Khamenei, One of Most Evil People in History, is Dead
POSTED BY: 6ixStringJack
UPDATED: Wednesday, September 2, 2026 05:42
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In Iran, the regime has indeed changed: It’s less restrained, more hard-line
After the U.S.-Israeli war’s “decapitation” strikes against top Islamic Republic political and military leaders, who is this new generation that has taken the reins in Iran? They are more hard-line than their predecessors, and less willing to compromise.
By Scott Peterson | April 20, 2026, 5:00 a.m. ET | London
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2026/0420/iran-war-regime-
change-hard-line-new-leaders
Every night, thousands of fervent, flag-waving supporters of Iran’s Islamic Republic take to the streets to vent vitriolic rage at their American and Israeli attackers.
They celebrate surviving 40 days of war, a fragile ceasefire, and now negotiations in which they believe Iran has the upper hand.
The chants also herald another change: The ascendance of a new hard-line cadre of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which has stepped up as the United States and Israel have assassinated scores of senior military and political figures, including the longtime supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
U.S. President Donald Trump, invoking an initial and oft-cited war aim, says he has achieved “regime change” in Iran, and that the new leaders are “less radical and much more reasonable” than before.
But analysts say the decapitation campaign has, instead, enabled the rise of the most hard-line elements of the IRGC, which now feel freshly emboldened and less willing to compromise to end the war.
One apparent example? Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi announced on the social platform X Friday that the critical Strait of Hormuz was “completely open” to shipping, after weeks of strict limitations imposed by Iran. Yet on Saturday, the IRGC fired on two commercial ships, and someone identifying himself as a member of the IRGC navy issued a message on marine radio, recorded by crews in the strait: “We will open it by the order of our leader, Imam Khamenei [Iran’s new supreme leader], not by the tweets of some idiot,” the Wall Street Journal reported. That message came in the context of a hard-line backlash in Tehran against Mr. Araghchi’s statement.
Still, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth referred repeatedly Thursday to what he called the “new regime” in Iran, and told leaders to “choose wisely” as they continued “digging out” their disabled missile launchers. Iran’s motivation to continue the ceasefire was “very high” to avoid further attacks, he said, and U.S. forces were “locked and loaded” to resume strikes.
Such rhetoric has yet to deter Iran’s regime loyalists, much less the IRGC, which U.S. intelligence reportedly believes may still retain half its missile arsenal.
“Moms, dads, take your children’s hands and join the [pro-regime] street gatherings,” Hossein Yekta, an IRGC ideologue believed close to Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, who succeeded his slain father, told state-run television this month. “Don’t you want your kid to become a man? Let them feel like a hero in the middle of the battlefield.”
The night before, appearing on state television, the gray-bearded Mr. Yekta likened the war to a fight between Shiite Muslims and Jews, foretold in the ninth century:
“The infallible Imam [Mahdi] said Iranians will enter Jerusalem and there will be killing. He said ‘bekosh, bekosh’ [kill, kill]. He said that in Persian,” Mr. Yekta said.
Impact of hard-line messaging
Such hard-line messages have helped shape Iran’s response to the war, and – coupled with Iran’s tight restrictions on the flow of one-fifth of global energy supplies, through the critical Strait of Hormuz – may be complicating ways to end the conflict.
Mr. Trump on April 13 imposed a U.S. naval blockade on top of Iran’s, warning that any ship that left Iranian ports or carried Iranian oil would be stopped. On Sunday, he said on Truth Social that U.S. naval forces had fired upon and seized an Iranian cargo ship that was defying the blockade.
After th
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The Most Corrupt War In US History
On April 17, a $760 million bet on falling oil prices was placed minutes before Iran’s foreign minister publicly announced that the Strait of Hormuz would be open to commercial vessels. The announcement triggered an immediate market reaction, with crude oil prices falling as much as 11 percent within minutes. The trader who put the massive bet made a huge financial windfall in just moments.
This was no accident it was almost certainly corruption. Indeed it was just the latest of series of obviously corrupt trades, using inside information that could only have come from the top of the US Government, to make illegal benefits on major market shifts that the “investor” knew were only minutes away. It fits a pattern of trade which has caused hundreds of millions of $’s (at least) of gains for those with the inside information—and losses for many honest investors.
Other trades include: More at https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/midweek-update-8-the-most-corru
pt
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Is There a Way Out of the Iran War? (w/ John Mearsheimer) | The Chris Hedges Report
Who is John Mearsheimer?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Mearsheimer
In his 2007 book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, Mearsheimer argues that the Israel lobby wields disproportionate influence over U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. His more recent work focuses on criticism of the "liberal international order" (laid down in his 2018 book The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities) and why he believes that the West is to blame for the Russo-Ukrainian War.
(0:00) Intro
(2:35) Will Trump go up escalation ladder?
(4:40) 10 points
(7:10) The two-sided pressure on Trump (10:13) Lebanon
(13:23) Israel lobby's status
(17:28) Trump's blockade conundrum
(21:18) Trump's destruction of State Dept.
(25:26) Trump's false prediction
(27:22) Global economic consequences
(34:39) Going forward
(38:30) Frozen ceasefire
(41:48) Suez Crisis?
(45:25) Outro
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Robert Barnes' interview on Trump's advancing dementia. (If Barnes' description is correct, fronto- temporal dementia.)
According to him, life in the WH is like living in an abusive household. Everyone is tiptoeing in fear of setting off a rage, not passing along negative news, and not correcting Trump's confabulations.
He made the point that "the left" created such a caricature of Trump that they're oblivious to his very real decline.
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
I told you so. Again and again, I told you so and you didn't listen, did you?
T
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Last week, Trump took to the media to crow that Iranian leaders had “agreed to everything,” including the removal of its enriched uranium, and that “Iran has agreed never to close the Strait of Hormuz again.” He promised that Iran had agreed to end its nuclear program forever and that talks “should go very quickly.” Trump declared the breakthrough was “A GREAT AND BRILLIANT DAY FOR THE WORLD!” and asked why media outlets questioning the alleged deal didn’t “just say, at the right time, JOB WELL DONE, MR. PRESIDENT?”
There is the unmistakable feeling that the wheels are coming off the MAGA bus.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/april-21-2026
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Giorgia Meloni's government rules out Italy replacing Iran at World Cup
https://news.sky.com/story/giorgia-melonis-government-rules-out-italy-
replacing-iran-at-world-cup-13535400
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Robert Barnes' interview on Trump's advancing dementia. (If Barnes' description is correct, fronto- temporal dementia.)
According to him, life in the WH is like living in an abusive household. Everyone is tiptoeing in fear of setting off a rage, not passing along negative news, and not correcting Trump's confabulations.
He made the point that "the left" created such a caricature of Trump that they're oblivious to his very real decline.
THUGR: I told you so. Again and again, I told you so and you didn't listen, did you?
No, bc most of what you posted was either complete hogwash (TRUMPRUSSIACOLLUSION!!) or irrelevant.
John Kennedy was a compulsive womanizer, high on steroids for a back problem and suffering from Cushing's syndrome.
Nixon was a paranoid drinker.
Kissinger was an amoral sociopath.
Johnson was a vicious political infighter concerned about his popularity but clueless about foreign policy and military affairs.
Carter was personally clean but ineffective.
"Billy Bob I feel your pain" Clinton was a personally charming, intelligent sociopath.
Obama was a charming devious CIA tool.
There's a difference between moral and personality defects and disconnection from reality.
Reagan suffered from Alzheimers. USA was governed by his wife.
Biden (most likely) has advanced Parkinson's and dementia. The USA was governed by Sullivan and Blinken.
Trump appears to be suffering from either PTSD or frontotemporal dementia.
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
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Going to Tehran, book
https://www.amazon.com/Going-Tehran-America-Islamic-Republic/dp/125004
3530
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
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Quote:Download for free from https://annas-archive.gl/search?q=Going+to+Tehran+Flynt+Leverett
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Going to Tehran, book
https://www.amazon.com/Going-Tehran-America-Islamic-Republic/dp/125004
3530
Epigraph from the book:
For if we should perish, the ruthlessness of the foe would be only the secondary cause of the disaster. The primary cause would be that the strength of a giant nation was directed by eyes too blind to see all the hazards of the struggle; and the blindness would be induced not by some accident of nature or history but by hatred and vainglory.
—Reinhold Niebuhr,
The Irony of American History, 1952
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Hegseth Just Sent an Alarming Message to the Rest of the World
Hegseth Just Delivered a Slap in the Face to a Loyal Ally. The Implications Are Huge.
[US has not enough ammo to fight a war lasting more than a month]
By Fred Kaplan | April 24, 2026 5:50 AM
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/04/iran-war-trump-hegseth-est
onia-weapons-delay.html
According to a study released this week by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the U.S. military used up more than half of its pre-war inventory for four of the seven types of weapons that it calls “key munitions” for fighting a war—and it will take, in some cases, more than four years for the stockpile to be replenished. https://www.csis.org/analysis/last-rounds-status-key-munitions-iran-wa
r-ceasefire
Though the study was released a few days before news reports of Hegseth’s phone call to Estonia, it helps explain the secretary’s panic. A key example cited in the study is the Precision Strike Missile, the main munition of the HIMARS rocket system that Hegseth held back from delivery to our NATO ally. The U.S. military had 90 of these missiles before Trump started bombing Iran. During the five and a half weeks of war, it fired off 40 to 70 of them. (The study’s estimate is based on published sources; hence the imprecise range.) The study concludes it will take 46 months—nearly four years—for manufacturers to refill the U.S. inventory.
Similarly, the U.S. had 360 Terminal High Altitude Area Defense systems before the war started. In shooting down Iran’s ballistic missiles, U.S. service members fired off somewhere between 190 and 290—52 to 80 percent—of them. Rebuilding those stockpiles should take 53 months.
The military used between 1,060 and 1,430—between 45 and 61 percent—of its 2,330 Patriot air-defense missiles, which will take 42 months to replace.
In other, slightly less extreme cases, the military fired more than 1,000 of its 3,100 Tomahawk cruise missiles, more than 1,000 of its 4,400 armor-piercing Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles, between 130 and 250 of its 410 SM-3 air-defense missiles, and between 190 and 370 of its 1,160 SM-6s. The Tomahawks will take 47 months to replace, the SM-6s will take 53 months, and the SM-3s will take 64 months.
The study notes that the situation is not quite as dire as the numbers make it seem. Some of these weapons can be replaced by far cheaper, slightly less capable systems that the U.S. possesses in large quantity. However, for a few of the weapons—the Patriots, THAADs, and SM missiles, which are adept at shooting down short-to-medium-range ballistic missiles—there are no good substitutes.
It’s breathtaking to examine these numbers. The U.S. military budgets since 2020 have added up to more than $5 trillion. Yet its arsenal is facing such drastic shortfalls in some of its most critical weapons! How could this be?
A few lessons can be learned from this grim tale.
First, we should have been buying—and now need to buy—many more of these basic munitions.
Second, the Pentagon needs to find companies that, in lightning-fast contracts, can build weapons of this sort—artillery rockets, medium-range missiles, and air-defense weapons—for much, much lower prices. (It’s crazy to fire multimillion-dollar air-defense missiles at drones costing a few thousand dollars.)
Third, the president of the United States needs to think three or four times—as opposed to not thinking at all—before starting wars for no real reason. Sometimes these wars go on for longer than anticipated; military commanders tend to fire off as many weapons, as rapidly, as they can. The resulting cost can be devastating—in human lives, infrastructure, our own finances, and now, with Hegseth’s phone call to Estonia, our reputation, not only with our allies but with other actors in the world, who are all watching very closely.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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