JIm Kavanagh (The Polemicist)

This War Will End When Zionism Does

2026-04-01T14:00:00.002-04:00

This War Will End When Zionism Does

Jim Kavanagh

Iranian strike on the Bazan oil refinery in Haifa, Israel’s largest oil hub, March 30^th

We’re now into the second month of the USraeli war on Iran—a war in which, I have said, we must “stand, and work, for the defeat of USrael.” We cannot celebrate a victory that is not yet won, and the extent of which we cannot be certain. At this point, however, I've seen enough to be hopeful that USrael’s defeat is the outcome in progress.

We should not forget that the ostensible, announced purposes of this war, centered on Iran’s capabilities, especially those confusedly articulated by the U.S. administration, are not the real, larger purpose, set by Israel—which is the defense and extension of the Zionist project in the region. That requires, per the Yinon Plan, that Israel must “become an imperial regional power, and …effect the division of the whole area into small states by the dissolution of all existing Arab states”—and, of course, Iran. For Israel, the destruction of the Iranian state is a key, but only one, element in the buttressing of the Zionist project, which is both advancing and under threat as never before.

Though I join many others in thinking that failure to destroy the Iranian polity would fatally weaken Israel and the Zionist project, it is not impossible that Israel could retreat on the Iranian front, recompose, and continue to ravage the region for an indefinite time. Especially if it continues to have American support. The loss of American support—and I mean the U.S. polity breaking with and renouncing Zionism as it did South African apartheid—would be more devastating to Israel than any particular result in Iran, though such an outcome would be made more likely by a failure in Iran that was costly to the U.S.

This is a war for and over Zionism (under the protection of U.S. imperialism) through Iran. Iran is acting as the principal protagonist of and impediment to of Zionism at this moment.

We cannot forget that USrael has neutered most Arab states into explicit or implicit Abraham-accord puppies of Zionism; that Israel is still controlling Syria; that it has destroyed and is occupying and continuing to devastate Gaza; that it is carrying out an accelerated pogrom of the West Bank; and that it has initiated a new Nakba in Lebanon, displacing a million people who “will not be allowed to return any time soon” (i.e., ever) and is indiscriminately bombing residential areas of Beirut (under the Dahiyeh Doctrine, “do[ing] what we did in Gaza"), with no challenge—indeed, hardly any notice—from the “international community.” Per the head of the Knesset Committee on Internal Affairs and the Environment, Israel has "no other choice but to expel and clear the entire territory up to the Litani River, to cleanse it of Lebanese civilians... Sovereignty and settlement."

Apart from Iran, then, Israel’s drive to expand and dominate the region continues relentlessly, and with the customary international impunity. Zionism requires.

https://x.com/DaniMayakovski/status/2034808904040030376?s=20

This is all one big war for Zionism now—not just USrael vs. Iran, but Zionism vs. the World, the First Zionist World War. USrael will not be defeated until Zionism is—until Israeli troops are forced to leave Gaza and Lebanon in order to take a last, losing stand for Zionism on and for the territory of Green-Line Israel.

It’s not the only source of conflict, but, as I think is becoming clearer to more people every day, there will be no peace in the Middle East (and therefore the world) until and unless Zionism is defeated and deleted.

However well Iran does in re-setting the world stage, then, stay in your seats. There’s going to be a lot more commotion before the fat lady sings.

Nonetheless, given the material, military, economic, political, and ideological conditions under which this war started and has been progressing for the past month, certain very hopeful trends that seem impossible to reverse have become clear.

First, and crucially important, the Islamic Republic regime (and I don't use that word in a pejorative sense, but to denote a political and cultural apparatus wider than “the government”) is standing firm. Not only has it not collapsed after the assassination of Ali Khameni, Larijani, et. al., as some USsraeli fools expected, it has become stronger, more unified, more militant, and backed by wider, more adamant popular support. That’s precisely as a result of the assassinations and of USraeli attacks on civilians, like the vicious double-tap murder, via thermobaric incineration, of over 160 school children.

I think it was the US faction of USraeli fools who most expected the regime to collapse. Most of the Israeli faction knew that it would not and/or did not care. Sure, they would have loved an easy victory, but they were not counting on it, as the clueless Americans were, and it also serves the Israeli’s purpose to have an angrier, more militant Iranian government and people who will fight harder. All the better to persuade Israel’s American fools that unrestrained “death and destruction,” including ultimately with nuclear weapons, must be visited upon Iran. Israel was never seeking to change the Iranian regime; it was and is seeking to destroy the Iranian polity.

I should say, too, that I’m uneasy with the response that sloughs these murders off, or romanticizes them, because "martyrs." Sure, killing these leaders won't destroy, and in the context of Shia culture will likely harden, Iranian resistance. But good leaders—especially, in a war context, exceptional military leaders like Ali Larijani—are not a dime a dozen, not interchangeable. These assassinations are real hits, and Iran has to get better at preventing them, if not directly retaliating on equivalent USraeli personnel (without levelling whole apartment blocks). We need victors, not martyrs.

At any rate, after a month of assassinations of its leaders and “death and destruction from the sky all day long,” the Islamic Republic of Iran stands and fights, harder and smarter every day. The idea that it’s going to be “toppled” like Saddam’s statue in Firdos square (named after the Persian word for “paradise”) by some USrael “shock and awe” and/or by a CIA-Mossad-armed revolution led by Pahlavi and the Shahs of Sunset is gone, baby, gone—belied by the hundreds of drones and missiles hitting Israeli towns and US bases and comprador Arab support infrastructure, and the millions of Iranians in the streets demanding revenge and victory, every day. That fact alone constitutes victory for Iran, means that Iran has already won a victory that will every day become harder for USrael to reverse.

At War For Zionism

2026-03-05T12:00:00.001-05:00

At War For Zionism

Jim Kavanagh

So this is happening—the USraeli war on Iran that, in an essay in October 2023, I saw as the inevitable denouement of Israel’s Gaza ethnic cleansing offensive. The inevitable result of this attack is going to be a regional, if not global, conflagration that will likely create economic and political upheaval around the world (including crisis in the U.S.), probably involve the use of nuclear weapons, and certainly will effect a dramatic change in the balance of geo-political power.

Everyone is aware of the enormous collection of American military assets amassed against Iran. The U.S. has drawn down military potential in other important world theaters, including warships, warplanes, and tankers. Something like 40% of the available U.S. naval fleet and 37% of the AWACS fleet are deployed for this attack. They’re taking air-defense assets from South Korea!

Some of us understand that this enormous strike force is in play because Iran itself has formidable military capabilities, and the Pentagon knows it. Many knowledgeable people have warned that Iran, a large, mountainous country of >90 million people with a strong economic and military infrastructure, is a much larger and harder target than Iraq, or Syria, or Libya. Iran has already shown, in the 12-day war, that its missile inventory can outlast initial attacks, deplete Israeli air defenses, and strike with precision. Iran is also now much better prepared, with substantial support from Russia and China, including important air defense, ISR, and global positioning assets.

The military conflict is underway, each side has the ability to inflict serious damage on the other, and the various speculations about who has what advantage will soon be resolved on the battlefield. I’ll just say, with most observers, that I think the longer the fight goes on, the worse it will get for USrael, which—politically, as least as important as militarily—does not want and cannot sustain a prolonged war.

Donald Trump is certainly counting on a quick, low-American-cost “victory.” He has initiated the kind of regime change war that he promised to end, one that >70% of the American people oppose. Any prolonged resistance, any need to deploy more (especially ground) forces, any dire economic consequences, any significant number of casualties—results that are, I think, in some combination inevitable—will be a military and political disaster for him. The Israelis have different political considerations, but they, too, cannot sustain a prolonged conventional war against a country as big and strong as Iran.

Let’s be clear about what the purpose of this war is, and what the prospects for its resolution are.

First, and most important for American opponents of this war to emphasize and repeat constantly: This is a Zionist war. It is a war for Israel and Zionism. The United States and the American people have no reason to attack Iran. There is nothing for them in it. And they know it. More than 70% of Americans oppose it. Over four election cycles, the American people have soundly rejected regime-change wars, especially in the Middle East, and that rejection was a foundational element of the Trump-MAGA campaign itself. Iran poses no threat to the United States. The various rationales—from notional nuclear weapons to monarchist “democracy”—don’t deserve a moment of consideration. They are as patently phony as Bush’s were for Iraq, and everybody knows it. Nobody wanted this war but Netanyahu and Israel.

Netanyahu explicitly thanked, “my friend, US President Donald Trump, for “allow[ing] us to do what I have yearned to do for 40 years.” Not an American project, but one Netanyahu wished for for 40 years that could not have been done unless the U.S. “allowed” it. Now the U.S. is doing it for and with him.

Marco Rubio, Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, acknowledges, with full confidence that it will be accepted as a sufficient explanation, that the U.S. attacked Iran because Israel was going to, and Donald Trump, the President of the United States, said that “he had no choice but to join a strike that Israel would launch.” There are no more powerful American political leaders. For them, for the whole of the American political and media elite, Israel leads and America follows—America cannot conceive of doing anything but follow. Like a dog on a leash.

Here’s what I said in my August 2024 essay foreseeing how Israel was going to walk the U.S. into war on Iran.

Israel is acting with particular contemptuous disregard for the country on whom it most depends, the United States. Israel has only slightly less contempt for Americans than it does for Palestinians. Israel considers Palestinians needless, expendable subhumans. Israel considers Americans unfortunately necessary fools who don't, and don't want to, understand the core of the Zionist colonial project and its necessarily eliminationist policy toward the Palestinians, about whose essential savagery equality-obsessed Americans are hopelessly naive.

Israel thinks of Americans the way a supercilious avant-garde artist thinks of his/her vulgar wealthy patrons. It has to keep its indispensable supporters believing it shares their appreciation of the purely decorative prettiness of things like human rights, peace, living side by side in mutual respect with other peoples, etc., so that they will continue to subsidize the truly important and transgressive Zionist artistry, whose beauty they will never understand.

Israel has been confident of its ability to play its patron in that way, because, as Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders have said many times: “America is a thing that can be easily moved, moved in the right direction” and “We have the Senate, the Congress, and a strong Jewish lobby on our side.” And he is right. (And don’t forget the Zionist-committed media.) It’s hard to find a ward more contemptuous of its patron than Israel, or a patron more submissive to its ward than the United States.

In fact, Israel is so confident of its ability to get the American government to go along with anything it wants that it has completely dispensed with any effort at prettifying its grotesqueries:

“Look, we are, as we announced, committing genocidal ethnic cleansing with no limits, deliberately slaughtering and starving children every day, carrying out airstrikes and destructive assassinations in foreign capitals, etc. If you want to continue pretending to yourselves and your citizens that there’s such a thing as fundamentally humanitarian ‘liberal Zionism,’ that we’re interested in ‘ceasefires’ and ‘two-state solutions’ and such—anything other than getting rid of the Palestinians and consolidating Jewish supremacy throughout our promised land—-while we blatantly kill the primary negotiator you want us to talk to, you go right ahead. Keep writing your thoughtful op-eds and expressing your ‘frustration’ and ‘tension’ with us. Just understand that we are going to continue killing anyone and any number of people, anywhere, at any time of our choosing, until we’ve put down all potential enemies of our colonial project, and we don’t give a damn about what you think about that. Your job is to keep sending us the weapons we need and bring your soldiers and armies into a major war to protect us from the inevitable blowback from the countries we attack. Capisce?”

To which the Blue and Red bitches—-Biden, Harris, Trump, Vance, RFK, Jr.—-leading the American and Western political pack, bark, “Yes, sir. Your war is our war. We will do anything to protect the Zionist project!” Has anyone ever seen a more pathetically obsequious, self-demeaning political leadership?

So, the American polity—-its dog-trained leadership and its starting-to-yap-back but still too dog-trained populace—-is walking into war. Being walked into war on the Zionist leash. There will be a lot of yelping once their noses are rubbed in it.

Like a dog on a leash. The only revision I would make, happily, is that the populace is now not just yapping but snapping back much more widely and forcefully. Tucker Carlson sees it clearly:

Who Runs Venezuela?

2026-01-09T23:30:00.002-05:00

Who Runs Venezuela?

Jim Kavanagh

First and most important thing: The abduction of the head of state of Venezuela and his wife by U.S. armed forces is a crime in every sense. It flouts black-letter international law and universally held principles of international relations. It is a blatant act of imperialist arrogance, with no credible pretense of justification other than “might makes right.” It is the ethical imperative of every citizen of the world—and especially of every citizen and politician of the United States—to denounce this act and demand the immediate, unconditional release and return to their homeland of Nicolas Maduro and Cilia Flores.

Anyone—especially any politician—who claims to oppose this abduction by the Trump administration but refuses to demand the immediate, unconditional release of the two abductees is just a virtue-signalling American imperialist, complicit in the crime

https://x.com/JeffSchuhrke/status/2007648246030839878?s=20

Ditto for any politician who claims to oppose this crime, or who makes a show of proclaiming that U.S. soldiers must disobey illegal orders, but does not use all the power of his/her office to impeach and bring charges against the president and every executive officer who issued, and every service member who carried out, this illegal order.

Not gonna happen, of course, because no Republican or Democrat objects to the substantive crime, which is SOP for U.S. imperialism. (See Noriega, Aristide, etc.) Democratic Senator Jack Reed says we “have to commend” our armed forces for conducting an operation that was "well conceived and courageously executed." They object, at most, to the procedural misdemeanor—OMG, you shot that guy without getting a permit for the gun!—and to the rhetorical transgression of not adorning the blatant, cop-of-the-world, might-makes-right thuggery in sufficient “freedom, democracy, and human rights” bling.

Peter Bagge

It’s not hard to recognize the crime that's already been committed. More difficult, at this point, Is trying to determine what the ongoing fruits of that crime are going to be for the Trump administration. What the hell have they accomplished with this abduction? What the hell do they think they've accomplished with this abduction? What the hell do they think they will accomplish with this abduction?

It's not hard to see what Donald Trump thinks he has accomplished. He thinks he has taken control of the Venezuelan oil industry and of the Venezuelan polity tout court. He thinks “we”—he, Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth, and their minions—now “run” the country of Venezuela. He thinks operation “Absolute Resolve,” at his direction, was “one of the most stunning, effective, and powerful displays of American military might and competence in American history…an assault like people have not seen since World War II.” He thinks it thoroughly intimidated the government of Venezuela and left it and the whole of Latin America in his thrall. He thinks the world has learned the lesson that the Monroe Doctrine with Trump Corollary—per Hegseth, ridiculously renamed the Donroe Doctrine—is in force, with the United States now having final control over the resources, wealth, trade partners, and paths of development of every country in the Western Hemisphere.