Al Jazeera:

Israel is exporting its “Gaza playbook” to Lebanon.
Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) said on Friday that Israel’s bombings and forced displacement orders for all of southern Lebanon and the southern suburbs of the capital, Beirut, “are instilling widespread fear among civilians”.

“What we are witnessing in Lebanon is the unmistakable extension of the Israeli military playbook used in Gaza,” said Steve Cutts, CEO of the UK-based charity.

That includes “collective punishment, forced displacement, and the deliberate terrorising of civilian populations, including already traumatised Palestinian communities,” Cutts said in a statement.

People close to Trump basically saying that Netanyahu maneuvered him into war.

WaPo:

Netanyahu’s determination to initiate hostilities led Trump to believe an Israeli attack was inevitable and that the best course of action was to involve U.S. military power to ensure its success, said two people familiar with this thinking.
“It was a false premise because the United States could have told Israel ‘no,’” said the adviser to the president. “But it was a clever tactic, and it shifted the momentum in favor of military action.”
Netanyahu in late February called Trump with a specific piece of intelligence: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his inner circle would be gathered at a single known location in Tehran on a Saturday morning. Israel was ready. Trump decided to go for it.
“Trump felt like he didn’t have a choice,” said one of the people familiar with the president’s thinking.

Nearly 10 million people have effectively been subjected to a poison gas attack. And all with European support. A heinous act, historical evil.

FT:

Residents of Tehran are being warned that inhaling poisonous gases is more dangerous than acid rain, after Iran’s oil storage facilities were attacked overnight.
“Inhalation of these gases is definitely more dangerous,” state media said, pointing to nitrogen and hydrocarbon gases released into the atmosphere.

Telegraph:

Britain has as little as two days of gas stored up, raising fears of a potential crisis as supplies from the Middle East dry up.
The UK’s gas reserves have shrunk from 18,000 GWh worth last year to 6,700 GWh – enough for just 1.5 days of demand, according to new data published by transmission operator National Gas.
The crunch in supplies has resulted in traders charging the UK a premium for gas, exploiting its need to outbid rivals in other countries. It means the UK is now paying the highest wholesale gas prices in Europe

.

Reuters confirmed that the elementary school in the Iranian city of Minab was bombed TWICE by the US military, 40 minutes apart. This was intentional. You don't "accidentally" bomb a school TWO TIMES. 168 children and 14 teachers were killed. It was a massacre.

'Great liberator' Trump is stripping Venezuela of its natural resources, first oil, then gold, then critical rare minerals...

Interior Secretary Burgum ⬆️

🇺🇸🇮🇷 US claims "dismay" over "Israeli" strikes on Iranian fuel depots, and why you shouldn't believe them...

The US has, in all military operations throughout its history sought to exterminate all human life where and when possible, turning nations into failed states and inhibiting life for everyone, not just governments it targets.

In Serbia it targeted the power grid.

In Iraq the US starved half a million children to death even before its invasion and occupation killed another 1 million.

In Libya vital infrastructure for agriculture was deliberately destroyed.

In Syria the US seized and denied grain to deliberately starve the Syrian civilian population.

And now the US seeks to do ALL of these things to Iran and it IS.

As the US continues destroying Iran, and more egregious crimes against humanity required to do so, it will depend on its Israeli proxies to carry out, or at least claim to carry out, attacks that will cause immense human death and the destruction of vital infrastructure, all so the US can claim plausible deniability for itself.

However, every bomb, missile, plane and drop of fuel Israel uses was given to it by the US, every target is fixed by US intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, and each sortie made possible by US capabilities Israel doesn't have including extensive aerial refueling, suppression of air defenses, region-wide radar enabling situational awareness, and even combat search and rescue.

Every "Israeli" action is an American action.

Thus every "protest" by the US is an act of theater primarily because if the US doesn't want these targets hit it will simply deny Israel the ISR and coordinated operational capabilities (aerial refueling, suppression of air defenses, electronic warfare etc.) required to hit them.

The US knows, however, no one knows or cares about these material realities and will instead allow their myopic obsessions and emotions convince themselves somehow the Israelis, not the Americans, are in the driver's seat and these actions were "Israeli," not American, despite the fact Israel wouldn't exist in the first place (just like Ukraine) without full and constant support.

Again, this doesn't absolve Israel for the war crimes carried out amid this war of aggression. Like America's proxies in Ukraine, all involved in atrocities must be fought against and held accountable. However, if you want the war to end and the danger eliminated, identity the root of the danger, not just obsess over the tips of the branches or their falling leaves.

This post aged well!

Trump Aug 05 2024:

STOCK MARKETS ARE CRASHING, JOBS NUMBERS ARE TERRIBLE, WE ARE HEADING TO WORLD WAR lll, AND WE HAVE TWO OF THE MOST INCOMPETENT “LEADERS” IN HISTORY. THIS IS NOT GOOD!!!

Brent Crude Oil price

Germany’s state-funded Jewish newspaper:

"In the fight against the mullah regime, one piece of good news follows another."
“Admittedly the first phase of this war was fun”

The first phase of the US and Israel war against Iran saw the bombing of a girl’s school where up to 180 were killed

The US launched illegal unprovoked war against Iran because Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff lacked the technical expertise to even understand what the Iranians were offering in negotiations.

MS NOW reports:

The Trump administration has cited Iran’s Tehran Research Reactor as a central justification for its military strikes, but has provided no evidence that the facility — built by the United States and used for civilian research for nearly six decades — was being used to develop nuclear weapons. Multiple nuclear scientists and nonproliferation experts told MS NOW that the reactor does not have the  capacity to serve as an easy conduit to a bomb as asserted by the administration.
Several nuclear experts who spoke to MS NOW questioned the extent to which Witkoff and Kushner — who led the nuclear negotiations and described the Iranian position to Trump — understood the technical details of the enrichment programs at the heart of the deliberations.