As the United States continues to lose the war to Iran, expect American journalists to employ increasingly bizarre but instructive circumlocutions to misdescribe obvious but unpalatable realities. This piece in The Wall Street Journal is a classic in the genre. “Iran uses asymmetric warfare to inflict pain from a weakened position.” Translation: “Iran is using asymmetric warfare to win the war.” Continue reading
Category Archives: War with Iran
A Challenge for Professor Kurtzer
Yet another unprinted letter of mine below, this one (like the last) submitted to The Daily Princetonian. The letter, dated March 29, contains a direct challenge to Professor Daniel Kurtzer, currently Professor of the Practice in International Relations and Professor of Middle East Studies at Princeton, and previously U.S. Ambassador to both Israel and Egypt. Continue reading
The Time to Bail Out Is Now
If you’re in the United States Armed Forces, the time to seek Conscientious Objector status to the “Iran War” is now. Don’t delay. Don’t overthink. Don’t give in to excuses. Don’t engage in wishful thinking. Don’t succumb to pressure. Get out now. If ever you’ve sought to show valor on the battlefield, here is your chance. You’re on the battlefield. It’s called life. You have only one weapon at your disposal. It’s called integrity. Use either one to preserve the other, and flee this war as fast as you fucking can. Continue reading
No Words
We’re propagandized incessantly about anti-Semitism and “Islamism”—terms without stable definitions—but there turns out not to be any terminology in the English language to describe the forcible displacement of a whole population on sectarian grounds by a Jewish State, even if that State has spent its entire history and pre-history doing just that, and invokes an elaborate ideology to rationalize it. The predictable result is that we have words for things we can’t define, but lack words for things that keep recurring. The first thing leads to snap judgments, the second, to blindness about the obvious. Continue reading
Dire Strait
Consider one of the antinomies, or self-contradictions, of international relations.
For decades now, the conventional wisdom in international relations has held that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz was a low probability event, and that if it happened, it could very likely be dealt with by the U.S. Navy. For documentation and a literature review, see Caitlin Talmadge’s paper, “Closing Time: Assessing the Iranian Threat to the Strait of Hormuz,” International Security, vol. 33:1 (Summer 2008), pp. 82-117. Continue reading
No Kings and the Anti-War Movement
We’re about a month into the Iran War at this point. The war is, as predicted, a disaster getting worse by the day. As I’ve argued here before, we desperately need a large-scale anti-war movement, but the movement is, alas, in a low-energy state right now. Not that it’s entirely dead: there are direct actions taking place, some very brave ones, along with some ordinary demonstrations. And there’s no shortage of astute commentary out there as well.
But the movement has a problem in need of solution, and while No Kings seems at first to provide the solution, that appearance quickly evaporates on contact with it. The anti-war movement has a clear goal, ending the war, but lacks the means or numbers to accomplish it. No Kings has the numbers, but seems uninterested in ending the war (or any war), and uninterested even in broaching the topic. So it’s worth discussing the relationship, or anti-relationship, between these things. Continue reading
Stop the War
It’s becoming increasingly apparent that the Trump Administration is contemplating some sort of ground-based military action against Iran, presumably to free the Strait of Hormuz for navigation, or more precisely, to wrest control of the Strait from Iran. I can’t stress enough the need to oppose this action, as loudly and vehemently as possible. In an earlier post, I suggested that we’re going to need a bigger anti-war movement. I’m willing to amend that: for now, we just need an anti-war movement, (almost) any anti-war movement, except that it has to make its appearance sooner rather than later. The No Kings movement, which tends to have good resources and organizational capacities, is organizing rallies this weekend, starting Friday evening. My advice? Go. Continue reading
Expel ROTC Now
Statement at Firestone Plaza
Princeton University
March 18, 2026
Hi, my name is Irfan Khawaja; I’m an alum of the Class of 1991. I’m affiliated with Princeton Alumni for Palestine, the alumni wing of the Princeton Palestine movement, but I’m speaking here for myself.
Like many of you, I have friends and family “over there,” in Jerusalem, the West Bank, Beirut, and the Gulf. Every morning now, I enact the same macabre ritual of looking at my phone to discover who’s been arrested, who’s been shot, who’s been bombed, who’s dead. And it’s not an idle question. At last count, Ahmad had been shot, Amer had been abducted and left for dead in the desert, Maha is likely not answering my calls because she’s been bombed or displaced from Beirut, and Naeem says he’s OK but is likely being deliberately insouciant about what’s going on. Continue reading
The Iranian Sleeper Cells Are Here
If I wrote here that the Iranians had scored a major tactical hit on American soil, I doubt that 1 in 100 people would believe me. But in fact they have. The tactical hit is the hack, on March 11, of Stryker, the medical device company (not to be confused with Stryker the eight-wheeled armored fighting vehicle designed by General Dynamics). Continue reading
The Power and the Glory
Imagine a society in the grips of civil war. On one side stand the partisans of theocracy; on the other, the partisans of secularism. As they fight over their country, a larger imperial power decides to invade, citing as justification the apparent approval of (a faction of) the secular side, along with the inherent evils of theocracy. Taking advantage of the smaller country’s internal division and weakness, the imperial power then tears the country to pieces that neither side will ever be able to govern. Besieging, starving, and massacring the people it claims to be liberating, the imperialists eventually conquer the place, lording it over the defeated population. They then spend the next several centuries singing their own praises–until they, too, are defeated by a rival power and swept away. Continue reading
Policy of Truth 