Eve Ottenberg

Eve Ottenberg

   Five headlines from the week of March 22 are all about missiles. "Iranian Strikes Cripple Qatar's LNG Hub, Threaten Europe Gas" was one on X. Another, from the Middle East Eye, cited Iran's attacks on Israel's Dimona nuclear site, noting that dozens were wounded. Another X headline focused on Iran's missiles reaching Diego Garcia "in Longest Strike Yet." RT featured a story on "US Patriot missile linked to civilian injuries in Bahrain," while on X itself a story ran, quoting Sergei Shoigu, the secretary of the Russian Security Council: "Iran possesses an offensive missile system that the United States does not have," Shoigu allegedly announced. "These are highly advanced missiles that have not yet been used. Iran has a stockpile of missiles capable of destroying the entire Middle East, not just Israel. We call on the United States and Israel to immediately stop the war and declare the military operation against Iran a failure. Otherwise, the losses and damage will be a surprise. That is all." In other words, if this post was accurate and not a fake, Russia warns that the Empire cannot beat the Eurasian block's hypersonic missiles and better call it a day.

   The next afternoon Russia TV ran a list of over 17 nations that stand with Iran. The message is clear: Russia (and China) regard Iran as an ally – so does North Korea, which offered to open its arsenal to Iran over a week ago, and you know what that arsenal contains – nukes. Also, Iran is considering joining a defense pact with Russia and China – does that mean it would shelter under their nuclear umbrella? Stay tuned, because it's definitely possible.

    Of course, Iran may sagaciously move to have its own nukes in the near future – the new ayatollah put the Empire on notice regarding that in his March 21 speech. Apparently, as predicted by many observers, including yours truly, the new Iranian leadership considers the old one's abstention from a nuclear deterrent to have been erroneous. This is no surprise. Ayatollah Khamenei was a moderate who issued a fatwa against nuclear weapons. He was killed and has been replaced by his son, whose family was also killed by the American-Israeli Fourth Reich, and who, guess what? is no moderate. I ask you – if your family was wiped out by the U.S. and Israel, would you be a moderate? No. And the new ayatollah wants the bomb, doubtless recognizing the stupendous logic that had Iran had nuclear weapons, the U.S. and Israel would not have dared attack it. He will now rectify that situation.

   Meanwhile on March 18 and 19, Iranian missiles struck "two LNG trains and a gas-to-liquids plant at Quatar's Ras Laffan complex, sidelining 12.8 million tons of annual output and forcing a $20 billion write-down," according to X March 22. These attacks retaliated for Israeli bombing of Iran's South Pars field, a deliberate escalation of the Iran War and one that supposedly took the Trump regime by surprise. Whatever the truth about this surprise, Israel appeared determined to expand the conflict. After Iran's counterattack, Qatar, in a move no doubt delightful to Israel, expelled Iranian attaches, while declaring force majeure on contracts to Europe, South Korea and China. But Israel has no doubt finally awoken to the unwelcome realization that it is in an existential fight, one it rashly picked, and this time, unlike the 12-Day War, no amount of begging by Jerusalem will get hostilities halted. Indeed, as the IRGC insists, nothing short of Jerusalem's unconditional surrender will stop Iranian missiles from hitting Israel.

   So Israel is desperate. How desperate? Well, on March 23, General H.R. McMaster told the world on live CBS TV that the IDF now hits Russian ships in the Caspian Sea. I can't imagine Vladimir Putin standing very long for much of this. Jerusalem is clearly making a provocative hullaballoo over Moscow's support for Tehran – a mosquito annoying an elephant. And my bet is the Kremlin will swat that mosquito in short order. McMaster also revealed that to aid Israel, the U.S. blocks Chinese fuel shipments to Iran. Ho, ho! We'll see how long this brazen piracy against the tariff-proof Five-Thousand-Year-Old civilization lasts.

   Then we have lousy U.S. air defense doing its typical crappy job of not working and killing and harming innocent bystanders. On March 23, RT reported that a U.S. Patriot missile was "linked to civilian injuries in Bahrain. The mid-air interception of an Iranian drone led to 32 people being wounded early in the conflict." According to Reuters, the Patriot interceptor "was launched from a battery located approximately four miles southwest of the Mahazza neighborhood on Sitra Island. Bahrain's authorities previously said 32 people, including children, were wounded." This fits with much wretched experience of Patriots in Ukraine: missing the drones they're meant to shoot down and blowing up or landing on civilians and civilian infrastructure instead.

   But Iranian missiles are doing their job. Meanwhile Iran is making money hand over fist in the oil business. How much money? Well, check out what Iran expert Trita Parsi had to say on X March 23: "Before the war Iran produced just shy of 1.1 million barrels of oil per day and sold it at $65 per barrel minus $18 discount (i.e. $47). Today it produces 1.5 million barrels a day and sells it at $110 with only $2-4 discount. And this does not include petrochemical sales that not only have increased but are now being sold to a larger set of customers compared to before the war. Moreover, Iran is receiving payments through new mechanisms that bypass the UAE, which were set up after the June war. In essence…Trump and Israel's war has ended up delivering Iran de facto sanctions relief. This means that Iran is all the less incentivized to end the war, unless the agreement provides Iran with formal sanctions relief."

   Sanctions aren't the only thing Iran stipulates. In addition to nukes, Iran, as mentioned, wants unconditional Israeli surrender, reparations and the total exit of the U.S. from the Gulf. That exit is already well underway. As of March 24, the last U.S. and NATO troops had fled Iraq, while American bases throughout the region have gone up in flames. The Empire made a big boo boo with its Israel uber alles assault. Unlike the Eurasian behemoths, it cannot produce weapons 24/7 day in and day out and is even utterly dependent on China for the rare earths to make those arms. And China is ready, if provoked, to turn off its rare earth monopoly spigot at the drop of a hat. So the Fourth Reich lacked materiel going into this war. Washington and Jerusalem were also outgunned by hypersonic missiles they have no defense for and which they do not know how to produce. Had anyone in those two capitals had a brain, they would have resisted the urge to attack. But they weren't thinking with their brains, if they could be said to have them or to have been thinking at all.

   So now the missiles fly. Iran gets rich. The security architecture of West Asia has transformed permanently. The idiots in Jerusalem have punctured the illusion of their nation as a regional power and will be lucky if it gets through the Iranian and Hezbollah blitz with its territory intact. This is what happens when, instead of statesmen running countries, you have third-rate car salesmen, like Benjamin Netanyahu. Or in the case of Trump, snake oil salesmen. I would not want to bet on the nitwit Israeli/American rulers resisting the insane urge to resort to a tactical nuke, however, that won't save the situation for these morons, as it could well lead to nuclear retaliation. You don't have to be a genius to see these two nations have dragged humanity to the precipice of Atomic Armageddon. If you can figure out a way to drag it back, you get a prize.

Eve Ottenberg

   It may be pointless to keep repeating that the U.S. attack on Iran was inane, but let me mention this: the U.S. attack on Iran was idiotic.

   As British politician and commentator George Galloway posted on X March 9: "The U.S.-Israel attack on Iran is the greatest military-political disaster since Operation Barbarossa – the Nazi invasion of the USSR." Yes indeed it is, as any normal person in their right mind could have seen coming decades ago. Iran has made clear it will only accept Israel's unconditional surrender and the complete eviction of the U.S. and U.S. military from the region, two titanic developments that were, prior to this insane adventure, unthinkable. Well, they're no longer unthinkable. With Tel Aviv and Haifa incinerated and bombed to smithereens, ALL Americans advised to quit the Gulf forthwith and the hospitals at Ramstein military base in Germany awash in the blood of hundreds of dead and wounded American soldiers, it's not a moment too soon to ask whether the psychotics running Israel, confronted with an existential threat, would resort to a tactical nuke. I think the answer is yes. And that's where two things come into play: first, the extent of damage at the Israeli nuclear site, Dimona, and second, China and Russia. Let's start with China and Russia. Because this is the moment when it becomes very important for nuclear armed Moscow and Beijing to step in and put an end to this lethal lunacy.

   Pakistan offered nukes to Iran, should Israel threaten it with atomic Armageddon, back during the 12 Day War. Things have changed since then. They got worse. Not just the deranged Israeli rulers, but also Washington under Trump may itch for an atomic final solution rather than cleanly losing a war and losing face. Russia and China, as historian Tarik Cyril Amar posted on X, must enter the chat, with their own nukes, to stop this pathology before the insane asylum inmates, who happen to run much of the world, decide to irradiate it. Russia and China are the only ones who can – and they have good reason to do so. Iran is an ally. Moscow has assisted its Persian friend with targeting of U.S. troops and bases, while Beijing has given Tehran scads of satellite intelligence on U.S. bases. Furthermore, Russia announced in early March that it supports Iran in this fight. Days later, Kremlin foreign minister Sergei Lavrov blasted Gulf potentates as the cowards they are regarding the U.S. In short, the Kremlin boldly took a side; and it wasn't the psychopathic Empire's. So did Beijing, with its dozens of military cargo planes landing in Tehran and unloading who knows how much weaponry and air defense. And then, on March 12, Eurasian ally North Korea announced that it had opened its ENTIRE arsenal to Iran, and you know what that arsenal includes – a nuclear trump card.

   Next up: the apocalyptic damage at Dimona. One thing we learned in the Ukraine War is that Russian statistics are unassailable. Well, the Russian stats, released March 9, coming out of the Iran War, are devastating to Israel: In the first 72 hours of the war, Israel lost 700 military, intel and nuclear experts. This is a shocking kill list, and there's no reason to doubt Moscow's info. At this rate – because who knows how many more such people Israel has lost since – Jerusalem might wanna consider an unconditional surrender. Why? Well, according to Russian intelligence, one for instance: Israel has completely lost control of Dimona, its most essential nuclear site and the key to its supposedly nonexistent nuclear arsenal. If this is accurate and Israel now lacks its atomic insurance policy, we don't need to worry about Jerusalem deploying a tactical nuke. But Washington could still be a problem. Presumably, Moscow and Beijing, both armed to the teeth with atomic weapons, can make the would-be Beltway Bombers see reason.

   Meanwhile, Iran has rejected several ceasefire offers from Trump. Why? Because it doesn't want a repeat of what followed the 12 Day War. Tehran knows very well that a truce would just be a break during which the Israeli-American Fourth Reich would simply rearm for another assault. Tehran wants to deal with the problem once and for all, and that means now. Though it has nearly exhausted U.S. and Israeli air defense interceptors, Iran is just warming up with its ballistic and hypersonic missiles. Estimates were that in the 12 Day War, Iran burned through 20 percent of those missiles; it rebuilt and imported from its Russian and Chines allies more than enough to compensate for that 20 percent. So now it's firing hypersonics, for which we in the west and thus Israel have zero, zip, nada, zilch defense. And of course, we ourselves completely lack hypersonics and have been unable to develop them. You'd think smart pentagon leadership would have avoided confrontation with a regional power bristling with weapons we can't match and able to shut of the world's energy spigot at the drop of a hat; you'd think that, but you'd be wrong.

   Because just like they warned, Iran's military men shut the Strait of Hormuz. For the first time in living memory 20 percent of the world's oil and 30 percent of its LNG is bottled up in that waterway. The price of oil is shooting up, the stock market drops, and Americans can soon expect to pay $5 per gallon at the pump. This was an entirely preventable catastrophe. How? I'll tell you how: just don't freakin' declare war on Iran. Was that too much to ask of the megabrains in the white house? Apparently yes. Cause they did it. They risked the entire world economy on an idiotic assault on a country the size of Europe, protected by numerous mountain ranges, with 92 million people and enough hypersonic missiles to obliterate Israel and the Gulf states. This is stupid on steroids.

   Late on March 9, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps announced: "Any Arab or European country that expels the Israeli and American ambassadors from its territory will be granted full authorization and freedom of passage through the Strait of Hormuz starting tomorrow." This offer came in response to imbecilic white house threats about opening the Strait of Hormuz. The arsonist in the white house had made noises about U.S. navy ships accompanying tankers, suggesting this naval suicide amid complaints about the Strait's closure. Well, the IRGC's response was not conciliatory. It was cantankerous.

   No wonder the U.S. and Israel are "studying the possibility" of ending the Iran War without regime change in Iran. That amounts to declaring victory and running away, but hey, it works for me. This whole fiasco, from the moment it debuted on the world stage decades ago out of the revolting mouth of Benjamin Netanyahu, was enough to make you want to puke – and keep puking till it actually happened, the anti-nausea meds kicked in, and you could stop paying attention to the news. Because if there's one thing the U.S. war on Iran does is it proves the terminally nauseating idiocy of the American ruling class. Nitwits are in charge. Nitwits and psychopaths, and these mentally imbalanced people have guns and bombs and loads of money; but at last you can take some satisfaction – they bit off more than they can chew. They picked on someone who can fight back and destroy them financially. Someone who has big, scary allies, allies who are unimpressed with the bluster of white house dimwits; someone whose power is measured in unbeatable hypersonic missiles and impenetrable air defense. Russia has the best AD in the world. It's battle-tested and it doesn't miss. You can bet your paycheck that now Iran's got some of that too.

   The IRGC has made its goals clear: unconditional Israeli surrender, eviction of the U.S. from the Middle East. Russia and China back Iran and you don't want to underestimate the lengths they'll go to to support their ally. So as Berlin on the Potomac's jig ends in the Middle East, who benefits? The Lebanese, the Gazans, the Houthis, Hezbollah (much more powerful than the demented Israeli-American tyranny estimated), Palestinians in the West Bank, Iraqi Shia and indeed Shia everywhere. It's a horror and a tragedy that some many Iranians had to die, but at least if the IRGC attains its goals, there might be some justice for the dead.

Eve Ottenberg

     It's time for the so-called new left to wake up to the existential threat posed by AI. The only U.S. politician cognizant of this stupendous danger is old left Bernie Sanders, who recognizes the late-capitalist AI tsunami coming for us all. He's the only one asking questions about what happens once governments and corporations turn everything over to AI, because the only way to compete is to rely on a technology that functions at the level of "the best humans" and will soon develop beyond and surpass the best and smartest humans.

     This is the overall danger posed by AI. More specific ones have been making headlines lately, namely the AI corporation Anthropic's imbroglio with Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth. With breathtaking arrogance, Hegseth threatened to ditch Anthropic's $200 million defense department contract for its AI called Claude, if Claude could not be used for certain despicable and frankly illegal purposes: in autonomous weapons systems that can kill people without human input and allowing Claude to be used for mass domestic surveillance. To his credit, Anthropic's ceo Dario Amodei resisted Pentagon pressure. But these horrifying demands reveal AI's monstrously anti-human and homicidal potential. On the evening of February 27, before Anthropic and the Pentagon could release their final positions, Trump, in a fit of pique, banned all government agencies from doing business with Anthropic. So I guess we know where the white house stands on potential abuses of AI. But in the end, this hullaballoo between an AI corporation and the Pentagon is only one aspect of the broader danger AI poses to humanity.

     So what happens when, in a few years, the labor portion of the economy is zero percent and the capital portion is 100 percent? And that's coming fast, because Donald Trump has unleashed AI. The situation might be manageable if the U.S. and China slapped some controls on this monster – so that creating AI superior to the best and smartest humans is delayed – and China would probably be willing to do that. But Trump's U.S., particularly his venture capitalist backers? Not so much.

     Most of the left regards AI as merely the latest Silicon Valley craze, like crypto. It is not. On this, the old left, represented by Sanders, is a lot smarter. Because this is not a matter of "well, I ignore AI, so it will leave me alone." It won't. Years ago on Twitter, The Wire's writer, David Simon, was asked if he'd use AI to help him write, and he replied, "I'd rather put a gun in my mouth and pull the trigger." For those of us who want AI out of our lives, that could soon be the only option.

     Roughly five years ago, of the four big AI companies – Open AI, xAI, Google and Anthropic – two stated openly that if we developed an artificial general intelligence, the chance of human extinction would immediately hit 25 percent (Anthropic's ceo DarioAmodei) or 20 percent (xAI's boss Elon Musk). It was then still a theoretical concern, but these leaders in the field admitted that to make up for employment extermination, government would have to supply a universal basic income. But now, with the public asleep to this menace and competition having increased, those corporate bigwigs are no longer quite so honest.

     Making matters worse is the fact that for Trump promoting AI keeps the stock market booming. And since Trump regards the stock market as the economy, he has issued horrible executive orders on AI, the worst being his attempts to preempt state regulation of AI, which is the only thing that might protect us from this technological Godzilla.

     Three years ago, you could discern easily if you were chatting online with AI. But by winter of 2025, most AI passed the Turing Test, which means it could fool you into thinking you were chatting with a person, if it wanted to. Now if you look at more quantitative fields, like computer programming, well, in the past few months, top computer programmers have stopped writing their own code and have turned this task over to AI. In formal mathematics, AI already operates at the level of pretty good PhD students, but not yet professors. So mathematicians are still doing math. But that will likely be the first of the hard sciences that falls to total automation.

     The real danger comes in the next few years, when, according to the research institute METR, the task length that AI can complete extends – because it's been doubling every few months. So that's an exponential trajectory that means AI will surpass most human knowledge work – computer programmers, Wall Street entry-level associates much of whose work is manipulating Excel spreadsheets (they will be merely the first to go) – in a matter of years. This change will wipe out knowledge workers, since AI will be able to perform all their tasks, faster and better.

     Within Silicon Valley opinions differ on how desirable it is to summon super intelligence into the world. But Trump and his venture capitalist supporters, who have quite successfully kept this issue off the public and congressional radar, have backed those who are most gung-ho for creating super intelligence. This is dangerously short-sighted. These guys may all get rich, but they'll do so producing a super intelligence that could easily decide in the future that we humans are a nuisance, like so many insects that need to be exterminated. If you think this is an overreaction, well then, you haven't been paying attention.

     Bernie Sanders has. Back on November 24, 2025, he released a statement entitled "The Future of AI and Its Impact on Humanity." "The question is: Who will control this technology? Who will benefit from it? And who will be left behind?" Then on February 20, the Guardian reported that Sanders "Warned that Congress and the American public have 'not a clue' about the scale and speed of the coming AI revolution, pressing for urgent policy action to 'slow this thing down.'" Sanders calls this the "most dangerous moment in the modern history of this country." He added, "the Congress and the American people are very unprepared for the tsunami that is coming." Sanders reissued his call for a moratorium on the expansion of AI data centers to "slow down the revolution and protect workers."

     Sanders first called for a moratorium in December 2025. "If there are no jobs and humans won't be needed for most things, how do people get an income to feed their families, to get healthcare or to pay rent? There's been not one serious word of discussion in the Congress about that reality." As the Guardian reported December 28, 2025, he questioned the motives of "the richest people in the world" pushing AI. "He singled out tech moguls Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Peter Thiel." Sanders calls for slowing "this process down. It's not good enough for the oligarchs to tell us, it's coming, you adapt…They're going to guarantee health care to all people? What are they going to do when people have no jobs…make housing free?" Again and again, Sanders says, correctly, we need to slow this hurricane down.

     So when it comes to AI, old left Bernie Sanders knows the score. Donald Trump does not. Or, more likely, he just doesn't care. In 2025, Trump issued four executive orders promoting AI and deregulating it. Worst of all was his December 2025 order designed to stop states from restricting AI. Scheduled for March 2026, the secretary of commerce is tasked with identifying burdens on AI, among other things. Trump's assault on the only guard-rail against explosive AI development, namely state regulations literally threatens us all. The only way out of this dead end that AI is corralling us into lies in congress. If Sanders can wake up his fellow congress members, then we humans might stand a chance. Otherwise it's a future of no jobs, no income and the likelihood that super-intelligent AI comes to regard the human species as redundant or outright expendable.