Lew Rockwell Institute

On the 21st of June, a day that will live in infamy, President Trump led the American People to War with Iran. Trump’s message to Americans? Striking Iran’s three nuclear facilities is all that U.S. Forces will do. Unless, of course, the Iranians have the temerity to strike back. In that case Trump promises to destroy Iran. Ridiculous.

Washington has launched its own Pearl Harbor operation.  U.S. Air and Naval Power executed rehearsed strikes against a few “critical” Iranian targets. Then, American Forces pulled back, ostensibly waiting for Tehran to capitulate much like the Japanese in December 1941. Trump’s mindset echoes Israel’s thinking when it attacked Iran last week, but Iran did not collapse after Israel’s surprise attack.

And Tehran won’t capitulate to Washington’s opening moves. Initial assessments of the strikes’ effectiveness suggest nothing of consequence was destroyed. The facilities? Devoid of people. Empty of centrifuges and enriched uranium.  But the lack of damage? That’s not yet relevant. It’s a question no one in Washington cares to answer.

The world now waits for Iran’s response. Tehran’s leaders aren’t reckless or impetuous. Their counter-strike will be deliberate and likely decisive. And make no mistake, Iran will strike back. It will do so in ways Washington doesn’t expect.

Why? Tehran controls the political and moral high ground. Israel violated international law. A program of mass murder in Gaza. Backing the murderous ISIS-led regime in Syria. Killing Christians. Killing other minorities. Israel’s unprovoked attack on Iran. These are incontrovertible facts.

Escalation is inevitable, but Iran, not Washington, will control it. Remember the Houthis from Yemen and their war with Saudi Arabia? They struck Saudi oil fields. Repeatedly. Now, Iran has far greater reach. Far more ballistic missiles. Desalination plants. Across the Arabian Gulf are within striking distance of the Houthis. They are also within striking range of Iranian missiles. Millions depend on them for water.

Iran’s parliament just voted to close the Strait of Hormuz. Markets won’t react until Monday morning. But they will panic. Inevitably, oil prices will soar. The financial consequences for Americans? Eventually, devastating. Everyday, one out of every five barrels of oil  flows through the Straits of Hormuz.

Washington spent six months bombing the Houthis. Then, Washington threw in the towel. Walking away from war with Iran won’t be so easy.

Russian Prime Minister Medvedev warned that many countries are now willing to transfer nuclear technology to Iran. Simple rule. Countries with nuclear weapons don’t get bombed. Look at North Korea. Countries without them? They get bombed. Iraq. Libya and, now, Iran prove it. This is the universal lesson for the world beyond America’s borders.

Iran’s parliament voted to close the Straits of Hormuz, but Tehran doesn’t need to formally close the Strait of Hormuz. Shipping companies will do it. If the risk of losing tankers is too great, the insurance companies will insist. The world’s oil supply will slow and the impact on industries that depend on petroleum products will be disastrous.

This is the real “battle damage assessment.” The consequences will be felt for decades. Trump just invited war to America. Now, Americans must prepare for it. Tens of millions of foreigners crossed our borders illegally between  2020 and 2025. Washington is foolish to ignore the high probability that Islamist terror sleeper cells are here. No doubt, the Drug Cartels will be happy to cooperate with them against American Law Enforcement.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German Pastor who resisted Hitler’s regime and was eventually executed by the Nazis, said evil carries the germ of its own subversion. But against stupidity, Bonhoeffer warned the well-intentioned are always defenseless.

Bonhoeffer explained why: “Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplishes anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed – in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable, they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack.”

Washington’s ruling political class, not just President Trump, decided to unconditionally support Israel in its war against Iran. Going to war when and where Israel dictates and for reasons Israel decrees is stupid. It’s worse than stupid. It’s stupidity on stilts. Israel’s war for Jewish Supremacy in the Middle East will fail and Washington will now fail with it.  The war against Iran will fail because the war is unjust and the world will ensure that it fails.

Reprinted with Author’s permission from X.

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Just a few weeks ago in this space I urged President Trump to accept a deal with Iran allowing it to continue pursuing civilian nuclear power while ensuring that it would not pursue nuclear weapons. Iran signaled it was ready to sign such a deal, yet suddenly Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff changed the US position to demand no civilian nuclear enrichment at all.

The US Administration understood that Iran could not accept such a demand – that it had that right as a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty – but Witkoff shifted the position anyway. Just days before the sixth round of negotiations were to take place, Israel blew up the whole process by launching a surprise attack on Iran and here we are just over a week later staring right into the face of World War III.

Had the “bait and switch” and subsequent Israeli attack not taken place, we likely would be seeing rapidly improving trade relations with Iran and throughout the region that would have enriched all parties. Peace and prosperity. It would have been a “win-win” for everyone.

But the neocons and their leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, couldn’t stand the prospect of peace breaking out in the region so they dusted off their old lies about “weapons of mass destruction” from the lead up to the Iraq war and soon enough the talks were sunk beneath a barrage of Israeli – and as of this past weekend American – bombs and missiles.

President Trump’s decision to spend untold billions of dollars on what appears to be not much more than a “symbolic” bombing of Iran’s already-vacated nuclear facilities was no doubt made with the intention of making himself look tough. Unfortunately for him, it has had the opposite effect.

He has shown the world that he was no more able to resist the demands of the neocons and warmongers than his predecessors, and in abandoning his promises to be the president that ends wars instead of starting new ones he has also abandoned the most enthusiastic part of his base.

What President Trump does not seem to understand is that true strength is not measured in how many missiles you can send to the “Hitler of the month” as designated by the warmongers. True strength comes from standing up for your stated principles in the face of the enormous pressure that will inevitably be placed on you.

Real strength is strength of character. It often comes from the ability to say “no” when everyone around you demands that you give up a little bit of your principles for promises of riches or glory.

As of this writing, we are standing on the precipice of a major war in the Middle East that threatens to bring in much larger actors such as Russia and China. The neocons, filled with unwarranted vainglory, welcome such a clash because they won’t be doing the fighting and dying. They will be the ones reaping the financial and other rewards. As usual.

Unfortunately, President Trump has severely damaged his credibility by embroiling us in a war that is not our war. He would do well to immediately change course, search for off-ramps, make peace with Iran, and once and for all banish all neocons and warmongers from anywhere near his Administration. Otherwise “MAGA” will go down in history as nothing but a cruel joke.

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Select Background Resources on Israel and the Middle East

The study of the construction of pseudo-secular gnostic religions has been one of the principal obsessions of my life since I first heard Gerhart Niemeyer of Notre Dame lecture on it in 1975 at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s Western Summer School at Thomas Aquinas College.

Niemeyer was a keen student of world-renown philosopher Eric Voegelin on these matters, as was Murray Rothbard. I believe understanding this 2000 year battle between orthodox Roman Catholic Christianity and Gnosticism is the ultimate key to unlocking the history of the previous two millennia.

Within the convoluted matrix of this arcane historical wilderness is the search for the ancient origin stories of peoples such as the “Aryans,” “Palestinians” and “the Jews.” Much of this “history” or pseudo-history is very controversial yet intriguing and concerns the ideological roots/origins of Marxism, Fascism, Zionism, National Socialism, Anti-Semitism, Christian Zionism, Palestinian nationalism, Arab Nationalism, and Ba’athism, which continue to impact the geopolitics of the Middle East today.

The Jewish State: An Attempt at a Modern Solution of the Jewish Question — Book by Theodor Herzl

The Invention of the Jewish People — Book by Shlomo Sand;

Khazars -Wikipedia

Chazars — The Jewish Encyclopedia

The Thirteenth Tribe: The Khazar Empire and its Heritage, Book by Arthur Koestler

A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East — Book by David Fromkin;

Israel – Birth of a Nation — Documentary

Modern Middle East History in Ten Minutes: Origins of Israel – Palestinian Conflict — Documentary

Alison Weir, Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used To Create Israel;

Ralph Schoenman, The Hidden History of Zionism;

Alfred M. Lilienthal, The Zionist Connection II: What Price Peace?;

Edwin Black, The Transfer Agreement — 25th Anniversary Edition: The Dramatic Story of the Pact Between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine;

Saddam and Third Reich –– Documentary (10 parts)

Lenni Brenner, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators;

Lenni Brenner, The Iron Wall: Zionist Revisionism from Jabotinsky to Shamir;

Lenni Brenner, 51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration With the Nazis;

“Ancient History”: U.S. Conduct in the Middle East Since World War II and the Folly of Intervention — Sheldon L. Richman article

and John Loftus and Mark Aarons, The Secret War Against the Jews: How Western Espionage Betrayed the Jewish People.

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Tim McGraw wrote:

California politicians and bureaucrats don’t have the business acumen to run a lemonade stand.

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Tim McGraw wrote:

The US government won’t have to contract out its dungeons and torture chambers to other countries anymore (like Tora Prison in Egypt). The US will have its own dungeons and torture (interrogation) rooms in the new Beirut Embassy. The US government is an evil institution full of evil men and women.

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Just months into his second term, “Peace President” Donald Trump has launched missiles into an Iran that has neither attacked nor threatened to attack the United States. And he has done so with virtually no input from the US Congress. What comes next? Former US diplomat and senior US Senate foreign policy analyst Jim Jatras joins today’s Liberty Report.

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Tim McGraw wrote:

The politicians, bureaucrats, spies, and military inside the Washington, D.C., Beltway live in a Fantasyland. The price of oil and doing business is going up.

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David Martin wrote:

Yep.  Our days of “Dulce et Decorum Est…” are thankfully in the rearview mirror, and we’re getting pretty damned tired of our “Bombs and Propaganda” foreign policy generally.

Brilliant analysis.
Israel is kinda fucked. Last year I said it wouldn’t exist in 10 years. Now I think it won’t be here in 5 years. pic.twitter.com/5DG2t9J1g1

— Kerry Burgess (@KerryBurgess) June 22, 2025

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Thanks, John Frahm. 

Activist Post.

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David Krall wrote:

that Trump is starting to suffer from dementia?  And no one has taken that into consideration?

I knew someone with dementia and it starts out slowly where the person is rational almost all the time,  but slowly the symptoms (such as Trump displays?) start to accumulate.

Just a thought.

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I uploaded this video to X just 2 hours before Trump announced they had just bombed the Fordrow nuclear enrichment facility in Iran

btw yes I realized halfway thru recording this that Top Gun used fighter jets to deliver the bomb rather than stealth bombers but it felt kinda silly to re-record everything at that point… according to the plot the whole point of using the planes they did was to bomb the target stealthily, so… kinda still a stealth bomber if ya think about it…

The post Mike Benz – The Most Prescient Video of All-Time: We Are Living Through the Exact Plot of Top Gun: Maverick appeared first on LewRockwell.

In 1998 Bill Clinton ordered the bombing of an aspirin factory in Susan that he lied about calling it a terrorist training camp. He was in the middle of his grand jury testimony regarding the Monica Lewinsky affair. The whole world now knows that he lied.

Last week Netanyahoo went on trial in his corruption and bribery case that is reported to last for about a year. Wag the Dog 2.0?

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Dear All…

Before you dive into this dispatch, let me offer a further moment of candor from the edge of the fireline…

The article that follows isn’t casual commentary.

It’s a spiritual detonation, a mythic decoding, and—for those who can feel it—a field signal from a Sovereign timeline pushing back against deception that has ruled this Earth for far too long.

But make no mistake—this piece will sort you.

You’ll likely fall into one of three categories:

1. Those Who Resonate Instantly

You don’t need convincing.

You’ve seen the cracks, felt the falsehoods, and sensed the dark fingerprints behind major world systems.

To you I say: Welcome, fellow witness.

2. Those Who Feel Something—But Aren’t Sure

You sense a pattern in the madness, but you’re cautious.

To you I say: Perfect. Stay curious.

I urge you: do your own research. Feel into the layers. Look beyond the headlines.

Don’t take my word for it—test the field for yourself.

3. Those Who Think I’m Full of Shit

And that’s fine too.

To you I say: Treat this as a spiritual sci-fi briefing—a high-concept exposé that may read as fiction today… but might prove devastatingly accurate tomorrow.

All I ask, regardless of where you land, is this:

Save this post.

Archive it.

Put it somewhere accessible.

Because IF the wheel turns the way it’s already leaning,

you may want to revisit these warnings.

And when you do, I’ll still be here—standing where I’ve always stood: at the edge of the lie, sounding the alarm.

With clarity, fire, and respect for your discernment,

—Omega-Sam-2 Tier-11 Witness

Uncancellable. Unbought. Unburned.

HIGH-LEVEL TRANSMISSION MEMO

From the Archives of the High Thrones — Tier XI Protocol
Prepared for: Omega-Sam-2
Timestamp: 2025:06:15 :: Epoch Theta

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?”
— Jeremiah 17:9

This transmission is a clarion call to sovereigns, sentinels, and seekers alike.

The forces working to fracture humanity’s collective soul are legion — both seen and unseen.
Some walk in flesh; others dwell in shadow realms.
Some wield political power; others animate fear as a spectral contagion.

They are the Architects of Collapse — a constellation of parasitic influences coalescing to rewrite Earth’s operating code.

You are here to unmask, name, and disarm these forces.

DUTCH UNCLE NARRATIVE: Reality’s War is Neither Fair Nor Gentle

Listen well: This is not paranoia. This is not conspiracy theory fodder.
This is spiritual and material warfare playing out on multiple levels.

The world is being pulled toward entropy by design.
The architects want you confused, isolated, and disempowered.

They use distraction, deception, and division as their crowbars.

But here’s the truth that no gatekeeper wants you to see:

“The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable.”
— James A. Garfield

Your task: Stay miserable long enough to see clearly.

THE 12 MAJOR CATEGORIES OF DARK INFLUENCE AND THEIR SIGNPOSTS

1. Egregores: The Thought-Forms of Collective Shadow

What They Are:
Autonomous psychic constructs fueled by collective fear, belief, and trauma — often worshiped unwittingly. They gain power through repeated emotional investment.

Signposts:

• Repetitive cultural narratives that breed despair or compliance
• Viral social contagions of fear or frenzy
• Secret societies that channel collective energy into control agendas

Countermeasures:

• Conscious disengagement from mass emotional contagions
• Group rituals to cleanse and reorient psychic energy
• Intentional seeding of hope and sovereignty into shared cultural space

“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind…”
— Romans 12:2

2. Nephilim: The Ancient Hybrids and Their Legacy

What They Are:
Genetic and spiritual hybrids said to be offspring of “fallen angels” and humans — archetypally linked to war, domination, and spiritual oppression.

Signposts:

• Bloodline aristocracies with occulted power
• Occult symbolism in elite rituals and architecture
• Military-industrial complexes with shadow agendas

Countermeasures:

• Bloodline healing work and energetic severing rituals
• Exposure of hidden dynasties and their influence
• Sovereign embodiment practices to break inherited curses

“There were giants in the earth in those days…”
— Genesis 6:4

3. Architects: The Shadow Planners of Global Control

What They Are:
Human or trans-human elites orchestrating societal collapse via technology, finance, and culture — often hiding behind corporate and political facades.

Signposts:

• Overlapping memberships in secretive globalist bodies (WEF, Aspen Institute, Bilderberg)
• Coordinated media narratives and engineered crises
• Accelerated roll-outs of surveillance and social credit systems

Countermeasures:

• Public disclosure campaigns and whistleblower amplification
• Sovereign technological countermeasures (privacy tools, encryption)
• Grassroots rebuilding of resilient, autonomous communities

“For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?”
— Mark 8:36

Read the Whole Article

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Updated Man of La Mancha lyrics could read: “To dream the impossible dream of clean, green, net-zero electricity, to fight the unbeatable foe of manmade climate cataclysms, we must run where the brave dare not go.”

Don Quixote saw windmills as malevolent and dangerous dragons. Spain’s governing classes view them from the Chinese perspective: benevolent and magical dragons.

They’ve erected over 22,000 gigantic windmills, to harness the wind and generate electricity. Portugal has nearly 3,000. Together, when conditions are perfect, they can generate almost 38 gigawatts.

Like Cervantes’ hero, the elites also want “to reach the unreachable star” – or at least capture the energy from one star: the sun. Spain and Portugal together also have 38 GW of photovoltaic solar panels.

However, the Iberian Peninsula neighbors have long ignored the dark sides of the forces they seek to commandeer.

Those wind turbines, solar panels and transmission lines sprawl across some 2,000,000 acres of Spanish and Portuguese vistas, habitats and croplands. That’s equal to Delaware and Rhode Island combined.

They kill eagles, bustards, vultures, and other raptors and birds. Building them requires mining, pollution and child labor on historically unprecedented scales. Solar panels are easily destroyed by storms.

Worst, they provide intermittent, weather-dependent electricity – necessitating expensive backup power and making the electrical grid unstable. Just how unstable was demonstrated recently, and dramatically.

On April 16, for the first time, for a few minutes, Spain generated 100% of its electricity with wind, solar and hydro power.

A fortnight later, on April 28, a prolonged blackout sent Iberia into chaos. Lights, televisions, refrigerators, cell phones and traffic lights went dark. Trains, subways and elevators trapped passengers. Airports canceled flights. Hospital backup power provided only basic and emergency services.

The outage even struck parts of France and Belgium. It was Europe’s biggest blackout ever. If France hadn’t shut off its connection to Spain’s cascading problems, all of Europe could have shut down.

Just a week later, another blackout hit Spain’s Canary Islands.

Power outages are nothing new. But the Spain-Portugal blackouts underscore fundamental problems with the supposedly “inevitable transition” from coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear electricity to wind, solar and battery power.

They show that the only inevitability will be more frequent and severe blackouts – because of our soaring reliance on electricity … political decisions to mothball or destroy reliable generating systems … and ideological commitments to “green” energy.

We’re effectively being told: You’ll have electricity when it’s available – not necessarily when you need it. In this modern technological era, that is absurd, outrageous, intolerable and dangerous.

One fundamental reality must override all other considerations: Modern industrialized societies require enormous quantities of steady, synchronous alternating current, 24/7 – at the precise frequency of 50 Hertz in Europe and 60 Hz in the United States. Without it, life shuts down, societies descend into chaos, and people die.

Frequencies outside 0.2 Hz above or below that frequency can trigger major emergencies. A mere ±0.5 Hz deviation can cause system-wide cascading blackouts.

In Spain’s case, with 80% of its power now coming from renewable sources, the country simply did not have enough reliable, dispatchable, instantly accessible power on hand to keep its grid from collapsing when a power generation glitch happened.

Rice University’s Baker Institute explained how a malfunction at two Spanish solar power plants triggered the widespread chaos.

“At approximately 12:30 pm local time in Spain – just minutes before the grid collapsed – renewable sources accounted for 78% of electricity generation in the Iberian system, with solar alone contributing nearly 60%. By contrast, conventional technologies, such as gas-fired and nuclear power plants, comprised only around 15% of the total generation mix….

“[Then] two consecutive generation loss events occurred in southwestern Spain, likely involving large solar installations…. Given the limited availability of conventional generation, these unexpected losses, combined with reduced support from neighboring systems – the instability triggered a disconnection from the French system – created a “perfect storm” for a massive power outage.

“In just five seconds, Spain lost approximately 15 GW of capacity, equivalent to 60% of its national electricity demand. The remaining generation was insufficient to meet demand, thus triggering a cascading failure across the entire grid. Various generating units were automatically disconnected to protect infrastructure, and nuclear plants were shut down in accordance with safety protocols.”

That’s all it took. In the blink of an eye, the Iberian Peninsula and beyond had a massive blackout.

Unless America’s Net Zero politicians and utility companies wake up to reality, multiple US states – and entire regions – face similar preventable (indeed virtually inevitable) disasters. The same nightmarish realities confront other countries worldwide.

First, because federal, state and local governments have pressured or ordered utility companies to shut down coal, gas, nuclear and even hydro power plants that still have years or decades of operational life. Other utilities have done so voluntarily, to showcase their climate and green energy bona fides.

Second, because the same governments also provide subsidies, loan guarantees, tax breaks, rapid permitting, and exemptions from endangered species and other environmental rules – to incentivize utilities to build more and more wind, solar and battery installations, instead of traditional power plants.

Third, because those same entities demand and often subsidize a steady conversion to electricity from gasoline and natural gas. Vehicles, home and apartment building heating systems, stoves and ovens, water heaters, lawn mowers, leaf blowers and more must be powered by electricity – to save the planet from manmade climate change – even as electricity generation and reliability dwindle.

This shortsighted, ideological, virtue-signaling government intrusion into what should be market-driven, reality-based, reliable-electricity-focused decisions puts our grid, our society and our lives at risk.

Abundant, reliable, affordable electricity is the lifeblood of twenty-first century civilization. Modern industrialized societies simply cannot function, or even survive, if they are forced to rely on land-hungry, expensive, insufficient, intermittent electricity.

And yet, largely because of misplaced climate fears (about human-induced droughts and a “thirstier atmosphere,” for example), $9 trillion has been spent globally over the past decade on wind and solar power, electric vehicles, energy storage, electrified heating and power grid adjustments.

Congress, state governors and legislatures, the Trump Administration, our courts and utility companies need to act quickly and decisively to end this wasteful spending and fix our fragile electricity generating system and grid. The news media and academia must stop parroting “climate crisis” and “renewable energy” talking points, and start presenting the complexities and realities of these issues.

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When Donald Trump ran for president, he made a number of statements that suggested he wanted to curtail our neocon interventionist policy.  But since his election, he has continued to send military aid to the Middle East and to Ukraine, He threatened to drop a “bunker buster” bomb on Iran and called for the citizens of Teheran to evacuate their city. He has also called for the residents of Gaza to move elsewhere. Regardless of your view of these conflicts, one fact is indisputable.  President Trump’s actions violate our traditional non-interventionist foreign policy. Under that policy, America was to remain neutral in all conflicts, except for direct threats to our country. The great historian Ralph Raico explained our traditional foreign policy with unmatched clarity and eloquence in a speech, “The Case for an America First Foreign Policy,” that he delivered at the Future of Freedom Foundation at their conference in Virginia in June 2007. Rather than continue in my own words, here is a substantial part of that speech:

“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. . .My view is that our cause should be anchored in the traditional American policy that served us so well in the first 100 years of our life as a nation, a policy that I will be calling America First. The record is laid out in a schoolbook by the great historian Charles Beard, published in 1940, A Foreign Policy for America. Charles Beard was a professor at Columbia and president of the American Historical Association, considered the dean of American Historians until he concluded and documented that Franklin Roosevelt was not really all that sincere when he told the American people, before Pearl Harbor, that he was working night and day to keep us out of war, whereupon Beard was suddenly demonized by the profession and dismissed as a hopeless nutcase.

This was Beard’s thesis in that small book: In our dealings abroad we should basically follow the guidelines laid out by George Washington in his farewell address to the American people. The great rule of conduct in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations, we should have with them as little political connection as possible. This statement by Washington, which we may hear maybe once or twice during this seminar, involves three basic points. First, we should engage in mutually beneficial peaceful commerce with the rest of the world, but forcing nothing, as Washington was careful to add. Second, while trading with them, we should avoid entanglements in the political affairs of other countries and in their quarrels with other nations. Finally, we should always remain strong enough to defend ourselves from attack.

This system was endorsed by John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and the other Founders. That was no accident. Nonintervention was the natural counterpart to the form of government, the Republic, which they had instituted. The monarchies of Europe were all massive war machines, systematically exploiting the people to finance the never-ending conflicts and to support the military and civilian bureaucracy that those conflicts necessitated. The old monarchies were dedicated to the pomp and glory and power of the state. America would be different: Novus Ordo Seclorum, as you will find still on the back of dollar bills, the new order of the ages.

Here, the rights of the people, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, of all things the pursuit of happiness, that was our mainstay. Government power was to be strictly limited, mainly exercised by the localities and the states. Hence the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which still reads, for all the good it does us, ‘The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.’ Taxes would be low, and the public debt would soon be liquidated, ensuring that the citizens, citizens not subjects, would not be routinely plundered as was the European and monarchial way.

In order to forestall high taxes, debt, and the centralization of power, there was a crucial precondition, however; we had to steer clear of war. Here is the considered opinion of James Madison: ‘Of all the enemies of true liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, debts, and taxes are the known instrument for bringing the many into the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the executive, that is the President and his minions, is extended. No nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.’

So the advice of the Founders was this: If you want to preserve the system we had established, keep out of war, except when war is required to defend the United States; avoid political entanglements overseas, since these are likely to lead us into war. And, as Washington also warned in his farewell address, we should treat all foreign nations fairly and equitably, not showing favoritism to any, because, he said, ‘The nation which indulges towards another an habitual hatred or habitual fondness is in some degree a slave.’ You can call this the policy of America First. First it was reiterated by James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, Grover Cleveland, and others throughout the 19th century.

America First in no way meant isolation from the rest of the world. This term ‘isolationism’ has turned into a one-word slam dunk in the hands of the proponents of global meddling. It’s the only thing that most college students, for instance, remember about American diplomatic history, if they remember anything—that in the bad old days we used to be isolationists. But no one was more of a cosmopolitan than Thomas Jefferson. America following Washington, Jefferson, and the others welcomed trade and cultural exchanges with all nations while rejecting political connections. As we abstained from overseas meddling, American civilization flourished, and America became the world’s economic powerhouse.

This noninterventionist America devoted to solving our own problems, and nurturing our own distinctive civilization, soon became Stupor mundi, the Latin phrase ‘wonder of the world.’ Everywhere people struggling for their freedom looked for inspiration and hope to the Great Republic of the West. America served the cause of freedom in the lands across the seas not by sending troops or bombers or foreign aid, but by being, in the words of Henry Clay, ‘a light to all nations,’ a shining example of a happy and prosperous people enjoying their God-given rights and peace. When the French decided to send us a birthday present for our country’s 100th birthday, the statue was named ‘Liberty Enlightening the World.’ That’s the reason that the statue in New York Harbor is carrying a torch. Traditional American policy thought it was none of our business to make any distinction between foreign nations as to their morality, ideology, or provenance. If a regime had the attributes of a state, we could recognize it and deal with it. . .”

That concludes the part of Ralph’s speech that I’m reprinting. I agree entirely with him. Murray Rothbard agreed with him too. We need to return to our traditional foreign policy and abandon power politics. President Trump wants to “Make America Great Again” but we can achieve this goal only through the pursuit of liberty and peace. The Tenth Amendment, which Ralph Raico mentioned, shows that America was originally intended to be a loose confederation of states, with limited power to the federal government. Abraham Lincoln overthrew the Constitution by his invasion of the South, in an effort to turn America in a Great Power, a goal antithetical to our Founding Fathers. Let’s do everything we can to get President Trump to abandon interventionism and to return to our traditional foreign policy.

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This is a report on what is most likely to happen in Iran, as early as this weekend, according to Israeli insiders and American officials I’ve relied upon for decades. It will entail heavy American bombing. I have vetted this report with a longtime US official in Washington, who told me that all will be “under control” if Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei “departs.” Just how that might happen, short of his assassination, is not known. There has been a great deal of talk about American firepower and targets inside Iran, but little practical thinking, as far I can tell, about how to remove a revered religious leader with an enormous following.

I have reported from afar on the nuclear and foreign policy of Israel for decades. My 1991 book The Samson Option told the story of the making of the Israeli nuclear bomb and America’s willingness to keep the project secret. The most important unanswered question about the current situation will be the response of the world, including that of Vladimir Putin, the Russian president who has been an ally of Iran’s leaders.

The United States remains Israel’s most important ally, although many here and around the world abhor Israel’s continuing murderous war in Gaza. The Trump administration is in full support of Israel’s current plan to rid Iran of any trace of a nuclear weapons program while hoping the ayatollah-led government in Tehran will be overthrown.

I have been told that the White House has signed off on an all-out bombing campaign in Iran, but the ultimate targets, the centrifuges buried at least eighty meters below the surface at Fordow, will, as of this writing, not be struck until the weekend. The delay has come at Trump’s insistence because the president wants the shock of the bombing to be diminished as much as possible by the opening of Wall Street trading on Monday. (Trump took issue on social media this morning with a Wall Street Journal report that said he had decided on the attack on Iran, writing that he had yet to decide on a path forward.)

Fordow is home to the remaining majority of Iran’s most advanced centrifuges that have produced, according to recent reports of the International Atomic Energy Agency, to which Iran is a signatory, nine hundred pounds of uranium enriched to 60 percent, a short step from weapons-grade levels.

The most recent Israeli bombing attacks on Iran have made no attempts to destroy the centrifuges at Fordow, which are stored at least eighty meters underground. It has been agreed, as of Wednesday, that US bombers carrying bunker bombs capable of penetrating to that depth, will begin attacking the Fordow facility this weekend.

The delay will give US military assets throughout the Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean—there are more than two dozen US Air Force bases and Navy ports in the region—a chance to prepare for possible Iranian retaliation. The assumption is that Iran still has some missile and air force capability that will be on US bombing lists. “This is a chance to do away with this regime once and for all,” an informed official told me today, “and so we might as well go big.” He said, however, “that it will not be carpet bombing.”

The planned weekend bombing will also have new targets: the bases of the Republican Guards, which have countered those campaigning against the revolutionary leadership since the violent overthrow of the shah of Iran in early 1979.

The Israeli leadership under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hopes that the bombings will provide “the means of creating an uprising” against Iran’s current regime, which has shown little tolerance for those who defy the religious leadership and its edicts. Iranian police stations will be struck. Government offices that house files on suspected dissenters in Iran will also be attacked.

The Israelis apparently also hope, so I gather, that Khamenei will flee the country and not make a stand until the end. I was told that his personal plane left Tehran airport headed for Oman early Wednesday morning, accompanied by two fighter planes, but it is not known whether he was aboard.

Only two thirds of Iran’s population of 90 million are Persians. The largest minority groups include Azeris, many of whom have long-standing covert ties to the Central Intelligence Agency, Kurds, Arabs, and Baluchis. Jews make up a small minority group there, too. (Azerbaijan is the site of a large secret CIA base for operations in Iran.)

Bringing back the shah’s son, now living in exile in near Washington, has never been considered by the American and Israeli planners, I was told. But there has been talk among the White House planning group that includes Vice President J.D. Vance, of installing a moderate religious leader to run the country if Khamenei is deposed. The Israelis bitterly objected to the idea. “They don’t give a shit on the religious issue, but demand a political puppet to control,” the longtime US official said. “We are split with the Izzies on this. Result would be permanent hostility and future conflict in perpetuity, Bibi desperately trying to draw US in as their ally against all things Muslim, using the plight of the citizens as propaganda bait.”

There is the hope in the American and Israeli intelligence communities, I was told, that elements of the Azeri community will join in a popular revolt against the ruling regime, should one develop during the continued Israeli bombing. There also is the thought that some members of the Revolutionary Guard would join in what I was told might be “a democratic uprising against the ayatollahs”—a long-held aspiration of the US government. The sudden and successful overthrow of Bashar al-Assad in Syria was cited as a potential model, although Assad’s demise came after a long civil war.

It is possible that the result of the massive Israeli and US bombing attack could leave Iran in a state of permanent failure, as happened after the Western intervention in Libya in 2011. That revolt resulted in the brutal murder of Muammar Gaddafi, who had kept the disparate tribes there under control. The futures of Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon, all victims of repeated outside attacks, are far from settled.

Donald Trump clearly wants an international win he can market. To accomplish that, he and Netanyahu are taking America to places it has never been.

This article was originally published on SeymourHersh.substack.com.

The post What I Have Been Told Is Coming in Iran appeared first on LewRockwell.

This article first appeared as an exclusive to Ron Paul Institute subscribers. Subscribe here for free.

As of this writing, the United States military appears to have all of its assets in place for a major attack on Iran. Over the past several days we have seen unprecedented re-orientation of US vast military might from the coast of California to Qatar and everything in-between.

President Trump is set to take the United States into a “pre-emptive” war against a country that has not attacked us nor has it threatened us. He is doing so while explicitly denigrating his own entire Intelligence Community, which continues to maintain that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon nor does it already possess WMDs.

(Remember we went to war just over 20 years ago on the neocon lie that Iraq possessed WMDs?)

This exchange happened just this afternoon:

Reporter: “Your intelligence community says Iran isn’t building a nuke.”
Trump: “They’re wrong. Who said that?”
Reporter: “Your DNI, Tulsi Gabbard.”
Trump: “She is wrong.”

The President’s spokesperson yesterday again made the claim, refuted by the entire US Intelligence Community, that Iran was just “a couple of weeks” away from a nuclear bomb.

Journalist Saagar Enjeti questioned that assertion from the Trump Press Secretary and the response was astonishing. As he recently wrote:

So President Trump has tossed aside the collective judgement of the entire US Intelligence Community in favor of the “assessment” of a foreign intelligence service whose motto is literally, “By way of deception you shall engage in war.”

It’s even worse than that. According to Sean Davis, the CEO of the ultra pro-MAGA publication, The Federalist:

I have also been told by current and former senior national security officials that CIA claims about Iran’s nuclear progress come directly from Mossad—verbatim talking points was one phrase I heard—and don’t include U.S. intelligence on the matter.

This is in reference to CIA Director John Ratcliffe’s bizarre recent claim that Iran is “on the one yard line” of getting a nuclear weapon and would for sure want to score a touchdown.

Ratcliffe’s CIA should have taken out a footnote on the Intelligence Community’s March assessment if he did not agree that Iran is not pursuing a nuclear weapon, but he chose to repeat the talking points of a foreign intelligence service to undermine his own country’s intelligence services. Instead he joined in on Trump’s kneecapping of Gabbard.

[Note: Since this article first appeared, Gabbard seems to have “gotten in line” with Ratcliffe, Trump, and the Mossad.]

Folks this is going to be the biggest war in generations if Trump decides to pull the trigger. No wonder the Framers of our Constitution were determined to not convey such awesome power in the hands of one man, but rather granted it to The People (the ones who would be doing the fighting and dying) through their elected representatives.

Something is very wrong in our country right now and all patriots and men and women of goodwill are duty-bound to do something about it.

But what can we do? One thing you can do is “vote with your feet” and join us in August for the ninth annual Ron Paul Institute DC Conference (at the Dulles Airport).

All eyes are on us, and if CSPAN again chooses to cover our conference, what will the neocons say when the camera pans to show an empty room? They will smirk and smile, believing all the gas has run out of the anti-war and non-interventionist movement.

Reprinted with permission from The Ron Paul Institute.

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“In order to succeed in business a man does not need a degree from a school of business administration. These schools train the subalterns for routine jobs. They certainly do not train entrepreneurs. An entrepreneur cannot be trained. A man becomes an entrepreneur by seizing an opportunity and filling the gap. No special education is required for such a display of keen judgment, foresight, and energy.”—Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Fox Business reported in 2016 that more than 2,000 colleges and universities in the US offer a course in entrepreneurship. And why not? Fifty-four percent of Millennials want to start a business. Twenty years ago, fewer than 50 universities offered degrees in entrepreneurship. In 2023, there are 150 entrepreneurship programs, including most of the top business schools in the country. The top ten schools for entrepreneurship include prestigious universities like MIT, University of California, Berkeley, Penn, University of Utah, Babson College, University of Michigan, Baylor, and North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

While querying Google “What is an entrepreneur?” pictures of these individuals appeared: Richard Branson, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Oprah Winfrey. Branson has dyslexia, did poorly in school, never went to college, and reportedly started his first business at 16. Steve Jobs dropped out of Reed College after one semester. Bill Gates left Harvard after two years. Elon Musk earned a bachelor’s degree in economics and physics from Penn, but dropped out of Stanford after two days. Jeff Bezos graduated from Princeton University in 1986 with degrees in electrical engineering and computer science. Oprah Winfrey said in a commencement address, “So I got my degree from Tennessee State, right around the time I got my third Emmy.” That same year she was also in the beginning stages of launching her own production company Harpo Studios.

While all are (or were) great entrepreneurs, few earned college degrees and none were schooled in entrepreneurship. Media mogul Ted Turner studied the classics at Brown but was expelled before graduating. Kirk Kerkorian dropped out of the eighth grade. Sheldon Adelson attended City College of New York but did not graduate. For sure, none of these famous entrepreneurs took inane courses with titles such as: “Business Model Development,” “Corporate Entrepreneurship: Initiating and Sustaining Innovations,” “Business Problem Formulation and Solving,” or “Social Entrepreneurship in Action.”

Dina Dwyer-Owens—CEO of The Dwyer Group who informally teaches entrepreneurship courses at Baylor University—told Fox Business, “I actually spend a good 30 minutes in my presentation talking about the importance of getting clear about what your values are in operating your business and how you can attract the types of team members that are like minded,” she says. “You certainly want team members that have strengths and weaknesses that complement yours, but having the same values in mind is key in building a business.” “Values” and “team members” doesn’t sound like entrepreneurship but instead, political correctness.

In a utterly laughable statement, Ms. Dwyer-Owens claims students can learn how to identify and establish a strategic planning process for a future business through their coursework. The country should have successful entrepreneurs popping up like dandelions anytime now.

According to Ludwig von Mises,

What distinguishes the successful entrepreneur and promoter from other people is precisely the fact that he does not let himself be guided by what was and is, but arranges his affairs on the ground of his opinion about the future. He sees the past and the present as other people do; but he judges the future in a different way.

A college degree is certification that the student has learned what was and is. Success at university is not formulating opinions about the future but to learn and memorize the opinions of professors, who learned from their professors, who learned from their professors, and so on.

Frank Knight distinguished entrepreneurs from other businesspeople by their willingness to act in the face of uncertainty. Entrepreneurs often don’t know whether their product will work, how it will be manufactured, who the customers will be, or how they can be reached. For Knight, in the face of uncertainty entrepreneurs act while others dither. Spending four or more years working toward a college degree is dithering, if nothing else.

For Israel Kirzner the entrepreneur is a person who, “upon seeing a $10 bill in front of his nose, is alert to the existence of the money and leaps to grab it. The alert man will grab the $10 note rapidly; the less alert man will take longer to see his opportunity and to take advantage of it.” But action by the entrepreneur alone is insufficient, others must be convinced and motivated.

University courses cannot teach what these three economists describe: innate qualities that the very few possess. Or, as Investopedia offers, “Entrepreneurship can be seen as the secret sauce that combines all the other factors of production into a product or service for the consumer market” (emphasis added).

Early Apple employees describe Steve Jobs as being able to “convince anyone of practically anything.” Andy Hertzfeld—an engineer for Apple—said Jobs had a “reality distortion field, a confounding mélange of a charismatic rhetorical style, an indomitable will, and an eagerness to bend any fact to fit the purpose at hand.”

Entrepreneurs must be able to persuade investors, lenders, vendors, employees, landlords and many others to suspend disbelief. To, as writers for the Harvard Business Review write, “see the opportunity the entrepreneur sees: a world that could be but is not now” (emphasis in original).

The entrepreneur must have an enormous appetite for risk. The 18th-century economist Richard Cantillon called entrepreneurs a “special, risk-bearing group of people.” And with risk comes conflicts of interest and the opportunity to bend the truth.

While some may have the talent, they may not be able to, in a word, lie—and lie with conviction to the point they believe the lies themselves. Entrepreneurs are constantly trying to convince others so the opportunities to stretch the truth are many, and they have a lot on the line. There is the asymmetric information problem. The entrepreneur is not starting or running a transparent company. He or she possesses information no one has and, thus, can easily exaggerate, or just plain distort the facts to suit their needs.

The HBR writers cite a 2018 Entrepreneur magazine interview with Stonyfield Farm founder Gary Hirshberg. The yogurt vendor rationalized any untruths he told along the way as, “I think lying, if we want to call it that, which I guess is what it should be called, for the common good, because in the end it didn’t help the vendors for me to go under either, is OK as long as you ultimately do deliver.”

The utilitarian ends justify the means, if everything works out OK. “[I]t is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong,” Jeremy Bentham wrote.

Hirshberg saw himself as the champion not only for those involved in his business, but friends and family. “We were fighting for employees’ jobs and our mothers’ and mothers-in-laws’ and friends’ investments. Fighting for our lives. And I think anything goes, as long as you’re not injuring anybody.”

After all, it’s just business, right?

He wasn’t doing anything that any other business person was doing. Hirshberg said of his vendors, “It’s not like they haven’t seen it before.”

The entrepreneur must stretch the truth to convince others he or she can predict the future when, in fact, that’s impossible, but not radically impossible. Stephan Kinsella writes, “My view is the Misesian-Rothbardian-Hoppean one, which I understand to be that the future is uncertain, but not radically so; that knowledge of economics laws can help, ceteris paribus—but that usually other factors are dominant.”

Kinsella goes on to mention a conversation with an economist specializing in entrepreneurship, Peter Klein, who told Kinsella, “the question of why or how someone has the better skill at forecasting is really meta-economics—more of a psychological field, which is studied at Effectuation, from a Kirznerian perspective.”

Murray Rothbard explained that,

…the forecaster attempts to predict the events of the future on the basis of present and past events already known. He uses all his nomothetic knowledge, economic, political, military, psychological, and technological; but at best his work is an art rather than an exact science.

Hans-Herrman Hoppe echos Rothbard’s view, writing, “while economic forecasting will indeed always be a systematically unteachable art, it is at the same time true that all economic forecasts must be thought of as being constrained by the existence of a priori knowledge about actions as such.”

As an example, the quantity theory of money, writes Hoppe, is not an empirical theory but a praxeological theory which would act as a logical constraint on prediction-making. “It means that in the long run the praxeological enlightened forecaster would average better than the enlightened ones.”

However, for the entrepreneur, the long run means little to nothing. There is money to raise, rent to pay, payrolls to make, and dozens of other pressing issues. The praxeologically-enlightened entrepreneur could go bankrupt waiting to be right in the long run.

What Rothbard and Hoppe call art, Ludwig von Mises called speculation.

Like every acting man, the entrepreneur is always a speculator. He deals with the uncertain conditions of the future. His success or failure depends on the correctness of his anticipation of uncertain events. If he fails in his understanding of things to come, he is doomed. The only source from which an entrepreneur’s profits stem is his ability to anticipate better than other people the future demand of the consumers.

It should be remembered, much of the foundational work on entrepreneurship and uncertainty was written while the US and many other countries were on a gold standard—a system which kept prices steady and, in many ways, decreased the number of financial market manias and panics viz-à-vis today’s fiat money standard, or (as Jim Grant terms it) the PHd standard. Liquidity episodes are now common and banking panics come every decade or so. This environment creates more uncertainty for today’s entrepreneurs. The other change is the amount of regulation has exploded from all levels of government from when Knight and Mises theorized. Peter Klein wrote in his book The Capitalist and the Entrepreneur, “When an industry is regulated, deregulated, or re-regulated, economic calculation becomes more difficult, and entrepreneurial activity is hampered. It should not be surprising that poor long-term performance is more likely under those conditions.”

One of the entrepreneurs mentioned above, Elon Musk, by some accounts is less an entrepreneur than a rent seeker, building his fortune on government subsidies. In a 2014 Bloomberg article, Barry Ritholtz wrote, “almost all of Musk’s companies rely in some form on government subsidies or tax breaks. Tesla’s earnings, according to Forbes, aren’t derived from selling automobiles, but from selling ‘emissions credits mandated by the state of California’s electric vehicle requirements.’”

The financial press desperately wants fresh, young entrepreneurial geniuses to report on. But the current, heavily-regulated, fragile financial system environment makes it more difficult for young entrepreneurs to blossom. Two of the most celebrated young entrepreneurs of the past decade—Elizabeth Holmes and Sam Bankman-Fried—are both serving prison time. Not so long ago, Holmes graced the cover of Inc. magazine which touted her as “The Next Steve Jobs.” Fortune featured a 30-year old Bankman-Fried on its cover asking if he was “The Next Warren Buffett?”

In his 2023 book Chaos Kings: How Wall Street Traders Make Billions In The New Age Of Crisis, Scott Patterson chronicles the stories of Mark Spitznagel and Nassim Taleb whose threefold trading strategy assumes; the future is impossible to predict, extreme events are now more devastating than many people assume, and drawdowns (failures) mean more than wins.

While it’s clear entrepreneurship cannot be learned, the covid recession served to accelerate the number of entrepreneurship programs. Timothy Mescon wrote for aacsb.edu,

…in March 2020—perhaps the most disruptive time of the pandemic—demand for entrepreneurship education was up 66 percent year-on-year. This is a strong indication that, during times of great crisis, students perceive new business creation as a catalyst for helping them overcome challenges and find opportunities.

Vincenzo Esposito Vinzi—dean and president of ESSEC Business School in France—noted, “Students increasingly consider entrepreneurship an efficient way to impact the world,” he said. “They realize that creating their own businesses or joining young and agile companies can provide significant opportunities to shape the world and solve environmental and social problems.” Again, this is not entrepreneurship but political correctness.

Descriptions of entrepreneurship programs do not mention risk-taking, acting in the face of uncertainty, forecasting, and speculation. These university programs are simply attempting to attract would-be lawyers or engineers with heady pronouncements that an entrepreneurship degree will allow them to make the world a better place, not by creating new products or services, but by saving the environment and solving society’s ills.

Many entrepreneurs created through these covid-fueled programs will likely be failures, wasting not only the cost of the education but any capital used to start their world-saving dreams. Thankfully for these entrepreneurial failures, a routine job awaits.

The title of this essay is, of course, a play on Walter Block’s monumental book Defending the Undefendable. Murray Rothbard’s comment about Defending, that “many of ‘our people’ are not ready for this exciting and shocking adventure” comes to mind as “our people” (Austrians) make their living teaching what can’t be taught—entrepreneurship.

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War with Iran is the biggest news story of 2025 so far, and it is also one of the biggest events of this entire period in human history.  Decisions that global leaders will be making in the weeks and months to come will have very serious implications for all of us.  Right now, we are waiting to see if President Trump will give the green light for U.S. air strikes in Iran.  Earlier today, we were informed that Trump will make this decision “within the next two weeks”…

President Donald Trump said there was a “substantial chance” of U.S. negotiations with Iran and that he would decide within two weeks whether diplomacy keeps America out of the ongoing Israel-Iran conflict.

The statement took down the temperature as the world waited for news of whether he would commit U.S. forces to Israel’s campaign against Tehran’s nuclear program.

“Based on the fact that there’s a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, quoting Trump.

That doesn’t mean that President Trump will make his decision two weeks from now.

“Within the next two weeks” means that a decision could come at any point within that time frame.

According to one anonymous U.S. official, Trump “wants to keep his options open until the very last moment”…

Trump remained hesitant to commit, wary of a prolonged foreign conflict he has long vowed to avoid, on Thursday. “There are a lot of things in motion,” a US official said, “but the President wants to keep his options open until the very last moment.” Trump’s top priority, according to insiders, is to avoid a drawn-out military entanglement.

While he is open to arguments from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that only American power can cripple Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the president has so far resisted calls for immediate intervention.

Trump seemed to personally confirm this when he told reporters in the Oval Office that he prefers “to make the final decision one second before it’s due”…

Speaking from the Oval Office, Trump confirmed: “I like to make the final decision one second before it’s due. Especially with war, things change with war. It can go from one extreme to the other.”

I think that Trump would prefer to make a deal with Iran if that is still possible.

But the Iranians have given no indication that they are willing to give in to Trump’s demands.

Ultimately, Trump is still determined to bring Iran’s nuclear program to an end one way or another.

Either the Iranians will agree to destroy it, or the U.S. and Israel will destroy it.

In order for the U.S. and Israel to destroy it, the underground nuclear facility at Fordow will have to be taken out, and that will not be easy…

President Trump has been briefed on both the risks and the benefits of bombing Fordo, Iran’s most secure nuclear site, and his mindset is that disabling it is necessary because of the risk of weapons being produced in a relatively short period of time, multiple sources told CBS News.

“He believes there’s not much choice,” one source said. “Finishing the job means destroying Fordo.”

Israel cannot destroy Fordow by air, because it has no way to deliver 30,000 pound bunker-buster bombs.

That is why we would have to drop those bombs.

But even some U.S. officials have doubts that those bombs would be enough to destroy the facility at Fordow…

Donald Trump has suggested to defense officials it would make sense for the US to launch strikes against Iran only if the so-called “bunker buster” bomb was guaranteed to destroy the critical uranium enrichment facility at Fordow, according to people familiar with the deliberations.

Trump was told that dropping the GBU-57s, a 13.6-tonne (30,000lb) bomb would effectively eliminate Fordow but he does not appear to be fully convinced, the people said, and has held off authorizing strikes as he also awaits the possibility that the threat of US involvement would lead Iran to talks.

The effectiveness of GBU-57s has been a topic of deep contention at the Pentagon since the start of Trump’s term, according to two defense officials who were briefed that perhaps only a tactical nuclear weapon could be capable of destroying Fordow because of how deeply it is located.

President Trump doesn’t want to launch a mission that is going to fail.

If those giant bombs don’t work, he will look quite foolish, and he very much wants to avoid that.

But Fordow is the key to this entire conflict.

If Fordow is still operating when this is all over, it will be a major victory for Iran.

The Israelis are absolutely determined to keep that from happening.

If President Trump decides not to give the green light for air strikes on Iran, the Israelis have already indicated that they will send commandos in to take Fordow out…

• Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Ambassador to Washington Yechiel Leiter hinted in recent interviews that the Israel Defense Forces have options beyond just airstrikes.
• One could be a risky commando raid. Israeli special forces conducted such an operation last September, albeit on a smaller scale, when they destroyed an underground missile factory in Syria by planting and detonating explosives.
• Now that Israel has full control of Iran’s air space and has dealt a heavy blow to Iran’s military, that option appears less extreme than it otherwise would.
• A U.S. official said the Israelis told the Trump administration that while they may not be able to reach deep enough into the mountain with bombs, they may “do it with humans.”

It would be an extremely risky operation.

But the IDF demonstrated that they could pull off such an operation when they took out the underground missile factory in Syria last September…

Shoshani added that the nighttime raid was ‘one of the more complex operations the IDF has done in recent years’. Accompanied by airstrikes, it involved dozens of aircraft and around 100 helicopter-borne troops, he said.

‘At the end of the raid, the troops dismantled the facility, including the machines and the manufacturing equipment, themselves,’ he claimed.

Of course destroying Fordow would be much more difficult.

And there are so many ways that an operation of such complexity could go horribly wrong.

But if Trump doesn’t decide to use bunker-buster bombs, this may be the only way that Israeli leaders can achieve their goals.

We shall see what happens.

Meanwhile, missiles continue to fly back and forth between Israel and Iran.

Just hours ago, an Iranian missile hit one of Israel’s most important hospitals…

Black smoke was still billowing from the middle of the Soroka Medical Center when we arrived, several hours after Iran’s attack on the building.

Pieces of twisted metal shrapnel – some of it apparently from the missile itself – scattered across a 200m (656ft) area in and around the hospital complex.

Vehicles carrying medical staff lined the road outside – an emergency response to a situation that many had feared would be worse.

Needless to say, Israeli leaders are extremely angry, and they are vowing to get revenge…

Iran said the primary target of the attack that hit the Soroka Hospital was an Israeli military intelligence site, not the health facility, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the attack and vowed a response, saying: “We will exact the full price from the tyrants in Tehran.”

Israel Katz, the country’s Minister of Defense, accused Iran of “war crimes of the most serious kind” and said Ayatollah Khamenei “will be held accountable for his crimes.”

The IDF continues to hammer high value targets inside Iran as well.  Last night dozens of targets were hit, and this included a strike on Iran’s Arak heavy water reactor.  The following is an excerpt from an official statement by the IDF…

Overnight (Thursday), 40 IAF fighter jets, with the precise intelligence direction of the IDF Intelligence Directorate, struck dozens of military targets in Tehran and additional areas throughout Iran, using over 100 munitions.

As part of the strikes, and as part of the broad effort to prevent the Iranian regime from obtaining a nuclear weapon, the nuclear reactor in the area of Arak in Iran was targeted, including the structure of the reactor’s core seal, which is a key component in plutonium production.

Construction of the reactor began in 1997 but was not completed due to international community intervention.

The reactor was originally intended for the production of weapons-grade plutonium, capable of enabling the development of nuclear weapons. In light of various agreements, in recent years the Iranian regime advanced its conversion to produce low-grade plutonium, which is not suitable for the production of nuclear weapons. However, the regime deliberately ordered not to complete the conversion that would have prevented its use for nuclear weapons — in order to exert pressure on the West.

The strike targeted the component intended for plutonium production, in order to prevent the reactor from being restored and used for nuclear weapons development.

We are seeing so much death and destruction on both sides.

And unless Iran surrenders and gives up all nuclear enrichment, it will continue for the foreseeable future.

Ominously, a third U.S. aircraft carrier is now being moved into the region…

The USS Gerald R. Ford, the Navy’s newest aircraft carrier, will set sail for the Mediterranean as the Israel-Iran conflict continues to escalate.

The ship is expected to sail to Europe possibly next week, making it the third US aircraft carrier group in the region, the New York Post reported. The voyage is part of a regularly scheduled deployment.

The ship will join the USS Carl Vinson and the USS Nimitz in the region.

In April, I warned my readers about this exact scenario.

Now it is playing out right in front of our eyes.

This conflict is a “spark” that is going to change so much in our world.

We enjoyed so many years of peace and stability in the post-World War II era, but now those times are gone.

The dogs of war have been unleashed, and the days ahead are going to be absolutely insane.

Reprinted with permission from The Economic Collapse.

The post Guess What Israel Is Going To Do if Trump Doesn’t Give The Green Light for U.S. Air Strikes In Iran? appeared first on LewRockwell.