Jeremy Scahill

And, you know, let's back up and remember, you had these huge protests in Iran in January, and then you had, you know, the overwhelming, huge, peaceful protests then start to be disrupted by smaller cells of people within them who are attacking police stations.

And, you know, and then the Iranian state responds brutally and forcefully.

And you had this kind of humanitarian interventionism argument happening.

Oh, my God, we need to intervene.

to save the Iranian people.

And oh my God, the women of Iran are so oppressed.

And Iran is a diverse country, and there is completely legitimate reasons for Iranians to despise their government.

It's the right of anyone in this world.

But this is cynically used to sell a war of choice that has nothing to do with freeing Iranian women, that has nothing to do with delivering democracy to the suffering masses of Iran.

This is any more than when Laura Bush would say, we're in Afghanistan to save the women and get the burqa removed.

None of that was what that war was about.

And any of us that knew anything knew the Taliban is going to end up back in power.

And this was yet another graveyard of imperialism adventure where American lives were lost.

Tens of thousands of Afghan lives were lost.

And it all ends with the Taliban going back into power and reconsolidating things.

I bring this up because American imperialism is filled with episodes of convincing the American people to step on the same rake in the same position in the same yard every time and it smacks you in the face.

None of this is about humanitarianism.

None of this is about saving any Iranian people or defending any Iranian women.

This is a regime change war that is overwhelmingly being fought.

for Israel's strategic interests in the region, and because it's been a long-term bipartisan project in the United States, and they want to create a Middle East, in the case of Trump, that is good for the kind of business that his family does.