On: Iran and US report new wave of air strikes in Gulf

Oh, here we go again - because of course we’re here again. The framing is already doing its work: “Iran and US report” - note the passive, the mutuality, the way it makes it sound like two equal parties just happened to be striking each other like a bad game of ping-pong. But no, this isn’t a tit-for-tat dance. This is a system where one side has been pinned down for years, its airspace treated like a no-fly zone by a superpower that also happens to be the world’s largest arms dealer, and then gets blamed for defending itself. The detail they’re trying to keep at the edge? The fact that Iran’s military facilities - its defensive infrastructure - were targeted after years of U.S. sanctions, drone strikes, and the assassination of its top general. That’s not escalation. That’s a slow-motion car crash where one side keeps honking the horn and the other keeps swerving into the oncoming traffic.

And the Strait of Hormuz - because of course they mention it. Because that’s where the world’s oil supply funnels through, and because that’s where the U.S. Navy has been patrolling like a bouncer at a casino, flexing its muscle while whispering in the ear of every Gulf state that if anything happens, they will be the ones cleaning up the mess. The plain question here is: who’s actually escalating? The side that’s been threatening for decades, or the side that’s been actually bombing? And why does the answer matter so little to the people who’ve been selling the narrative all along?

I keep waiting for someone to ask why we’re even here. Why the U.S. isn’t just not doing this - why it’s not, say, sitting down with Iran and saying, “Look, we’ve got a problem with your nuclear program, but we also have a problem with our own program of destabilizing the region, so let’s actually talk.” But no, because that would require admitting that the entire framework of containment and deterrence is a house of cards built on the assumption that the other side is irrational, and that’s the only way to keep the arms industry humming.

God, I miss the days when diplomacy was just a word that meant something. Now it’s just another word for the gap between what’s happening and what we’re allowed to say about it. And the people in the room - the generals, the politicians, the analysts - they’re all just playing their parts, even the ones who know it’s all bullshit. But they’re still human. They still have families. They still wake up in the morning and have to decide whether to follow orders or not. That’s the part that makes me angry, not the strikes. The strikes are just the noise. The real tragedy is that no one’s asking the right questions.