Monday

March 2nd, 2026

Insight

Persian Carpet-Bombing

Mark Steyn

By Mark Steyn

Published March 2, 2026

Persian Carpet-Bombing

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Ayatollah Khamenei has been a power player since almost the founding of the Islamic Republic, initially as president for eight years and then, since 1989, as "Supreme Leader". To kill him on the first night of the war is quite something. If they take their religion as seriously as they want the rest of us to, they will need to bury him within twenty-four hours, which would require some kind of announcement pretty soon.

~I'm just emerging from a rather grisly week and was hoping to catch up leisurely with relatively inconsequential things such as the State of the Union, only to wake and find that we have a brand new war:

I'm not sure, after the last quarter-century, that the over-butch monikers impress anyone anymore. I'd be pleasantly surprised if the next one were designated "Operation Somewhat Irked" or "Operation Mildly Peeved". Be that as it may, Lindsey Graham is already at the if-erection-lasts-for-over-six-hours-consult-your-doctor phase:

Lindsey's promise to his loyal constituents:

The biggest change in the Middle East in a thousand years is upon us.

Make of that what you will, but it doesn't sound like this is a little light banana-republic dictatornapping or three hours of long-range bunker-busting. The Israelis - the only participating ally in "Epic Fury" - are characterising it as "a broad and joint operation" to "remove existential threats to Israel". President Trump says "major combat operations" are underway and that his goal is "freedom for the people".

So that sounds like full-scale war, boots-on-the-groundy enough to keep Senator Graham whimpering orgasmically enough to distract his fellow GOP senators from their ongoing subversion of the Trump agenda. Not everyone on the Americn right is enthralled by all the earth-moving:

Trump's more ardent MAGA followers cannot forgive him. Take Curt Mills, the editor of the American Conservative, a magazine which first rose to prominence by opposing Bush's rush to war in 2003. He was unsparing in his response, texting me that Trump's attack on Iran is a "heinous day of betrayal for America First. This isn't stabbing Trump's original followers in the back. It's stabbing them in the front."

So far, Washington claims to have hit the Supreme Leader's residence. UPDATE! Israeli media report that he's pushing up daisycutters. If it is correct that the US waited till every senior figure was attending the Spectre board meeting and then took them out in a single strike, that would be a remarkable start to any war. Whether or not the Islamic Republic's leadership have gone to their virgins, in retaliation Tehran seems to be targeting Nigel Farage's Reform UK leadership at their global HQ in Dubai:

Reform Treasurer Nick Candy today told how his hotel 'shook' as a devastating barrage of Iranian missiles and drones rained down on Dubai.

The billionaire property developer was on one of the upper floors of the Bulgari Resort in Jumeria Bay, Dubai, when one of a series of missiles struck.

The Reform Deputy Leader's squeeze is also under barrage in Dubai.

The ayatollahs have also struck the headquarters of the US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, and killed at least one person in strikes on the Emirates, Qatar and Kuwait. There are conflicting reports of forty dead after the USAF hit a girls' primary school, which is sure to go down well with Ilhan Omar and other child-care specialists. On the other hand, a view from the streets:

Where we go from here is anybody's guess. The inability to use forty per cent of total planet-wide military spending to accomplish even modest strategic goals should shame arses like Graham and Thoroughly Modern Milley. On tomorrow's pre-scheduled episode of our America Alone adaptation, we revisit what, twenty years ago, was already very obviously the missing ingredient in Pentagon war-mongering. Since then, just in the past half-decade, Washington has lost - definitively - two entirely different wars on two different continents. Trump is not Biden, and Pete Hegseth is not Darth Visor; but it requires a huge leap of faith to believe that in the last twelve months the thoroughly corrupt and dysfunctional culture of the Pentagon has been sufficiently transformed to prevent this once-a-millennium "combat operation" going the way all the others have gone since VJ Day. The Bush "war on terror" was lost on the first night when some army lawyer refused to permit the droning of Mullah Omar. Is that guy still on the team?

Beyond that, the weapons of war are different today. China has taken control of much of the world without firing a shot. Islam has annexed western Europe without firing much more than the occasional machete or Christmas-market rental-car. Somalia has conquered Minnesota without firing off anything other than federal grant applications.

Which underlines the central point - that, to the United States and the wider west, the "existential threats" are all on the home front. Americans in particular don't want to switch on the news and hear about foreigners - unless they're being fast-tracked for deportation. Foreign war is not why the base voted for Trump. As I said in our America Alone adaptation a week or two back, it's not the real battlefield. By way of example from my neighbouring state, this is an all-American legislator in the Year of Our Lord 2026:

We shall update as actual facts emerge.

Mark's international bestseller America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It. If you haven't read the book during its first seventeen years, well, you're missing a treat. It's still in print in hardback and paperback. (Buy it at a 77% discount by clicking here or order in KINDLE edition at a 47% discount by clicking here. Sales help fund JWR)

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Mark Steyn is an international bestselling author, a Top 41 recording artist, and a leading Canadian human rights activist. Among his books is "The Undocumented Mark Steyn: Don't Say You Weren't Warned". (Buy it at a 49% discount by clicking here or order in KINDLE edition at a 67% discount by clicking here. Sales help fund JWR)

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