NORTH CAROLINA - Just to demonstrate how inaccurate and craven the U.S. mainstream media can be, one must note a late-night news broadcast this week about the further carnage in the Gaza arena. The talking head commented that the Zionists responded with massive bombing runs on Gaza because Hamas sent flying 300 or so (ineffective) “firecracker” rockets in to Israel, and now Israel may be preparing another invasion of what amounts to the largest open-air prison on earth – an amplified and defenseless Warsaw Ghetto redux.

However, the broadcaster failed to mention that exactly at the moment where some sort of ceasefire between the Israelis and the Gazans was at hand, it was the Israelis who invaded Gaza, breaking any ceasefire, with a few handpicked guerrillas (gorillas?), some dressed as women, riding in a civilian vehicle to murder a targeted group of Hamas commanders. The Zionists expected Hamas to respond, and they did, creating a pretext for a massive assault on Gaza that may be forming.

There seems no end to Israeli cruelty and subterfuge and no end to dishonest reporting about Israel in the mainstream U.S. media. But note also that probably the greatest living intellectual in the U.S., Noam Chomsky, formerly for decades at MIT and now semi-retired in Arizona, has just recently penned an article spelling out what most of the world already knows, and he is Jewish, too.

Echoing a prominent but now deceased Israeli scholar, Chomsky pulls no punches in describing what he terms “Judeo-Nazi” tendencies in the Holy Land. In short, those oppressed by the Nazis have become Nazi-like oppressors, but this really is no secret to astute observers. What’s interesting is that a Jew in the U.S. of Chomsky’s stature is saying it loud and clear.

 Perhaps some in the U.S. Congress may eventually get around to saying something similar, but holding one’s breath for that is not advised. However, it is heartening that with the midterm elections this month the Congress now has two Muslim women, for the first time ever, seated in the House of Representatives as well as a native American Indian.

In any event, with the full-on economic assault against Iran underway with sanctions, one would be a fool to misunderstand Iran’s efforts to contain the damage by clamping down on any dissidents inside Iran. Iran’s leaders have every right to be a bit paranoid.

 (We Americans where I live especially, in the U.S. South, must imagine what it would be like to be members of an ethnic minority living in a house with one’s family that has been surrounded, say, by white-robed Ku Klux Klan fanatics waving torches and burning crosses. Iran can hardly feel less set upon by the current fanatics in Washington and Tel Aviv and Riyadh.

 It’s just incredible, too, that many in the Trump Administration have been favoring the MEK, a known cult-like terrorist organization that formerly was designated as such by the U.S., to dominate Iran politically. This terrorist organization once tried to counter the Shah’s pro-Western policies of modernization and opposition to Communism! The inanities and insanities just continue to pile up in Washington.

Consider, for example, that the New York Times just reported this month that unnamed sources have detailed how top Saudi intelligence officials allegedly conspired with the U.S. a couple of years ago to assassinate Iranian leaders, including Qassem Suleimani, in a vague plot that might have cost $2 billion with the use of private contractors like Erik Prince, the former head of Blackwater and at the time an advisor to the Trump transition team.

Whether the plot was ever actualized to any degree remains unclear, but the fact that it was ever discussed gives absolute credence to the horrific pressures Iran has faced which, one must state again, arise ultimately from Trump’s slavish attention to Zionist demands.

The only good part of the New York Times’ revelations is that they were reported and that they fully demonstrate two things: one, the nefarious nature of the Trump Administration and most importantly, two, the ongoing restraint and cool of Iran’s leaders so far which one must presume ought to be maintained no matter what lies ahead.

 Iran’s Ayatollah Larijani has been correct in stating that Iran has become or is becoming a “symbol of resistance” in the entire Mideast and beyond, and that Iran’s “power” has been underestimated by its foes. It is the power that resides not in the military, but rather in smart thinking and restraint that demonstrates Iran is not some bloody and stupid regime like the one the Saudis maintain.

Those in the U.S. and Arabia who hope to see Iran’s economy literally collapse and usher in the fall of the Islamic Republic are going to be disappointed. 

Economies don’t collapse really, it has been noted, but they do shrink sometimes and Iran is facing that prospect right now with the sanctions. Iran’s prospects for resisting and somehow managing economic contraction without tremendous internal upheaval (given the current round of sanctions) may be relatively good compared to previous periods of sanction stress because Iran enjoys what has been termed a “superior moral position” that is being recognized. Why?

 Because Iran truly is facing an unpopular U.S. administration this time around and the European Union allegedly is attempting to set up a payment system that could permit Iran to continue at least some normative business as usual.

 The latter can’t come soon enough. And kudos to Iran’s leaders for permitting hundreds of women to attend a football match in Azadi Stadium last week and enjoy a splendid and even musical halftime respite from the justified gloom in Tehran. More of that social liberation is definitely in Iran’s longer-term interests.