The Long War on Iran: Vengeance, Oil, and the Cost of Forgetting How a nation that forgot Iraq and Afghanistan sleepwalks into another catastrophe The United States — with its obsequious Democratic and Republican legislators, and a country that seems to have forgotten the horrible consequences of the 20‑year debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan — has now lurched into another unnecessary war. This US-ISRAELI-IRAN war never approved by Congress, pushed forward by a president whose public comments about veterans and military service have been widely criticized, and carried out by a Pentagon that rarely questions the momentum of war. As General Smedley Butler said nearly a century ago, “War is a racket.” Its purpose is to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. Nothing has changed. In the United States, the Christian nationalist right, backed by AIPAC, the military‑industrial mafia, and a chainsaw‑wielding billionaire, has helped drive much of the country’s foreign policy toward Iran. They frame the confrontation as some grand civilizational clash — modernity versus barbarism, freedom versus theocracy — as if the world were a comic book instead of a place full of real people. It is mythology wrapped in a flag and sold as destiny. The reality is simpler and far less noble: the United States has carried a hunger for vengeance since 1979, when the Shah fell and American power was expelled from Iran. To understand this, we go back to 1953. Iran had a democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh. His “crime” was believing that Iranian oil should belong to Iranians. Britain and the United States disagreed. They organized a coup, removed him from power, and restored the Shah. The Shah ruled with secret police, torture, and fear — and he ruled with Western support. When the Iranian Revolution came in 1979, it was not sudden. It was the result of decades of anger, humiliation, and foreign control. The United States never forgot the revolution or the hostage crisis. Iran never forgot the coup. Persia has a history of more than 3,000 years, yet since the 1800s it has been treated like a chessboard by powerful nations. Britain wanted to protect its empire and oil. Russia wanted warm‑water ports. Both carved up influence in Iran without asking Iranians what they wanted. During World War I, Iran declared neutrality, but foreign armies marched across its land anyway. Millions suffered. These events are not ancient history in Iran. They are family stories, passed down like scars. Add to this the 1,500‑year division between Sunni and Shia Islam, and the fire burns even hotter. Into this already explosive history comes Israel. Israel is the largest nuclear power in the Middle East and one of the most militarized states in the world on a per‑capita basis. The modern state was created through the Balfour Declaration and the Sykes‑Picot Agreement — decisions made by European powers without the consent of the Palestinians who had lived there for generations. Today, the United States sends Israel about $3 billion a year in military aid, plus billions more in less visible support: fuel, weapons, intelligence, logistics. With U.S. backing, Israel has carried out preemptive strikes, expanded settlements, and waged devastating wars in Gaza, Lebanon, and beyond. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed, and hundreds of thousands injured or displaced. To remain polite in the face of this is not neutrality. It is silence. And silence in the presence of suffering becomes its own kind of wrongdoing. American foreign policy has bent toward Israeli strategic interests even when it damages U.S. credibility or drags the country into conflicts with no clear benefit. Congress, which is supposed to decide when the nation goes to war, has repeatedly stepped aside. Presidents act first and explain later. The public is left with the bill — trillions of dollars spent on wars that never end and never solve anything. Thousands of Americans and Iranians killed. This is not foreign policy. It is the military‑industrial mafia at work, the same system President Eisenhower warned about in 1961. It runs on money, fear, and momentum. No president has stopped it. Most don’t even try. Few politicians even understand that U.S. military spending now exceeds two trillion dollars per year. And what happens when powerful nations destroy governments without rebuilding anything? We already know. Iraq collapsed into chaos. Libya fell apart. Afghanistan swallowed twenty years and two trillion dollars, only for the Taliban to return the moment the U.S. left. There is no plan for what comes after. There never is. Iran would be no different. If the United States or Israel destroys the Iranian government, there will be no Marshall Plan, no rebuilding, no stability. There will be a vacuum — and the most ruthless forces will fill it. A U.S. foreign policy built on vengeance, carried out in collusion with Israeli military strategy, funded by endless war spending, and shaped by oil and weapons companies is not a strategy. It is a racket. And rackets, as history teaches again and again, devour everything — including the fools who believe they control them.
An Evil Greater Than Jeffrey Epstein?
An Evil Greater Than Jeffrey Epstein? The evil of the grifter, con man, rapist, pedophile will be debated for generations to come. There is a level of evil that rises to an extraordinary height, something so morally vacant and predatory that we reach for metaphors like “the devil” to try to name it. Jeffrey Epstein embodied that kind of concentrated depravity. He was not a financier. He was a pimp. A trafficker. A con man whose currency was power, secrecy, and the ownership of other people’s shame. But the greater evil, now—as we speak—is not a dead con man who allegedly hanged himself in jail. The greater evil is alive, operational, normalized, and largely ignored: the global sexual trafficking of women, girls, and boys. This is not an abstraction. This is something we can actually do something about. And yet we don’t. Look at the obvious signs we have trained ourselves not to see. The massage parlors that have spread like a virulent cancer across cities and towns around the world. The red lights glowing in the night, advertising “open.” People tell themselves comforting lies: it’s harmless, consensual, a little fun, a happy ending, a transaction between adults. But the reality beneath those lights is coercion, debt bondage, fear, violence, and often children. Whatever libertine fantasy is sold to the buyer collapses under the truth of sexual exploitation. This level of exploitation is not marginal. It is industrial. It is transnational. Underage girls are moved across borders in Europe and trafficked for sex. Women and girls are bought and sold through Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, India, Russia, and far beyond. The numbers are not in the dozens or the thousands; they are estimated in the millions—women, girls, and sometimes boys—caught in systems of sexual slavery that operate in plain sight. Organizations around the world have documented this reality for years. The International Labour Organization estimates millions are trapped in forced sexual exploitation globally. Human rights groups consistently report that women and girls make up the overwhelming majority of victims. These figures are conservative, because this crime depends on invisibility. I cannot do anything about the depravity of Jeffrey Epstein himself—the gravity of depravity that defined his life is sealed. But I can name the degravity that continues. While the media engages in a feeding frenzy of pseudo-outrage, recycling the same lurid details, we ignore the far greater evil unfolding right now. What we are confronting is the institutionalized support for sexual slavery across the globe. It cuts across race, nationality, and religion. It is upheld by clients, protected by corruption, and normalized by silence.
