Same old story on the Western Front

2026-03-02 - 19:32

There were opinions that the US military buildup in the Gulf would be used as a tool of pressure in negotiations with Iran. Yet the nature of the buildup was a clear sign that an attack against Iran was being planned. In my article titled "Chekhov's Gun," I had included the saying: "If in the first act of a play a gun is hanging on the wall, then in that play it must eventually go off!" That gun has gone off. Immediately after the aircraft carrier USS Gerald Ford reached Israel, the US and Israel attacked Iran. The day before the attack, Oman's Foreign Minister, Badr bin Hamad al-Busaidi, who plays a mediator role in negotiations between the US and Iran, had argued on a program on CBS News that the talks were going very well and that an agreement was within reach. Many analysts had commented, saying, "It looks like this time Trump and Iran might actually reach a deal." On the other hand, no country would want to find itself in the diminished position that Oman, as a mediator, has been placed in. The start of the attacks on Iran revealed that the negotiations were nothing but a trick and a deception. After the US completed its preparations, it blew up the negotiating table and started bombing those who would have signed an agreement had one been reached. The same thing had happened in June 2025. Trump is giving a maximum timeline of four weeks for the attack, but will the war's own dynamics allow for that? The war has already started to spread across the region. The Venezuelan government had also announced that it could reach an agreement with the US. Trump's Special Envoy for Venezuela, Richard Grenell, had even conducted extensive talks with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Grenell seemed quite hopeful that a deal would be made. However, Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State and a Venezuela and Cuba hawk, was not pleased with Grenell's initiatives. Naturally, the Neocons supporting Rubio also practically declared war on Grenell. Eventually, Grenell quietly withdrew from the scene, and we saw what happened next. The US only wants "surrender" from countries it deems weak. I had compared what the US did to Venezuela to the treatment inflicted upon the small island of Melos by the Athenian Maritime Empire some 2,500 years ago. In his famous book recounting the "Peloponnesian War," the Athenian general Thucydides, a witness to the events, included a dialogue presumed to have taken place between the Athenian and Melian delegations. In this dialogue, known as the "Melian Dialogue," the most famous phrase expressed by the Athenian envoys to the Melians was: "The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must." According to the Athenians, justice, law, and diplomacy could only apply between equal powers. Although the Melians remained neutral in the war between the Athenian forces and the Spartan forces, they were massacred for refusing to join the "Delian League." Even though Melos posed no threat to Athens and lacked any wealth to plunder, its male population was slaughtered, and its women and children were enslaved, simply to serve as a lesson to other city-states. However, the "Melian Doctrine" pushed many city-states to Sparta's side, which ultimately brought about Athens's downfall. This extremely cruel, lawless, and immoral display of brute force that Athens inflicted upon the Melians became the motto of the Neocons. What happened in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Venezuela, and Iran are projections of Melos. Trump, having fallen into the trap of the very Neocon policies he supposedly vehemently opposed, chose to turn Netanyahu's war into America's war. In his speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 20th, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who was supported with a standing ovation by European liberals, had included Thucydides's "Strong-Weak" dilemma. Carney criticized the fact that the sentence reported by Thucydides, meaning "the strong are right," had become the world's new reality through Trump. Carney had even proposed solidarity among "middle powers." Not even forty days have passed. The same Carney made a statement supporting the US and Israeli attack on Iran, reminiscent of the 'Melian Doctrine'. The leaders of three leading countries of so-called "values-based" Liberal Europe were not far behind. Like beads on a string, they lined up around Trump and the Genocidal Netanyahu. Remember these same countries' reactions to Russia over the Ukraine issue. These two diametrically opposed approaches reveal what they truly are. They have no connection whatsoever to values. The only thing they think about is their interests. After Gaza, their hypocrisy has been registered once again.