Another Israeli assassination but war goes on in what is becoming Netanyahu’s “Vietnam;” plus Iran’s numbers on U.S. killed.
Ali Larijani (Mostafameraji/Wikimedia Commons)
TUESDAY
By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News
Immanuel Kant Author Killed
A pragmatic Iranian leader who took part in nuclear negotiations with the U.S. and who was a philosopher specializing in Immanuel Kant was murdered by Israel in an airstrike as he was visiting his daugher in Pardis, a city east of Tehran.
Israel persists in thinking it is playing chess (first developed in India and Persia). They think if you kill the king you win. It didn’t happen after Tel Aviv killed Iran’s Supreme Leader in the opening hours of the aggression on Feb. 28, and it won’t end the war now that they have killed Ali Larijani, who was the de facto leader of Iran after the Ayatollah’s killing.
That’s because Iran is fighting a highly decentralized, asymmetrical war, while Israel and the U.S. are fighting a traditional wiping out leaders war and navies. The Iranian military and political system was built on surviving the elimination of its leaders, having learned the game the Israelis and Americans are playing.
Israel also removed the man who had faith in diplomacy and believed in talking to the Americans. Israel lessened the chances of that happening again..
Larijani was a conservative and was aligned closely with the religious leadership. He was a former culture minister, ran the state broadcaster and was speaker of Parliament for 12 years.
The titles of his three books on Kant are: The Mathematical Method in Kant’s Philosophy, Metaphysics and the Exact Sciences in Kant’s Philosophy and Intuition and Synthetic A Priori Judgments in Kant’s Philosophy.
Compare his erudition with Donald Trump and then figure out who are the barbarians in this war and who are the civilized?
Netanyahu’s ‘Vietnam’
An analysis in the Israeli daily Haaretz says out loud what the pro-Israel speech enforcers dare not permit: Israel, and specifically Benjamin Netanyahu, are in position to lose their war with Iran.
“The post-October 7 Wars in Iran and Lebanon Are Turning Into Netanyahu’s Vietnam,” reads the headline, with the subtitle: “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s attempt to gain support by warring with Iran and Hezbollah ahead of elections is already backfiring. What happens when his base realizes the repeated promises of ‘total victory’ were a lie?”
The article says:
“The current war has also revealed the enormous mendacity of Netanyahu and his allies’ boasts about Israel’s ostensible ‘successes’ against Hezbollah and Iran during the previous rounds of fighting. After Israel assassinated Hassan Nasrallah and its tanks pushed deep into Lebanon in the fall of 2024, Israel’s prime minister proclaimed the Iranian-backed Shi’te militia had been all but defeated, its arsenal depleted and organizational capacity neutralized.
Likewise, in Iran, Netanyahu claimed Israel had scored a ‘historic victory,’ setting back both Iran’s nuclear ambitions and its ballistic missile program significantly. Trump, for his part, claimed Iran’s nuclear program had been ‘obliterated.’
None of these claims, it turns out, were true. […]
Netanyahu may have thought the world would thank him for the attempt to bring down the Iranian regime. The opposite has happened. Anti-Israel sentiment has mushroomed, globally but perhaps most consequentially in the United States, where politicians on the left and right have staked out stridently critical positions on Israel that would have been unimaginable just years ago. Before the current war, Israel’s international reputation was already in tatters. It has deteriorated, almost implausibly, even further.
A military quagmire and geopolitical debacle, Israel’s long set of post-October 7 wars risk becoming Netanyahu’s Vietnam. The prime minister may have hoped that the ‘War of Redemption’ would, after the catastrophic failure of October 7, also spur his own political rebirth; in striking Iran twice, he smelled the possibility of redefining his legacy, sullied by the deadliest attack in the country’s history. That redemption now looks increasingly unlikely.”
British Official Says War Was Avoidable
First, the Omani FM came out and revealed that there was a deal on the table that met Trump’s demands, but that he instead chose war.
And now, it is revealed that the British National Security Advisor was also part of the talks, and he too attests to the fact that A) there was…
— Trita Parsi (@tparsi) March 17, 2026
Iran’s Claim on US Casualties
A senior Iranian intelligence official told Iran’s Press TV that Iran has intelligence indicating there have been more than 3,000 U.S. casualties so far in the war. Press TV reported:
“The main finding indicates a critical depletion of air defense stockpiles for both the United States and the Israeli regime, a development described as ‘very serious’ by the official.
The intelligence further details substantial casualties, reporting that at least 200 US military personnel were killed, with over 3,000 wounded in the first week itself. […]
The official said the US lost 150 missile launch platforms and 23 Patriot air defense systems. A total of 37 aircraft and helicopters were also destroyed.
The report also noted that 43 percent of US weapons stockpiles have been obliterated.”
The U.S. has so far admitted only 13 killed and around 200 wounded, but many analysts believe the figure is higher given the extent of the damage, revealed by satellite photography, that was done to U.S. military bases in the region.
MONDAY
Larijani’s Last Message
Larijani published an open letter hours before he died, chiding Muslim nations for not supporting Iran after it was deceitfully attacked by Israel and the United States.
? BREAKING
Full Message from Iranian Secretary of National Security Ali Larijani to Muslims:
In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful
To Muslims worldwide and the governments of Islamic countries:
1. Iran faced a deceitful U.S.-Israeli aggression during… pic.twitter.com/0bI0c59Sc1
— The Web News (@The_Web_News_HD) March 17, 2026
Israel’s Pettiness
Israel bombed targets throughout Iran on Monday. With almost petty viciousness, the IDF bombed a single airplane at Tehran’s Mehrabad Airport: the aircraft that transported the Supreme Leader on international flights.
As if it would be used during the current conflict when air space around the Gulf has been closed to all but drones, ballistic missiles and military aircraft.
It was a spiteful, symbolic act to send a psychological message. Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s plane, the Wing of Zion, was flown to Germany for safekeeping in the early days of the war (with no evidence that Netanyahu was on board despite what lots of people are saying.)
Surveillance/Targeting: Investigations (RSF/SIRAJ) indicate that “The Spider” (Syrian intelligence) targeted journalists before the regime fall, with trends continuing in 2025-2026.
War on Journalists: As of March 2026, over 95 journalists/media workers are reported killed, with recent reports indicating deliberate targeting.
On March 18-19, Iran twice hit Qatar’s Ras Laffan LNG facility in retaliation for an Israeli strike on the South Pars field, prompting U.S. President Trump to threaten to “massively blow up” the field.
oh@! Netanyahu gets his plane during war, but Tehran’s get bombed to shreds. Is there something wrong with Netanyahu? He cannot be a global player until and unless he actually joins the global caucus of peaceful coexistence among nations of all stripes. I have friends who were born and raised in Palestine. Tell me how they should now plan their lives around peace with Israel when the facts are that Israel has no intent to allow them to plan their lives in a peaceful region or have a homeland to claim as their own.
What would happen if the rhetoric were dialed down? okay, so we don’t like each other. is there a chance we can live in peace coexistence even if we don’t always agree? maybe you’re Jewish. maybe I’m Muslim. maybe I’m Christian. maybe those facts don’t mean we can’t live together. peace is the objective. war is no longer possible as a way to coexistence.
.
do barbarians need to care who kant is
when they have ‘beautiful’ 2,000-pound bombs
to blow not just brains out?
they’ll care even less about kant’s moral imperative to
“act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the
same time, will that it should become a universal law.“
much too complicated for people who have been getting away with
abuse [not just of power], lies, corruption, theft, mass murder & more
for so long, that impunity has become their rule of f.law.