Friday, 24 April 2026

Lebanon’s Recurring Nightmare

by Eric Margolis | Apr 24, 2026 | 2 Comments

Reprinted with permission from EricMargolis.com.

Once upon a time there was a magical little country named Lebanon. It was created by French imperialists out of the post-World War 1 wreckage of the Ottoman Empire as a mountainous stronghold for Levantine Maronite and Orthodox Christians.

Imperial Russia sought to assert its influence as defender of Lebanon’s Christians. The British and French thwarted Russia’s efforts and created two new states, Syria and Jordan. After the war, Israel was created by Britain. Some 750,000 Arabs who had been living in what was known as Palestine and Syria were driven from their homes by Jewish settlers. The Levant’s map was redrawn. What was to have been an Arab state was annexed by an expanding Israel and British-influenced Jordan, with little Lebanon sitting amid the geopolitical leftovers. Sixty percent of Jordan’s population was Palestinian. Nearly 60% of Lebanon’s population was Sunni and Shiite Muslim. The rest was Orthodox, Catholic, Druze and Armenian.

In 1975 I landed in Beirut, Lebanon’s capital, just in time for the first day of the 15 year long civil war that tore that nation apart and killed up to 200,000. All the pressures and hatreds that had been building up across multiethnic Lebanon exploded into one of the ugliest, most sadistic conflicts I had seen as a long-time war correspondent.

Women and children and unarmed men were routinely massacred. Rape, which was rare in the Muslim world, was used to punish Muslims. Torture of all sorts was a daily horror. Maronite Christians became crazed killers. One former business associate, who owned a chain of successful perfume shops, turned into the knife-wielding chief of the Maronite-Phalangist combat group. He boasted to me about the many Muslims he had killed. He offered to show me his collection of Muslim ears. This from a Paris-educated gentleman who had just previously been selling Chanel perfume.

Muslims battled Maronites; Druze fought Shiites; Armenians fought Muslims; Sunnis battled Druzes. It became a madhouse of slaughter and hatred, and then Israel invaded. Israel’s plan – as it is today – to annex parts of southern Lebanon. I was with the Israeli Army when it attacked the key town of Nabatiyeh. Its Shia citizens were celebrating their high Day of Ashura as Israeli mechanized troops burst through the worshippers spraying them with gunfire.

Until then, the Shia Muslim movement Hezbollah had been cooperating with Israel. Now, they began firing at their former allies. Before long, Israel’s all-powerful information machine and its US allies branded the Shia movement ‘terrorist.’ Hezbollah became Israel’s enemy number one – where it remains today even after Israel assassinated Hezbollah’s leadership.

Into this maelstrom charged the Reagan administration. 220 Marines and 18 American sailors stationed at the Beirut Embassy were killed by a large truck bomb. They had no business being in the midst of Lebanon’s civil war.

The next horrors were the massacres of Palestinians at the Shatila and Sabra refugee camps outside Beirut in 1982. Over 3,500 Palestinians were slaughtered by Lebanese Christian troops backed by Israeli forces. This crime helped end Lebanon’s ghastly civil war. But now, thanks to Israel’s latest invasion of Lebanon, the nightmare civil war may be about to come to life again – all thanks to Netanyahu and Trump, the so-called ‘men of peace.’

Eric S. Margolis is an award-winning, internationally syndicated columnist. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune the Los Angeles Times, Times of London, the Gulf Times, the Khaleej Times, Nation (Pakistan), Hurriyet (Turkey), Sun Times (Malaysia), and other news sites in Asia. He writes at EricMargolis.com.

https://original.antiwar.com/eric_margolis/2026/04/23/lebanons-recurring-nightmare/

Trump Shares Post Calling for the Killing of Iranian Leaders Who Won’t Accept US Demands

by Dave DeCamp | April 23, 2026 at 12:27 pm ET | Iran

President Trump on Thursday shared a post calling for the killing of Iranian leaders who won’t accept US demands, ramping up his threats against the country amid a very fragile ceasefire.

The post Trump amplified was written by Marc Thiessen, who served as a speechwriter for the George W. Bush administration. “If there are two factions in Iran, one that wants a deal and one that doesn’t, let’s kill the ones who don’t want a deal,” Thiessen said in a post on X where he was quoting himself from an appearance on Fox News.

Thiessen also made the case to kill Iranian leaders in an op-ed published by The Washington Post on Wednesday titled “Trump Doesn’t Need a Deal to Get What He Wants From Iran,” which President Trump also shared on his Truth Social account.

In the piece, Thiessen argued that Trump should restart the bombing campaign against Iran. “Right now, the remnants of the Iranian regime are under the misimpression that Trump wants a deal more than they do,” he wrote.

“Trump needs to disabuse them of that notion. He has reportedly told Iran that it has three to five days to make a serious counteroffer. If it fails to do so, he should resume combat operations — starting with strikes targeting Iran’s recalcitrant leaders. If the Iranian regime is really ‘fractured’ between a faction that wants a deal and a faction that does not, there is a simple solution: Kill the faction that does not,” Thiessen said.

Thiessen said the US should maintain the blockade and claimed the US military could open the Strait of Hormuz by force and that it just needed 14 more days to “finish the job” against Iran.

The Trump administration has pushed the narrative that Iran’s military has essentially been obliterated, but Iran was able to continue missile and drone attacks throughout the entire war, and according to US officials speaking to The New York Times, US intelligence assesses that Tehran likely has access to the majority of its missiles and launchers.

https://news.antiwar.com/2026/04/23/trump-shares-post-calling-for-the-killing-of-iranian-leaders-who-wont-accept-us-demands/

War On Iran: A Stalemate With No End In Sight

moon of alabama

U.S. President Donald Trump has again chickened out of his threats to Iran:

Trump said the ceasefire had been due to end on Wednesday, but he decided to keep it in place because the government in Tehran is “seriously fractured.”
He said the pause will continue “until such time as” Iran’s leaders and representatives submit a “unified proposal” to end the war with the United States and Israel. Trump also said he made the move after a request from Asim Munir and Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan. He said he directed the U.S. military to keep the blockade in place until a proposal is delivered.

The U.S. has, as Trump had previously acknowledged, already received Iran’s 10-point proposal.

What Trump is acknowledging without saying it is that it is unlikely that there will be any negotiated settlement of the war. The U.S. is structurally incapable of lifting sanctions on Iran or signing a peace treaty. Iran is unwilling to give up its (enrichment) rights for bare promises Trump or his successors are unlikely to hold.

The conflict will thus continue.

Iran’s military capabilities are sufficient to wage a long war. The intense U.S. and Israeli bombing campaign was unable to disarm the country:

About half of Iran’s stockpile of ballistic missiles and its associated launch systems were still intact as of the start of the ceasefire in early April, three of the officials told CBS News.
Roughly 60% of the naval arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is still in existence, the officials said, including fast-attack speed boats.
…
About two-thirds of Iran’s air force is still believed to be operational, the officials said, after an intensive U.S. and Israeli campaign that struck thousands of targets, including storage and production facilities.
…
The head of the Defense Intelligence Agency submitted a written statement ahead of a House Armed Services Committee hearing that said Iran can still inflict damage.
“Iran retains thousands of missiles and one-way attack UAVs that can threaten U.S. and partner forces throughout the region, despite degradations to its capabilities from both attrition and expenditure,” Marine Lt. Gen. James Adams wrote.
Previously, the president and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have described the U.S. effort, called Operation Epic Fury, as essentially destroying Iran’s military capacity.

That is a meager outcome if one believes reports that the Pentagon has used up nearly 50% of its relevant munition:

Over the last seven weeks of war, the US military has expended at least 45% of its stockpile of Precision Strike Missiles; at least half of its inventory of THAAD missiles, which are designed to intercept ballistic missiles; and nearly 50% of its stockpile of Patriot air defense interceptor missiles, according to a new analysis conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Those numbers closely align with classified Pentagon data about US stockpiles, according to the sources familiar with the assessment.
…
The US military has also expended approximately 30% of its Tomahawk missile stockpile; more than 20% of its stockpile of long-range Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles; and approximately 20% of its SM-3 and SM-6 missiles, according to the analysis and the sources. It would take around four to five years to replace those systems.

By now Trump’s bluffs have been called not only once or twice but five times:

On five separate occasions, the president has set deadlines for Iran to come to his terms or face his wrath.
And each time, he’s delayed that deadline despite little or no public evidence that Iran met the terms as he laid them out.

The U.S. has run out of option but is unwilling to concede its defeat.

Each day the damage due to Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz is increasing (archived):

The International Monetary Fund warned last week that under a severe scenario—where the conflict continues for months and keeps oil prices elevated—world economic growth could fall to 2% in 2026, a rate seen only during the deepest recent global recessions. That compares with the IMF’s main, or “reference,” scenario, in which there is a quick resolution and global output grows by 3.1% this year.
…
The conflict has already proven more disruptive to global energy markets than the 1973 oil crisis. The fallout extends far beyond crude.
Supply chains are also gummed up for helium, crucial for the artificial-intelligence chips boom, and fertilizers, essential for global food security. Aluminum prices are near a four-year high that was reached earlier this month amid war-related smelter closures across the Gulf, which accounts for around 10% of global supply.

Current U.S. propaganda is claiming that the leadership in Iran is not united:

Trump’s negotiators believe a deal to end the war and address what’s left of Iran’s nuclear program is still achievable. But they also worry they may not have anyone in Tehran empowered to say yes.
Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei is barely communicating. The IRGC generals now in control of the country and Iran’s civilian negotiators are openly at odds over strategy.
“We saw that there is an absolute fracture inside Iran between the negotiators and the military — with neither side having access to the supreme leader, who is not responsive,” a U.S. official said.

That is a serious misreading of the political process in Iran. The national security council under the Supreme Leader has always been the main forum of major foreign policy decisions. On national security issues President Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Araghchi are diplomats, not policy makers. The distinction between “hardliners” and “moderates” in Iran is thus not valid.

Main stream opinion writers who, with Trump’s applause, are calling for murdering the allegedly resistive party in Iran are only exposing their ignorance.

With his latest TACO Trump has pushed the problem out into the future. I expect him to try to ignore the situation he has created until more significant damage in the U.S. economy becomes visible.

Meanwhile Iran can, should and likely will increase the pressure. The most obvious move is to ask Ansarollah (the Houthi) in Yemen to close the southern Bab al-Mandeb outlet of the Red Sea.

This would block another 5% of the global oil output and thus increase the economic pressure.

Posted by b on April 23, 2026 at 14:40 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2026/04/war-on-iran-a-stalemate-with-no-end-in-sight.html

Why Did It Work in Venezuela and Not in Iran?

https://x.com/pati_marins64/status/2047288003970646394

Patricia Marins

@pati_marins64

Why Did It Work in Venezuela and Not in Iran?

To understand why, on January 3 of this year, the United States carried out an operation and successfully captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro without resistance from the Venezuelan armed forces, it is necessary to start with the political organization and the distinct moments the two states are going through.

Maduro’s Venezuela had nearly 200 officers from the armed forces imprisoned because of six coup attempts, more than 20 of whom were colonels and generals. It was a fractured military force, with extremely low salaries, poorly trained, without combat experience, and held hostage by disputes between Venezuelan political factions. 

Years of sanctions forced Venezuela, which, unlike Iran, did not seek ways to circumvent the sanctions and maintain a functional state, into this situation. 

In Maduro’s Venezuela, the military high command controlled oil and gas, mining, and industry through Camimpeg, as well as logistics and food distribution, managing ports, airports, and warehouses through the “Gran Misión Abastecimiento Soberano.”

The military elite took over the Venezuelan state while watching the entire country sink into poverty.

This scenario contrasts sharply with Iran, starting with its own governance structure. In Iran, the president may be challenged and criticized within the government, but the Ayatollah’s position is sovereign, with an uncontested verticalization of leadership in the country. 

This makes any opposition organization and uprising in the armed forces extremely difficult.

The Iranian model has always had clear enemies and has invested heavily in preparation for the possibility of a war against the United States and Israel. 

But this investment went far beyond weapons: it was an investment in the foundations of the Iranian state, in the country’s universities and research centers, creating a solid and innovative ecosystem that enabled the emergence of a civilian and military industry comparable to, and in some sectors even more modern than, that of the West.

Unlike Venezuela, the Iranian forces have real combat experience and doctrinal refinement from proxy wars in Lebanon, Yemen, and Syria, perfecting doctrines and allowing the implementation of new technologies.

The contrast is evident even when comparing the militia organizations of these two countries. While Iran’s Basij has a clear three-tier hierarchy, regular (basic), active (45 days of training), and special (IRGC members serving in the Basij), including special forces with actual combat experience; While the Bolivarian Militia is composed almost entirely of civilians with very little real training.

There is absolutely no parallel between Iran and Venezuela other than the fact that both were sanctioned and attacked by the United States.

But why was the attack on Venezuela a quick and successful operation while the attack on Iran has been a failure dragging on for nearly two months?

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https://open.substack.com/pub/global21/p/why-did-it-work-in-venezuela-and?r=7kssds&utm_medium=ios