– Iran: one week on into the war…

2026.03.06, Friday

Side by side with the military operations, the propaganda dimension (information war) proceeds apace, as one might expect.

It is noteworthy that the much celebrated exploits of the attackers, such as the sinking of the unarmed Indian frigate off the coast of Sri Lanka and the bombing of northern Tehran (where a major part of the capital’s opposition population resides, by the way), have had no effect on the course of the war.

Unmentioned by the Western corporate media is the effective disabling by Iran of the U.S. base system throughout the region by means of which the U.S. has not only made its presence felt but also, and more to the point, projected power, as it likes to say. As has been noted by numerous analysts, the United States and its Zionist partner are now largely blind (“eyeless” Huxley might have said) in the region, mostly bereft of radar and other detection and monitoring systems.

The bombing and burning of the United States embassy in Riyadh is a case in point, for it was one of the biggest U.S. outposts in the world for military command and control as well as for intelligence operations, while being (as might be expected in such circumstances) of minor importance on the diplomatic scene. The video footage is telling – and damning – for it demonstrates a complete lack of ability on the part of the U.S. to protect its “assets”, both human and material.

However, two dimensions of the conflict remain subject to radio silence by both the Israelis and the Americans: their own casualties and the weapons being used by both sides. The Israelis have imposed draconian censorship on everything pertaining to the conflict.

As for the Americans, the casualties were briefly cast into public view by the reproduction in the Russian publication Pravda of a major ad in a Delaware newspaper for “help wanted” for the Dover (Delaware) Air Force base. This base is where the bodies of United States armed service members killed abroad are brought back onto the Homeland territory. The help are wanted to sort thru, examine and label the belongings of dead United States armed service members before sending the belongings on to the next of kin.

It suffices to watch the videos of the hits on United States installations in the region to realize that there must be quite a few casualties if not a great many. The hits on the five-star (deluxe) hotels in which armed service members were reported to have been transferred to get them out of harm’s way on U.S. bases were quite spectacular.

These hotels were apparently considered to be safe havens because they were civilian installations, altho using them to house armed service members from a country at war would, under international law, transform them into military barracks (however up-scale), hence legitimate targets. The presence of the Trump family in the ownership structure of the hotels was promptly mentioned, suggesting one more flagrant conflict of interest from the presidential family, but just as promptly muted.

If these buildings were indeed being used as safe havens for armed service members after their removal from military bases, and if the buildings were indeed hit because they had thus become legitimate military targets, it is reasonable to assume that these strikes occasioned considerable casualties.

One is reminded of the operation of the Dover Air Force base during the 2003 destruction of Iraq: it was consistently off-limits to all members of all media, lest the parade of flag-covered coffins expose the United States public to the reality of the “cake walk” into Iraq.

The weapons used are a much more complicated and very (deadly!) serious matter, never properly discussed by the Western corporate media (when they are mentioned at all), media whose proprietary holding structures are invested in the business of death and destruction on a massive scale.

“Weapons” immediately brings to mind the subject of Iran’s “nuclear program” which, since the 2007 United States National Intelligence Estimate, has every year been declared to be non-existent and not even under consideration. This corresponds to the 2003 fatwa by the Ayatollah Khameni forbidding the development, possession and use of nuclear weapons as, essentially, a crime against humanity.

The ostensible reason for enrichment of uranium by Iran has been research and medical technology, but there is another reason, deliberately rendered – and kept – invisible by the collective West.

Since the 1980s, the United States has been fashioning various forms of nuclear waste – i.e. uranium from the various phases of the nuclear sector’s processes – into missile casings and warheads. This radioactive material can burn.

And burn it does, at up to 5,000° C., to wit at temperatures approximating those produced by a nuclear bomb. In short, it is a way of creating on the cheap weapons of colossal destructiveness – like nuclear bombs – of a relatively small scale, and without that impossible-to-hide mushroom-shaped cloud.

The power of uranium weapons was amply demonstrated in the 1991 Gulf War when five-kilogram (11-pound), one-meter-long anti-tank penetrator rods were used against Iraqi tanks. Upon hitting the target, they ignited and, we were told, sharpened as they burned their way thru the tank’s armor.

Since impact potency is the result of speed (velocity) squared, multiplied by mass and divided by two, they were fired at phenomenally high speeds which gave them a force that ignited them on contact with the target and drove them thru as many as three tanks in less than a second. The heat that they exuded in passing was great enough to incinerate anything inside that might burn.

United States armed service members were ordered to go into the tanks and dismantle the internal workings (electronic material). They often found the Iraqis therein, still in position and blackened. When touched, they collapsed into a small pile of fine dust. The Americans dubbed them, “crispy critters”.

However, unknown to the American armed service members, the tanks were contaminated, irrevocably radioactive. On military bases, the depleted uranium used in the penetrator rods is kept apart from all contact, and anybody handling it has to wear a hazmat suit. The Americans were wearing cut-off jeans, tee-shirts (often bare-chested in the desert heat) and construction-worker boots. Most of them later died horrible deaths from multiple, unrelated cancers caused by the dispersion of the radioactive particles in their bodies.

The particles that they had inhaled, resulting from the burning uranium, ranged from tiny, dust motes to microscopic and even sub-micron particles, radioactive for some 22 billion years – effectively permanent. (The Solar System is reckoned to be some 4.5 million years old.)

Apart from the anti-tank penetrator rods, the U.S. used the assault to test new uranium-based missiles. We have photos of the deep, underground, superhardened command and control center in Baghdad that was hit by one of these. Apparently, the Iraqis suspected that the “coalition of the willing” had discovered its existence and abandoned it, allowing it to be used as a bomb shelter.

The photos show the hole that the missile tore thru the ceiling and the many meters of reinforced concrete ground cover above it, as well as the walls inside on which one could see the “shadows” of the occupants. These are identical to the “shadow” of the man on a wall in Nagasaki, all that was left of his body when the heat blast of the atom bomb vaporized virtually the entirety of his physical existence.

It is these engines of death that Israel and the U.S. have been dropping and testing in Gaza and are now using on Iran. Their use has been demonstrated beyond doubt by the soil and air samplings taken from places where they have been used, including throughout the Gaza Strip.

David “Dai” Williams, an arms analyst based in England, who has been studying these weapons for almost thirty years has made a preliminary assessment for the first week of the assault on Iran.

“Given the reported rate of U.S. and Israeli strikes at 500-1000+ per day over 5+ days, scenarios should expect between 1,000 to 5,000 tons of uranium oxide contamination across targets in Iran, compared to 9 tons of highly enriched uranium estimated in the Iran nuclear program.

“The greatest risk to communities in Israel and military targets in Gulf States is the possibility of several hundred tons of Iranian uranium ‘dirty bombs’. The alpha radiation from uranium oxide dust is hard to detect without high resolution ICPMS (mass spectrometers). But if inhaled, it is 20 times more damaging than gamma radiation.

“It is the potential threat of uranium-enhanced ballistic missile warheads, delivered at Mach 3+, thus several times more powerful than the same size U.S. warheads delivered at Mach 1, that probably caused the rapid and unusually abrupt cease-fire request from Israel to end the Twelve-Day War. Iran had started to use large “heavy” missile warheads with large fireballs and dark gray smoke often seen from U.S./IDF weapons in Gaza and Lebanon – tit for tat.

“Uranium is pyrophoric (it burns at 3-5,000° C.), toxic, carcinogenic, mutagenic and teratogenic. The most immediate hazards and effects are from burns, blast and poisoning. Casualties may suffer extreme high temperature burns. Uranium explosions can also have thermobaric effects – a slow blast wave followed by a vacuum, which may rupture and/or collapse internal organs or cause haemorrhagic bleeding.

“Uranium oxide dust is highly toxic. If inhaled it may cause pneumonia-like symptoms, potentially followed by renal failure and death. These symptoms may apply equally to military personnel and aid workers as well as civilian rescue workers and survivors and their families.

“The devastating long-term health and environmental effects of uranium weapons may take months and years to emerge. The delayed-onset genetic and carcinogenic effects of internal alpha radiation exposure from inhalation and ingestion from food and water may take 1-5 years to reach epidemic levels e.g. birth defects and perinatal mortality rates (miscarriages or early death).

“The latency period for cancers from internal radiation exposures may be quite short for leukaemia or thyroid issues, moderate for skin and lung cancer or much longer for other cancers. Cancer rates in Iraq

after the 1991 war and in the Balkans after bombing between 1995-99 have risen to epidemic levels in bombed areas and have been rising in Lebanon since the war in 1996. Palestine/Gaza have the second highest birth-defect rates in global data.”

Regarding the use of uranium-based weapons used/tested on Gaza since the December 2008 to January 2008 assault and especially since 7 October 2023, Williams has the following to say.

“As a rule of thumb, typically, two warheads are used per target, perhaps including the BLU-137 900-kilogram bunker-busters (upgraded from BLU-109/9; see Lockheed Martin US Patent 6,389,977). Nominally, 50-75%+ of the 900-kilogram warhead appears to be fragmenting uranium casing or ballast – 500 kilograms – to penetrate hard and deeply buried targets, some with thermobaric explosive effects to eliminate/vaporize CBRN [chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear] agents or to target personnel.

“Videos show that typical IDF strikes use 2 warheads per target, so could deliver nominally 1 ton of uranium metal turned to oxide dust per target. High value targets e.g. Nazrullah’s assassination, used 6-8 or more BLU-138 warheads. Double strikes with the new, larger 5,000-pound (2270-kilogram) GBU-72 could deliver nominally up to 2 tons of uranium per target.”

According to a leak confirmed on 30 June 2024 by Reuters, in 2023, the United States delivered to Israel 10,000 900-kilogram bombs (generically designated Mk 84s), the majority of whose models can be presumed of use uranium in some form as the ~430-kilogram explosive charge. Most – if not all – of these seem to have arrived well before the Hamas incursion on 7 October 2023.

Further, for the first half of 2024, 4,000 more were delivered, with another 4,000 scheduled for delivery in the second half of 2024. The latter delivery was delayed owing to fear of bad publicity during the 2024 presidential election campaign. Upon assuming the presidency in January 2025, Trump authorized their delivery.

According to Israeli media and reports appearing in various military media, some time around mid-March 2025, the United States began delivery to Israel of over 35,000 more such bombs.

Those derided analysts who claim that the destruction of Iran was long in the planning and intended to be devastating beyond recovery might take some cold comfort in these figures.