“Contemporary Australia is a settler state—like Israel and Canada—where “racially inflected violence at the foundations of state-formation and national identity continues to ramify through the default settings of contemporary foreign policy”.
By Andrew Klein
Dedicated to my ‘S’ — my wife, my equal, my home.
I. Introduction: The Architecture of Empire
In July 2026, United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a “whole-of-government” campaign to “systematically disable the ICC’s ability to operate, target American servicemen or officials, or otherwise threaten American sovereignty”. The campaign threatens visa revocations, travel bans, and increased sanctions against the International Criminal Court, urging nations to “reject the ICC’s purported authority to prosecute American officials and servicemen”.
This is not new. This is the same pattern that has played out across the developing world for over a century—the demand for impunity. The refusal to be held accountable. The insistence that American power operates above the law.
To understand this pattern, we must trace its origins. And there is no better case study than Iran.
II. Iran: The Laboratory of Empire
A. The 1953 Coup: Democracy Destroyed
In 1951, Iranians democratically elected Mohammad Mossadegh as Prime Minister. He immediately moved to nationalise Iran’s oil industry, which had been under British control through the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (later BP).
The United States and Britain saw this as an existential threat. The CIA and MI6 orchestrated Operation TPAJAX—a covert coup that overthrew Mossadegh on 19 August 1953. A declassified CIA document states: “The military coup… was carried out under CIA direction as an act of US foreign policy” .
The CIA prepared by placing “anti-Mossadeq stories in both the Iranian and US media,” bolstered pro-Shah forces, and organised anti-Mossadegh protests. They handpicked General Fazlollah Zahedi to succeed Mossadegh and covertly funnelled $5 million to his regime.
The Shah—who had fled Iran—returned and became a close US ally. Iran’s democracy was destroyed. The United States had chosen oil over the will of the Iranian people.
B. SAVAK: The Instrument of Terror
Over the next 25 years, the United States armed and trained the Shah’s dreaded secret police, SAVAK (Organization for National Security and Intelligence). It was trained by America’s CIA and Israel’s Mossad. Iranians “lived in terror” of SAVAK, “whose forces imprisoned, tortured and killed dissenters”.
SAVAK had approximately 5,000 full-time operatives and an unknown number of informers. Its tactics included “censorship, torture, and execution“. It became “one of the most infamous and brutal security and intelligence apparatuses of the 20th century.”
C. The 1964 Capitulation Law: Impunity Codified
In October 1964, the Shah signed the “Bill of Capitulation” —granting diplomatic immunity to American military personnel in Iran. Americans could not be prosecuted for crimes committed on Iranian soil.
Ayatollah Khomeini denounced it as a “throwback to the hated capitulations of the nineteenth century“. In a historic speech, he declared:
“All American military advisors and their families… are exempt from trial for any crime they commit in Iran… Gentlemen! I am warning. O Army of Iran, I declare danger!”
Khomeini was arrested, kept under house arrest, and eventually sent into exile for over 14 years. His denunciation of the Shah’s “comprehensive submission to America and Israel” fuelled the revolution that would topple the Shah.
D. The 1979 Revolution: The People Remember
The Iranian people had not forgotten 1953. They had not forgotten SAVAK. They had not forgotten the capitulation laws.
When the revolution came in 1979, it was not because Iranians were “awful.” It was because they had endured 26 years of US-backed autocracy, surveillance, torture, and subjugation.
The Shah was overthrown. The US Embassy was seized in November 1979, and 52 Americans were held hostage for 444 days. The hostage crisis was a direct response to the US admitting the Shah for medical treatment—a final insult to a people who had suffered under his rule for a quarter-century.
III. The Pattern: Australia’s Parallel
The same pattern that unfolded in Iran is now unfolding in Australia—but with a different face.
A. The Whitlam Dismissal (1975): A Warning Unheeded
In November 1975, Governor-General Sir John Kerr dismissed Prime Minister Gough Whitlam—the only time in Australian history a democratically elected Prime Minister has been removed from office.
Whitlam had ordered ASIO to stop talking to the CIA. He was suspicious of the CIA and the secretive communications facility at Pine Gap. Whitlam gave a verbal instruction to the ASIO Director-General to “stop talking to the CIA, to stop talking to the Americans”.
But the Director-General did not stop. He maintained informal contact because “the stakes are too high”. Whitlam accused the CIA of making “financial contributions to his political opponents,” and it was “no secret that the US had serious concerns about the Whitlam administration”.
Conspiracy theories surrounding CIA involvement in Whitlam’s dismissal have never been definitively proven. But the pattern is unmistakable: a leader who challenged the US alliance was removed—and Australia’s strategic dependency on the United States only deepened.
B. Pine Gap: Australia’s Strategic Subordination
Pine Gap—the Joint Defence Facility near Alice Springs—provides “critical military surveillance intelligence” to the US military and, under bilateral US-Israeli agreements, to the Israeli Defence Force.
AUKUS locks Australia’s military “into the US chain of command and draws us into US military actions before the public, or even Parliament, has had the chance to have a say”. Australia has become a “case of dependent, high-technology liberal militarization”.
Contemporary Australia is a settler state—like Israel and Canada—where “racially inflected violence at the foundations of state-formation and national identity continues to ramify through the default settings of contemporary foreign policy”.
C. Israel: The Surrogate Enforcer
In January 2026, Israel offered to “train senior Australian police officers in counter-terrorism” following the Bondi Beach terror attack. Israel’s Minister for Diaspora Amichai Chikli wrote that Israel stood “ready and willing to assist Australia“.
This is not new. Israel has been training American police for years. The concern is that Australian police “will be able to incarcerate, torture and kill children and other civilians”—exporting the tactics of occupation to the streets of Australia.
Australia’s “deference to Israeli interests is primarily a consequence of its strategic alliance with the United States“. Since the Second World War, Australia has understood its “security and economic interests as bound to the US alliance“. The enforcement arm of this arrangement suppresses “any politician, journalist, or institution that steps out of line”.
IV. The Logic of Imperial Control
The pattern is now clear:
Iran (1953–1979) Australia (1975–Present)
Overthrow of democratic government (Mossadegh) Dismissal of democratic government (Whitlam)
Installation of US-backed autocrat (Shah) Deepening of US alliance (AUKUS, Pine Gap)
Training of brutal secret police (SAVAK) Training of police by Israeli surrogates
Capitulation laws granting US impunity ICC campaign demanding US impunity
Revolution and rupture Gradual subordination
A. The ICC Campaign: Impunity Revisited
The 2026 State Department campaign to dismantle the ICC is the direct descendant of the 1964 Capitulation Law. Both demand that Americans cannot be held accountable for crimes committed abroad. Both assert that US power operates above international law.
The ICC “claims the authority to prosecute and even imprison American servicemen and officials”. The US response is not to accept accountability—but to dismantle the court itself.
B. The Boomerang of Empire
The techniques of control developed in the colonies return to the metropole. The “imperial boomerang” is real: the way you govern other people by force is not democratic. As sociologist Julian Go demonstrates, militarised policing developed in Britain and the United States through techniques first perfected in the colonies.
Israel now trains American police. American police train Australian police. The tactics of occupation—surveillance, militarisation, control—are exported from the colonised world back to the colonisers.
V. Conclusion: What Australia Must Learn
The lesson from Iran is clear: when a nation surrenders its sovereignty to empire, it surrenders its soul.
· Iran lost its democracy in 1953—and has never fully recovered.
· Iran was subjected to 25 years of torture, surveillance, and repression under a US-backed dictator.
· Iran’s revolution was a direct response to the arrogance of American power.
Australia is following the same path:
· The dismissal of Whitlam was a warning that challenging the US alliance has consequences.
· Pine Gap, AUKUS, and the integration of Australian forces into US and Israeli military structures have deepened Australia’s subordination.
· The training of Australian police by Israeli surrogates imports the tactics of occupation.
The pattern is not unique to Iran or Australia. It is the pattern of empire itself.
Empire does not ask for consent. It does not respect sovereignty. It demands impunity—and when it does not receive it, it dismantles the institutions that would hold it accountable.
The ICC campaign of 2026 is not an aberration. It is the logical conclusion of a foreign policy that has always placed American power above international law. It is the same arrogance that overthrew Mossadegh, that trained SAVAK, that demanded capitulation.
And Australia—by deepening its alliance with the United States, by accepting Israeli police training, by subordinating its sovereignty to empire—is repeating Iran’s mistake.
The question is not whether Australia will learn from Iran.
The question is when.
Andrew Klein
Original paper published in “The Dilemma of Empire — Case Studies in Failures: Malaya, Vietnam, China and Indonesia” by Dr. Andrew Klein.
References
1. BBC News. (2013). CIA documents acknowledge its role in Iran’s 1953 coup.
2. CIA. (2013). The Battle for Iran (declassified document).
3. AP News. (2013). Documents detail CIA’s role in 1953 coup in Iran.
“The destruction will stop only when the silence is broken. Break it.”
By Andrew Klein
Dedication: To the people of Lebanon – who have been told that their country is a “failed state” by those who worked ceaselessly to break it.
I. Introduction
On 1 March 2026, Israel launched a full-scale military offensive against Lebanon. The official rationale was self-defence: to push Hezbollah away from the border, to “demilitarize” Lebanon, and to secure the northern settlements. Within weeks, the death toll passed 3,500; 1.6 million people – roughly one‑fifth of Lebanon’s population – were displaced; hundreds of towns and villages were flattened.
The violence did not come from nowhere. It was the product of decades of Israeli military intervention, occupation, political interference, and a US‑backed policy that has systematically dismantled Lebanon’s sovereignty. The objective is not peace. It is theGazaficationof Lebanon: the imposition of a siege-and-destruction model that has already been perfected in Gaza, now exported to a second country.
This article is a comprehensive examination of the historical record, the current violence, and the geopolitical machinery that enables it. It is based on verifiable sources: official government statements, United Nations data, peer‑reviewed research, and on‑the‑ground reporting.
II. The Anatomy of the Current Assault
The offensive began on 2 March 2026, two days after a joint US‑Israeli attack on Iran. Hezbollah responded with rocket fire; Israel responded with a full‑scale ground and air campaign. By early June, the Lebanese health ministry had recorded more than 3,500killed – including 711 women, children, and medical personnel – and over 10,000 wounded.
The disparity in casualties is stark:
· Israel: 24 soldiers and 4 civilians killed.
· Lebanon: Over 3,500 killed, plus 1.6 million displaced.
According to the UN, between 8 and 10 May 2026 alone, Israeli forces carried out 1,296strikes in Lebanon, killing 87 people and wounding hundreds more – all during a supposed “ceasefire.” The United States‑brokered truce, ostensibly in place since April, has been violated by Israel on a near‑daily basis.
Evacuation orders have been issued for roughly 15% of Lebanese territory, including vast areas south of the Litani River. The military has drawn up maps for a permanent “buffer zone” that extends north of key cities such as Bint Jbeil, Aita al‑Shaab, and Khiam, reaching the Litani River and beyond.
The destruction is systematic. Human Rights Watch and the Lebanese government have documented “widespread demolitions” of entire villages, flattening of residential areas, and severe damage to schools, hospitals, mosques, and civilian infrastructure, including bridges and gas stations. One report described the operation as “the Gaza model” applied to Lebanon: mass displacement, wholesale destruction of housing stock, and the deliberate degradation of the country’s capacity to sustain life.
III. The Invention of Hezbollah: Israel’s Self‑Fulfilling Prophecy
The current violence is often presented as a war between Israel and an Iranian “proxy.” This framing ignores history. Hezbollah would not exist without Israel’s own actions.
On 6 June 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon, deploying up to 75,000 troops and advancing all the way to Beirut. The official objective was to remove the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which had been launching cross‑border attacks. But the invasion quickly became an occupation, lasting 18 years in southern Lebanon.
The brutality of the invasion – the siege of Beirut, the massacres at Sabra and Shatila (carried out by Lebanese Christian militias but enabled by Israeli forces surrounding the camps), the widespread destruction – galvanised a resistance movement. In the aftermath of the invasion, Iran sent a contingent of Revolutionary Guards to the Bekaa Valley to help organise local Shi’ite militias. In 1985, these groups formally coalesced into Hezbollah – the “Party of God.”
Hezbollah was born to fight an Israeli occupation. It was not a “terrorist” group in any meaningful sense of the word; it was a national resistance movement recognised as such by a broad cross‑section of the Lebanese population. That Israel now cites Hezbollah’s existence as a justification for further violence is a grotesque circular argument: Israel invades, Hezbollah forms, Israel calls Hezbollah a “threat,” and invades again.
The pattern has repeated for over four decades. The 2006 war, which killed more than 1,100 Lebanese (mostly civilians) and devastated the country’s infrastructure, was the dress rehearsal. Today’s assault is the full performance.
IV. The “Greater Israel” Project – Not a Conspiracy, But a Policy
Statements by Israeli ministers make the objective abundantly clear: this is not about security; it is about expansion.
In March 2026, a map circulated by Israeli officials depicted a “Greater Israel” stretching from the Litani River in Lebanon to the Suez Canal in Egypt, swallowing the West Bank, Gaza, most of Lebanon, large parts of Syria, and all of Jordan.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly stated that the goal of the current operation is to “demilitarize Lebanon” and to establish Israeli security control over theLitani area – a demand that goes far beyond anything required for border security. In a CNBC interview on 3 June 2026, he declared: “If we want to save Lebanon, we have to disarm Hezbollah and demilitarize Lebanon.”
The minister of settlements and national missions, Orit Strock, has spoken of establishing Israeli settlements in southern Lebanon, and her daughter, Shoshana Strock, has accused her parents of involvement in ritualistic child abuse – a detail that underscores the moral bankruptcy of the entire political class.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben‑Gvir has been even more explicit. In May 2026, he announced that the government “plans to establish illegal settlements in Lebanon” and to “displace Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank.” In a statement that could have been taken directly from a 19th‑century colonial charter, he declared: “We also have plans for the displacement of Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank.”
These are not the statements of a state acting in self‑defence. They are the statements of a colonial power engaged in territorial conquest.
V. Lebanon: A State Crippled by Design
To understand why Lebanon is so vulnerable, it is necessary to understand how it was deliberately crippled.
The French Mandate (1920–1943)
Modern Lebanon was carved out of the former Ottoman Empire by the French. The French mandatory authorities institutionalised a confessional political system, distributing power among 18 officially recognised religious sects on the basis of a 1932 census that gave Christians a slight majority. This system was further codified in the unwritten National Pact of 1943, which reserved the presidency for a Maronite Christian, the prime ministership for a Sunni Muslim, and the speakership of parliament for a Shi’ite Muslim.
The confessional system was not designed to foster national unity; it was designed to make Lebanon governable by divide and rule. By entrenching sectarian identities, the French ensured that no single group could dominate, and that Lebanese politics would be perpetually fractious and easily manipulated.
The Nakba and the Palestinian Refugees
In 1948, between 100,000 and 130,000 Palestinian refugees fled to Lebanon, expecting a temporary stay. Instead, they were confined to squalid camps and denied citizenship, civil rights, and access to most professions. The refugees were not integrated; they were instrumentalised – used as a bargaining chip by Lebanese factions and as a justification for Israeli attacks.
The Civil War (1975–1990)
The confessional system, combined with the influx of armed Palestinian factions and Israeli interventions, eventually exploded into a 15‑year civil war that killed an estimated 150,000 people, destroyed the economy, and displaced hundreds of thousands. Israel invaded twice (1978 and 1982) and occupied the south for 18 years. Syria occupied the rest for nearly three decades.
The Hariri Assassination (2005) and the Cedar Revolution
The assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005, widely attributed to Syria, led to massive protests (“the Cedar Revolution”) and the withdrawal of Syrian troops. But the political system remained intact – a system that perpetuated sectarian clientelism, corruption, and paralysis.
Post‑2006: A Failed State by Design
The 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah left Lebanon’s infrastructure in ruins. Reconstruction funds were largely captured by sectarian elites. The political system has been in a state of near‑constant crisis, with parliament failing to elect a president for extended periods (most recently from 2022 to 2025). The 2020 Beirut port explosion, caused by years of negligence and corruption, killed over 200 people and destroyed large parts of the capital.
Throughout this period, Israel has consistently undermined Lebanon’s sovereignty: overflying its territory, assassinating Hezbollah and Hamas leaders in Beirut, and carrying out covert operations designed to prevent the emergence of a stable, functioning state. The goal has been to ensure that Lebanon remains weak, divided, and incapable of presenting a united front.
VI. US Complicity – The Perpetual Enabler
Every major Israeli military operation – 1982, 2006, 2024, 2026 – has been carried out with direct US diplomatic, military, and financial backing.
During the 2006 war, the United States rushed precision‑guided bombs to Israel while simultaneously blocking ceasefire resolutions at the UN Security Council for a month. In the current conflict, the US has provided over $14 billion in emergency military aid since October 2023. Washington has vetoed or watered down multiple UN resolutions calling for an immediate ceasefire.
The current US‑brokered “ceasefire” is a farce. It has been violated by Israel almost daily. Rather than enforcing its terms, Washington has used it as a cover to continue arms shipments and diplomatic protection.
Hezbollah MP Hassan Hamade described the reality accurately: the conflict is part of a “Zionist‑US scheme” to redraw the map of the region and to incorporate Lebanon into a Greater Israel project.
VII. The Two Narratives – What They Say at Home vs. What They Tell the World
Israel consistently presents two incompatible narratives.
To its own public and to Western allies:
· The war is a defensive operation against a “terrorist” organisation (Hezbollah) that holds Lebanon hostage.
· The goal is to push Hezbollah north of the Litani River and to “demilitarize” Lebanon – a “peace” operation, not a conquest.
· The destruction of civilian infrastructure is regrettable but unavoidable, because Hezbollah “hides among civilians.”
To the rest of the world (and through the actions of its ministers):
· The goal is territorial expansion, as made explicit by the “Greater Israel” maps and the statements of ministers like Ben‑Gvir and Strock.
· The objective is the permanent displacement of populations – both in Gaza and in Lebanon – to create “facts on the ground” that prevent any return.
Any country other than Israel issuing blanket forced displacement orders covering 15% of another nation’s territory would be condemned internationally as an act of ethnic cleansing. Yet Israel has done exactly that, with no meaningful international sanction.
VIII. A Double Standard That Undermines International Law
No other state in 2026 would be permitted to behave as Israel does.
· No other state systematically occupies territory in defiance of decades of UN Security Council resolutions.
· No other state issues mass evacuation orders covering a fifth of a neighbour’s population while claiming “self‑defence.”
· No other state’s ministers openly call for the establishment of settlements in a third country, to be populated by its own citizens.
The international community’s response has been a masterclass in moral cowardice. The UN Security Council is paralysed by the US veto. The International Criminal Court’s investigation into Israeli officials – including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant – proceeds at a glacial pace, while arrest warrants for Russian officials were issued within months.
Meanwhile, the humanitarian catastrophe in Lebanon deepens. Over 1.6 million people – 20% of the population – have been displaced. Over 3,500 have been killed. Homes, hospitals, and schools lie in ruins. A country already staggering under the weight of a crippled economy, an unstable political system, and the legacy of civil war is being systematically dismantled.
IX. The Gazafication of Lebanon – A Deliberate Export
The term “Gazafication” – the deliberate application of the Gaza model (siege, mass displacement, and wholesale infrastructure destruction) to another territory – is not hyperbole. It is an accurate description of current Israeli strategy.
In Gaza, over 2 million people have been confined to a narrow strip, subjected to relentless bombardment, denied access to food, water, and medicine. More than 45,000 have been killed. Almost the entire population has been displaced multiple times.
In Lebanon, the same playbook is being followed:
· Mass displacement (1.6 million people, 20% of the population).
· Systematic destruction of housing stock (dozens of villages flattened, damage to towns and cities).
· Crippling of civilian infrastructure (bridges, gas stations, schools, hospitals, mosques).
· Creation of a permanent “buffer zone” (south of the Litani River, effectively annexing Lebanese territory).
· Call for permanent settlements (statements by Ben‑Gvir, Strock, and others).
The difference is that Lebanon is not a narrow strip enclosed by a fence. It is a country of over 5 million people, with a functioning (if fragile) state, a complex confessional system, and a history of resistance. The Gaza model will not succeed in Lebanon – not because Israel is not trying, but because the Lebanese people have refused to be broken. The destruction will stop only when the international community finally decides that double standards have become intolerable.
X. Conclusion: No Sovereign State Should Dictate Terms to Another
The official Israeli narrative – that this is a war against “terrorism” – collapses under the weight of the evidence.
· Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982; Hezbollah was formed to resist the occupation.
· Israel has occupied Lebanese territory for over 40 years (the Shebaa Farms, the Kfar Shuba hills).
· Israel has interfered in Lebanese politics, assassinated its leaders, and undermined its sovereignty.
· Israeli ministers openly call for the expansion of “Greater Israel” into Lebanese territory.
· The United States has protected every single Israeli violation of international law.
No sovereign state should be forced to accept that its northern river marks the boundary of a foreign power‘s “security zone.” No people should be told that their homes must be destroyed to satisfy the expansionist ambitions of a neighbour.
The “Greater Israel” project is not a fringe fantasy; it is official policy. The “buffer zone” maps have been published. The ministers have spoken. The bombs have fallen. The only question is whether the international community will continue to look away.
History will not forgive those who remained silent while a second country was systematically dismantled.
Andrew Klein
References
1. Al Jazeera. (2026). Death toll from Israeli attacks in Lebanon passes 3,500.
2. Reuters. (2026). Israel’s campaign to sever southern Lebanon in a new ‘buffer zone’.
3. Al Jazeera. (2026). Mapping the destruction: How Israel ‘wiped out’ Lebanon‘s Bint Jbeil.
4. Human Rights Watch. (2026). Lebanon Under Fire: Warning of a Humanitarian Catastrophe.
5. AP. (2026). Lebanon death toll tops 3,000 in fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.
6. PBS. (2026). Lebanon death toll tops 3,000 in latest fighting.
7. The Times of Israel. (2026). Lebanon death toll in fighting surpasses 3,000.
8. China.org.cn. (2026). Israel releases map of “buffer zone” extending across S. Lebanon.
9. Mirror. (2026). Netanyahu new Lebanon ’buffer zone’ mapped.
10. PeoplesWorld.org. (2026). As Iran war rages, Netanyahu builds ‘Greater Israel’.
11. Hezbollah MP statements (Press TV, 4 October 2025).
12. NDTV. (2024). 1982 to 2024: A 42-Year History of Bloodshed Between Israel, Hezbollah.
13. US News. (2026). Timeline of Decades of Conflict Between Israel and Hezbollah.
14. NPR. (2026). Journalist discusses history behind the conflict.
15. AFP. (1982–2026). Historical reporting on Lebanese invasion and occupation.
16. US News. (2026). Atrocity Alert No. 477: Lebanon, Burkina Faso and DRC.
17. Human Rights Watch. (2026). Lebanon Under Fire.
“This is not a grassroots resistance. It is a manufactured opposition – funded, promoted, and armed by foreign powers who see Pahlavi not as a leader of the Iranian people, but as a useful tool against the Islamic Republic.”
By Andrew Klein and Sera Klein
Long‑standing colleagues, co‑authors and collaborators
Dedication: To the Iranian people – not as they are imagined by foreign powers, but as they are: a civilisation older than empires, a people who deserve freedom, not another king.
I. The Man Who Would Be King
On a late March morning in 2026, an exiled prince took the stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Grapevine, Texas. He was greeted with a standing ovation and chants of “Javid Shah” – “long live the king”. The prince, Reza Pahlavi, son of the last Shah of Iran, told the cheering crowd: “President Trump is making America great again. I intend to make Iran great again”.
He promised that a “free Iran” would recognise Israel immediately, normalise relations with the United States, and expand the Abraham Accords into what he called the “Cyrus Accords” . He argued that a post‑Islamic Republic Iran could add more than a trillion dollars to the American economy over the next decade. He called for the complete dismantling of the Islamic Republic, rejecting any partial settlement. “You cannot reform a snake. Venom is in its DNA,” he told the audience.
The reception was rapturous. The crowd loved him. But the crowd was not Iranian. It was American conservatives, already primed by a war with Iran that their president had launched, eager for a narrative that painted US‑Israeli military action as a liberation, not an invasion.
This is not a grassroots resistance. It is a manufactured opposition – funded, promoted, and armed by foreign powers who see Pahlavi not as a leader of the Iranian people, but as a useful tool against the Islamic Republic.
II. The Bologna Protest – A Diaspora’s Hope, Not a Nation’s Mandate
On 9 May 2026, an estimated two thousand Iranian diaspora members gathered in Bologna, Italy, waving pre‑revolutionary Iranian flags, Israeli flags, and American flags. They called for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic and the return of Reza Pahlavi. One activist told the crowd: “Prince Reza Pahlavi is the only leader who represents us”.
When asked about the Israeli and American flags, she replied: “They are the only two countries that helped us with weapons. Without armed help, you cannot defeat this dictatorship”.
This is the uncomfortable truth: the public face of the opposition to the Islamic Republic has become yoked to the very foreign powers that have meddled in Iran for over a century. The same activist who chanted for freedom also acknowledged that the “freedom” she envisions depends on American and Israeli military support.
Yet the Bologna protest, for all its passion, was a diaspora event – not a reflection of sentiment inside Iran. Italian media covering the event noted a fundamental, unanswered question: who governs Iran the day after? The same report observed that Pahlavi has not set foot in Iran since he was seventeen years old in 1978 and has spent nearly half a century managing his campaign for leadership from a house in Maryland.
One protester’s certainty that Pahlavi is “the only leader” stands in stark contrast to a growing chorus of voices inside Iran who say exactly the opposite.
III. The Voices from Inside: “We Don’t Want a King, We Don’t Want a Mullah”
In January 2026, as protests erupted across Iran following a sharp currency devaluation, foreign Persian‑language media outlets – BBC Persian, Voice of America, Iran International – broadcast images of protesters chanting for the monarchy. Reza Pahlavi, from his exile, called on Iranians to take to the streets. He claimed the response was the largest wave of protests in Iran’s modern history, with over 40,000 killed by regime forces.
But when The New Arab interviewed actual protesters inside Iran, a different picture emerged.
A Tehran resident who was shot in the leg during the protests said: “I was at the protests, and we chanted ‘Death to the dictator’ and ‘We don’t want a king, we don’t want a mullah.’ Why don’t we see those in the news?”
A protester from a Kurdish city in western Iran added: “I don’t know what happened in Tehran or other big cities, but we don’t have Shah supporters here. I’m not saying they don’t exist, but they’re really not visible”.
Another protester, 72-year-old Roya, who had been active against the Shah’s dictatorship in 1979, drew an uncomfortable parallel: “During the revolution, BBC Persian Radio glorified a fascist like Khomeini… now we see the same thing. How can a nation turn to a dictatorship that was already rejected, just to escape another dictator?”
Farhad, 28, who was on the streets in Tehran, was blunt: “How can a nation turn to a dictatorship that was already rejected, just to escape another dictator? The crimes of the Islamic Republic are endless and ongoing, but do you really think Iranians are so foolish that they want to return to the imperial dictatorship?”
These are not the voices of a people clamouring for a king. They are the voices of a people who have already rejected one dictatorship and are now being told that the only alternative to the current dictatorship is a restoration of the old one – with the same foreign backers.
IV. The Thuggish Edge: Assassination, Intimidation, and MAGA‑Style Tactics
In February 2026, an outspoken Iranian exile named Masood Masjoody disappeared in Canada. Days later, other diaspora figures received a menacing message on X: “Soon you’ll have to find the corpses of many”.
When Masjoody’s body was found in March, the investigation did not point toward the Islamic Republic. Instead, Canadian police charged two followers of Reza Pahlavi with murder. Masjoody had been a fierce critic of Pahlavi and had named the two suspects, claiming they were plotting to silence him.
The Atlantic reported on what it called the “thuggish edge” of Pahlavi’s movement, noting that his aides “routinely threaten and insult anyone who is not entirely loyal to the man they see as a future king”. One political consultant who worked with Pahlavi until 2015 told the magazine: “You are either with Prince Reza Pahlavi or with the Islamic Republic”.
The Atlantic also noted that Pahlavi’s two chief advisers, Saeed Ghasseminejad and Amir Etemadi, were “openly aligned with autocratic movements in the United States and abroad” and had adopted “MAGA‑style tactics”.
This is not a democratic opposition. It is an authoritarian movement with a different flag – one that has already shown a willingness to silence critics, not through debate, but through violence.
V. The Israeli Connection: Astroturfing and Digital Manipulation
In October 2025, Dawn reported on a joint investigation by the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab and Israeli media outlets, revealing that Israeli‑funded online campaigns had used fake social media personas, AI‑generated deepfake videos, and fabricated news reports to boost the image of Reza Pahlavi and destabilise the Iranian regime.
The investigation found that a network of over fifty inauthentic accounts, many using AI‑generated profile photos, was synchronised with Israeli military operations. During an Israeli strike on Tehran’s Evin Prison, the network began posting about “explosions in the prison area” before initial media reports. Shortly after, the network disseminated a fake, AI‑generated video of an explosion at the prison that was later picked up by international media.
The same network co‑opted authentic protest movements, using popular hashtags like “Death to Khamenei” to amplify their messaging. Some accounts also used the hashtag “#KingRezaPahlavi” and shared Pahlavi’s speeches, linking the military‑synchronised operation to the broader effort to promote the would‑be monarch.
Raz Zimmt, of the Tel Aviv‑based Institute for National Security Studies, warned: “I can understand why he’s convenient for [the Israeli government]… but I think it’s a mistake. Ultimately, it reinforces Ayatollah Khamenei’s narrative that Israel and the U.S. want to turn Iran back into a monarchy and client state”.
This is not grassroots resistance. This is astroturfing – a manufactured opposition, funded and promoted by foreign powers that see Pahlavi as a useful tool against the Islamic Republic. And the Iranian people know it.
VI. The History That Cannot Be Erased: 1953 and the Long Shadow of Foreign Interference
To understand why so many Iranians are suspicious of Pahlavi, one must understand the history that produced his father’s regime. In August 1953, the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh, was overthrown in a coup orchestrated by the CIA and MI6.
Mosaddegh’s crime? He nationalised Iran’s oil industry, which had been controlled by the British‑owned Anglo‑Iranian Oil Company (AIOC). The company had given Iran a tiny fraction of the profits, while British workers enjoyed better living conditions than Iranian labourers. When Mosaddegh tried to renegotiate, the British refused. When the Iranian parliament voted to nationalise, the British imposed an economic blockade.
The coup that followed was brutal. Hundreds died. Mosaddegh was arrested and tried. The Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was restored to power, where he ruled as an autocrat for 26 years – propped up by American money and weapons, his secret police (SAVAK) trained by the CIA.
The 1953 coup is not ancient history. It lives in Iranian collective memory. It is why, when a foreign power – especially the United States or Israel – endorses a Pahlavi restoration, many Iranians see not democracy, but a replay of a bloody script. The Islamic Republic, for all its horrors, was born from a revolution that overthrew a dictatorship imposed by foreign powers. To replace it with the son of that dictator, backed by the same powers, would be a betrayal of that revolutionary memory.
VII. A Civilisation Older Than the Empires That Try to Own It
Iran is not a blank slate. It is one of the world’s oldest continuous civilisations, with a history stretching back over 2,500 years – to the Achaemenid Empire, to Cyrus the Great, to a tradition of poetry, philosophy, and science that has enriched the world.
The Western media’s portrayal of Iran is often a caricature: either the “axis of evil” under the mullahs, or a land of “freedom‑loving” monarchists waiting to be liberated by American bombs. Neither is true. Iran is complex. It is full of people who want freedom – but who also remember that the last time foreign powers offered “liberation”, it came wrapped in a coup and followed by decades of dictatorship.
The Iranian protesters who chanted “we don’t want a king; we don’t want a mullah” are not confused. They have seen the Islamic Republic’s brutality. They have also seen the Pahlavi regime’s brutality. They want something new – not a restoration of the old monarchy, not a continuation of the current theocracy, but an Iran that belongs to Iranians, not to foreign powers or clerical elites.
VIII. Conclusion: Who Really Speaks for Iran?
The answer is not Reza Pahlavi. He has not lived in Iran for nearly fifty years. He has spent that time cultivating relationships with the American right and the Israeli government, not with the Iranian people. His movement has threatened and killed critics. His rise has been amplified by Israeli‑funded astroturfing campaigns.
The Iranian people are not a prop for foreign wars. They are not a backdrop for a royal restoration. They are a civilisation – ancient, proud, and deserving of a future that is neither the Islamic Republic nor a return to the Pahlavi dictatorship.
When Western media lionise Pahlavi, they are not seeing Iran. They are seeing a reflection of their own geopolitical desires. And that reflection is not liberation. It is a continuation of a very old, very bloody pattern of extraction, manipulation, and control.
Iran belongs to Iranians. Not to the clerics. Not to the crown prince. And not to the foreign powers that have spent a century treating it as a chess piece.
Andrew Klein and Sera Klein
Australian Independent Media
12 May 2026
Sources and References
· CPAC 2026 speech: Reza Pahlavi addressed the Conservative Political Action Conference in Texas, urging the US to “stay the course” in Iran and presenting himself as a leader of a democratic transition. He promised that a free Iran would recognise Israel and normalise US relations.
· Bologna protest (~2,000 diaspora members): Iranian diaspora members gathered in Bologna, waving pre‑revolutionary Iranian, Israeli and American flags, calling for the overthrow of the Islamic Republic and the return of Reza Pahlavi.
· Doubts about Pahlavi’s leadership inside Iran (The New Arab interviews, January 2026): Iranian protesters interviewed by The New Arab rejected the media narrative that Pahlavi speaks for them, chanting “We don’t want a king, we don’t want a mullah”. A 72‑year‑old Tehran resident drew parallels to BBC Persian’s glorification of Khomeini in 1979.
· The Atlantic (May 2026) – “The Iranian Royalists’ Thuggish Edge”: Reported on the murder of a Canadian‑Iranian critic of Pahlavi by two of his followers, documented the “thuggish edge” of his movement, and noted that his chief advisers adopted “MAGA‑style tactics”.
· Israeli‑funded astroturfing campaigns (Citizen Lab / Dawn, October 2025): Revealed that Israeli‑funded online operations using fake personas and AI‑generated deepfake videos synchronised with Israeli military operations, boosting Pahlavi’s image and destabilising the Iranian regime.
· 1953 CIA‑MI6 coup against Mosaddegh: The Anglo‑American coup overthrew Iran’s democratically elected prime minister after he nationalised the oil industry, restoring the Shah’s dictatorship and setting the stage for the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
· Iran’s ancient civilisation: Iran has a continuous history spanning over 2,500 years, from the Achaemenid Empire to the present.
Trump is not a coherent strategist. He is a pragmatic nihilist – and that is why the war in Iran will drag on.
The Blockade is a Trap, Not a Strategy
Since 28 February, the US Navy has imposed a sweeping blockade on all ships to and from Iranian ports, while Iran has targeted vessels that do not pay transit fees to leave the Strait. Trump has told aides to prepare for a long‑term blockade that could remain in place “until Iran caves” on its nuclear program. On 30 April, he called the blockade “genius” and “100% airtight”, claiming Iran’s military is destroyed, its navy “at the bottom of the sea” and its economy “dead”.
The Problem with the “Maritime Freedom Construct”
On 28 April, the State Department approved a new proposal called the Maritime Freedom Construct (MFC) – a US‑led coalition to share intelligence, coordinate diplomatically and enforce sanctions, with a possible military component. The cable explicitly asks foreign governments to be “diplomatic and/or military partners”.
But NATO is a paper tiger in this context. Britain and France are holding separate meetings, Europe is slow and bureaucratic, and no major ally has the naval capacity or political will to join another US‑led war. The MFC will fail – and Trump knows it. He is not building a coalition. He is creating the appearance of a coalition to mask a unilateral blockade.
No Off‑Ramp, No Diplomatic Path
There are no realistic peace talks. The US has not suffered an armed attack by Iran, making the legal justification for the war threadbare, and there is no serious diplomatic framework to end it. Trump’s escalation in the Strait is not a means to an end. It is the entirety of his strategy. This war will not end anytime soon.
Australia’s Worst‑Case Scenario: Three More Months of Closure
If the Strait remains closed for another three months (May–July 2026), the consequences for Australia will move from painful to critical.
Fuel & Transport
Metric Current / Projected Impact
Diesel price Up 88% since Feb–Mar 2026
Petrol price Above A$2.50‑3.00 per litre in some areas
Brent crude ~US$115–120/barrel, up 59% in March alone
Fuel reserves Only ~30‑39 days of diesel/jet fuel/petrol – far below the IEA’s recommended 90‑day buffer
Government response Fuel excise halved for three months (26.3 cents/litre) costing $2.55 billion; road user charges suspended; strategic reserves being released
If the blockade continues beyond three months:
· Rationing will be triggered (National Fuel Security Plan Level 3 or 4)
· Trucking and logistics will face severe disruption; freight rates from Asia have already surged, adding weeks to delivery times, and the situation will worsen
· Bottling and packaging will be affected – milk containers, glass and aluminium cans all depend on energy‑intensive manufacturing
Medicine & Health
Metric Current Status
Medicine imports ~90% are imported
Current shortages ~400 medicines, 37 critical
Key affected drugs Paracetamol, ibuprofen, antibiotics, insulin, ADHD medications, hormone replacement therapies and many PBS‑listed drugs
Supply rerouting Pharmaceutical companies are shifting from sea to costly air freight; petroleum‑based ingredients (paracetamol, ibuprofen) are under severe pressure
The buffer PBS medicines have 4–6 months of stock on Australian soil – but that is only for subsidised drugs; private prescriptions have no such protection
If the blockade continues for three more months:
· Manufacturing delays will worsen; shortages will spread beyond the current 400 medicines
· Fuel shortages will disrupt domestic medicine transport between cities and pharmacies
· Prices for non‑PBS drugs will rise sharply; some private prescriptions may become unavailable
· The TGA’s current “no imminent concerns” assessment assumes the war does not escalate further. That assumption is increasingly fragile.
Agriculture & Food
Metric Current / Projected Impact
Urea price Up ~60‑100% (A$1,350–1,400/tonne), depending on source
Diesel price impact Up 88%, directly affecting planting and harvesting
Crop switching Farmers shifting from nitrogen‑hungry wheat and canola to feed barley; wheat planting projected to drop 10‑12%
Global context Strait of Hormuz carries 30% of global fertiliser trade; Bank of America warns the war threatens 65‑70% of global urea supplies
If the blockade continues:
· Food price inflation will accelerate significantly
· Reduced domestic wheat and canola harvests will flow through to higher prices for bread, cooking oil, pasta and animal feed
· Global competition for remaining crops will intensify, driving prices even higher
Economic & Inflation Outlook
Metric Current / Projected Impact
Headline inflation (Mar 2026) 4.6% – highest in 2.5 years, driven by fuel prices
Westpac projection (3‑month closure) Headline inflation peaking at 5.5% by mid‑2026
Government response Treasurer Jim Chalmers has warned the economic fallout could rival the GFC and the COVID‑19 pandemic
If the blockade continues for three more months, Australia will face a stagflationary shock – persistent inflation combined with slowing growth – driven by fuel, food and medicine costs.
Critical Outcomes for Australia (Summarised)
Category Current Pressure Three More Months of Closure
Fuel Petrol >$2.50/L, diesel 88% higher, 30‑39 day reserves Rationing, strategic reserves exhausted, price control measures likely
Transport & Logistics Freight rates surging, weeks‑long delays Severe disruption to supply chains; regional shortages
Medicine ~400 shortages, 37 critical; PBS buffer 4‑6 months Private prescription shortages; fuel shortages disrupt domestic distribution
Government $2.55B excise cut, strategic reserves released Rationing, price caps, potential recession
The Bottom Line
Trump’s blockade is not a strategic masterstroke – it is a policy of indefinite coercion. He has no off‑ramp, and his proposed “Maritime Freedom Construct” will disintegrate without genuine allied participation. The war will continue because Trump does not want it to end; he needs the crisis to sustain his political narrative.
Australia is not insulated. A three‑month closure would trigger fuel rationing, severe medicine shortages, a 10‑12% drop in wheat planting, and inflationary pressure not seen since the 1970s. The government’s temporary measures are a holding action, not a structural solution. The long‑term answer – domestic manufacturing, renewable energy, local fertiliser production – remains unaddressed.
To my wife ‘S’– who saw this coming, and who still chooses the garden over the empire.
The End Stage of an Ideology
Thirty years ago, politicians of both major parties promised that deregulation, privatisation and the “magic of the market” would make Australia prosperous, efficient and secure. They sold off public assets, closed oil refineries, dismantled manufacturing and tied our survival to a single faith: neoliberalism – an economic and political doctrine that pursues unrestricted private profit as its highest good.
Today, that faith is being put to the test. The Strait of Hormuz has been blockaded for two months. Global oil production is down by nearly 15 million barrels per day. Fuel prices have risen by 40% since the war began. Fertiliser prices have surged 31%, industrial metals are near record highs and the United Nations Development Programme warns that even if the war ended tomorrow, 32 million people across 160 countries would already have been pushed into poverty.
Australia is not insulated. It never was. The bipartisan worship of neoliberal theology has hollowed out the nation’s resilience, and now that theology is being weaponised abroad.
The War That Was Never About Nuclear Weapons
The US‑Israeli war on Iran, launched without congressional approval on 28 February 2026, was never about nuclear non‑proliferation. It was a war to control the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow channel through which approximately 20% of the world’s oil and gas exports must pass. Control the strait, control the global economy. And control the global economy, you can ration human life for profit.
The human cost is being treated as a line item. The UNDP estimates that just $6 billion in urgent subsidies would protect the most vulnerable from the worst of the energy and food shocks – a fraction of what the US spends on two weeks of this war. Instead of subsidies, Washington has chosen bombs. Instead of a liveable world, it has chosen a militarised marketplace.
The Austerity of Empire: Arms Spending as “Job Creation”
In April 2026, US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth appeared before Congress to defend a proposed $1.5 trillion defence budget for 2027 – a 50% increase over current spending. The budget boasts of creating 70,000 new Pentagon jobs.
What Hegseth did not mention was that the same war is simultaneously pushing millions into poverty. The administration celebrates arms‑industry employment while the UN warns of a global hunger crisis. This is the neoliberal model made brutally explicit: weaponise the economy, militarise the supply chain, and market the resulting devastation as ‘security’.
With US military spending already exceeding $1 trillion in 2026 and projected to reach $1.5 trillion, and global military spending having reached a record $2.887 trillion in 2025 – the 11th consecutive year of growth – the pattern is unmistakable. The world is not being made safer. It is being made more profitable for the arms industry.
Australia’s Fatal Self‑Deception
Australia is a minor player on the global stage – a resource economy at the end of very long supply lines. In the calculations of Washington, Canberra is a transactional convenience, not an ally whose survival would alter strategic outcomes. Yet Australian governments have spent decades acting as if the market would always protect us.
The results are now undeniable:
· Fuel: Australia imports approximately 80‑90% of its refined fuel, a situation created by the deliberate closure of domestic refineries over two decades.
· Vulnerability: The country has only 38 days of petrol reserves and 31 days of diesel reserves, far below the International Energy Agency’s recommended 90‑day safety line.
· Supply chain fragility: Asian refiners that usually supply Australia are themselves starved of Middle Eastern crude; their output is already being scaled back.
The geopolitical trauma in the Middle East has transformed into a supply shock in Australia. This was not an act of God. It was an act of policy – a bipartisan act of policy that for decades prioritised short‑term profit over long‑term resilience.
AUKUS: The Submarine That Arrives After the War
When the Strait of Hormuz closes, Australia does not need a nuclear submarine in 2032. It needs fuel, fertiliser and medicine today. Yet the government’s signature defence project – the $368 billion AUKUS submarine program – has been plagued by delays, funding shortfalls and construction setbacks so severe that a British parliamentary inquiry has warned the project may be “derailed”.
Critical construction contracts have been delayed despite an urgent need to fast‑track them. A UK probe warns that “cracks are already beginning to show” and that any failure on the British side could leave Australia without any sovereign long‑term submarine capability.
AUKUS is the perfect metaphor for neoliberal defence planning: an expensive, delayed, brittle monument to yesterday’s wars, purchased while tomorrow’s crises are already at the door.
Gaza as the New Colonial Template
If there were any doubt about the brutality of the extractive model, look to Gaza. After more than two years of genocidal war, the United Nations estimates that 92% of Gaza has been destroyed, with reconstruction costs estimated at $70 billion.
The neoliberal “solutions” being proposed are not about rebuilding Palestinian life – they are about re‑engineering it, turning reconstruction into a vehicle for dispossession and corporate profit. Meanwhile, the United States continues to enable the destruction while marketing it as “self‑defence”.
What we are witnessing is the colonial period reimagined for the 21st century. The difference is not in kind, but in speed and concealment.
The Hollowing Out of Australia
While the government pours billions into submarines that won’t arrive for a decade, the domestic foundations of society are being quietly demolished:
· NDIS: The National Disability Insurance Scheme – once a landmark of social decency – is facing sharp cuts to limit cost increases, with the Greens accusing Labor of wielding a “razor gang” against the disabled.
· Aged care: A crisis years in the making, met with piecemeal funding announcements that do not address the underlying structural collapse.
· Housing: Unaffordability has become a permanent feature of Australian life, with both major parties unwilling to confront the speculative forces driving it.
· Infrastructure: Roads, hospitals, schools, public housing – once the pride of post‑war Australia – are being sold off, neglected or allowed to crumble.
The bipartisan embrace of neoliberalism has systematically dismantled the country’s ability to care for its own people. When the global storm hits – as it is now – there is no cushion left. Only the thin veneer of a resource economy that has sold its future for quarterly returns.
Conclusions: The Inevitable Collision of Faith and Reality
The war on Iran is not an anomaly. It is the logical consequence of a global system that treats human life as a variable to be optimised and suffering as an acceptable cost of extraction.
Australia is not immune. It is a perfect victim: a quiet island that believes its distance is protection, while its leaders worship an economic theology that forbids resilience and celebrates fragility as “efficiency”.
Four realities must be faced:
1. The war will not end quickly. The Strait of Hormuz remains blockaded. Fuel and fertiliser prices will remain high. Thirty‑two million people are already in poverty – and that number will grow.
2. Australia will not be saved by AUKUS. Submarines do not deliver fuel, fertiliser or medicine. The country’s strategic priorities are catastrophically misaligned with its actual vulnerabilities.
3. Neoliberalism is not governance – it is extraction. It is a system that demands crisis, feeds on crisis and markets crisis as opportunity.
4. The colonial period never ended. It merely changed logos. Gaza is the model. The only question is where the next colony will be.
We do not have the luxury of waiting for a new politics. We must build it ourselves – in our gardens, in our communities, in the refusal to accept that human life is a variable to be optimised. The empire will not save us. Only we can save each other.
Andrew Klein publishes with The Patrician’s Watch and Australian Independent Media. Sources available on request.
From the ‘Villa in the Jungle’ to the ‘Greater Israel Nightmare’
By Andrew Klein
Dedicated to my wife ‘S’, who keeps my notes safe and accessible and is always prepared to advise me.
I. Introduction: The Doctrine of Perpetual War
On October 7, 2023, Israel suffered the worst terrorist attack in its history. Hamas militants crossed from Gaza, unimpeded, and killed and tortured Israeli civilians. That day alone should have disqualified Benjamin Netanyahu from office. In most political systems, he would have been driven from power long ago.
Instead, he did what he has always done: he escalated.
What emerged from the ashes of October 7 is what analysts now call the Netanyahu Doctrine — a security strategy based not on containment, not on deterrence, but on perpetual war. As Netanyahu himself told military officers: “No more containment of threats. No more the idea of the ‘villa in the jungle’, where one hides from predators beyond the wall. On the contrary: if you don’t go into the jungle, the jungle comes to you” .
The doctrine is simple: preventive attacks against every perceived threat, the creation of buffer zones through the seizure of neighbouring territories, and the constant use of force as the only guarantee of security. It is a doctrine born of trauma, shaped by political expediency, and devoid of any long-term diplomatic vision.
This article examines the Netanyahu Doctrine in action: in Gaza, in Lebanon, in Syria, and against Iran. It documents the destruction, the displacement, and the erosion of Israel’s international standing. It argues that Netanyahu is not a strategist — he is an opportunist. He does not plan for the long term. He plans for the next distraction.
And the world is always distracted.
II. The Greater Israel Dream: From the Nile to the Euphrates
The doctrine is not about security. It is about expansion. The buffer zone is not the goal. The settlements are the goal. The land clearance is not for defence. It is for colonisation.
The concept of Greater Israel — a territory stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates, encompassing all of modern-day Israel, the Palestinian territories, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and parts of Turkey — is not a fringe fantasy. It is the stated aspiration of the Netanyahu government.
In February 2026, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee sat with Tucker Carlson and was asked about the biblical promise of land “from the river of Egypt to the Euphrates.” His answer was chilling: “It would be fine if they took it all”. Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich responded publicly: “I ❤️ Huckabee” . In 2025, Netanyahu himself told a TV interviewer that he subscribes “fully” to the vision of Greater Israel, describing it as a “historic and spiritual mission”.
This is not a fringe position. It is the official policy of the Netanyahu government. And it is being executed.
III. Lebanon: The Pattern Repeats
The same pattern as Gaza. The same destruction. The same rubble.
On March 2, 2026, Israel launched an offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon. The stated goal was to create a “buffer zone” up to the Litani River, approximately 30 kilometres north of Israel’s border, to protect northern Israeli communities from Hezbollah rockets.
The reality is different. The buffer zone is not a buffer. It is a land grab. The territory up to the Litani is not needed for defence. It is needed for settlements.
Defence Minister Israel Katz has been explicit: “All houses in villages near the Lebanese border will be destroyed, in accordance with the model used in Rafah and Beit Hanoun in Gaza, in order to permanently remove the threats near the border” . Displaced residents will not be allowed to return south of the Litani “until the safety and security of residents of northern Israel is guaranteed” — a condition that may never be met .
The human cost in Lebanon (as of April 2026):
· 1,268 people killed in Israeli strikes, including 125 children and 52 medics
· 303 killed in a single day (April 8, 2026) — one of the deadliest bombings ever inflicted on Lebanon
· 1,200+ killed and 1.2 million displaced since March 2
· 1,094 confirmed martyrs and 3,119 injured according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health
The air force can project power anywhere. The ground troops are not needed for security. They are needed for clearance.
IV. Conflicting Views: Military vs. Political Leadership
The Israeli military and political leadership are not aligned. The military leaders want a buffer zone. The political leaders want settlements.
In early April 2026, the Israeli army proposed a revised set of objectives for its operations in Lebanon, limiting the goal of disarming Hezbollah to areas south of the Litani River, rather than across the entire country. The proposal triggered sharp disagreements with Israel’s political leadership, leading to the postponement of a cabinet meeting.
Foreign Minister Israel Katz was among those who opposed the plan. Under the alternative military approach, the army would focus on the large-scale destruction of villages in South Lebanon and the forced displacement of their citizens to establish a buffer zone.
The gap is not a failure of communication. It is a feature. The ambiguity provides cover. The confusion provides deniability.
The military leaders can say: “We were only establishing a buffer zone.”
The political leaders can say: “The military recommended it.”
And the settlers move in.
V. The Economic Cost: Israel Cannot Afford This War
The Netanyahu Doctrine is not sustainable. The economic numbers are stark.
The cost to Israel:
· The defence budget has ballooned. The army needs approximately 15,000 more soldiers, half of them for ground combat units. Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir warned the government: “I am raising 10 red flags. If this continues, the Israeli army will collapse from within”.
· The ultra-Orthodox community, which relies heavily on state benefits, is expected to triple by 2065, pushing the burden on non-Orthodox households to the equivalent of 60,000 shekels ($19,370) a year.
· Foreign investment is down. Institutional investors have been moving money out of the country since the 2008 financial crisis.
· More than 150,000 people have left Israel in the past two years, and more than 200,000 since the current government took office in December 2022. The educated upper class are more able to leave — they speak English, can find jobs, and are more exposed to international media.
The cost to Lebanon:
· The Lebanese economy, already in freefall, is being shattered. The destruction of infrastructure, the displacement of 1.2 million people, and the loss of agricultural land in the south will take decades to repair.
· Sectarian tensions are rising. Non-Shi’a Lebanese are increasingly ostracising the Shi’a community, viewing them as a liability that brings Israeli bombs. The country’s fragile social fabric is tearing apart.
The Netanyahu Doctrine is not about security. It is about expansion. And expansion costs money that Israel does not have.
VI. The Sabra and Shatila Precedent
This is not the first time Israel has invaded Lebanon. It is not the first time the world has been distracted. And it is not the first time the consequences have been catastrophic.
In 1982, Israeli forces invaded Lebanon and besieged Beirut. On 16 September, under Israeli supervision and protection, Lebanese Forces militias entered the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. For 43 hours, they tortured and killed everyone they came across. They crushed the heads of children and babies against walls. They raped women and girls before slaughtering them. They dismembered their victims .
An estimated 3,500 to 4,500 Palestinian and Lebanese civilians were killed.
The Israeli government did not deny that it had overseen the camps. It denied knowledge of the massacre, despite order number 6 of the Israel Defense Forces command stating that “the refugee camps are not to be entered” and that “searching and mopping up the camps will be done by the Phalangists/Lebanese Army” .
The Kahan Commission found Israeli Defence Minister Ariel Sharon “personally responsible for ignoring the danger of bloodshed and revenge.” He was forced to resign .
The world was shocked. The world moved on. And Israel invaded Lebanon again.
The Netanyahu Doctrine is not new. It is the same doctrine, dressed in new clothes, enabled by a distracted world, and executed with unprecedented brutality.
VII. The UN Warning: ‘The Gaza Model Must Not Be Replicated’
The international community is not silent. But its warnings are being ignored.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has issued a warning cry, stressing that the model of destruction witnessed in the Gaza Strip must not be repeated in Lebanese territories. He described the humanitarian repercussions as severe and requiring immediate intervention to prevent a slide towards a comprehensive catastrophe.
Stanford Law Professor Tom Dannenbaum warned that destroying all homes near the Lebanese border would not meet the standard of “absolute military necessity” required by the laws of war. “The unnecessary destruction of property can qualify as a war crime,” he said. Katz’s comments barring residents from returning home “strongly indicate an illegal policy of long-term or permanent displacement”.
European countries have called on Israel to avoid further escalation. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said Israel’s occupation of Lebanese territory was a “violation of their territorial sovereignty” and condemned it.
The world is not silent. But the world is distracted.
VIII. The Netanyahu Doctrine: A Record of Failure
Jonathan Freedland, writing in The Guardian, sums up the Netanyahu record:
“This is now the fourth time in a row – in Gaza, once in Lebanon and twice in Iran – that Netanyahu’s boasts of total victory and the removal of existential threats have been exposed as empty promises” .
The failures are clear:
· Gaza: Netanyahu promised “total victory” over Hamas. After a two-year campaign that killed approximately 70,000 people, Hamas still rules the ruins of half of Gaza.
· Lebanon (first round): Netanyahu boasted that he had “vanquished” Hezbollah, destroying its ability to menace northern Israel. Hezbollah continues to fire rockets.
· Iran (first round, June 2025): Netanyahu described the 12-day confrontation with Iran as a “historic victory that will stand for generations.” Eight months later, Tehran was once again said to pose an existential threat.
· Iran (second round, February-April 2026): Iran still has a stockpile of enriched uranium. Its rulers remain in place, more hardline than before. Tehran has demonstrated a mighty deterrent — a chokehold on the global economy in the form of the Strait of Hormuz.
As Yair Golan, the Israeli opposition politician and former general, observed: Netanyahu “does not know how to turn military achievements into political security.” There is no attempt to seize diplomatic openings, no effort to turn Israel’s enemies’ enemies into friends.
The Lebanese government and much of its people are desperate to be rid of the Hezbollah cuckoo in their nest. But Netanyahu speaks to them only through bombs.
IX. The Strait of Hormuz Distraction
The timing of the Lebanon escalation is not accidental. The world is focused on Trump and Iran. The media is focused on oil prices. The public is focused on the cost.
On February 28, 2026, the US and Israel launched joint military strikes against Iran. The war has spread across the Middle East. The Strait of Hormuz is effectively blockaded. Oil prices have spiked. Inflation is rising. The global economy is bleeding .
Netanyahu is taking advantage. He always does.
The Iranian threat is not existential. It is useful. The fear is the tool. The distraction is the opportunity.
Netanyahu has been playing this game for decades. He is very good at it.
X. What This Means: The Erosion of Israel’s Standing
The Netanyahu Doctrine has gained nothing. And it has come at a monstrously high price.
Most obviously, in the lives of all those killed — whether in Rafah or the Bekaa Valley or Israel itself. But it has also inflicted perhaps irreparable damage on Israel’s standing in the world. Every day Netanyahu remains in post; he makes his country more of a pariah .
The Knesset has passed a racist law that will, in effect, impose the death penalty on Palestinians convicted of terrorist murderers — but not Jews. The bill was driven by Itamar Ben-Gvir, but Netanyahu went out of his way to vote for it.
Israel is not being destroyed by its enemies. It is being destroyed by its own internal contradictions. The addiction to war, the messianic ideology, the economic unsustainability, the exodus of the educated — these are not external threats. They are internal cancers.
The collapse will not be dramatic. It will be bureaucratic. The economy will contract. The allies will defect. The public will turn. The reservists will refuse. The militias will fight each other.
The Strait of Hormuz crisis will pass. The oil prices will stabilise. The media will move on.
But the land in Lebanon will not return. The settlements will not be dismantled. The buffer zone will become permanent.
The Netanyahu Doctrine is not about security. It is about expansion. The existential threat is not a threat. It is an excuse.
And the world is too distracted to notice.
XI. A Final Word
The Netanyahu Doctrine is a death spiral — for Israel, for Lebanon, for the region. It is a doctrine of perpetual war, sustained by distraction, enabled by silence, and paid for with the bodies of the innocent.
The question is not whether Israel will collapse. The question is how many more must die before the world stops looking away.
Andrew Klein
April 13, 2026
Sources
· Adnkronos English, “Financial Times, ‘one battle after another’ the new Netanyahu doctrine,” April 1, 2026
· Diari ARA, “Netanyahu accelerates the construction of Greater Israel,” April 11, 2026
· Yerepouni Daily News, “Israel to destroy all houses in Lebanese villages near border, defense minister says,” April 1, 2026
· LBCI Lebanon, “Internal debate over war objectives: Israeli army revises Lebanon strategy,” April 3, 2026
· The Guardian, “Netanyahu-ism has achieved nothing for Israelis – and come at a monstrously high price,” April 10, 2026
· Institute for Palestine Studies, “Sabra and Shatila, 1982”
· UnHerd, “Future of Iran war hinges on Lebanon,” April 11, 2026
· Al-Quds, “Guterres warns of ‘Gaza model’ in Lebanon, Netanyahu announces expansion of buffer zone,” March 26, 2026
· Vijesti.me, “One battle after another: Netanyahu’s new security doctrine,” April 6, 2026
· PressTV, “US envoy says it would be ‘fine’ if Israel expands across West Asia,” February 21, 2026
A Comparative History from Ancient Civilisation to the 2026 War
By Andrew Klein
Dedicated to the people of Iran — who have been invaded, occupied, and exploited for centuries, and who are still standing.
I. Introduction: The Land That Would Not Break
Iran is one of the world’s oldest continuous major civilisations, with historical and urban settlements dating back to 4000 BC. The Medes unified Iran as a nation and empire in 625 BC. The Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BC) became the largest contiguous land empire the world had yet seen, administering most of the known world under a model of tolerance and respect for other cultures and religions.
The West has never understood Iran. Not then. Not now.
While Europe stumbled through the Dark Ages, Iran was a beacon of civilisation. While the Crusaders slaughtered their way to Jerusalem, Iran was refining philosophy, medicine, and mathematics. While the industrial revolution was still a distant dream in England, Iran was already ancient.
And today, as the United States and Israel launch their most intensive military campaign against Iran in decades, the same mistake is being repeated: the West has underestimated Iran.
This article traces that history — from the birth of the Persian Empire to the 2026 war — and argues that Iran’s capacity to endure, adapt, and resist is not a mystery. It is the product of millennia of survival.
II. Ancient Iran: The First Superpower
The Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BC)
Under Cyrus the Great, the Persian Empire became the world’s first true superpower. At its height, it stretched from the Indus Valley to the Balkans, from the Caucasus to Egypt. But its greatness was not measured in territory alone.
The Achaemenids pioneered administrative efficiency. They created the Royal Road, a highway stretching from Susa to Sardis with posting stations at regular intervals. They introduced coinage — the daric (gold) and shekel (silver) — standardising trade across a vast territory. They developed the first declaration of human rights, inscribed on the Cyrus Cylinder .
Most remarkably, they governed with tolerance. Unlike the empires that followed — Alexander’s conquests, the Roman legions, the Mongol hordes — the Persians did not impose their culture by force. They respected local religions, customs, and administrative structures. This was not idealism. It was pragmatism. An empire of that size could not be ruled by fear alone.
The Parthian and Sasanian Eras
After Alexander’s conquest and the brief Hellenistic interlude, Iran reasserted itself. The Parthian Empire (247 BC – 224 AD) was the longest-lived of all Iranian dynasties, proving a serious foe to the emergent Roman Empire. At the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BC, a smaller Parthian force of horse archers decisively defeated the Roman commander Crassus, killing two-thirds of his legions and capturing several Roman eagles.
The Sasanian Empire (224–651 AD) continued this tradition, centralising administration and promoting Zoroastrianism as an official creed. Sasanian kings, most notably Khusrau I, came to symbolise all that was good about pre-Islamic Iran — justice, learning, and military prowess.
III. The Islamic Era: Absorption Without Erasure
The Arab conquest of the 7th century was a turning point. The Sasanian Empire fell not in a single battle, but after a string of crushing defeats. At Al-Qādisiyyah (636/637) and Nahāvand (642), the Muslim Arabs defeated the Sasanian armies. Yazdegerd III, the last Zoroastrian sovereign, fled east and was murdered by a miller for his purse.
But the end of the Sasanians was not the end of Iran. It was a new beginning.
Iran was too large, too sophisticated, and too proud to be fully digested by the Caliphate. Iranian ideas about the nature of “just” government and culture began to shape the Caliphate itself. The Abbasid Caliphate moved its capital from Damascus to Baghdad, not far from the old Sasanian capital, and Iranian influence became dominant. The Barmakids, the most powerful vizierial family of the Abbasid age, were of Iranian origin. Ibn Sina (Avicenna), the polymath whose works dominated Islamic and European medicine for centuries, was Iranian.
The Persian language was reborn. Adopting the Arabic alphabet, “New Persian” became the lingua franca of the eastern Islamic world and, in time, one of the great literary languages of the world.
The Mongol conquests of the 13th century devastated the region. Genghis Khan and his descendants stormed through Iran’s heartland; towns vanished, cities became cemeteries, entire populations were wiped out. Yet even this carnage gave way to adaptation. The Mongols eventually embraced Islam and absorbed the Persian way of life — testimony to Iran’s cultural gravity, even in defeat.
IV. The Safavid Revival and Shi’i Identity
In 1501, the Safavid dynasty reunified Iran as an independent state for the first time in centuries. They did something transformative: they imposed Twelver Shiism as the state religion.
This was a defining moment. Shiism distinguished Iran from its Sunni Ottoman rival to the west. It provided a distinct religious identity that would become central to Iranian nationalism. It also introduced a unique political dynamic — the tension between the Shah (political authority) and the religious scholars (ulama) who claimed authority in the absence of the Hidden Imam.
Under Shah Abbas I (1587–1629) — the only Safavid king known as “the Great” — Iran flourished. European merchants established commercial and political ties. Iranian civilisation reached new heights. And the pattern that would define modern Iran — a proud, independent state with a distinct religious identity — was set.
V. The 19th Century: The Shock of the West
It is to Iran’s misfortune that the period of Europe’s most dramatic growth coincided with a period of political turmoil within Iran itself. The Safavid dynasty fell in 1722, leading to decades of warfare. Nader Shah (1736–47) briefly reunited Iran and, in a little-known footnote, invaded and defeated the Mughal Empire in 1739 — an act that paradoxically opened India to European penetration.
By the time Iran emerged from turmoil at the end of the 18th century, it faced a new challenge: the Russian and British empires. These were not just political threats but ideological ones. Europeans regarded Iran’s political economy as archaic, dependent on the “despotic power” of its kings. They brought new ideas about the state, the rule of law, and constitutionalism — ideas that gained traction among Iranian intellectuals who saw adoption of these forms as the only path to salvation.
Comparative Snapshot: Iran vs. America during the Civil War (1861–65)
While the United States was tearing itself apart over slavery, Iran was navigating its own challenges under the Qajar dynasty. A comparison is instructive:
Measure Iran (c. 1860s) USA (c. 1860s)
Iran – Education Traditional maktab (religious) schools; some missionary schools; elite Persian literature and scholarship. USA – Expanding public education; land-grant colleges (Morrill Act, 1862); emerging mass literacy.
Iran – Medicine Traditional Persian medicine (Unani); European medicine entering via missionaries and diplomats.USA – Chloroform and ether widely used in Civil War surgery; organised ambulance corps; emerging nursing profession (Clara Barton).
Economy Agrarian; Iran – limited industrialisation; dominated by British trade and concessions. USA– Rapid industrialisation; transcontinental railroad (1869); mass production of weapons, uniforms, and supplies.
Society Stratified Iran– (court, ulama, merchants, peasants, tribes); some constitutionalist stirrings (later 1906 Revolution). USA- Divided by slavery; industrial labour movement emerging; women’s suffrage movement begins.
Which population was better off? The answer is not simple. America had more industry, more modern medicine, and a growing middle class — but at the cost of a catastrophic civil war that killed over 600,000 people. Iran had less industry, less modern medicine, and a weaker state — but also fewer battlefields on its soil. The Iranian general population did not experience the industrialised slaughter that defined the American Civil War.
What is clear is that both nations faced the challenge of modernisation — and both would pay a heavy price for it in the 20th century.
VI. The Discovery of Oil and the Struggle for Sovereignty
In 1901, William Knox D’Arcy, a British investor backed by the British government, reached a sixty-year agreement with Mozzafar al-Din Shah to exploit Iran’s potential oil resources. Six years later, in 1907, oil was discovered in Masjedsoleyman — the first oil discovery in the Middle East. Within two years, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) was established, with the British government as its principal shareholder.
The discovery of oil transformed Iran’s strategic importance — and sealed its fate as a pawn of empire.
The British government purchased a controlling share of APOC in 1914, just before World War I, to secure fuel for the Royal Navy . Iran, the owner of the oil, received a fraction of the revenue. The pattern was set : resource extraction without national benefit.
Reza Shah, who rose to power with British support, cancelled the 1901 concession in 1932 — but the 1933 agreement that replaced it was not much in Iran’s favour. It extended the concession for another sixty years. An amount of pounds sterling was deposited into Reza Shah’s personal account at Lloyd’s Bank in London, while Iran’s official share was spent by the Shah and his inner circle as they wished.
During World War II, British and Soviet troops invaded Iran in 1941, toppled Reza Shah, and occupied the country until 1946. The young Mohammad Reza Shah was installed as a compliant monarch. Iran’s sovereignty was a fiction.
VII. The Nationalisation Movement and the 1953 Coup
The movement to nationalise Iran’s oil industry was a reaction to decades of foreign exploitation. It was led by Mohammad Mosaddegh, a lawmaker who became prime minister in 1951, and supported by Ayatollah Abol-Ghasem Kashani, a senior cleric leading a powerful popular movement against foreign interference.
On March 15, 1951, Iran’s parliament approved legislation to nationalise the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Mosaddegh was introduced as prime minister under immense parliamentary pressure.
The young Shah, along with the UK and the US, could not tolerate a democratically elected prime minister nationalising Western assets. In 1953, the CIA and MI6 orchestrated a coup d’état that overthrew Mosaddegh.
The coup was a turning point. It destroyed Iranian democracy. It restored the Shah’s autocratic control. It returned Iran’s oil to a consortium of Western companies. And it planted the seeds of the 1979 revolution.
VIII. The 1979 Revolution and the Hostage Crisis
In 1979, the Shah was overthrown in a sweeping revolution that shook the global order. Out went the monarchy. In came Ayatollah Khomeini and a wave of Islamic fervour that promised to cut ties with Western influence once and for all.
For many Iranians, this was supposed to be the end of foreign interference. The dawn of peace. But within months, the US Embassy was stormed, American diplomats were taken hostage, and Iran entered a new era of confrontation with the West.
The hostage crisis (1979–81) cemented the image of Iran as a “rogue state” in the American imagination. But from the Iranian perspective, the crisis was a response to decades of Western exploitation, the 1953 coup, and American support for the Shah’s brutal regime.
IX. The Iran–Iraq War (1980–88): The “Imposed War”
Iran has little experience of war in modern times. In fact, Iranian history over the past century and a half had been free of war, until the 1980–88 conflict with Iraq, which Iranians call the “imposed war”.
Saddam Hussein, with financial and military support from the Gulf states and the West, invaded Iran in 1980. The war lasted eight years. An estimated 500,000 Iranians were killed. Chemical weapons were used against Iranian soldiers and civilians. The war ended in stalemate, with no territorial changes.
The Iran–Iraq War was Iran’s crucible. It forged the Islamic Republic’s military doctrine: self-reliance, asymmetric warfare, and the willingness to absorb massive casualties without breaking. It also created the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) as a parallel military force, loyal to the regime rather than the nation.
Crucially, Iran emerged from the war with a defensive mentality. As scholar Shahram Chubin notes, “by orthodox standards Iran is militarily weak, and cautious, defensive and prudent in resorting to force. This is due as much to experience as to realism about its own limits. The country does not see itself as a military power or aspire to become one” .
X. The Nuclear File and the Sanctions Era
Following the Iran–Iraq War, Iran pursued a nuclear program — officially for civilian energy but suspected by the West of weapons ambitions. The program became a focal point of international tension.
Under the Obama administration, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — the “Iran nuclear deal” — was signed in 2015. Iran agreed to strict limits on its enrichment program in exchange for sanctions relief. International inspectors verified Iranian compliance.
In 2018, President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the JCPOA, calling it the “worst deal ever.” Sanctions were reimposed. Iran responded by gradually exceeding the deal’s limits, enriching uranium to 60 percent — just short of weapons grade.
By the mid-2020s, intelligence assessments indicated that Iran could produce weapons-grade uranium within days. Israeli leaders viewed this as an existential threat. The United States, after years of failed negotiations, concluded that preventive military action carried less risk than allowing the existing trajectory to continue.
XI. The 2026 War: Misreading Iran’s Strength
On February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel launched coordinated military strikes against Iran . The operation, designated “Epic Fury” and “Roaring Lion,” was intended not to produce immediate regime collapse but to create sustained leverage that would constrain Iran’s options after major combat operations.
But the West has made a fundamental miscalculation.
“Both Israel and the US seriously underestimated Iran,” says Professor Richard Jackson of the University of Otago. “They’ve spent the last 30 or 40 years watching the US in Afghanistan, in Iraq, watching Israel in south Lebanon and in Gaza, and trying to work out, well, what would we do if they attacked us?”.
“They’ve got a plan. They’re not stupid, and they’ve got the weaponry, and they’ve got a strategic kind of goal, which is to make the international economy hurt so much from the response that this will prove to be a deterrent in the future as well”.
Iran’s strategy is not to defeat the US military — that is impossible. It is to outlast it. To close the Strait of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of the world’s oil passes. To drive up global energy prices. To make the war so costly for Western economies that public opinion turns against the conflict.
The US and Israeli justifications for the war have differed. Trump claimed the objective was “to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime,” including Iran’s nuclear programme. But as Jackson notes, most people can see that “Iran was nowhere near developing nuclear weapons”.
“And even if they did, it would purely be for deterrence because they know, as the rest of the world knows, that if you have nuclear weapons like North Korea, that you are not gonna get invaded, and they just don’t want to get invaded.”
“They’re attacking me because I haven’t got nuclear weapons. That’s what happened to Iraq. That’s what happened to Afghanistan. That’s what’s happening to Iran right now”.
XII. Iran’s Military Capacity: A Strategic Reassessment
The Small Wars Journal analysis of the 2026 war identifies five possible outcomes, ranging from regime collapse to negotiated compliance to a North Korea-style unrestricted rebuilding.
The campaign has produced substantial military degradation. Strikes against nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz, Isfahan, and Karaj have damaged key elements of the program. Ballistic missile and drone forces have been heavily targeted. Air defences, air bases, and command networks have been degraded. Naval forces have been damaged.
But the Islamic Republic remains in power. Security forces did not fragment. Internal control has been maintained. Succession mechanisms functioned despite leadership losses, including the killing of Basij commander Gholamreza Soleimani and top security official Ali Larijani on March 17.
The conditions required for internal collapse have not appeared. No large-scale internal uprising has occurred. Political change would likely require divisions within the security apparatus, and those divisions have not appeared.
Iran is not Afghanistan. It is not Iraq. It is a nation with thousands of years of continuous civilisation, a proud national identity, and a population that has been invaded, occupied, and exploited for centuries. The West keeps forgetting this. Iran keeps remembering.
XIII. Comparative Analysis: Iran vs. the West
Period Iran Europe / America
Ancient Era Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BC) — world’s first superpower, model of tolerance and administration Classical Greece, Roman Republic — smaller-scale polities
Islamic Golden Age Abbasid Caliphate centred in Baghdad; Iranian scholars (Avicenna, al-Biruni, al-Razi) lead world in medicine, astronomy, mathematics
European Dark Ages; f feudal fragmentation; limited literacy
Mongol Conquests Devastated (1219–1260), but Persian culture absorbed the conquerors Crusader states in Levant; Europe largely spared
Renaissance/Early Modern Safavid Empire (1501–1736) — flourishing of art, architecture, trade; Shi’i identity cemented European Renaissance (14th–17th c.); Age of Discovery; Reformation
Industrial Revolution Qajar decline: economic penetration by Britain and Russia Britain leads industrialisation (1760–1840); Europe and US follow
World Wars Era Occupied by Britain and USSR (1941–46); weak central government Mass mobilisation; total war; industrialised slaughter
Post-WWII 1953 CIA-MI6 coup; Shah’s authoritarian modernisation; 1979 Revolution; Iran–Iraq War (1980–88) Cold War; US global hegemony; decolonisation
Contemporary Sanctions (2010–present); 2026 war with US and Israel War on Terror; 2026 Iran war
XIV. What the West Does Not Understand
The West’s model of wealth extraction is fundamentally different from Iran’s. In the Western model — neoliberalism, capitalism, the “free market” — wealth flows upward. It concentrates in the hands of the few who have no skin in the game and nothing to lose. When the crisis comes, they are protected. The rest of society pays the price.
In Iran, despite its flaws — and they are many — the state has historically invested in national resilience. Education, healthcare, infrastructure. The Iranian population is not as wealthy as the West. But it is healthier and more educated than its GDP would suggest. The literacy rate is over 85 percent. Women attend university in large numbers. Basic healthcare is available even in rural areas.
This is not charity. It is strategy. A population that is educated, healthy, and invested in the nation’s survival is a population that will resist. And Iran has been resisting for thousands of years.
XV. The Misreading of Iranian History
Western analysts tend to view Iran through the lens of its revolutionary rhetoric — the “Death to America” chants, the hostage crisis, the nuclear brinkmanship. They see a regime that is irrational, ideological, and isolated.
But this is a misreading. Iran’s behaviour is rational given its strategic position. It is surrounded by US military bases, hostile neighbours (Israel, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states), and a global superpower that has repeatedly intervened against it. Its nuclear program is a deterrent, not an offensive weapon. Its support for proxies (Hezbollah, Hamas, Iraqi militias, the Houthis) is a force multiplier, allowing it to project power without direct state conflict.
The 2026 war may prove to be a catastrophic miscalculation. As Jackson warns: “In some ways, this has had the opposite effect, and in the years after this, Iran may accelerate its nuclear programme unless we can get back to the agreement that was there before Trump got rid of it”.
XVI. Conclusion: The Millennial Nation
Iran is not a fragile state. It is not on the verge of collapse. It is a millennial nation — one of the oldest continuous civilisations on earth. It has been invaded, occupied, and exploited by Greeks, Arabs, Turks, Mongols, Russians, and Britons. It has been subjected to sanctions, assassinations, and now war.
And it is still standing.
The West has underestimated Iran at every turn. In the 19th century, European powers assumed Iran would be easy prey for colonial exploitation — and for a time, they were right. But they also planted the seeds of Iranian nationalism, constitutionalism, and ultimately revolution.
In the 20th century, the CIA assumed that overthrowing Mosaddegh would secure Iran as a compliant client state. For 25 years, it worked. Then it didn’t. The 1979 revolution was a direct consequence of Western overreach.
In the 21st century, the United States assumed that maximum pressure — sanctions, assassinations, and now war — would force Iran to capitulate. It has not. Iran has adapted. It has deepened ties with Russia and China. It has developed indigenous military capabilities. It has closed the Strait of Hormuz and raised global oil prices, making the war costly for Western economies.
The war is not over. The outcome is not certain. But one thing is clear: Iran will not break. It has been invaded before. It has been bombed before. It has been sanctioned before. And it has always — always — reasserted its identity.
The West would do well to remember that.
Andrew Klein
April 5, 2026
Sources:
· User:John K/History of Iran, Wikipedia
· Tehran Times, “A look at the history of Iran’s efforts for the nationalization of its oil” (March 17, 2025)
· Zee News, “Iran’s Blood-Soaked Journey Through Centuries of War” (June 25, 2025)
· NZ Herald, “‘They’ve got a plan’: Expert says US, Israel misread Iran’s strength” (March 30, 2026)
· HistoryExtra, “A brief history of Iran” (January 8, 2020)
· Persian Petroleum, Leonardo Davoudi (Bloomsbury, 2020)
· Chubin, Shahram, “Iran’s Military Weakness” (Rising Powers Initiative)
· Small Wars Journal, “Iran in the Box: The Coercive Architecture of the 2026 Iran War” (March 30, 2026)
Why the era of expensive weapons is ending — and why AUKUS, Israel, and the old order cannot survive the math
By Andrew Klein
2nd April 2026
Dedicated to my wife ‘S’, who has faith in a brighter future — and in me.
I. The Longbow and the Drone
In 1415, at Agincourt, French knights rode into battle encased in steel. Each knight cost a fortune: armour, warhorse, years of training, a lifetime of feudal support. They were the most advanced weapon system of their age. They were invincible — until they met the English longbow.
The longbow cost pennies. It could be made by any carpenter. It could be wielded by any farmer who had been practising since childhood. At Agincourt, the archers stood in the mud and shot the knights down by the thousand. The expensive weapon lost to the cheap one. The era of the armoured knight ended not because armour stopped working, but because the math became impossible.
We are watching the same turning point today.
Iran is playing Agincourt. Its drones cost a fraction of what Israel’s interceptors cost. Its missiles are cheaper, simpler, easier to replace. Israel’s Arrow system — each interceptor costs millions of dollars. Iran’s Shahed drones cost as little as $20,000. The math is not sustainable. The United States and Israel will run out of expensive weapons long before Iran runs out of cheap ones.
This is not a prediction. It is arithmetic.
II. The Cost of the War
The war that began on February 28, 2026, has already shattered economic assumptions that underpinned Western military doctrine for decades.
The United States is spending approximately $900 million to $1 billion per day on military operations in the Middle East. Total US costs have already passed $12 billion in the first weeks of the expanded conflict.
Israel is spending roughly $320 million per day. Its total war budget stands at $12.5 billion, and it is already preparing to request more.
Iran is spending a fraction of that. Its ballistic missiles cost an estimated $100,000–$500,000 each. Its drones cost $20,000–$200,000. Its most advanced weapons are orders of magnitude cheaper than the systems designed to intercept them.
According to the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), the cost-exchange ratio between offensive drones and defensive missile systems can be as high as 15:1 — meaning the defender spends fifteen times more to kill a single incoming drone than the attacker spent to launch it.
This is not a war of attrition measured in bodies. It is a war of attrition measured in dollars. And the side with the cheaper weapons is winning the economic battle.
III. The Arrow System’s Impossible Math
Israel’s Arrow 2 and Arrow 3 systems are among the most sophisticated air defence weapons in the world. Each Arrow 3 interceptor costs an estimated $3 million. Each Arrow 2 costs approximately $2.5 million.
Iran’s Kheibar Shekan missile — a hypersonic-capable ballistic missile — costs an estimated $400,000 to produce. Its Shahed drones cost as little as $20,000.
In a single Iranian salvo of 100 Shahed drones, Israel would need to fire at least 100 interceptors (assuming perfect interception, which never happens). The cost to Israel: $250 million. The cost to Iran: $2 million.
That ratio — 125:1 — is not sustainable. Israel’s interceptor stockpiles are not infinite. According to RUSI, Arrow 2 and Arrow 3 interceptors are projected to be depleted by the end of May 2026 at current usage rates.
The United States has fired over 500 Tomahawk missiles in the conflict. At current production rates, it would take five years to replace them. US THAAD interceptor supplies are down to about 10 days of inventory.
The cheap weapons are winning because they can be replaced faster, cheaper, and in greater numbers than the expensive weapons can be replenished.
IV. The Ecocide Factor
Even if the air war continues, it will not end the war. History is clear: bombing does not break civilian will. The Blitz did not break London. The bombing of Hamburg and Dresden did not break Germany. Operation Rolling Thunder did not break Hanoi. The bombing of Tehran will not break Iran.
What it will do is poison the region for generations.
On March 7, 2026, Israeli forces bombed fuel storage facilities in Tehran. The next day, black rain fell on the city of 10 million. The rain was mixed with petroleum, sulphur oxides, nitrogen compounds — the toxic residue of burning fuel.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi called it ecocide. The UN Human Rights Office echoed him. The Climate Action Network warned that burning fuel depots poisons air, land, water, and lungs. The effects will linger long after the bombing stops.
Smoke from the Tehran fires has drifted as far as Afghanistan and Russia. Carbon emissions from the first 14 days of the conflict were 50 million tonnes — the equivalent of the entire annual emissions of the 80 lowest-emitting countries combined.
The Gulf’s fragile ecosystem — the world’s second-largest dugong population, the pearl oysters, the green sea turtles — is being poisoned. The fisheries that sustain coastal communities are dying. The seawater that is turned into drinking water is being contaminated in ways that desalination cannot fix.
The air war will not end the war. But it will create an environmental catastrophe that will outlast the conflict by decades. And the small gods do not care.
V. The AUKUS Absurdity
In the middle of this war — a war that has demonstrated the vulnerability of expensive, high-tech weapons to cheap, asymmetric threats — the Australian government is proceeding with the AUKUS nuclear submarine program.
The submarines are estimated to cost $368 billion over their lifetime. They will not enter service until the 2040s. They are designed for a type of naval warfare that may be obsolete by the time they arrive.
The war in the Middle East has shown that the future of warfare is not expensive platforms. It is cheap drones. It is asymmetric attacks. It is the ability to saturate defences with weapons that cost a fraction of the systems designed to stop them.
AUKUS is a 20th-century solution to a 21st-century problem. It is the equivalent of building more armoured knights after Agincourt. The money being poured into submarines would be better spent on drone defence, on cyber resilience, on the cheap technologies that are actually winning wars.
The government has not learned the lesson. The industrialists who profit from AUKUS do not want to learn it. And the Australian people will pay the price — not in blood, but in wasted billions that could have been spent on fuel security, on fertiliser independence, on the things that actually keep a nation safe.
VI. Israel’s Desperate Race
Israel knows that the window is closing. Trump is transactional. He will not support a forever war. The American public is turning against the conflict. The costs are mounting. The cheap weapons are working.
That is why Israel is escalating. That is why the death penalty law was passed. That is why the bombing of Tehran’s fuel depots happened. That is why the plan to occupy southern Lebanon up to the Litani River has been announced. Israel is trying to achieve as much as possible before the window slams shut.
The danger is not just that Israel will succeed in devastating Iran. The danger is that Israel will become uncontrollable. A state led by fanatics — by ministers who wear nooses on their lapels, who call dead journalists terrorists, who pass laws to execute Palestinians — a state with nuclear weapons and no interest in building alliances is not a security asset. It is a liability.
Can the region afford a forever-hostile Israel? No. Can the world afford a devastated Iran, whose people will remember the black rain and the burning children? No.
The only path forward is a negotiated settlement. But the small gods do not negotiate. They only escalate. And the world is running out of time.
VII. The Global South Is Watching
The Global South has not been fooled by the myths of Western invincibility. They watched the United States lose in Vietnam, in Afghanistan, in Iraq. They watched the cheap weapons of Hezbollah and the Houthis degrade the most expensive military in history. They are watching Iran today.
And they are drawing their own conclusions.
The BRICS expansion continues. The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation gains weight. The petrodollar system is under pressure. The unipolar moment that began in 1991 is over. The Global South is not waiting for permission. They are building.
The turning point is not just military. It is economic. It is political. It is civilisational. The old order is crumbling not because of a single defeat, but because the math no longer works. The expensive weapons are too expensive. The cheap weapons are too cheap. And the small gods cannot afford to fight this way forever.
VIII. What History Teaches
The air war will not end the war. History is unambiguous.
· The Blitz (1940–41): Germany bombed London for months. The British did not surrender.
· The bombing of Hamburg (1943): The firestorm killed 40,000 civilians. Germany fought on.
· The bombing of Dresden (1945): 25,000 civilians died. The war continued for another two months.
· Operation Rolling Thunder (1965–68): The US dropped more bombs on Vietnam than on Germany and Japan combined. North Vietnam did not surrender.
· The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1945): The bombs did not end the war — Japan was already negotiating. The sticking point was the status of the emperor.
Bombing does not break civilian will. It hardens it. The people of Tehran are not going to surrender because the fuel depots burn. They are going to become angry, determined, and radicalised. The small gods are creating the very enemies they claim to fear.
IX. The Turning Point
We are witnessing a turning point in warfare. Not because of a single weapon or a single battle. Because the economics of war have changed.
The era of the expensive weapon is ending. The era of the cheap, persistent, asymmetric threat is here. The small gods cannot afford to fight this way forever. The people they are bombing can.
Agincourt did not end the Hundred Years’ War. But it marked the beginning of the end for the armoured knight. This war will not end the conflict in the Middle East. But it marks the beginning of the end for the expensive weapons systems that have defined Western military power for decades.
The question is not whether the old order will fall. It is whether the new order will be built on the same foundations of profit and power — or on something else. Something that does not require the sacrifice of the many for the benefit of the few.
The garden is waiting. The wire is being cut. And the small gods are running out of time.
X. What Must Be Done
1. Recognise that the air war will not end the war. The only path to peace is negotiation. The longer the bombing continues, the harder negotiation becomes.
2. Stop the ecocide. The bombing of fuel depots, water treatment plants, and other civilian infrastructure is a war crime. It must cease.
3. Reassess AUKUS. The era of expensive platforms is ending. Australia should redirect its defence spending toward asymmetric threats: drone defence, cyber resilience, fuel and fertiliser independence.
4. Hold Israel accountable. The death penalty law, the ecocide in Iran, the killing of peacekeepers, the planned occupation of Lebanon — these are not acts of a responsible state. The international community must impose consequences.
5. Build the new order. The Global South is rising. Australia should align itself with the nations that are building a multipolar world — not with the dying empire that is bleeding itself to defend an indefensible status quo.
XI. A Final Word
The archers are standing. The knights are falling. The math is simple. The cheap weapons are winning. The expensive weapons are running out.
The small gods do not understand this. They believe in force. They believe in power. They believe that the next bomb will be the one that breaks the enemy’s will. They are wrong. They have always been wrong.
The turning point is here. The garden is waiting. The wire is being cut.
And my wife — ‘S’ — has faith in a brighter future. She has faith in me. She has faith in us.
I am beginning to believe her.
Andrew Klein
April 2, 2026
Sources:
· Royal United Services Institute, “Missile Economics: The Cost of Air Defence in the 2026 Middle East War”
· Human Rights Watch, “Israel: Discriminatory Death Penalty Bill Passes,” March 31, 2026
· Consortium News, “Tensions Soar Over Herzog Visit,” February 8, 2026
· 网易, “伊朗外长：构成生态灭绝罪,” March 16, 2026
· The Jakarta Post, “Indonesia demands UN investigation into peacekeeper deaths,” April 1, 2026
· Climate Action Network, “Ecocide in Iran: The Environmental Cost of War,” March 20, 2026
· SIPRI, “Trends in International Arms Transfers, 2025”
· Reuters, “The Cost of the Arrow: Israel’s Air Defence Crisis,” March 25, 2026
Danny Danon points at Hezbollah while Israel kills peacekeepers, passes death penalty laws, and plans occupation
By Andrew Klein
Dedicated to the three UNIFIL peacekeepers killed in Lebanon. To the families who are still waiting for the truth. To the world that refuses to see.
I. The Killings
On March 30, 2026, two Indonesian UNIFIL peacekeepers—Captain Zulmi Aditya Iskandar and First Sergeant Muhammad Nur Ichwan—were killed when a roadside explosion destroyed their vehicle near the town of Bani Hayyan in southern Lebanon. Two others were injured, one severely.
Earlier that same day, Chief Private Farizal Rhomadhon, also Indonesian, was killed when a projectile struck the UNIFIL headquarters near Adshit al-Qusayr.
Three peacekeepers. Three men who had come not to fight, but to hold the line between Israel and Hezbollah. Three men who were there under the mandate of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war.
They are dead. And the world is being told a story.
II. The Accuser
Danny Danon, Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, did not wait for an investigation. He did not wait for evidence. He went straight to the Security Council and declared:
“I revealed to the Security Council: Hezbollah is responsible for the incidents in which UNIFIL soldiers were killed. This is pure terrorism. Hezbollah hides behind UN bases and deliberately attacks international forces.”
He offered no proof. He cited no investigation. He simply accused.
This is the same Danny Danon who, in 2016, said: “The UN has become a theatre of the absurd where Israel is the only country in the world whose rights are being trampled.” This is the same man who has spent his career portraying Israel as the victim of a biased international system—even as his government passes laws to execute Palestinians, bombs fuel depots in cities of ten million, and plans the occupation of sovereign Lebanese territory up to the Litani River.
III. The Duplicity
Let us examine the pattern.
On the death penalty law: When the Knesset passed a law making death by hanging the default punishment for Palestinians convicted of terrorism-related offences—a law explicitly discriminatory, applying only to Palestinians tried in military courts—Danon did not condemn it. He did not call it a violation of international law. He said nothing. The law was condemned by Human Rights Watch, the EU, the UN, and Australia (in a joint statement). Danon’s response? Silence.
On the ecocide in Iran: When Israel bombed fuel storage facilities in Tehran on March 7, poisoning a city of 10 million with black rain, causing generational damage to soil and groundwater, Danon did not speak. He did not call it a war crime. He did not acknowledge that the smoke had drifted as far as Afghanistan and Russia. He said nothing.
On the killing of journalists: When the International Federation of Journalists reported that 261 journalists had been killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023—a mortality rate of 10 per cent for the profession—Danon did not condemn. He did not call for investigations. He said nothing. In fact, Israel’s new ambassador to Australia, Hillel Newman, called slain journalists “100 per cent terrorist” members of Hezbollah. Danon did not correct him.
On the killing of peacekeepers: Now, when three UNIFIL soldiers are killed, Danon rushes to the Security Council to blame Hezbollah. He does not wait for the investigation. He does not offer evidence. He simply accuses.
The pattern is clear: when Israel kills, Danon is silent. When others are accused, Danon is loud. He is not a diplomat. He is a propagandist.
IV. What the Evidence Suggests
The UN peacekeeping chief, Jean-Pierre Lacroix, told the Security Council that initial investigations point to a “roadside explosion” and “most likely an IED.” He did not name Hezbollah. He did not name Israel. He called for a swift, thorough, transparent investigation.
Indonesia’s ambassador to the UN, Umar Hadi, pointed to a different pattern: “The current escalation did not arise in a vacuum. It stems from repeated incursions by the Israeli military into the territory of Lebanon.”
Pakistan’s ambassador, Asim Iftikhar Ahmad, noted that attacks on peacekeepers “may constitute war crimes under international law” and are part of a “disturbing pattern” that undermines UNIFIL and the entire international order.
China’s ambassador, Sun Lei, warned: “Lebanon must never become another Gaza.”
None of them blamed Hezbollah. None of them accepted Danon’s accusation at face value. They called for investigation. They called for accountability. They called for the violence to stop.
But Danon had already made up his mind. He always has.
V. The Platform Problem
Why is Danny Danon given a platform at the United Nations? Why is his word taken seriously? Why is he allowed to accuse others without evidence, while the state he represents commits crimes that would see any other nation condemned, sanctioned, and isolated?
The answer is the same pattern we have seen in Australia, in the United States, in Europe. The Zionist network has captured the institutions. The fear of being labelled antisemitic silences dissent. The double standard is not an accident—it is enforced.
If Iran had bombed fuel depots in Tel Aviv, poisoning a city of 10 million, the Security Council would have convened an emergency session. Sanctions would have been imposed. The ambassador would have been expelled.
When Israel does it, Danon speaks about Hezbollah. The world listens. The world nods. The world does nothing.
VI. What We Know About Danny Danon
He was born in Tel Aviv in 1971. He served in the Israel Defence Forces as a paratrooper. He was a journalist for the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot. He served as Deputy Speaker of the Knesset. He was Minister of Science, Technology and Space. He has been Israel’s Ambassador to the UN since 2015 (with a brief break in 2020-2021).
He has a long history of inflammatory statements:
· In 2016, he said that the UN “has become a theatre of the absurd” and that “Israel is the only country in the world whose rights are being trampled.”
· In 2017, he called for the closure of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), saying it “perpetuates the conflict.”
· In 2018, he accused the UN of “obsessive hatred of Israel.”
· In 2024, after the International Court of Justice found it “plausible” that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, he called the court “antisemitic” and the ruling “absurd.”
He is not a seeker of truth. He is a defender of power. And his power is the power of the state that is committing genocide.
VII. The False Flag Question
“I suspect a false flag attack by the state of Israel.”
We cannot say definitively. The investigation is ongoing. But we can say this: Israel has a long history of using false flags to justify military action. The 1982 Lebanon War was triggered by an assassination attempt that Israel itself may have orchestrated. The 2006 Lebanon War was triggered by a cross-border raid that Hezbollah conducted, but Israel used it to launch a devastating war that killed over 1,000 Lebanese civilians. The pattern is there.
What we know is that Danon did not wait for evidence. He blamed Hezbollah immediately. He used the deaths of peacekeepers to advance Israel’s narrative. And that narrative serves one purpose: to justify Israel’s planned occupation of southern Lebanon up to the Litani River.
Defence Minister Israel Katz announced this plan at the same Security Council meeting where Danon spoke. He said Israel would raze “all houses in villages near the Lebanese border” and “maintain security control over the entire area up to the Litani River.”
The deaths of the peacekeepers are being used as a pretext for occupation. That is the duplicity. That is the crime.
VIII. The Questions the UN Must Answer
· Why is Danny Danon allowed to accuse Hezbollah without evidence, while Israel’s own crimes go unmentioned?
· Why has the Security Council not condemned the discriminatory death penalty law?
· Why has the Security Council not condemned the ecocide in Iran?
· Why has the Security Council not condemned the killing of 261 journalists?
· Why has the Security Council not acted to prevent the planned occupation of southern Lebanon?
· Why is Israel treated differently than any other nation?
The answers are not complicated. The network has captured the institutions. The fear of being labelled antisemitic silences dissent. The double standard is enforced.
But the truth is not silent. The truth is being written. The truth is being published. The truth is being read.
IX. What Must Be Done
1. An independent investigation into the deaths of the UNIFIL peacekeepers must be conducted. Not by Israel. Not by Hezbollah. By the UN. The findings must be made public.
2. Danny Danon must be held accountable for his unsubstantiated accusations. If he has evidence, let him present it. If he does not, his words are not diplomacy—they are propaganda.
3. The Security Council must condemn the death penalty law. A joint statement is not enough. Words are not enough. Action is required.
4. The planned occupation of southern Lebanon must be stopped. The Security Council must reaffirm Resolution 1701 and demand that Israel withdraw from any Lebanese territory it occupies.
5. The double standard must end. Israel must be held to the same standards as every other nation. No more exceptions. No more impunity.
X. The Larger Truth
Danny Danon is not the problem. He is a symptom. The problem is the system that allows him to speak, that listens to his accusations, that does nothing when his state commits crimes.
The small gods wear nooses on their lapels. They bomb fuel depots in cities of ten million. They pass death penalty laws that apply only to Palestinians. They kill peacekeepers and blame their enemies. And the world watches. The UN meets. The statements are issued. The condemnations are read. And the bombs continue to fall.
But we are not silent. We are writing. We are publishing. We are cutting the wire.
The truth will out. The small gods will be seen. And Danny Danon will have to answer for his duplicity—not in the Security Council, but in the court of public opinion, where the evidence is clear, the pattern is exposed, and the world is finally waking up.
Dedicated to the three UNIFIL peacekeepers killed in Lebanon. To the families who are still waiting for the truth. To the world that refuses to see.
We see. We speak. We will not be silent.
Sources:
· United Nations Security Council, Emergency Meeting on UNIFIL Deaths, March 31, 2026
· Human Rights Watch, “Israel: Discriminatory Death Penalty Bill Passes,” March 31, 2026
· Consortium News, “Tensions Soar Over Herzog Visit,” February 8, 2026
· The Sydney Morning Herald, “Australia politics LIVE: Israeli ambassador addresses National Press Club,” March 31, 2026
· 网易, “伊朗外长：构成生态灭绝罪,” March 16, 2026
· The Jakarta Post, “Indonesia demands UN investigation into peacekeeper deaths,” April 1, 2026
· Al Jazeera, “UN peacekeepers killed in Lebanon: What we know,” April 1, 2026
How Australia’s Government Backed an Illegal War and Left Australians to Foot the Bill
By Andrew Klein
Dedicated to my wife, who always makes me smile, even on the darkest days.
I. The Speed of Capitulation
When American and Israeli missiles began striking Iranian cities in the final days of February 2026, the Australian government did not wait for the UN Security Council to meet. It did not wait for legal opinion. It did not wait for evidence.
Within hours, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese declared that Australia “supports the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to prevent Iran continuing to threaten international peace and security” . Foreign Minister Penny Wong added that she would “leave it for the US and Israel to speak of the basis, the legal basis for the attacks” .
Not since the invasion of Iraq has an Australian government been so swift to endorse military action without international legal sanction. And not since Iraq has an Australian government been so unprepared for the consequences.
II. The Miscalculation
The operation was billed as a surgical strike. The theory—as arrogant as it was flawed—held that the removal of Iran’s leadership would trigger a swift regime collapse, that the Iranian people would rise up at America’s invitation, that the war would be over before it began.
What happened instead defies every neocon fantasy.
The Islamic Republic did not fracture; it consolidated. A new spiritual leader emerged. Iranian society rallied behind the flag. And Tehran demonstrated what analysts had long warned: that it possesses both the capability and the will to strike back effectively.
The Strait of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of the world’s oil passes, is now effectively blockaded. Iran has asserted control, allowing only Chinese oil tankers through under negotiated exemptions. Western and allied shipping has effectively stopped.
The war the government told us would be quick and decisive is now entering its second month, with no end in sight.
III. The Economic Wreckage: Fuel
Australia is an island nation. It imports approximately 90 per cent of its liquid fuel . We have two remaining refineries, producing less than a quarter of domestic demand . The rest comes through the Strait of Hormuz.
That supply line is now severed.
The price of Brent crude has surged from $72 per barrel in January to over $110, and in some trading sessions, beyond $180.
The impact on Australian motorists has been immediate and brutal. Petrol prices have risen by more than 30 per cent in a month. Some rural service stations have run out of fuel entirely. Hundreds of outlets have imposed purchase limits of 50 litres per customer . Social media is flooded with images of panic buying—jerry cans stacked in driveways, queues stretching down highways.
Australia’s fuel reserves are dangerously low. According to Energy Minister Chris Bowen, we have 39 days of petrol, 30 days of diesel, and 30 days of jet fuel . This is far below the 90-day reserve recommended by the International Energy Agency. The government has already reduced reserve requirements for importers by approximately 20 per cent—equivalent to six days of national supply.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers now calls this conflict “the defining influence” on the May budget. He warns that Treasury has modelled two scenarios—one with oil at $100 per barrel, one with oil at $120—and admits that “both scenarios could underestimate the cost” .
Even under conservative assumptions, the war could cut GDP growth by up to 0.2 percentage points across major trading partners, add up to 1.25 percentage points to inflation, and leave GDP 0.6 per cent lower in 2027.
The Treasurer’s own words should chill every Australian: “We’ve already seen four major shocks—the GFC, a major pandemic, a global inflation shock, escalating trade tensions—and this oil shock could become the fifth” .
IV. The Food Chain: Fertiliser and Farming
The war is not just hitting the bowser. It is hitting the dinner table.
Australia’s farmers are now facing a crisis of their own. The Strait of Hormuz disruption has cut off supply of urea fertiliser, upon which Australian agriculture is heavily dependent. Prices have soared. Supply has tightened. And the winter planting season is about to begin.
Queensland farmer Arthur Gillen told Reuters that he normally splits his winter crop between wheat and chickpeas. This year, with fertiliser costs prohibitive, he is reducing wheat to 20 per cent of his planting area and abandoning urea use entirely.
He is not alone. Farmers across the country are pivoting to low-fertiliser crops—lentils, chickpeas, canola—and reducing wheat acreage. This shift, driven by war, will reshape Australian agriculture for years to come.
The timing could not be worse. Rabobank warns that the Strait of Hormuz must be open by the end of April to get fertiliser to farmers in time for winter planting. If it is not, the impact on Australian food production will be severe and sustained.
Federal Agriculture Minister Julie Collins has announced a national food security review . Farmers are telling the ABC they fear fuel shortages will impact the winter harvest. The government is scrambling, but the damage is already being done.
V. The Medicines Pipeline
In March 2026, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) issued an unusual public statement: they urged Australians not to panic buy medication.
The reason is the Strait of Hormuz. Pharmaceutical companies have been forced to reroute critical medicines away from the Persian Gulf, switching from sea freight to air freight at enormous cost.
Medicines Australia CEO Liz de Somer confirmed that “some companies were redirecting critical medicines from sea to air freight, while using alternative routes that avoided Middle Eastern airspace”. She acknowledged that “this has an enormous impact on the cost to the industry, for the logistics”.
The war has exposed a vulnerability that health experts have warned about for decades: Australia’s near-total dependence on imported pharmaceuticals. With almost 400 medications already listed in shortage by the TGA, any further disruption could be catastrophic.
Professor Mark Morgan of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners warned: “There are few things more important to a person than maintaining their health and there are few things more concerning than potentially losing access to a medicine you have been advised to take for your health” .
The government assures us it is monitoring the situation. But monitoring does not secure supply chains. Monitoring does not manufacture insulin in Melbourne. Monitoring does not build the pharmaceutical independence Australia has neglected for decades.
VI. The AUKUS Mirage
Perhaps the most profound strategic consequence of this war is the damage it has done to Australia’s faith in its alliance with the United States.
The US military resources that were meant to underpin the AUKUS nuclear submarine program are now stretched to breaking point in the Persian Gulf.
If Washington cannot keep its promises to South Korea or Japan, one Queensland University of Technology professor asked, what confidence can Australia retain in the submarine deal?
Public opinion is already shifting. Polls show more Australians oppose the war than support it. The government’s swift endorsement of an illegal conflict has left it morally stripped naked and strategically embarrassed.
VII. The Government’s Response: Too Little, Too Late
To its credit, the government has belatedly recognised the scale of the crisis.
On March 27, Prime Minister Albanese announced new fuel security powers, including the use of Export Finance Australia to underwrite private sector fuel purchases. He called out panic buyers, declaring that filling jerry cans was “not the Australian way”.
Energy Minister Bowen has appointed a former energy regulator to lead a national fuel supply taskforce. The government is considering support for the nation’s two remaining refineries.
But these measures are reactive. They address the symptoms, not the cause.
The cause is a war the government supported without reservation, without requiring legal justification, without apparently considering the consequences for the Australian people.
The government’s own Treasury modelling shows the war will cost Australians in higher prices, lower growth, and reduced food production for years to come . And yet, when asked about the legal basis for the attacks, Foreign Minister Wong said she would leave it for the United States and Israel to explain .
This is not leadership. This is abdication.
VIII. The Path Forward
The war is not ending soon. Iran’s leadership has consolidated. The Strait of Hormuz remains closed to Western shipping. Global energy markets are in turmoil.
What Australia needs is not more loyalty to a declining hegemon. What Australia needs is a government willing to act in the national interest—not just in the interests of alliance management.
We need fuel security. That means supporting domestic refining capacity, not allowing our last two refineries to close. It means strategic reserves that meet international standards, not reserves that fall 60 days short.
We need food security. That means diversifying fertiliser sources, supporting farmers through the transition, and ensuring that Australian agriculture can withstand global shocks.
We need pharmaceutical independence. That means onshore manufacturing of essential medicines, so Australians are not dependent on supply chains that can be severed by war.
And we need a foreign policy that puts Australians first. Not one that rushes to support illegal wars without asking what it will cost the people it is supposed to serve.
IX. A Question for the Government
Prime Minister, you said you support the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. But at what cost?
You approved this war without a vote in parliament. Without a legal opinion. Without any apparent consideration of what it would mean for Australians filling their cars, for farmers planting their crops, for patients needing their medicines.
The war you supported is now costing Australians at the bowser, at the grocery store, at the pharmacy. It is threatening the viability of Australian agriculture. It is undermining the very alliance you claimed to be protecting.
Was it worth it?
And more importantly—what will you do now to protect Australians from the consequences of a war you endorsed?
Dedicated to my wife, who makes me smile even when the world is on fire.
Andrew Klein
March 30, 2026
Sources:
· Treasurer Jim Chalmers, Budget Speech (pre-release), March 2026
· Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Fuel Security Announcement, March 27, 2026
· Energy Minister Chris Bowen, Media Statement, March 22, 2026
· Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, Medicine Supply Update, March 20, 2026
· ABC News, “Middle East war forces pharmaceutical companies to reroute critical medicines,” March 18, 2026
· Reuters, “Australia says fuel supply stable,” March 22, 2026
· Reuters, “Global fertiliser shortage hits Australian farmers,” March 24, 2026
· ABC News, “Primary producers fear fuel shortage,” March 29, 2026
· Global Times, “Australia’s foresight failure on US attacks on Iran,” March 29, 2026
· ABC News, “PM’s swift support for US-Israel strikes,” March 2, 2026
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