The Israel/US decapitation strike on Saturday hit the Ayatollah Khamenei when he was reportedly meeting with senior Iranian military officers. Was the Israeli hit a lucky coincidence or was this a deliberately planned trap? Did the US send a message to Khamenei for a meeting to discuss a US proposal in preparation for the planned Monday meeting — now cancelled — in Geneva?

Is Donald Trump Looking for an Exit Ramp?

by Larry C. Johnson

Rubio, Hegseth, Caine, Ratcliffe to Brief All Congress Members on Iran Tuesday - Speaker

US House Speaker Mike Johnson said on Monday that he arranged a classified briefing on March 3 for all members of Congress with senior administration officials amid the US-Israeli military campaign against Iran.

"I've arranged for a classified briefing for all members of Congress tomorrow at 5pm [22:00 GMT], and we're going to to have Secretary [Marco] Rubio, Secretary [Pete] Hegseth, the CIA Director [John] Ratcliffe, and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General [Dan] Cain. They're all going to brief the House and Senate members, Republican and Democrat," Johnson told the KEEL radio station.

Rubio is also set to brief House and Senate leaders on Capitol Hill later on Monday, according to the State Department's schedule.

Western governments, including Australia and New Zealand, have backed US and Israeli strikes on Iran. But the decision risks economic catastrophe, regional escalation and the further erosion of international law.

Western countries, including Australia and New Zealand, were quick to line up to support the US-Israeli blitzkrieg on the Islamic Republic of Iran launched this weekend. They were effectively throwing international law into a cauldron of blood and mayhem. These same Western powers – and the Gulf Arab states that stand with them – may soon come to regret it.

Eugene Doyle

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman made multiple private phone calls to US President Donald Trump last month pushing for a strike on Iran despite favouring diplomacy publicly, the Washington Post reported.

In January the crown prince said that he would not allow his country's airspace or territory to be used for an attack on Iran. He said that Saudi Arabia would respect the sovereignty of Iran and urged Washington and Tehran to resolve issues through dialogue.

The US and Israel launched a joint military strike that targeted Iranian military and governmental sites on Saturday after stalled nuclear talks and claims that Iran had resumed its nuclear activities.

The US president vowed revenge after three US service members will killed by Iran, and called on Iranians to rise up. DW has the latest.

Trump on Iran: 'US will avenge the deaths of Americans'
by Timothy Jones | Mahima Kapoor | Karl Sexton with AFP, Reuters, AP, dpa | Felix Tamsut | Darko Janjevic editor | Wesley Dockery

Australia has declared its support for US action against Iran to prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon and “to prevent Iran continuing to threaten international peace and security”.

But Australia’s department of foreign affairs (Dfat) has warned of the risk of “reprisal attacks and further escalation” across the Middle East after the attack.

In a statement issued on Saturday evening, Anthony Albanese said: “Australia stands with the brave people of Iran in their struggle against oppression.”

Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election could not have come at a better time for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. More than 13 months since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, terrorist attack, Israel finds itself on a roll. Since the beginning of the year, Israel has assassinated much of the senior leadership of both Hamas and Hezbollah, decimated their ranks, and conducted precision strikes in Iran. At home, after seeing his approval rating hit rock bottom following October 7, Netanyahu has watched his popularity start to rebound.

Now Netanyahu and his government see a rare opportunity for a comprehensive realignment .....

Pope Leo said on Sunday that he is following events after US-Israeli strikes against Iran with “deep concern” and made an impassioned appeal to stop what he called a “spiral of violence”.

“I address a heartfelt appeal to the parties involved to assume the moral responsibility to stop the spiral of violence before it becomes an irreparable abyss,” said the pope.

“Stability and peace are not built through mutual threats or through weapons … but only through reasonable, genuine, and responsible dialogue,” the pope said during his weekly address to pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square after a Sunday prayer.

Overnight, Tehran confirmed the death of the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, following US and Israeli strikes on his residence early on February 28. In strategic terms, this marks a watershed moment in the architecture of the Middle East conflict. This was not a tactical raid or a calibrated show of force, but a decapitation strike at the very apex of Iran’s state system.

The confrontation between Iran on one side and the United States and Israel on the other has now entered a qualitatively new phase. The elimination of a state’s highest political and religious authority during an ongoing military operation is, from Tehran’s perspective, a textbook casus belli. This is no longer a limited exchange of blows. It is a shift toward a far broader and potentially systemic confrontation.

The Golden Bough scandalized the British public when first published, as it included the Christian story of the resurrection of Jesus in its comparative study. Critics thought this treatment invited an agnostic reading of the Lamb of God as a relic of a pagan religion.

For the third edition, Frazer placed his analysis of the Crucifixion in a speculative appendix — while discussion of Christianity was excluded from the single-volume abridged edition.[6][7]

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In 1931, the Institute for Intellectual Cooperation invited Albert Einstein to a cross-disciplinary exchange of ideas about politics and peace with a thinker of his choosing. He selected Sigmund Freud, whom he had met briefly in 1927 and whose work, despite being skeptical of psychoanalysis, the legendary physicist had come to admire. A series of letters followed, discussing the abstract generalities of human nature and the potential concrete steps for reducing violence in the world.

Introduction: Freud and Einstein on War

[GUSNOTE: BOLD HIGHLIGHTED TEXT BY GUS as underlined by "unknown" in book]

Our leaders are not wise or insightful. They’re not even particularly intelligent. Our society is led by plutocrats who only know how to make more money, by unelected empire managers who only know how to dominate and control, and by elected politicians who only know how to say the right words and make the right bargains in order to get themselves elected.…

Our leaders are not going to fix the worst problems in our world. They couldn’t if they wanted to. And they don’t want to.

Our Leaders Couldn’t Fix Our Problems If They Wanted To (And They Don’t Want To)

BY CAITLIN JOHNSTONE

The NSW government is creating a heavily resourced policing unit of around 250 officers, prioritising hate crimes above other violence. Andrew Brown asks why.

Every four minutes in New South Wales, police respond to a domestic violence incident, a relentless cycle of harm that rarely makes front-page news.

Chris Minns’ stormtroopers. Guns for graffiti, silence for the dead

by Andrew Brown

Two women are killed every week in Australia, and hundreds more are assaulted, often behind closed doors, often without the attention or urgency that accompanies other forms of crime.

There is no 250 officer task force for that, no permanent, centralised unit standing ready to respond.

As the Russia–Ukraine war enters its fifth year, hard questions are overdue. In Part 1 of a two-part series, Michael McKinley examines the strategic history behind the conflict and Australia’s uncritical alignment with a US-led approach that offered Ukraine little prospect of victory.

Michael McKinley