Written By:
- Date published:
8:59 am, March 1st, 2026 - 29 comments
Categories: Donald Trump, International, Iran, israel, uncategorized, us politics -
Tags:
This is one hell of a way to divert away from the Epstein files.
Israel has attacked Iran and the United States has joined in.
And not by accident.
The White House has been trying recently to work out how to get around the Constitution’s requirement that Congress declares war. And how to engage in a war that is really unpopular with Americans in the least support damaging way.
So someone in the Trump brains trust came up with the great idea. Get Israel to attack first. Then just join in.
From Politico:
Senior advisers to President Donald Trump would prefer Israel strike Iran before the United States launches an assault on the country, according to two people familiar with ongoing discussions.
The calculus is a political one — that more Americans would stomach a war with Iran if the United States or an ally were attacked first. Recent polling shows that Americans, and Republicans in particular, support regime change in Iran, but are unwilling to risk any U.S. casualties to achieve it. That means Trump’s team is considering the optics of how an attack is conducted in addition to other justifications — such as Iran’s nuclear program.
“There’s thinking in and around the administration that the politics are a lot better if the Israelis go first and alone and the Iranians retaliate against us, and give us more reason to take action,” said one of the people familiar with discussions. Both individuals were granted anonymity to describe private conversations.
Then overnight Israel chose to attack Iran. Who would have guessed?
The premise for the US attack is that negotiations with Iran over the possibility it could develop nuclear weapons had failed.
There was previously the agreement known as the Iran Nuclear Deal which was negotiated by the Obama White House.
For some reason Trump hated the deal and railed against it for years.
The preamble to the deal said that it would “ensure that Iran’s nuclear programme will be exclusively peaceful, and mark a fundamental shift in their approach to this issue”. The deal was signed by Iran, the United States, China, France, Germany, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom.
Under the deal Iran would get rid of pretty well all of its enriched uranium, decomission its advanced centrifuges and only use Uranium for peaceful purposes.
In 2018 Trump withdrew America from the deal. Iran then quietly got on with doing that which it promised not to until it was told the deal was off. The “Art of the Deal” took on a whole new meaning.
In June 2025 the US bombed different sites in Iran. Trump claimed that the attacks completely and totally obliterated Iran’s nuclear facilities, a claim which appears to be more than a tad inaccurate given continuous US threats against Iran.
Then yesterday’s events occurred.
The situation is developing but so far there are reports of the bombing of a Girl’s school with a number of fatalaties, Netanyahu claiming that they have killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, there have been retaliatory responses from Iran, a missile hit on a Dubai Hotel and the Strait of Hormuz is closed.
There is something weird about one world leader trying to divert attention away from charges of fraud teaming up with a second world leader trying to divert attention away from the Epstein Files going to war with a third country which is trying to do no more than what the first two countries are already doing. But that is where we are at.
And Trump’s rhetoric feels unnervingly like 1984’s “War is Peace” irrational rhetoric. although this time delivered by a buffoon rather than a jack booted fascist.
Bernie Sanders has as usual summed up the situation perfectly.
The American people were lied to about Vietnam. The American people were lied to about Iraq. The American people are being lied to again today and once again, it is ordinary people who will pay the price … We must not allow Trump to force us into another senseless war. No war with Iran.”
And what has been New Zealand’s response?
Crickets I am afraid.
Our proud history of displaying principle based independence in International affairs is in tatters. We seem to be buddying up to the leader who poses the biggest threat to world peace since Adolph Hitler in the 1930s.
Update:
The Government’s response is worse than I thought it could be.
All this talk about the "threat" of Iranian nuclear weapons (that, let's not forget, the US "obliterated" last time Trump wanted a distraction from something), seems particularly egregious when one considers the Middle East's actual rogue nuclear state: Israel.
Thanks to US support, Israel has at least 90 nuclear warheads, maybe up to 400, refuses to confirm or deny their presence, refuses to sign up to the Non Proliferation Treaty, then bombs Iran because of the "threat" that it might have one in the future.
Iran doesn't have any nuclear weapons, and while it says it would like some, unlike Israel, it regularly lets the IAEA inspectors in, and is a fully signed-up member of the NPT…
The Iranian government says its nuclear program is for peaceful, civilian purposes, after a religious edict (fatwa) issued by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in the early 2000s, declaring the production and use of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons, as forbidden (haraam) under Islamic law.
It has of more recent times enriched uranium to weapons grade level (presumably to leverage talks to end sanctions imposed by Trump as POTUS 45). Instead the 2025 military action.
Yes, Iran signed the NPT in 1970: under the Shah. But to argue that they 'let the inspectors in’ since the revolution is misleading.
Tehran’s cooperation has repeatedly expanded and contracted with the politics: it provisionally implemented the Additional Protocol, then stopped, later resumed under the JCPOA, then suspended again
The modern crisis began because Iran was caught hiding major facilities in Natanz and Arak in 2002. Which is exactly why verification became the central fight under Bush and Obama, and how we've ended up with the Trump administration's obsession with the Iranian nuclear programme.
Yes – but as Micky notes in the post above:
Bloody Trump, like Midas, stuffs up everything he touches. If only he could wash his hands.
Your opening words says it all mickysavage!
"One hell of a way to divert attention from the Epstein files.
Says Bernie Sanders:
"And what has been New Zealand’s response?"
Well, one response has just come through. Not read it properly yet but it appears to be a denouncement of Iran because they dared to take reciprocal action. The mind boggles!
How dare Luxon and Peters make such a bald-faced untruthful statement in my name.
Like most Kiwis, I am no fan of the current Iranian regime, but to be dragged (because it ultimately includes all of us) into an illegal war by two of the world's leading crooks who are trying to save their own skins because we know they will end up in gaol should they ever lose their leadership roles.
Every time that crook in the White House opens his mouth he is lying. And the populist insipid media around the world sit back and let it happen because they don't have the guts to stand up to him.
So say Luxon and Peters.
Absolute bullshit. It is a game of one-up-man-ship by two of the worst war-mongers on the planet. One wants to rule the M.E. the other wants to rule the world.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/middle-east-conflict-live-updates-israel-claims-irans-supreme-leader-ayatollah-ali-khamenei-is-dead/VYHEWG5GSRAY3LXL6OYZFLJRGE/
New Zealand – vassal state.
Not a single word of acknowledgement that US and Israel have broken international law, which NZ has previously said they want to uphold. It is absolutely craven and weak-gutted by Peters and Luxon.
The New York Mayor Mamdani can say it out loud – ""The military strikes launched by the United States and Israel against Iran constitute a catastrophic escalation in an illegal war of aggression"
Oman’s Foreign Minister says most recent indirect talks between US, Iran ‘really advanced, substantially’ and diplomacy must be allowed do its work.
Ashamed of this country.
Hipkins also doesn't condemn the US and Israel – in fact he's very careful not to do so, in his statement.
https://www.facebook.com/chrishipkinsmp/posts/we-are-deeply-concerned-by-the-situation-in-iran-our-first-thoughts-are-with-the/1464864048336574/
It's like all other international foreign-policy statements. Leaders of governments are constrained by real-politik; opposition leaders (with a real chance of getting elected) can be braver – but still have to word things carefully so as not to have to walk-back their public statements if/when they are in government; minor party opposition leaders have fairly free reign (cf TPM) and ex-politicians can be as inflammatory as they choose – knowing they won't have to deliver on any of it, or risk any negative consequences (cf Helen Clark)
Hipkins said Labour does not support the strikes on Iran by the US and Israeli governments.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DVXqvmfEoZc/
QFT
In 2012 Trump accused Obama of planning an attack on Iran to get re-elected.
There are elections in Israel this year.
There are mid-term elections this year in the US where the Republican Congressional majority is under severe threat.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/28/midterms-democrats-house-senatehttps://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/28/midterms-democrats-house-senate
What would a Democrat win do for Trump and his Republican henchmen and sycophants? The Guardian writes-
“Up for grabs in November are all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 33 seats in the Senate, and if Republicans lose their majorities in either chamber, it will alter the course of Trump’s presidency. Should Democrats take the House, they will gain the power to issue subpoenas as they investigate his administration, and can block the president’s legislative agenda. Should they wrest control of the Senate from the GOP, Democrats could stop Trump from appointing nominees to cabinet positions and the federal judiciary, including the supreme court.”
I'm sure that both Trump and Obama have seen, and remembered, the film "Wag the Dog" which came out in 1997. If it works in Hollywood it will work in real life.
Well, if any Americans die in this conflict, at least they died for a noble cause: distraction!
Maybe Trump will get his Medal of Honour for stopping yet another war!
/s
Well he has stopped 8 wars and only started 16!*
* As with any Trump linked assertion this statement is completely unverified.
PS Just been on the phone to a friend in Canada who has just returned from a visit to Mexico. I asked her did she know what borders on insanity? Canada and Mexico!
Regime change ahoy, mullahs out, IRG thugs in.
//
Donald Trump’s Worst Deal
The President helped build a hotel in Azerbaijan that appears to be a corrupt operation engineered by oligarchs tied to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
https://archive.li/S7rHZ (newyorker 2017)
When Luxon was pushed on why he gave such a craven statement, he said "our position is the same as the Australian position". Such appalling leadership, do your own friggin' thinking …
https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360945371/christopher-luxon-hits-back-after-helen-clark-brands-iran-response-disgrace
And that's why you don't have business people as leaders – they are terrible because they don't lead from a moral/idealogical position but from a selfish position of what gets them the most profit now and damn the long-term consequences.
"The Government’s response is worse than I thought it could be."
Really? I thought MFAT made a pretty good job of it – don't write anything that sounds like support for a murderous totalitarian regime that's spent billions on waging proxy wars in the region and supporting terrorism world-wide, do support Iranians who oppose the regime and do condemn the regime attacking Gulf States for no reason other than that they're sunni Muslim states. Pay lip service to a negotiated solution while being quietly pleased that the appalling Khamenei won't be around to participate. Just the ticket, really.
If you believe in international law then you have missed the elephant in the room.
If people believed in international law, they would have spent the past few decades advocating for the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran to be brought to justice for their proxy wars and terrorism funding. Instead, the only times I ever hear the phrase "international law" is when people are complaining about something the US or Israel's doing, so it's become hard to take the idea seriously.
I have two perspectives on this situation.
Firstly, from the perspective of the Iranian people, who have suffered a lot under the existing regime, hopefully this situation will lead to positive change and a better future for them. History shows that often, that doesn't happen though. For instance, Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. We can but hope that it will be different this time I guess.
Secondly, though, from an international perspective, this has to be bad. These sorts of military actions, however virtously they are framed, are setting a precedent for other nations to take similar action as they see fit. For example, China with its ambitions towards Taiwan.
Sadly, I think we are seeing the beginning of a new era of global conflict where might is right.
"History shows that often, that doesn't happen though."
In fact, has it ever happened?
France after the defeat of Napoleon, Turkey, Iran and the Arab states after WW1, Germany and Japan after WW2, possibly even Syria after the fall of Assad. Depends how you define "better," I suppose.
Oh joy, were just a couple of live nuclear weapons tests from democracy breaking out in Iran then?
Unless the US commits to a full scale ground invasion (which is unlikely to succeed) these examples clearly don't apply and are unlikely even to wrestle power off the IRGC faction. (e.g I was asking for an actual similar example, not wish casting).
I think the best that can be hoped for from this particular example is that it "mows the grass," but your question was about whether defeating another country in a war has ever made things better for that country.
Out of interest, just where are you forwarding the "mowing the grass" concept of this attack from?
In the USA there are suburban covenants where people are fined for not mowing their lawns.
In some cities councils do this as well.
Thus the use of the term which was couched to infer a form of broken windows policing, or neighbourhood activity.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14623528.2025.2506162
Discussing this with a friend last night. She has lived in the Middle East for a substantial chunk of time – and has visited Iran.
Her perspective is that the Iranian people are, in general, highly educated and literate, and with a strong cultural history. Apart from minority groups (largely on the borders) – there is not a lot of regionalism – so much less likely to implode into warlordism and a failed state (that was my initial prediction – however, I am swayed by her arguments). There is little real support (outside those who have benefited from the religious rule) for religious control of the state. This experiment has not gone well for the Iranian people.
If (and from my perspective it's a big if) – the mechanisms of government outside religious control haven't been totally destroyed; and, the IRG can be neutralized – and prevented from anointing another religious dictator – then there is a strong chance that Iran can come through this as a functional country. I should think it unlikely, that a Pahlevi king would be successfully parachuted in – but it's certainly a possibility. In the absence of a strong democratic history, and as a bulwark against renewed religious control, a constitutional monarchy may indeed be a good solution for Iran (it worked for Spain).
Trump is certainly piece, he is a real piece of…………