The Apostles of Hate
States possess extraordinary powers to do good and evil, to kill their own citizens, to kill the citizens of other nations through wars, to build, to educate, to mislead, to inspire, and to destroy. These are normally constrained by due process, by the rules of law, by the rules of international law, by international institutions, and by certain norms of civilized behavior. These restraints are breaking down, have already broken down in too many societies, including our own. Russia under Putin, Iran and its proxies, the US under Trump, and Netanyahu’s Israel post 10/7 have all been aggressors where the international norms have broken down.
The Middle East has much of the world’s oil. This resource fuels the global economy. It makes nations wealthy, and it makes specific individuals and institutions who control it extraordinarily wealthy. Much of it flows through the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, south of Iran and north of the Gulf Arab nations.
Oil, gas and coal (the fossil fuel industries) may be slowly supplanted by solar, wind, geothermal, nuclear, and other alternative energy sources less damaging to our planet, increasingly less costly than oil and gas and less likely to cause catastrophic shocks to the global economy. Some nations like China are investing heavily in developing and promoting alternative energy sources which may diminish the importance of those OPEC economies dominated by the extraction of oil and gas. Others like the US under Trump are disinvesting in alternative energies – a giant mistake, but one Trump promised his fossil fuel donors – and relying more heavily on fossil fuels instead.
Wars make nations poorer. It kills their citizens, and it wastes their financial and human resources. It destroys that which has been created by the hard work and often back breaking labor of individuals and families.
In wars, hatreds of “others” are harnessed to the aims of the state and its war-making machinery. After wars, hatreds may persist for generations, sparking new wars of revenge. At times, the end of a major war has led to a peaceful coexistence like the formation of the EU, to strong alliances like NATO emerging after centuries of war among the French, Germans, British, Spanish and Dutch in Europe and all over the world. We need peacemakers in the Middle East building a strong interwoven economy in the home of the Fertile Crescent, the birthplace of three major religions, and the very region where mankind evolved from tribes of hunter gatherers into agrarian and urban societies.
Today’s apostles of hatred include: Khamenei, Trump and Netanyahu. (There are more, many more). One of the three is now dead at the hands of the other two.
Khamenei reviled the US as the “Great Satan”, sought to eliminate the state of Israel, and murdered his own people when they protested his policies. He headed a theocratic state that was absolutist in its intolerance of others with differing religions and viewpoints. He headed a state that supported and exported terrorism and terrorists in Yemen (Houthis), Lebanon (Hezbollah), Palestine (Hamas) and throughout the Middle East. https://theconversation.com/ayatollah-ali-khamenei-ruled-iran-with-defiance-and-brutality-for-36-years-for-many-iranians-he-will-not-be-revered-259268 Under Khamenei the Islamic State strongly opposed the neighboring Sunni Arab regimes of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Arab states and regularly fomented violence among the Shia communities against their governments. He was responsible for killing many Arabs, many Persians, many Americans, many Jews and Israelis. He is now dead, killed by airstrikes from Israel and the US. One might ask “where was the US”, and “where were the allies” when thousands and tens of thousands of Iranian protesters were being mowed down in the street just a few months ago. One might also ask what happens next inside a deeply entrenched and heavily armed regime, where the newly chosen successor is even worse than his father, a father who will now be transformed into a fallen martyr by the regime’s propaganda machine.
In the early 50’s the US and British governments overthrew the democratically elected Mosaddegh government of Iran because of his efforts to nationalize British oil interests. They installed the Shah, Reza Pahlavi, who led Iran during a period of rapid modernization, growing prosperity, ostentatious displays of wealth, and secularization, coexisting alongside torture and killing of the regime’s opponents.
In 1979, the Iranian Shah was overthrown by students, traditionalist religious clerics, and many other elements of Iranian society. After power struggles, the religious fundamentalists prevailed and have governed since 1979 as a theocratic state, combining an elderly religious leadership with a Revolutionary Guard of ex-radical student leaders oppressing the women of Iran. Since 1979, Iran has been in prolonged and bloody armed conflicts, first with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, followed by proxy wars with the US in Iraq, by proxy wars with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States in Yemen and the Gulf, and by proxy wars with Israel in Lebanon and Syria over the last 47 years. Trump now wants unconditional surrender from Iran and to appoint the next Supreme Leader of Iran to succeed the deceased Khamenei – two highly unlikely scenarios.
Iran is a complex society with many different ethnic and religious groups and a long and distinguished history of powerful and sophisticated Persian empires. In centuries and millennia past, they fought the Greeks and the Romans, the Arabs, the Mongols, and the Turks. The dominant groups of today’s Iran are the Persian Shia (60% of the population). They are sitting on the third largest reserves of oil in the world – a resource that could be used for so much good and could so benefit the nation and the region.
The regime’s rulers are opposed by a large majority of the population. https://theconversation.com/iran-protests-2026-our-surveys-show-iranians-agree-more-on-regime-change-than-what-might-come-next-273198 But there is no viable, peaceful way to vote them out because the Iranian Constitution distributes ultimate power to the Supreme Leader and the elderly religious fundamentalists enshrined as the Council of Guardians. It may take a mass uprising and a lot of deaths of innocents to unwind the regime. It is highly unlikely that a bombing campaign led by the US and Israel could dislodge the regime.
Many Persian Jews left Iran after the Khomeini inspired religious fundamentalists took over. They moved to the US and to Israel, to England and Germany, and started new lives. Many of these Jewish exiles had long roots inside Persia since the Jews had found Persian protections dating back to the end of their Babylonian captivity and the rise of the Persian king Cyrus. There are few exit strategies available to the remaining 90 million Iranians and no easy way to absorb them among the neighboring states.
Netanyahu has been a long-time staunch opponent of a two-state solution and of independence for Palestine. He has opposed Iran with the same equally implacable stance as they have opposed Israel.
Since the Hamas attack and massacres on 10/7, the Netanyahu government has been on a tear to decimate those it perceives as Israel’s enemies. It has leveled Gaza, and an estimated 70,000 Gazans have been killed. Over 1,000 residents of the West Bank, including 231 children have been killed by Israeli security forces and the Israeli settler movement. Over 4,000 Lebanese have been killed by Israeli forces since 10/7.
About 1200 Israelis were killed on 10/7 and about another 800 Israelis have been killed in the conflicts since then. Now Israel is attacking Iran, a nation of 90 million, that has vowed its extermination and funded arms and sustenance for its enemies in neighboring Gaza, Lebanon and Syria.
Israel is a small country with a small population, nuclear bombs, and the most effective and advanced armed forces in the region. Since its founding and inception after the unspeakable horrors of the Holocaust, it has fought multiple wars against its neighbors for its very survival; it is battle tested. This is an existential war for both Israel and the Iranian regime with no ready solutions for either.
Israel is now at peace with Egypt and Jordan and to a certain extent with the PLO. Israel has been bitterly divided about making peace with the Palestinians. Prime Minister Rabin was shot and filled by an angry right winger, a part of the protest movements against the peace of the Oslo Accords, then being organized by Netanyahu. An influential part of Netanyahu’s coalition seeks to create a greater Israel, encompassing portions of its neighbors’ territories. Netanyahu’s coalition encompasses the settler movements, the ultranationalists, the most religious Jews, and many other Israelis who just want peace and better security. After the horrifying massacres of 10/7, most Israelis cannot imagine let alone countenance making a peace with an independent Palestinian state. Although that is what the region needs, there are no interlocutors on either side with the credibility, vision and power to negotiate it.
The war(s) have enhanced Netanyahu’s popularity from its low point; the country is now evenly split between pro and anti-Netanyahu factions. https://www.timesofisrael.com/poll-netanyahus-likud-enjoys-boost-amid-iran-war-but-not-enough-to-clinch-election-win This year’s elections will decide whether his government falls or continues; however, there would likely be little to no change in Israeli policies towards Iran.
Trump has publicly campaigned over the last 40 years by inciting hatred and racial discord. Hatred, lies, and vitriol against immigrants, against black and brown people, against Muslims, and against his various opponents have been his stock in trade since at least the Central Park 5 during the 1980’s.
During his first term, he wanted federal forces to shoot and/or rough up protesters exercising their 1st Amendment rights, but his staff and cabinet members stopped him for the most part. During his second term, there have been no such guardrails; a number of people have already been shot, and some killed during the immigration crackdowns and protests. Many others been roughed up, and still others have been and are being subjected to unwarranted and baseless criminal investigations and prosecutions.
While the scope of Trumpian violence against US protesters has been nothing as compared to the Iranian state’s violence against Iranian protesters, the US Armed Forces and the state National Guards have been unlawfully deployed against citizens protesting the President’s immigration policies in cities like Los Angeles, Chicago and Portland. ICE and CBP went on a rampage of unchecked violence against protesters and immigrants in cities like Minneapolis. The victims of their violence are then labeled by the Trump Administration as “domestic terrorists”, a calumny which could not be farther from the truth.
One component of Trump’s political base is a strongly conservative, racist, dogmatic, fundamentalist, anti-immigrant, antisemitic, anti-Muslim, white Christian nationalism. It’s about 10% of the nation’s population. https://prri.org/research/a-christian-nation-understanding-the-threat-of-christian-nationalism-to-american-democracy-and-culture/ It is very much the mirror image opposite of Khamenei and Netanyahu’s politico-religious bases. This part of his base has been for the most part opposed to the foreign adventurism streak that has taken hold of Trump in the second year of his second term. The failures of the US forever wars in Afghanistan and Iraq haunt many Americans, and it made the isolationist America First aspects during Trump’s first term and campaigns particularly appealing to them.
Lately, Trump has become enamored of his ability to use the US Armed Forces against those foreign heads of state who oppose him. He ordered the capture of Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro and then in short order, undertook the joint operation with Israel to kill Iran’s Khamenei. Kindly, note the fortuitous common denominator of vast oil reserves. Iran was not threatening the US; this was a war of choice against a regime that is a thorn in the side of its many neighboring states.
He ordered the US Navy to shoot and kill suspected drug runners in the high seas off the coasts of Venezuela and Colombia with no semblance of due process before their executions and no mercy to those still clinging to their destroyed vessels. This too is a violation of international law.
He has shown no remorse whatsoever for the bombing of an Iranian girls’ school or the local hospitals or the innocent civilians and civilian residences by the joint US and Israeli forces. He is bombing Iranian missile sites and factories, ships, nuclear facilities, political and clerical leaders (they are intertwined), and security forces. These have been a threat to all in Iran’s neighborhood as Iran has in the past launched missiles and drone strikes at its neighbors and supplied the weaponry for its proxies. But there is simply no excuse for the bombing of innocent civilians with the smart bombs and targeted weaponry which the US commands. These indiscriminate bombings backfire and build greater national support for the Iranian regime. Trump has failed to make any sort of case for Trump’s war to the American people or Congress, which alone has the constitutional responsibility to declare war.
On the side and in his spare time, Trump threatened our own neighboring states like Canada, Mexico, Greenland, Panama, Cuba, and Colombia, and reliable allies such as Denmark. Sounds a lot like Iran’s bellicose rhetoric towards its neighbors.
The US Armed Forces are the best funded, most technologically advanced in the world. They are first class; however, they are being led by a commander in chief who is utterly unqualified to make the life and death decisions that starting, pursuing and finishing a war, any war, entail. So, our first-class military with its grade D commander in chief are embroiled in a deepening war that threatens to disrupt the world’s economy, which runs in large part on the oil and gas production based in the Middle East that exits on large tankers through the narrow Strait of Hormuz. Iran is fighting an asymmetric war, targeting and shutting down the energy production from the region, rather than the bombing campaign of the US and Israel.
Trump and Hegseth ousted and purged those top military leaders who happen to be people of color or women. Some current officers are telling their troops that this is a religious war led by a godly Trump and leading towards Armageddon, the second coming of the Messiah, the end of days as predicted in the Book of Revelations.
The single greatest threats to Trump however are the spiraling energy costs that threaten the global economy and the pocketbooks and voting proclivities of everyday Americans due to the closing of the Strait of Hormuz because of missiles and now mines. Trump has become enormously unpopular. https://www.cnn.com/polling/approval/trump-cnn-poll-of-polls He could be somewhat restrained and hampered by democratic elections in November 2026, depending on their outcome, and his term will end in 2028. The damage of his decisions will be long lasting and take great states-persons to undo what he has wrought to our nation and the world.
So, one must ask, what happens next?
Next blog: Princes of Peace