Tag: regime change

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 

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

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

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.

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

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.

Silhouetted figures in a darkened war room study maps and screens showing Middle East strike targets, while a crumpled peace agreement lies on the floor below, a telephone receiver off the hook beside it

He Was Warned. He Knew. He Did It Anyway.

Trump was warned by Iran, by his own intelligence services, by international mediators and by members of his own Congress. The warnings were not vague — they were specific, on the record, and entirely accurate. Iran had agreed to a nuclear breakthrough the day before. Netanyahu lobbied for the strike. MBS made private phone calls urging it. US intelligence said there was no imminent threat. Trump attacked anyway. Now the region burns.

Rubble and scattered schoolchildren's backpacks outside a bombed girls' elementary school, dawn light, Iran

We Bombed a School Full of Children. Call It What It Is.

Sara Shariatmadar was six years old. She went to school on Saturday morning and did not come home. At least 108 girls died — the governor says 148— when US and Israeli munitions struck the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab, Iran. International humanitarian law is unambiguous. This is a war crime. The perpetrators should be indicted.

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

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?

The Rules-Based Order: Where America Gets Away with Murder, and Everyone Else Gets the Bombs

The US and its allies including Australia don’t give a fig about Iranian or Palestinian lives. If they did, they wouldn’t be starving Iranians with sanctions that block medicine, food and fuel. They wouldn’t be funding insurgents who turn protests violent, ensuring the regime cracks down harder. They wouldn’t be threatening war while pretending to care about “the brave Iranian people”.

The War Nobody’s Paid to See Coming

Right now, the USS Abraham Lincoln and nine escort warships are sitting in the Persian Gulf like a loaded gun aimed at Iran’s heart. Not one Australian media outlet can independently verify what this means for Australians when the shooting starts. Are we up shit creek with America again?