Tag: middle-east

Back to the Stone Ages

ABC News (3 April 2026) reports that ‘Former US special envoy to Iran, Robert Malley described Mr Trump’s address to the nation this week as “delusional”. Malley raised serious concerns that the US would be committing war crimes if it followed through on Mr Trump’s threats to target Iranian non-military, civilian infrastructure.


On the same day, Donald Trump boasted about destroying Iran’s highest bridge, currently under construction, claiming “We’re going to bring [the Iranians] back to the Stone Ages where they belong.” Al Jezeera https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/2/bomb-back-to-the-stone-age-us-history-of-threats-and-carpet-bombing chillingly reminds us what this means. ‘To bomb a place to the Stone Age typically refers to carpet bombing it, destroying all its modern infrastructure so it reaches a primitive state. But these threats from Trump and the US aren’t novel — instead, they build on Washington’s decades-old legacy of threatening to carpet bomb countries during its military campaigns, often delivering on those threats.’


The International Committee of the Red Cross (cited in Al Jazeera) regards Trump’s statement as ‘particularly appalling since it repudiates the claim that the United States is fighting the Iranian regime, implying rather a war against the Iranian people and society more broadly. Iran is home to one of the oldest human civilisations — and its empires built canals, highways, militaries, modern currency systems, and made major advances in science, medicine and philosophy – more than a millennium before the US was born’.


CNN reports, citing the Iranian Red Crescent (the Moslem Red Cross equivalent) that in the first month of the war, ‘Nearly 140,000 residential and commercial units have been damaged in airstrikes on Iran since the war began. At least 316 health, medical and [Emergency Medical Service] facilities, 763 schools and 18 Red Crescent centres have also been damaged by US-Israel attacks.’ The school tally includes the Iranian girls school bombed on the first day of the US invasion, in which over 150 girls died.


These flagrant violations of international law by the US constitute war crimes. Similarly, recent threats from Trump of bombing Iranian energy and water infrastructure in order to get ‘a deal’. Trump has recently characterised Iran as ‘the most violent and thuggish regime on Earth’.


The only primitive parties to this conflict whose thuggish regimes threaten to take international order back to the stone ages (via this conflict that Israel and the US unilaterally and illegally started) are Trump and Netanyahu.


It is pertinent that the Iranians have a voice, see the Iranian President’s recent open letter to the US reported in CNN https://edition.cnn.com/2026/04/02/middleeast/iran-president-open-letter-us-war-intl-hnk in which President Pezeshkian claims that ‘Iranian people harbour no enmity towards other nations, including the people of America, Europe, or neighbouring countries. … This is a deeply rooted principle in Iranian culture and collective consciousness – not a temporary political stance.’ While Iran understandably retaliates to the bombing as best it can, it is the US and Israel who are the primary aggressors here in this increasingly deadly and unnecessary asymmetric war. It has to be brought to a halt, ASAP. It is time for other world nations, including Australia, to follow the lead of Spain, speak out and reject the rationale and conduct of this war. The alternative is to follow Trump and his corrupt and inept cronies even further into the Dark Ages.

POST SCRIPT: ABC 3 April now reports:

Robert Malley one of the lead negotiators on the Iran nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Action Plan told ABC 7.30 that the rhetoric Trump used in his Thursday address should not be normalised.

“Just listening to him, [it is disturbing] how normalised it’s become to have a president threaten to commit war crimes, which is what bringing Iran back to the Stone Age would be, on behalf of an unlawful war,” he told 7.30.

“He seems to be driven by this notion that if the US has the capability to do something militarily, it can do it and it will do it if he thinks that Iran is not capitulating or is not responding to his every demand.

“I think we should pause a bit and think the most powerful man on Earth has just threatened to destroy not a government, not military sites, but a country on behalf of a war that he still is not able to justify.”

Trump: Not my King

Donald Trump and the sycophants he increasingly surrounds himself with in the US take a lot of my emotional energy each day. Aside from privately complaining about him and the despicable way he treats people and nations, it is time I ‘nailed my colours to the mast’ like the folk who recently marched in the thousands of recent ‘No Kings’ rallies.

America’s recent invasion and still escalating war on Iran (combined with Netinyahu’s invasion of southern Lebanon) crosses so many red lines I have grave fears about how this might end: unless there is regime change through democratic elections in the US and Israel. Both countries are currently governed by increasingly out of control facists. We will look back on this era in decades to come and wonder how all of this was enabled, including by Australia.

The rise of facists is enabled if people do not take action and speak out. Fortunately in Australia, we still have a democracy and I am free to pen this post and speak truth to power. My aim is to progressively add to this post as events unfold during 2026.

I visited and travelled widely Iran as an independent tourist in 2019. I was welcomed there more warmly than anywhere else I have visited in the world. I felt safer and more at home there than I have felt when visiting the US. The Iranian people have a long, proud and deep history. I acknowledge that the current theocratic, revolutionary Iranian regime has oppressed its people, sometimes with a deadly iron fist. But I also acknowledge that the revolution which led to the regime taking power was caused by decades of covert US (and other colonial) attempts to control Iran (and particularly its oil).

It is unsurprising that recent saturation bombing of Iran by the US has only hardened the resolve of the regime (and many Iranian people) to fight back , to damage US interests in the Gulf and restrict the shipment of oil to countries which support US hegemony. Similarly, Israel’s attempt to wipe out Hezbollah by occupying southern Lebanon will only lead to more resentment of the US globally. None of this will make America great again. Quite the opposite.

What a humiliating crisis Trump has created for people all around the world, see link below. That thousands of innocent people have also been killed as collateral to his hubris is a tragedy. That most governments around the world (with a few exceptions including Spain) acquiesce and stay silent is also a tragedy.

https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/trump-is-facing-a-humiliating-crisis-he-created-himself-20260311-p5o99s.html

I try and keep abreast of what is happening as a consequence of Donald Tump via an excellent daily post penned by Matt Kiser in the US, which summarises recent developments, that you can also subscribe to via: http://www.whatthefuckjusthappenedtoday.com

As I write this on 31 March 2026, it is Day 1898 since Trump arrived first on the scene. One way for me to cope each day is to look at posts like the one below which humorously highlight the absolute stupidity of the MAGA movement and Trump’s claim of US exceptionalism and ‘America First’. https://www.instagram.com/reel/DWW-JpmAcL1/?igsh=MzdmOTk4OHUxMnh1

The US has, in my estimation, now become a pariah state, led by a totally unhinged and out of control, inveterate liar and convicted criminal. I acknowledge Trump and also Netanyahu were democratically elected. I only hope these men (and they are all men) and those who surround Trump in government are voted out of office and that those responsible for this mess (environmentally, ethically, internationally) are eventually charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Today Trump is considering whether to go beyond relentlessly targeting military-related sites in Iran from the air, further escalate his ‘excursion’ by targeting Iranian civilian energy sites and perhaps putting ‘boots on the ground’ to claim and control shipments of Iranian oil. This is a crisis Trump alone created. I have grave fears for the future of much of the planet unless Trump’s current irrational excesses are reined in.