by Leo Hohmann, Leo’s Newsletter:
Entire Middle East now enraged and in flames, as Trump warns U.S. death toll is expected to rise. Could Iran become the flip side of Ukraine — a Russian proxy against US?
Barely three days in and the latest phase of the U.S./Israel-Iran war, dubbed “Operation Epic Fury” by the White House, is already spiraling into a wider regional conflict.
Trump decided to launch the war, and Iran retaliated with deadly strikes across the Middle East, just as it promised it would, targeting Israel as well as U.S. bases and U.S.-allied Muslim nations while shutting down the key Mideast oil-shipping channel, the Strait of Hormuz.
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At least 600 people in Iran have been killed by a barrage of mostly Tomahawk missiles and at least 10 have died in Israel from Iran’s launch of retaliatory missiles. Thousands of commercial flights have been canceled or rerouted. And gasoline prices at the pump are already soaring across the United States and Europe.
Shia Muslims have been protesting in Iraq, Pakistan and Bahrain, their indignation touched off by the U.S. assassination of Ayatollah Khamenei, who is Iran’s supreme leader and the second-most important religious figure to Shia Muslims worldwide. He was 86 years old.
In the first indication that the war might not be going exactly according to plan for the U.S. and Israel, President Trump announced Monday that he expects strikes on Iran to continue for at least four to five weeks. That’s up from the original estimation of two to three weeks. There are already four confirmed deaths of U.S. military personnel, with Trump saying more are expected in the days and weeks ahead.
Reliable information is difficult to find and confirm.
As the old saying goes, “the first casualty of war is the truth.” Propaganda is rampant on both sides in any war, and yet it’s surprising to me how many Americans still lap up every word their government tells them about the war and how it’s progressing.
And the media is no better.
Once the missiles started to fly, most of what we’ve heard on Fox News and the other corporate-media outlets immediately devolved into rank cheerleading, totally untethered from the reality of war.
We saw little to no actual reporting, for instance, on the missile, allegedly fired by the Israelis, that hit an all-girls elementary school in Iran. All we know for sure is that an ordnance of some kind hit the school, resulting in the deaths of more than 150 girls enrolled in first through fourth grade. We don’t know if it was a mistake or deliberately targeted due to the possibility of some Iranian military asset being hidden at or near the school. Either way, it’s an unspeakable tragedy that warrants a U.S. response. There has been none.
The U.S. also killed the Iranian ayatollah, but he was an easy target given that he apparently wanted to be martyred and stayed in his government office rather than go into hiding. Sadly, he allowed his 4-year-old granddaughter to be with him, and she was also killed.
While the ayatollah was an easy target, I’m not sure he was a wise target. This infuriated Muslims throughout the region, especially the Shia, and could result in more people in more countries being willing to sign up to fight the Americans and Israelis. This is something that will not surface immediately but could come to bear after the Iranian regime is replaced by a U.S puppet and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps retreats into the mountains to wage a years-long counter-revolution against whoever the U.S. decides to install.
