From Tyrie’s scaffold to Riyadh’s bone saw: the World Cup, the FIFA Peace Prize, and the audit that removed the crimes before it began. Urban Wronski looks.
Category: Middle East Politics, International Affairs, Human Rights, Political Analysis, Opinion and Commentary, US Foreign Policy
Donald John “Two-Weeks” Trump: The Work-Experience Boy from Hell
He’s always a mate of a mate and he’s never paying you back. So it is with the deal-maker president, whose “two weeks” has become the most transparent stall in modern diplomacy. Part Three of the Iran war series: the farce, the spoiler in Tel Aviv, the donors and enforcers, and the West Australian gas giant cashing in on the carnage.
The Monster They Made (Part 1)
The coup did not sow the seeds for the Islamic Revolution. It constructed the machinery. SAVAK liquidated every secular democrat who might have led a modern Iran. The mosque was left standing because it was the one institution the secret police found too difficult to penetrate. Every morning the Australian media tells us the bombing is regrettable but the regime is monstrous. It does not explain who built the regime.
The Lovely War
Donald Trump threatens Iran the way he once threatened a recalcitrant steak: same wounded, flinty, infant-king fury. A working homage to Martin Amis — on the Epstein flights, the six-billion-dollar goon squad, the taunting of a proud civilisation, and a nine-year-old girl in Minab waiting for the water that is her birthright. The infant-king has other plans.
The Holy War on the Holy See
Pete Hegseth has a muscular theology. The Pope has Augustine on his side and refugees on his schedule. The Vice President has been explaining Just War theory to an Augustinian. Clarke and Dawe have two chairs, a lanyard marked “Office of Sacred Communications,” and the truth hiding in plain sight. Urban Wronski referees.
Mission Impossible
Trump’s Hormuz blockade is live. Oil is at $102. China’s Defence Minister says the strait is open for Chinese ships and dares the US to stop them. A forty-nation coalition is forming against the blockade. And one of the last two tankers carrying pre-war oil on earth is heading to Australia. Urban Wronski on the war Trump cannot win.
Hormuz Dateline
The war now has the smell of salt, oil, and old empires trying to defy the tide. Thirty-three kilometres. That is the width of the Strait of Hormuz at its narrowest navigable point: two shipping lanes, each two miles wide, one in, one out, with … Continue reading Hormuz Dateline
VANCE DROPS IN
JD Vance has just returned from negotiations with Iran. The Strait of Hormuz is still closed. Two C-130s are still on a dirt strip outside Isfahan. And the Vice President would like to explain, in his own words, why this is going tremendously. Urban Wronski channels Clarke and Dawe. Stand by.
The Erasure of a Civilisation Part 2 of Donald Trump, the War on Iran, and the Rules Nobody’s Enforcing
On the morning of April 7, Donald Trump posted that a whole civilisation would die that night. He was not bluffing. Part Two of Urban Wronski’s Operation Epic Fury series examines the systematic destruction of Iranian universities, libraries and cultural institutions, the weapons tested on children, and what it means that none of the rules are being enforced.
“Because They’re Animals”: Donald Trump, the War on Iran, and the Rules Nobody’s Enforcing
Operation Epic Fury” sounds like it was coined by a fourteen-year-old playing too much Call of Duty. In many ways, it’s a perfect fit for the Peter Pan that Donald Trump has running the Pentagon. Urban Wronski on the War of Donald’s Ear — how two homicidal maniacs borrowed one very willing ear, and launched a war.
Urban Wronski Writes 