Tag: middle-east

Dark editorial illustration of shadowy figures in ornate portrait frames on a gallery wall, a burning city visible through a window behind them, suggesting the architects and beneficiaries of a catastrophic war.

Netanyahu, MBS, Putin and the Useful Idiot 

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Russia feeds Tehran American targeting intelligence. Netanyahu needs the war to continue. MBS counts his oil revenues. One hundred and seventy-five children were at school in Minab when the missile struck. The mathematics of this catastrophe have been visible from the start. That nobody in Washington appears to have done the sums is the most damning fact of all.

Dark editorial illustration of a suited figure shouting into a microphone at a podium, facing a vast labyrinth of ruins under a bruised purple sky with a distant burning city on the horizon.

Trump, The Dealmaker’s Fatal Error

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Trump demands unconditional surrender from a nation of 90 million. Iran elects a hardline new Supreme Leader and rules out any ceasefire. The MAGA
coalition fractures. What began as targeted strikes has become a war without an exit, a plan, or a president capable of admitting either.

Satirical illustration of a chaotic war cabinet: an orange-tinted central figure gestures at a Middle East map while two suited advisers argue across a table strewn with classified folders. A pale isolated figure sits apart in shadow. A screen shows Tehran under attack. A Caribbean fishing boat is visible through the window.

Trump’s Team at War With Itself

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There is a peculiar kind of drama playing out inside the Trump Bunker of the Bizarre. Its theme? The accidental Armageddon. A government so witless it could not run a bath has launched the most ambitious US military operation in living memory — and nobody in Team Trump can agree on why, for how long, or what winning looks like. Urban Wronski reports in two parts.

Chess king in checkmate on dissolving board symbolising Trump Iran war strategic collapse with no endgame

Trump’s Iran Blunder

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Robert Reich knows Trump has no endgame for his Iran war. What he doesn’t see from inside the American story: the munitions arithmetic is catastrophic, the legal basis non-existent, and Canberra has made us part of it without asking a single question in Parliament.

Editorial illustration representing a small power directing a large military force — a metaphor for Israel's strategic influence over US military action against Iran in 2026.

The Tail That Wags the Dog: Israel’s War, America’s Blood

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Three American soldiers are dead. A girls’ primary school in Minab is rubble. The Strait of Hormuz is under threat. Regional war has arrived — exactly as every credible analyst, diplomat and international lawyer predicted. Urban Wronski on how Israel wagged the most powerful dog in the world into the most dangerous Middle Eastern conflagration since Iraq 2003.

Satirical illustration of a large cartoon dog in the Oval Office, its wagging tail scattering military documents, while a small figure holds its leash and an aircraft carrier is visible through the window against a blood-red sky.

America’s Wag-the-Dog Moment

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A flailing administration, a nuclear pretext recycled from the WMD workshop of 2003, and an Israel that appears to be setting the tempo of a potential world war. Before the missiles fly, Urban Wronski asks the question Washington’s press won’t: is this about Iran — or about saving Trump from himself?

Shuttered shopfronts in a Middle Eastern bazaar at dusk with scattered leaflets on wet cobblestones and distant fire glow through tear gas haze.

The Arson Investigator: How Western sanctions built Iran’s bonfire; and now, the firebugs demand to lead the rescue

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Every empire tells itself its mission is not to plunder and control but to educate and liberate. Edward Said wrote that about Iraq. It reads as though written yesterday, about Iran. New two-part series from Urban Wronski examining how Western sanctions engineered Iran’s economic collapse — and why the same powers now present themselves as liberators. Part 1: The Arson Investigator.