajareh Tayyebeh girls elementary school (6-12 year-olds) in Minab and heard the screams of mothers calling for children whom they will never walk to school again.

The Western empire has a long history of killing children. I recently referenced Madeleine Albright’s infamous comment on the killing of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children being “a price worth paying”.

This is just standard modus operandi for the West.

Protected by Mossad
Israeli football hooligans travel through Europe chanting “Why is school out in Gaza? Because there are no kids left!” They are protected by Mossad, local police and politicians like British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Australian PM Anthony Albanese recently welcomed Isaac Herzog, the President of Israel, who in October 2023 said: “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible.”

This is as clear a statement of genocidal intent as you could get and Israel made good on it.

Israel, the killer of tens of thousands of school kids, presents itself as a liberator for Iran? You don’t have to be an A-grade student to spot that lie.

Many people around the Western world want to commit the children of Iran into the hands of the President of the United States.

According to US Congressman Ted Lieu (D-CA), Vice-Chair of the House Democratic Caucus: “In the Epstein files, there’s highly disturbing allegations of Donald Trump raping children, of Donald Trump threatening to kill children.”

Lieu, one of the architects of the Epstein Files Transparency Act is also one of those legislators who has had access to some of the files still kept out of the public record.

Iranian children have as much right to grow up in safety as our own children.

infamous bro-talk
We should all also recall Trump’s infamous bro-talk with the vile radio host Howard Stern. Stern asked if he could refer to Ivanka Trump as a “piece of ass,” and Donald Trump salivated back at him: “Yeah.”

While they were joking about this “piece of ass”, Trump said he would try to date Ivanka if she wasn’t his daughter. It is a relevant anecdote because we live in the age of American Geopolitical Epsteinism — a world of predators seeking to violate those weaker than them.

You don’t have to like the Iranian government to support the UN Charter and the insistence on the sovereign equality of nations.

Nothing in the Charter says it is okay for powerful white countries to attack other countries.  The West needs to bring its leaders to justice for the crime of genocide not launch yet another war on innocents.

Hands off Iran, Netanyahu. Hands off the children of Iran, Trump.

Eugene Doyle is a community organiser based in Wellington, publisher of Solidarity and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report. His first demonstration was at the age of 12 against the Vietnam war. This article was first published by Solidarity on 2 March 2026.