Kernow Damo

Right, so NewsNation asked Republican Congressman and Zionism’s biggest fan Randy Fine how much longer Americans were expected to carry the cost of Donald Trump's Iran war. A war we all know is being waged in the interests of Israel of course. A fair question, really. Petrol costs more, transport costs more, anything that even moves across state lines costs more, and in the end the whole country gets handed a bill with extra zeros and a cheery 'thanks for playing.' So how long? Until we win. Which, roughly translated from Israel leg-humping politician-speak, means 'until the sun burns out, I get bored, or in this case more like until Benjamin Netanyahu says so.' It’s the kind of answer you'd expect from a Magic 8 Ball after too many Stella’s and a GB News binge. No date. No limit. Not even a seasonal 'we'll review it after Christmas' dodge. Just keep paying until Trump decides he can slap a 'Mission Accomplished' sticker on whatever's still smouldering and call it a day. Win what, exactly though? Iran's surrender? Its nuclear programme dismantled? Hormuz fully reopened? A signed peace deal? Or just Trump announcing victory before any of those things have actually happened, hell having a higher chance of significant flurries quite frankly than the orange oaf securing a deal?

Right, so Donald Trump is out here insisting Israel is absolutely thrilled with his latest Gaza masterstroke. The pitch, at least in theory, was a classic Trump-style swap: Hamas gives up its weapons under the watchful eyes of international clipboard-carriers, a group of technocrats is dropped in to run Gaza, and Israeli troops quietly withdraw, sector by sector, as long as everyone follows the rules and he gets a gold star. That was the sales pitch, at least. Oh, but the Israeli hard right didn’t like it. Ben-Gvir said throw it out. Smotrich said victory means bringing Israeli settlers back into Gaza. Meanwhile, as Trump is busy selling his withdrawal vision, Israel is pouring concrete and constructing a new military fort on the ruins of a Palestinian fishing village very much in Gaza. Nothing says 'we're leaving' quite like a brand-new bunker in the place you’re supposed to be getting out of. This was supposed to be the plan that forced Hamas to surrender though. Instead, Netanyahu has Trump already softening his own terms, the settler ministers such as Ben Gvir and Smotrich are demanding the exact opposite of withdrawal, and Palestinians are still being killed and forced from their homes while the self-proclaimed dealmaker stands there insisting everyone is just delighted. Trump got played, and Netanyahu, between Trump and his settler coalition handlers has boxed himself in with all the finesse of a man trying to assemble IKEA furniture blindfolded and missing half the screws. And Hamas, for once, gets to watch Trump’s deal wave the white flag long before they ever would. Best breakthrough anyone has ever achieved. Never mind whether Netanyahu has endorsed the actual terms. Never mind whether the ministers keeping Netanyahu in power are openly threatening to reject them. Never mind the small matter of Israel continuing to attack the territory it is supposedly preparing to leave. Those pesky, tedious little details that only matter if you are in contact with reality.

But the Donald, as always, had an announcement to make.

Right, so Donald Trump claims America is prepared to strike Iran again whenever he feels like it. Anytime he wants. Because Trump approaches regional security like a man shaking a petrol can beside an open flame. But there's just one small snag in this latest display of dementia-addled orange bravado. The American families who were forced out after Iranian missiles and drones struck Bahrain last time are still in exile, waiting for someone to declare it safe again, so they can actually go back to Fifth Fleet HQ. The ships are there. The admirals are there. The missiles are there. But the families and the school kids are not. Bahrain has just revealed the other side of Trump's bravado. America may still be able to attack from the Gulf, but it can’t rebuild the supposedly safe, permanent American community around the US command centre for those attacks. When your family has been forced to evacuate, you’re no longer ordinarily resident, are you? You’re no longer living; you're simply serving on a given call-up. And of course this all comes on top of the recent news, which I covered the other day regarding Kuwait, that showed the Pentagon cutting the number of Americans left exposed there. Jordan showed the rising anger at being used as an American launchpad and then handed to Iran as a target. Many in that country right now want the Americans out now as a result. Bahrain, meanwhile, has taken the story into something of a surreal detour, complete with missing families and a base that's actually only permanent these days, if you're a warship. Bahrain was supposed to be home for many Americans. Permanently resident there. Now it's just another address on the Pentagon's growing list of places you wouldn't send your children unless you didn’t like them. No lasting peace. No end to the danger around the Gulf bases. No sign that the countries asked to host America's war have stopped paying the price. But anytime we want, he says. As if Bahrain, Kuwait, and Jordan were just a string of gas stations lined up around Trump's personal bombing range. His idea of 'readiness' is about as dependable as his reading comprehension: selective, self-serving, and disconnected from reality.

Right, so what has happened in the last few days in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta has been well covered in the media, but not necessarily in full, and certainly not the latest events, as the story actually continues to unfold and not to the benefit of those who thought this was something smart and clever either.

This was not some sudden invasion that came out of nowhere.

This was orchestrated, not a random group trip to the Spanish border.

A fake route into Europe was advertised online. Large groups were moved toward the border. Moroccan security staff were caught on camera opening the back of an official truck filled with young men and letting them out onto the road. Guards were seen standing aside and, in some cases, pointing people directly toward Ceuta.

Tens of thousands were then allowed to flood one of Europe's most closely monitored borders.

And waiting on the other side were Donald Trump and Israel's political allies, ready to label the outcome an invasion, blame Spain, and turn those caught in the middle into campaign material.

Trump got his midterm commercial.

Netanyahu got his diversion from Palestine.

Morocco, with its political leadership leaning hard towards Trump and Israel too, got leverage over the Spanish territory it has wanted for decades.

The migrants were used as the ammunition.

Then the entire sordid operation collapsed dramatically, because Trump's so-called permanent invasion packed up and left in less than two days, Spain remained in Ceuta, and evidence of the manufactured crisis started to appear: the fake online offers, the coordinated transport north, the truck video, the missing border enforcement, and the political campaign already set to exploit it.

Somewhere between 50,000 and 60,000 people joined this mass movement, but about 48,000 of them turned around and went home almost as soon as they’d arrived. The whole episode was driven by online misinformation, planned routes, official vehicles, and Moroccan border guards who seemed to confuse their duties with those of a tour guide.

Right, so Donald Trump entered this war demanding Iran's unconditional surrender, as if he were at a drive-thru shouting for a cheeseburger and expecting Tehran to include a free milkshake. Back in February, he assumed the whole conflict would be finished in four weeks, maybe even sooner if he skipped dessert. Five months of bombing, threats, and increasingly tense victory laps later, Iran still has not surrendered, and now Trump is out here giving them a gold star for refusing to break.

Five months on, Iran is still refusing to hand over the white flag, no matter how many times Trump waves his own like he is trying to hail a taxi in a hurricane. Is it TACO Tuesday again already?

Trump admitted at Camp David that Iran "hasn't" given up. Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman reportedly warned Trump that another major US attack could bring Iranian retaliation down on Saudi and other Gulf energy infrastructure. And Netanyahu told Fox that what happens next is, "in many ways, [Trump's] decision." So Trump is conceding Iran has not broken, Riyadh is warning him not to make the Gulf pay for another escalation, and Netanyahu suddenly sounds less like the Trump whisperer and more like a man waiting in the corridor, wondering what's for dinner.

Quite the magical mystery tour, isn't it? From demanding unconditional surrender to regional allies quietly trying to stop him from lighting a match in the petrol station that they're all locked inside of.

And that is what this story is really about. Not whether Iran has been damaged. It clearly has. Not whether Trump can order more bombs dropped. Of course he can.

It is whether all that destruction actually delivered the political result he promised, because Trump did not promise to damage Iran.

He promised to break it.

Right, so Benjamin Netanyahu believed Washington had just handed him a lifeline.

He had spoken with America's secretary of state, received promises of strong action against the institution threatening him, and felt confident enough to announce it to his Cabinet as if the outcome was already decided. A very positive development for Netanyahu, certainly.

He faced an active arrest warrant, and the most powerful government in the world was now vowing to make things very difficult for those behind it.

That seems like a win, at least while the applause is still ringing out and no one has looked at the details.

Because Washington couldn't just say, "We're doing this for Bibi." That would sound a bit unseemly, wouldn’t it? So Marco Rubio wrapped the whole move in the Stars and Stripes and cast America as the victim.

American sovereignty. American troops. American officials supposedly under threat from foreign judges thousands of miles away.

It’s not Netanyahu being shielded. Honest guv.

Certainly not. How crude to even suggest it.

Except Donald Trump then stepped in and did what he does best: the lobotomised orange fruitcake said out loud the part everyone else had spent weeks carefully sidestepping, because he’s far too stupid not to. And so the cover story falls apart.

Netanyahu had welcomed the promise. Rubio had provided the patriotic rationale. Trump then tore off the wrapping paper and told everyone whose gift it really was.

That is the point where Netanyahu's supposed victory starts to look much less certain, isn’t it? Because Trump didn't just embarrass Rubio. He tied the American president's own words directly to the protection Netanyahu had been celebrating five days earlier.

Netanyahu thought he had been handed a lifeline.

Trump may have just turned it into a burning fuse.

Right, so it turns out Donald Trump has finally stumbled across a problem that refuses to be solved by lobbing another bomb at it. Tragic, really. Iran is striking American military facilities throughout the region. The Pentagon is reportedly scaling back its large presence in Kuwait. In Jordan, hundreds of prominent individuals are calling for the complete removal of the American presence. And now, on top of all of that, CENTCOM is concerned that its own troops are recording enough of the aftermath to help Iran figure out what was effective. Essentially making the same mistake so many IDF troops have made, by being stupid enough to upload what amounts to free intel for the enemy. A real achievement for American statecraft, if your definition of statecraft is 'how to turn your own bases into a live-fire demonstration for the enemy.' Trump started this war with his usual boasts about control and deterrence, delivered with all the subtlety of a McDonald's menu and the standard photo op of him pointing at something, as if his finger alone can frighten Iran into surrender. Well, it is rather small and suspiciously orange, and you do tend to wonder where it’s been. What he has actually managed, though, is to turn America's bases into a row of high-value targets, conveniently spread across countries whose citizens never agreed to be extras in Trump's Middle Eastern ego trip. He can bomb Iran again. No doubt with Netanyahu on yet another visit, that’ll be his line to Trump. Odds are, he is already looking over the map for which bit to strike next. But what he cannot bomb is the argument now breaking out within the countries that are still hosting his troops. They have been doing so for some time. They have been targets themselves as a result for months now, on and off. It turns out, you cannot airstrike your way out of that kind of political backlash. He cannot bomb Kuwait back into feeling comfortable with this arrangement. Strangely, dropping explosives does not seem to lift morale. He cannot bomb Jordanians into believing that being attacked somehow proves the Americans are protecting them. And he cannot bomb every phone in every soldier's pocket into forgetting what it has already been recording. The iPhone seems quite resistant to shock and awe.

Right, so Trump and Epstein lawyer, the odiously Zionist Alan Dershowitz appeared on Piers Morgan's show and, within about five minutes, managed to accuse Professor Mohammad Marandi of being a Nazi propagandist, a supporter of genocide, and someone who hates Jews.

He was about as subtle as a marching band in a library.

Dershowitz arrived with the guilty verdict already printed, laminated, and probably colour-coded for the cameras. He compared Marandi to Goebbels. Nazis. October 7. Fifty thousand dead Iranians at the hands of the Iranian state, he opined.

Just throw every accusation into a blender, hit the purée button, and hope the resulting grey slop can be served up as 'evidence.'

But the problem appeared when Dershowitz finally asked Marandi what he wanted for Israelis and Palestinians.

Marandi said equal citizenship.

Equal votes. Jews, Muslims, and Christians living with the same rights. Nobody forced out. Nobody placed above anyone else by law.

Dershowitz listened, changed it into something else entirely, and then began arguing with the version he had then invented.

Well, you can imagine how much fun Marandi finally had with this, can’t you? That was Dershowitz building a bonfire out of every frightening word he could find.

Marandi is Goebbels. Iran is Nazi Germany. Fifty thousand innocent protesters have been murdered. Israel is defending itself because October 7 happened.

Case closed, everyone-time to turn off your brains and go home.

Except that the fifty-thousand figure is not the result of any careful investigation. It's just a number thrown out with the enthusiasm of someone who thinks volume can replace evidence.

Right, so Donald Trump says America has plenty of missiles. Plenty. Loads. More missiles than America could ever possibly use, or so says the man bombing Iran, threatening fresh strikes, exposing US bases across the Gulf and promising Patriots elsewhere, all while burning through the world's most expensive air-defence equipment like a toddler let loose in a fireworks warehouse and piling on fresh escalation like it’s the last tray of roast potatoes at an all-you-can-eat carvery.

And yet, here comes the US Army, rolling out a seven-year Patriot contract worth up to $58.6bn, as if they're buying missiles in bulk from the closest cash and carry. Lockheed Martin is being told to ramp up Patriots at three times the pace and THAADs at four times the pace, and Ukraine is now so frustrated with waiting for the American missile delivery van that it's asking for the keys to the factory. That is a suspicious amount of factories, money, and panic-buying for a country that claims to be drowning in missiles, isn’t it? It almost feels like the cupboard is less 'overflowing with disposable arsenal' and more 'bare shelves with a single lonely tin of beans.' This is less of another episode of 'America's Got No Missiles Left.' This is more the part where the bill to replace them as fast as possible, which is never going to be fast enough, lands with a thud.

Right, so Pete Hegseth went on television a couple of months ago now and announced that Iran's military was destroyed. Combat ineffective he said at the time. Devastated. Finished. Toast. Iran, apparently, exists now only as a cautionary tale for aspiring militaries everywhere. And then, as usual when it comes to the bloviating orange one’s administration, reality gate-crashed the party and wrecked his scripted load of nonsense, aww, poor Petey. That was after all an Iranian missile reaching Muwaffaq al-Salti Air Base in Jordan, where American personnel were stationed. US soldiers were killed. And Donald Trump is now threatening to bomb Pickaxe Mountain, a facility buried under more rock than a Led Zeppelin reunion, because this 'destroyed' and 'combat ineffective' Iran apparently still has enough equipment underground to keep the Pentagon's demolition fetish alive. Again. So Hegseth's victory speech has dissolved faster than a sugar cube in a hot cup of tea, American bases are taking fire again, because defending them is a lot harder when you’re running short of defensive capabilities at the same time your Iran arsenal bulls**t is getting rumbled, and Iran's toughest military toys remain tucked away inside mountains, stubbornly refusing to get the memo that they were apparently 'destroyed.' That isn't total victory. That's an air-war lesson: air power can smash what it sees, block what it reaches, and still fail to destroy what lies deepest underground or force the surrender it was meant to deliver.

But listen to how absolute this was. Hegseth wasn't claiming Iran had merely taken a battering. Nobody would dispute that. The bombing was enormous, the damage extensive, and Iran lost people, equipment and infrastructure on a vast scale. But that wasn't what he sold. He sold an ending. Destroyed. Combat ineffective. Devastated. You can almost hear the Pentagon gift shop starting up the mug press: 'I survived the destruction of Iran's military and all I got was this lousy talking point.' Iran could no longer operate as a meaningful military force. That was the claim. Not weakened. Not degraded. Not badly damaged and likely to recover. Destroyed. Which makes those missiles still coming out of Iran all the more inconvenient. You have to wonder what Hegseth thinks 'combat ineffective' means. Being pi**ed as a mattress would count, I suppose.