The stakes in Iran have never been higher. Mojtaba Khamenei, 56, was named Supreme Leader on Sunday by the Assembly of Experts — one week after a joint U.S.-Israeli airstrike killed his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He is the only person willing to take this job. He took it knowing the United States and Israel have already demonstrated they will assassinate Iran’s head of state. That is not the foundation for a peace partner. That is the blueprint for a generational blood war.
President Trump’s response was to declare that if Khamenei “doesn’t get approval from us, he’s not going to last long,” and that he would choose a “GREAT AND ACCEPTABLE leader” after Iran’s “unconditional surrender.” This is not diplomacy. This is not strategy. This is a man who co-signed a forever war declaration on behalf of the American people against one of the most feared militaries in the world — and he did it by abandoning a diplomatic breakthrough. Omani mediators had just announced progress in indirect U.S.-Iran talks in Geneva before the bombs started falling.
And he is not doing it alone.
Russia’s Vladimir Putin sent a congratulatory telegram to Mojtaba Khamenei, pledging “unwavering support for Tehran.” China’s Foreign Ministry declared any attempt to target the new leader an interference in Iran’s internal affairs. These are not idle words. Russia and China are participating — with intelligence, chemical supplies, and strategic coordination. The result will not be an Iranian surrender. The result will be escalation on a scale the Pentagon’s war planners have not accounted for, against a sophisticated regime with supply lines the West cannot disrupt.
Trump's moves so far have alienated every ally that matters. He told British Prime Minister Keir Starmer "this is not Winston Churchill that we're dealing with" after the UK refused to join offensive strikes. Then on Saturday — nine days into a war against one of the most sophisticated military powers on earth — he posted on Truth Social: "We don't need people that join Wars after we've already won!" Already won. In week two. Against a nation backed by Russia and China that has not surrendered, has named a new Supreme Leader, and is launching retaliatory strikes across the Gulf. France warned the action risks undermining international law. The coalition of the willing is a coalition of two — the United States and Israel — against an adversary backed by the world's second and third largest militaries.
This is where it’s useful to remember history. America has been here before. Vietnam. Korea. Afghanistan. Iraq — twice. Every one of those conflicts was a misadventure in which American blood and treasure were spent fighting wars that served the strategic interests of our adversaries more than our own. Each time, the architects declared victory before the body count made that declaration obscene. Each time, the American people paid the price — in lives, in dollars, in global standing — for decades after the last shot was fired.
The determination to install a puppet regime in Tehran — potentially alongside or in opposition to Khamenei — suggests either a domestic and military naivete so profound it borders on incompetence, or something far worse: a deliberate desire to entrap America into a punishing and expensive war it neither wants nor can afford.
And anyone who believes Cubans and Venezuelans will simply stand by as their countries are threatened, raped, and pillaged fails to understand how deep those Latin American ties to China and Russia run. China accounts for 95 percent of Venezuela’s oil export revenue. Cuba supplies Caracas with military advisors and intelligence operatives. Russia’s arms and security apparatus props up the entire structure. Pull on the Iran thread and the Western Hemisphere unravels with it.
Now look at what’s happening at home.
Oil prices spiked to nearly $120 a barrel overnight before settling around $105 — a 50 percent surge from prewar levels. Gas is heading toward $4 a gallon. Diesel hit $4.66 and is expected to blow past $5 within weeks. The U.S. economy lost 92,000 jobs in February. Unemployment hit 4.4 percent. The Dow plunged over a thousand points in futures trading. Stagflation — the poisonous combination of stagnant growth and rising inflation — has entered stage left. This is the economic environment Trump has chosen to wage a war of choice. This is exactly what you want if your goal is destabilizing the U.S. dollar.
And while the economy craters under the weight of a war no one asked for, Trump is holding the entire legislative agenda hostage. On Sunday, he announced he will not sign any bills into law until the Senate passes the SAVE America Act — a bill that requires documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote, that passed the House 218-213, and that voting rights organizations have called what it is: election rigging dressed up as election security. A 17-page draft executive order reviewed by PBS News would give Trump emergency powers over the 2026 midterms if the Senate doesn’t comply. Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold called it “attempted authoritarianism.”
So let us connect the pattern.
A president wages an illegal war without congressional approval. He alienates allies. He assassinates a head of state and then demands the right to choose the replacement. He sends oil prices into a spiral that punishes American families. He presides over job losses and market crashes. He holds legislation hostage to ram through voting restrictions. And every single one of these actions serves the strategic interests of Russia and China — the same Russia and China that are actively backing the other side of this war.
This war is positioned as being about Iran. It is not about Iran. It is about Russia, China, and Israel and their unholy alliance to destroy the United States from within — and its currency with it.
Israel’s role in this arrangement deserves particular scrutiny. It is being used as the proxy, the whipping boy, the mechanism through which foreign interests maneuver and control American foreign and domestic policy. This is not speculation. Five million pages of documents exposed in the Epstein cases show the extraordinary lengths to which this influence operation has gone — the ties to Israeli intelligence, the ties to Russian oligarch money, and the financial backbone provided by dynasties like the Rothschilds. All well-documented. All exposed. Jeffrey Epstein did not operate in a vacuum. He operated at the intersection of these three pillars — Israeli intelligence, Russian money, and Western financial power — to systematically compromise American officials and institutions. The network that protected him is the same network that produced this war.
The economic carnage is not collateral damage. It is the objective. A weakened dollar, a destabilized America, a military bogged down in an unwinnable Middle Eastern war — this is the scenario Moscow and Beijing have war-gamed for decades. And they have a willing participant in the Oval Office making it happen.
There is a word for such acts — for collaboration, aid, or comfort given to the enemies of the United States. We have wanted to use it before. We were told we couldn’t. The term is reserved for wartime, we were reminded. It requires an enemy. It requires a war.
Well, now we have one. Trump gave it to us. He started an illegal war against Iran without congressional authorization, against a nation backed by Russia and China — the same Russia and China whose strategic interests every single one of his actions serves. The war he started is the war that completes the legal framework for the charge.
The word is treason.
It is high time we used it where it belongs.
Zev Shalev is an Emmy-nominated, Murrow Award-winning journalist and founder of Narativ.org.
Our regularly formatted newsletter will return tomorrow.
We are live at 2 p.m. ET with Wajahat Ali and Ellie Leonard and at 3 p.m. ET on THE FIVESTACK with Dean Blundell.
"So let us connect the pattern.
A president wages an illegal war without congressional approval. He alienates allies. He assassinates a head of state and then demands the right to choose the replacement. He sends oil prices into a spiral that punishes American families. He presides over job losses and market crashes. He holds legislation hostage to ram through voting restrictions. And every single one of these actions serves the strategic interests of Russia and China — the same Russia and China that are actively backing the other side of this war."
Zev...you are absolutely correct....it's about time we all started calling this what it is......
TREASON....tRUMP is a Traitor ... !!!
AMAZING AND INSIGHTFUL. REQUIRED READING.