After the genocide in Gaza, and now on a far larger field in Iran, those in power in Israel and the U.S. have a lust to kill and revel in impunity. There’s an urgent need for regime change – in the West.
Attack around Enghelab Square in Tehran on March 3. (Tasnim News Agency, Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY 4.0)
By Craig Murray
CraigMurray.org.uk
The United States and Israel are both reveling in inflicting the maximum possible death and suffering on Iran.
After the genocide in Gaza, on a far larger field in Iran, those in power in Israel and the U.S. have a lust to kill and they revel in impunity.
The Epstein Files reveal the same dynamic. We live in a society where those who obtain power wish to exercise it in the cruellest possible ways against the most defenceless.
It appears to be a feature of late Western capitalist society, where sociopathic tendencies are essential to obtaining power in a society which rejects altruism and cooperation as concepts and promotes competition, self-love and ruthlessness.
Iran is showing commendable fighting spirit, but American military power should not be underestimated. They have the ability to destroy Iran from the air, to obliterate the institutions of the state and all of the key civilian infrastructure. Electricity, water, healthcare, education, administration, policing all can be knocked out just as they were systematically in Gaza and — on a scale insufficiently recalled — in Iraq.
Trump is already asking Congress for $50 billion to fund the operation and replenish stocks. The scale of destruction Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu envisages will cost at least half a trillion dollars from the U.S. Treasury. But there is nothing that can stop them.
If modern war history shows us anything it’s once you start sending troops the number keeps going up especially when the war is a debacle. And leaders would rather pass off the problem to the next administration rather than be the one to admit defeat https://t.co/h2fR7mvxns
— Mike Prysner (@MikePrysner) March 13, 2026
I witnessed close up over five months the 80 to 100,000 homes destroyed in Lebanon by Israel in the last three years. We have all seen what they did to Gaza. The notion they cannot do this to Iran is simply wrong. It requires a colossal effort of will, a mania for killing, a vast amount of money and the depletion of the U.S. arsenal. But they can do it.
Only political action by the peoples of the West against their leaders can stop it.
Iran and its allies have been the only physical opposition to the creation of Greater Israel. If the physical destruction of Iran is achieved, Greater Israel will be established at pace.
One of the world’s greatest civilisations will lie in ashes, covering millions of corpses, but none of that will prevent the extraction of oil.
Pete Hegseth, U.S. secretary for war, simply comes over as a Nazi thug. He plainly is enjoying this as much as Netanyahu, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir or Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. He has gloatingly promised “Death and destruction from the sky, all day long.” He repeatedly signals ever-escalating bombing.
The Iranian Red Crescent has listed the bombing destruction as of March 7. By then it included:
- 5,535 civilian residential units
- 1,041 commercial units
- 65 schools
- 14 hospitals and medical centres
- 13 Red Crescent Society bases
By contrast, there has been no credible claim that Iran has inflicted widespread civilian damage. It has very tightly targeted specific facilities — collateral damage seems almost entirely confined to debris from intercepted drones and missiles.
But we know the U.S.-Israel axis targets hospitals and medical facilities. It is proven beyond doubt in Gaza, and I witnessed it in Beirut.
In gloating about U.S. military superiority, Trump advised Iranian civilians: “Don’t leave your home. It’s very dangerous outside. Bombs will be dropping everywhere.”
Yet they are deliberately bombing residential buildings, exactly as in both Lebanon and Gaza. Trump is attempting to terrorise Iran into “unconditional surrender.”
Trump at the Republican Members Issues Conference at Trump National Doral golf club in Miami on March 9. (White House / Molly Riley)
At the 1815 Battle of Waterloo — an epic, large-scale and unmissable event — approximately 15,000 people died on the field of battle (more died later of wounds in an age before antibiotics). You are supposed to believe that the Iranian government in January killed twice as many demonstrators as died at Waterloo. This using only small arms and despite the complete lack of visual evidence of killing on anything like that scale.
At the same time you are supposed to believe that tens of thousands of tonnes of the highest explosives have been dropped into the centre of cities all across Iran but that these are “precision attacks” killing very few civilians.
It is obvious nonsense.
AI targeting only adds a new layer of dystopia to an entirely vicious and unnecessary war. The indifference of the Western media to the slaughter of 160 Iranian schoolgirls leads to really difficult questions about the type of society the West has become. Racism is just the beginning of the problems.
The effort to coerce the Kurds into yet again fighting for the U.S., only to be abandoned when no longer deemed helpful, is reckless in the extreme. It is bound to lead to further war and fragmentation in Iraq. The repercussions in Turkey are potentially extreme — and possibly may jolt Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan from his complacent furthering of the U.S-Israeli agenda.
Civil war is close in Lebanon. The traitorous Zionist regime of Lebanese President General Joseph Aoun has no forces capable of taking on Hezbollah; but the other Zionist puppet al-Jolani [Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa] has concentrated forces on the border with the Bekaa Valley ready to attack Hezbollah from the East while Hezbollah fight Israeli invading forces in the South. French President Emmanuel Macron has indicated he may send troops and armour to assist Aoun.
This entire conflict sounds like a dreadful regional disaster in which millions could die – and it is. But to the U.S. and Israeli Zionists, the prospect of a devastated region is precisely what they wish to achieve to facilitate Israeli expansion and American seizure of resources.
There is an urgent need for regime change – in the West. The only way for this carnage to stop is for the people of the West to remove their Zionist-controlled ruling classes.
Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster and human rights activist. He was British ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004 and rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010. His coverage is entirely dependent on reader support. Subscriptions to keep this blog going are gratefully received.
Subscriptions to keep Craig Murray’s blog going are gratefully received. Because some people wish an alternative to PayPal, Murray has set up new methods of payment including a GoFundMe appeal and a Patreon account.
This article is from CraigMurray.org.uk.
Views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
“can someone do ‘a maduro’ on the man in tel aviv,
and preferably include #47 in that coup, too?”,
i caught myself thinking, out of utter despair today.
to think that heads of state would still want to side with the US,
and still provide nat’l. territory to deploy new US weaponry this year,
like my EU country does, as it hosts europe’s largest US airbase,
instead of heeding iran’s call to EXPEL all US forces swiftly!
ari ben-menashe, in a recent talk w joe lauria, spoke of a death cult
the man in tel aviv and those surrounding him there and in the USA
adhere to.
what’s taking ordinary people so long to RISE [up] to the occasion?
can’t we smash the system that has been benefitting barbarians only?
The US is leading in giving up western secular principles beginning with Reagan in rebuilding the Vietnam torn military protection racket and the profits of war technology funded by deficit spending. The large wealthy investors classes then live on the quarterly profit of doom and destruction to present a humanitarian face that is impossible to ignore now. Our western religion by stealing monotheism for defamation of character over centuries. Now we are proclaiming empathy as a sin.
The planet Earth gave birth to life and life on Earth has to save itself rather than dreaming of Armageddon falling from the sky in the form of bombs.hXXps://consortiumnews.com/2013/08/
I was disappointed but not surprised to see journalists on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Guardian Australia cite a Time magazine article as evidence for the claim that 30,000 Iranians were killed on 8 and 9 January this year. Like Craig Murray, I wondered how it could be possible for any government or military to execute so many people in such a short period of time. And when I heard that “influencers” like Laura Loomer were celebrating the numbers killed on 8 and 9 January, it occurred to me that only supporters of Pahlavi and PR firms for the governments of Israel and the USA would benefit from a figure like 30,000 being accepted in public discourse, and sadly it has been—with the exception of articles like this one.
Yes, I saw the ABC 7.30 Report interviewing regime change fanatic John Bolton citing the alleged 30,000 Iranians dead. No evidence at all. Just brazen propaganda lies. I saw another US ‘expert’ on the Today show insisting that the Iranian military forces has been destroyed, a ridiculous claim given that Iran has over a million armed forces. An absurd claim uncritically accepted by the TV hosts.
Polls show that most Americans are opposed to this war with Iran, and yet, there is no significant anti-war movement to speak of. This seems like a serious disconnect, but it is to be expected when the actual fighting and dying are the responsibility of a class of economic conscripts and not their more financially secure peers. Should the United States institute a military draft, all that will change.
I’m glad Mr. Murray connected this murderous system to the Epstein class. This is their war. This is the outcome of rape culture. They are raping the entire human race in their fever dream of techno fascism. Extreme wealth and power have turned these individuals into freaks who have lost touch with their humanity. They are mutants. Humanity is an integral part of nature. They are not. If we let them, they will destroy us.
You’re right. I’m an atheist and therefore don’t believe in Hell. However, I would gladly create Hell if I could send every single imperialist there forever.
To be more precise, this is the war of the Epstein class, because its premier member is the POTUS, and Israel almost certainly has the most damning kompromat imaginable on him. In other words, it is the result of blackmail. Trump would prefer that the entire world goes up in flames rather than have himself humiliated.
Trump demonstrates his narcissism at the convention while cheered on by the extremists behind him. The MAGA idiots who voted him in must be so proud. Hopefully there are enough of us who do not support this evilness.
Count me in to the group that voted for Trump and now are 100% opposed to his foreign policy. I voted for America First. I got the opposite.
Please never let that happen again.
I wonder whether a regime change in “the west” is going to be enough.
It much looks like a profound system change is needed.
Otherwise, this “all for me” will just repeat rather sooner than later.
Capitalism is(!) fascism/ zionism.
Maximum profit for the few, at whatever it takes, as we must witness on a daily basis.
Trump and his minions are pushing the global economy toward a major depression, and the US economy will not escape that. At the moment there really isn’t much that citizens can do to stop the war against Iran, other than hold up signs along the street sides. But I think the war’s economic impact will lead to major blow-back by US voters in the November mid-terms, once the cost of war (in dollars) hits home. Brent Crude oil is already above $100/barrel on March 14th (hxxps://oilprice.com/oil-price-charts/#Brent-Crude) and the trend line is toward higher prices. I am keeping up hopes that oil goes to $200 or $400 per barrel, or whatever it takes to exhaust the US war lust.
I am also hopeful that Iran will be able to down some of the bombers and disable some of the US armada. The US doesn’t really have much more to expend in the way of Patriot or THAAD missiles to protect its military assets, and is not re-arming its vassals in the war region.
As always, Dr. Murray, thank you for your thoughtful and humane analysis.
The disease of the West goes deeper than Capitalism. Capitalism is only the flowering of materialism and literalism.
The word literalism , as read and said .
Where might one follow this prophet ?
Polictics , pictures , in a book or upon the upon all alook , upon a throne alone or grouped high upon a hill ?
Stage right , behind the veil or theaters curtain hook ?
Am I getting close ?
An inarticulate, narcissistic, paranoid, real estate ‘developer’ ending the world as we know it
Who would’ve thought?
That made me lol Johnny. Such a banal end. Would that it might have come from someone a bit more intelligent and charismatic. I could live with that.
Morons of the West should read this article!
They can read?
if they even bother to read it they will say:
“yes, indeed, mr murray’s got the point.
our aim is to destroy the world so we
can rule it even more easily.” divide =
smash to smitherines and CON_quer.
quote:
———
“The notion they cannot do this to Iran is simply wrong. It requires a colossal effort of will, a mania for killing, a vast amount of money and the depletion of the U.S. arsenal. But they can do it.”
——
Thats a motto “won” can enjoy ?
He means don’t “lose” the plot ?
Trump was pushed into the attack on Iran by the US neocons, the FBI and Israel, all selling the lie that Iran had been behind assassination attempts against him.
hxxps://consortiumnews.com/2026/03/13/max-blumenthal-how-fbi-israel-got-trump-to-attack/
The US invasion sponsors such as john Bolton and the NED have only ever promoted lies and falsehoods about Iran society and its readiness for regime change. This was a major factor in Trump initiating the Iran war. Netanyahu of course was fully aware of what he was up against and wanted the US to obliterate Iran. This has now cropped up in various editorial views about how the US is to proceed against a nation that is never going to buckle under. To ensure that Iran never has the capacity to rebuild any military defences the US and Israel must implement the “Morgenthau” option: the destruction of any industrial capacity to do so.
“This means attacking not merely weapons, but the system that produces and reproduces them: electric power, transport, fuels, machine tools, metallurgy, electronics, repair facilities, and perhaps the broader fiscal and industrial foundations of military recovery… A country whose critical infrastructure remains intact can rebuild military industry. A country that cannot rebuild has, by definition, suffered something much closer to strategic deindustrialization.”
This is the view expressed just a few days ago by Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. We are talking about the destruction of the Iranian nation state. And yes, this is where they are heading.
hxxps://responsiblestatecraft.org/dan-caine-iran/
Iran has destroyed 5 of the 7 US billion dollar radar units stationed in the region, reducing Israeli warning times for incoming missiles to 3 minutes as opposed to 20. The US and Israel are also running out of Patriot missile interceptors which they can’t replace and they have been forced to take South Korean and Japanese stockpiles to protect Israel. Tel Aviv is being relentlessly bombed but Israel censors it. The straits of Hormuz have been blocked. American bases in the region are largely defenceless and Trump has only about 50,000 marines to take Kharg Island but he can’t defend it or them. America is losing the war on Iran hands down. The only tactic available is to enlist global outrage and a global consensus for violence against Iran, likely by a massive loss of American lives or a naval vessel. Trump is putting the US military in harm’s way specifically in order to get his Gulf of Tonkin incident.
Sources for these claims?