There is a 2,500-year old message about who is strong, who is weak in politics and war, and what the latter can do to defend themselves from the former.
The message comes from Thucydides in his History of the Peloponnesian War. Written between five and ten years after the events described, which occurred in 416 BC, it was part of a negotiation between the invading Athenian forces and the Melos islanders, who wanted to remain neutral in the war between Athens and Sparta. The message was part of the Athenian refusal to accept this neutrality and the Athenian ultimatum – either the Melians surrendered, or they would be killed. The Melians refused; the Athenians then killed all the men, enslaved the women and surviving children; and repopulated the island with Athenians.
This is the message: “The standard of justice depends on the equality of power to compel and the strong do what they have the power to do and the weak accept what they must.”
The second, consequential sentence is the most famous of lines still quoted from Thucydides. The weak will have to submit to the strong — that was the warning. Do what we want or we will kill you. Almost never quoted and forgotten, however, is the first, conditional sentence.
That ancient condition is still the modern calculation. If the weak can devise enough power to resist, to undermine the power to compel, to make the strong uncertain of the outcome of their threats and displays of force — if their defeat and death can be credibly threatened in retaliation, then the strong can be deterred.
In just this way, the “equality of power” can be upset. Neither justice in the outcome, nor the history of the war to achieve it, will always be dictated by the strong. Exaggerating your strength if you think you are strong, and over-estimating the weakness of your adversary can cost you defeat, maybe your life.
This is where the regime of President Donald Trump is today as he dictates terms to Iran.
President Vladimir Putin told Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi at their meeting on Monday in St Petersburg: “We see how courageously and heroically the Iranian people are fighting for their independence and sovereignty… For our part, we will do everything that meets your interests.” This appeared to be an unqualified declaration of Russia’s support for Iran to resist Trump’s terms.
Unqualified, however, it is not. At least not on Putin’s part. His spokesman and advisor on foreign policy, Yury Ushakov, Russian ambassador to the US between 1998 and 2008, issued the qualifier: “We will analyze what he [Araghchi] will say, and analyze against the background of today’s conversation the signals that we have received from both the Americans and the Israelis. And then we’ll see what to do.” In other words, Putin will balance Iran the defender against the US and Israel the attacker. Putin will measure their respective strengths and then choose which side to take in the fight.
April 25, ANZAC Day, is a national celebration in Australia commemorating the World War 1 campaign, ordered by Winston Churchill in London, for Australian and New Zealand (NZ) forces to land at Gallipoli, and attempt to march on the Ottoman Empire capital at Istanbul.
It has become the equivalent of Memorial Day in the US, which comes a month later. Like the American commemoration, for Australians and New Zealanders it is now meant to celebrate all the wars they have fought. Very recently, the ceremonies include a “Welcome to Country” speech by a tribal elder of the Australian indigenous peoples. They were not allowed to serve in the Australian forces until the numbers of willing whites were beginning to run low in 1917.
ANZAC stood for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. That wasn’t a combination of armies of two independent states. It was a single unit of two colonial divisions formed in December 1914 and commanded by a British general, William Birdwood, with his staff of officers from the British Indian Army.
This was an empire operation: Australia was a self-governing dominion of British colonies in 1901; New Zealand the same in 1907. However, they remained under British constitutional, legal, military, and secret service control until the Japanese Army forced the surrender of the British at Singapore in 1942 and headed southward.
Japan did more for Australian and New Zealand independence than the anti-imperialism of Australians and New Zealanders. By contrast, the Indians, fifteen thousand of whom were landed with the Anzacs, successfully fought the British to achieve their independence in 1947; Australia and New Zealand followed with legislation of 1986 and 1983, respectively. By then, however, CIA penetration of both ruling elites had succeeded in replacing the overt British Empire with a subvert US Empire. And so it is today, with a Zionist twist.
The 1915 ANZAC operation was a total failure, ending in ignominious retreat.
Not only did the Turks drive the Allies off with one of the gravest campaign tolls of the war; estimated numbers of dead and wounded were almost 350,000 – slightly more than half on the Allied side. The Turks then began the genocide of the Armenian population, killing more than 1.5 million civilians; they followed that with attacks on the Greeks.
The Australian casualty rate was about 15% dead; the comparable NZ death rate was 19%; the Indian casualty rate, 10%; the British rate (including Irish and Newfoundlanders) was 12%.
The Turkish retelling of the history omits that the principal forces which defended the heights and took the greatest casualties were conscripted Arabs from Syria and Iraq and Kurds from Mosul. Mustafa Kemal (later Ataturk), then commander of the Ottoman 19th Division at the front, held his Turkish infantry and cavalry in reserve to defend the northward road to Istanbul. The death rate for these Arab soldiers was at least 27%, probably higher.
Since 1996, and with government authorization since 2006, descendants of the Ottomans who fought and defeated the Australians have been allowed to march alongside the Australian veterans through the Australian cities. Note that in the state press corporation report of 2006, these soldiers are described as “Turkish”, not as Arabs.
Australia is now permanently at war with the Arabs and Muslims with a Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, appointed from the Jewish community by the federal government to represent the opinions of 120,000 Australian Jews in an attack on the opinions of 815,000 Australian Muslims. Together with a Royal Commission currently under way to recommend criminalizing the second group’s defence against the first, Australia is adopting the ideology of race-hate fascism to advance its domestic, intercommunal warmaking and its foreign warmaking (against Russia, China, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, etc.).
The combination of personal sanctions and asset seizures against the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska (lead image), corporate sanctions against his Rusal and EN+ companies, and the cutoff of alumina feedstock supplies from Australia and the Ukraine have done visible damage to Rusal’s Hong Kong-listed share price (lead image).
At the pre-Ukraine war peak of 2021, the market capitalization of Rusal was HK$115 billion (US$14.8 billion); the share price ran up to HK$8.50. But then as the Special Military Operation began and sanctions and asset confiscations escalated, this collapsed to just HK$48 billion (US$6.2 billion) in December 2024. By this April, however, share price recovery has lifted Rusal’s market cap to HK$66 billion ($US8.4 billion); the share is now at HK$4.31.
First listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in January 2010, Rusal’s share price has never reached its initial public offering (IPO) price of HK$10.80; that price was rigged by Deripaska with insiders who included Nathaniel Rothschild, John Paulson, and the Russian state bank VEB. (they sold out swiftly and richly within the first year). At its 2021 high, the share price reached just over HK$8.00.
The published annual financial statements of the company show that net profit was $3.2 billion in 2021. It then began falling year by year – to $1.8 billion in 2022; $282 million in 2023; $803 million in 2024; and finally to a loss of $455 million in 2025.
Since February of this year, however, the US war against Iran, and Iran’s counterattack against the Hormuz Strait and the aluminium-producing Arab states from which the US have launched their attacks, have begun to dig Deripaska’s company out of its loss-making hole.
In the Stone Ages, as President Donald Trump (lead image) calls ancient history, it was expected that if a man wanted somebody enough, he would grab them by the short hairs to make them scream their compliance.
The Stone Age painters’ records on cave walls, which have been discovered to date, disclose more of the anatomical details of the animals and women the men hunted, and of their weapons, than they do of the hunters.
After several million years of that history had improved fighting and killing technology with metal and horses, Homer came along to polish the character of the hunters and put a shine on the original idea that brute force almost always succeeds unless it is met with matching brute force. He also introduced the idea that the gods are always on the side of the war winners, and that the theological reward they offer is sexual satisfaction following on slaughter (and vice versa). If Trump and his speech and tweet writers had read enough, they would be citing Homer for their model.
But it won’t help them. In fighting a war as hackneyed Homeric as Trump’s against Iran (China, Russia, Venezuela, Cuba), the predictability of his every move exposes him to defeat by an adversary who can predict, and is unpredictable himself. That adversary understands that Trump has Achilles’ heels all over his body.
In this new podcast with Nima Alkhorshid, we go through the details of the fighting around the Strait of Hormuz, explaining why this is the lynchpin of all the Iranian end-of-war conditions – Iranian control is the only effective guarantee that the US (and Israel) will be deterred from resuming the war; the toll is the only method of securing multi-billion dollar reparations for the war damage; by strangling the economies of the West it is more effective for revenge and regime decapitation than those the CIA and Mossad have been able to use.
These were the end-of-war aims of Mojtaba Khamenei’s speech of March 26. “The leverage of closing the Strait of Hormuz must definitely continue to be utilised”, he said then. And so it continues through the Jalali Five Points of April 1; and the Ghalibaf Ten Points of April 19.
Breaking news was added as we spoke of Trump’s closeting in lengthy White House “executive time” and “policy meetings” on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday; then the new US Navy interception and boarding of the oil tanker Tifani in the Indian Ocean, between Sri Lanka and Singapore. A day later, on Thursday afternoon, the abrupt sacking by Trump and his War Secretary, Peter Hegseth, of Navy Secretary John Phelan reveals that the US military resistance to Trump is beginning to spill outside the White House with grave political risk for Trump and the Republicans as the election campaign enters the final stage. .
Testimony from the survivors of the Iranian frigate, IRIS Dena, attacked and sunk in a US Navy operation, led by the submarine USS Charlotte on March 4, has just been released in Iran, broadcast by an Iranian television outlet (lead images, top and bottom, are screenshots, bottom image is a file photo).
The two survivors who appear in the six-minute videoclip are the captain of the Dena, Commander Abuzar Zarri (top left), and accompanying him is the first officer of the Dena, who is not identified by name (top, second image, centre). Zarri has been wounded; at the end of the video he appears to be standing with the support of a crutch. Zarri had previously been reported as having been killed in the attack.
Photographed in India when the Dena was participating in the Indian Navy-hosted MILAN 2026 review and exercise, Zarri was the second senior Iranian officer in India. The ranking officer was Rear Admiral Shahram Irani, Commander of the Islamic Republic of Iran Navy, who flew back to Teheran when the Dena, and its two escorts, IRIS Lavan and IRIS Bushehr, departed Visakhapatnam port on February 25. Their visit had lasted for ten days, February 15-25. Photographs of Zarri at Visakhapatnam match his appearance in the new video, which was released on April 21.
The evidence provided by the two officers indicates the Mouj-class warship did not have its regular armament of anti-ship and anti-air missiles, and torpedoes for anti-submarine combat. This was a condition of the Indian invitation for the exercise. The US Navy, which also participated in MILAN 2026, not only knew this but US air-patrol electronic surveillance of the Dena in the days before it reached Visakhapatnam on February 15 confirmed this disarmament.
“One of the exercise’s conditions,” Zarri said, “was weapons like missiles and torpedoes, which are strategic weapons, shouldn’t be carried by the participating vessels”. The Indian Navy set the condition and the verification procedure when the Dena entered Visakhapatnam. Asked if “the destroyer [sic] was not armed at all”, Zarri replied: “No, we didn’t have torpedoes.” He was not excluding the Dena’s six deck guns.
During the approach to the Dena, on its attack run, the USS Charlotte command knew the Dena was disarmed.
Zarri also reveals that two US torpedoes were fired. The first has been reported in the US media as having missed the Dena. In fact, according to Zarri, the first torpedo struck the ship, “and we lost our mobility. The ship’s shaft and propeller were destroyed so we had no mobility at all…we suffered no fatalities.”
Zarri said the local time was 3:35 am. At 5:06 am, US and other reports indicate the Dena was hit in the aft section with a large explosion breaking the keel. This evidence of a 90-minute interval between the torpedo firings is new and has not been explained. If confirmed, it indicates that after its first strike, the Charlotte asked for orders from its base at Pearl Harbour, Hawaii, the US Pacific Fleet, and the Pentagon. The time in Washington, DC, was between 4 and 5 in the afternoon of March 3.
In that interval, the testimony of the Dena’s first officer indicates that Zarri ordered the crew to assemble on the aft deck and prepare for evacuation, surrender, scuttling, or other options which have not been revealed by Zarri; return of fire was impossible without sub-surface torpedoes. “The second torpedo killed 104 of our friends, our comrades, our dear brothers,” Zarri added, confirming he knew “that was their intention.”
“After the first shot,” the second officer said, “I sent the crew to the flight deck [lead image, bottom] and went back inside to check that everyone was out…I went back in, started checking from the stern to midship to make sure that no one was left inside. I came back up toward the stern. I was in the corridor when the second torpedo was fired.”
Dawn in the waters off Galle, western Sri Lanka, the location of the Dena on the morning of the attack, did not occur until 5:59 am. Although it was still dark, however, the Charlotte captain, Commander Thomas Futch, and his weapons officer, were able to verify that the Dena crew had assembled on the rear deck. In the customary laws of naval warfare, if the attacking captain can verify that the target crew is readying to abandon ship, and is not preparing counter-fire, it is unlawful for him to fire to kill. Futch also knew the Indian Navy had guaranteed that the Dena was not carrying anti-submarine torpedoes.
The second torpedo fired by the Charlotte, according to Zarri, “was meant to cause heavy loss of life”. The second US torpedo was aimed at the aft section of the Dena’s keel underneath the assembled crew.
The newly disclosed survivor evidence does not reveal the Dena’s course south and then westward after leaving Visakhapatnam on February 25 with orders to seek sanctuary from the expected US attack at a Sri Lankan port or an Indian port. Zarri said that “on the way home we received a message that the US had attacked our country and that we’re at war.”
While that message was dated February 28, Indian and Sri Lankan sources indicate that in anticipation of the attack, the Iranians had been requesting safe haven for the Dena and its escorts from Sri Lanka from before February 25, and then from India on or before February 28. From the departure from Visakhapatnam, more than four days elapsed before the Indian agreement was issued to open Kochi port to the three-ship squadron on March 1.
A report from an Indian source reveals that the Iranian ships had “called at Hambantota in Sri Lanka, and then spent over eight days [February 25-March 4] in international waters.” This has not been acknowledged by Sri Lankan or Indian officials.
However, it was their delay – under intense pressure from US officials to disallow safe haven or to stall it – which exposed the Dena to the ambush the US was preparing. Knowing that the Dena was disarmed on the Indian Navy’s request and that the US Navy was in hot, armed pursuit, the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jayshankar, together with the Sri Lankan President Anura Dissanayake, were responsible for the delay which was fatal.
Their subsequent statements disclaiming culpable knowledge and concealing the Dena’s course at sea between February 25 and March 4 add to the evidence of their complicity in the American war crime.
This is not a question. Asking it is the answer.This is because the Security Council, the politburo of Russian war and security policymaking which President Vladimir Putin leads but does not fully control, rarely issues public statements; it never issues one like the announcement of April 14.
For our audience, which is exposed every few minutes of the day to the knowns, speculation about the known facts, speculation about the knowns, and the hopefulness, wishfulness, and theories of what’s about to happen, that’s an impossible amount of data and information to make sense of things.
Let’s try an unusual method of figuring out the big ones and the little ones — whether the American empire is falling down, or not falling down; whether the tankers coming from or bound for Iranian ports are getting through the Strait of Hormuz, or not – that is different from what we are exposed to when we watch all those other podcasts.
We know the unknowns we want to know more about: what will happen next in Trump’s war plan against Iran; what Iran, Russia and China are discussing now for their options in the fight back; what might be the unknowns we don’t know about (yet); what we suspect that the Americans, Iranians, Russians, and Chinese aren’t telling; and if we add up all the answers, where we are.
Between saying something if you are a Chinese admiral and Defense Minister and meaning something if you are a Politburo member and Foreign Minister, there is a pussyfooting difference.
If you are the US Treasury Secretary and you tell the Chinese what you mean, that’s different.
And then if you are the President of China, these differences of meaning might be interpreted as “the law of the jungle”.
Might be is a conditional verb. Sometimes in grammar it connects the subject of sentences with the object. Sometimes in politics it doesn’t.
And so, on or about Monday, April 13, Dong Jun (lead image, 2nd left), China’s Minister of Defense, said: “We are committed for peace & stability in the world. We are monitoring the situation in the Middle East. Our ships are moving in and out of the waters of Strait of Hormuz. We have trade and energy agreements with Iran. We will respect and honour them and expect others not to meddle in our affairs. Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz and it is open for us.”
Where Dong said this, when, and in front of whom, were unclear in the press reports which, unusually, were not official state Chinese media or commercial media like the South China Morning Post. China experts noticed that the style of the remarks in Chinese was “very different from the official Chinese language style.” This isn’t necessarily a disqualifier. In Russian practice, sensitive official thinking can often be leaked through unofficial, even obscure sources, in part to test what happens in response.
Dong’s first two sentences were official boilerplate and obvious. The third sentence refers to the fact that in the first month of the US-Israeli war against Iran, an estimated 18 Chinese vessels transited the Strait – with Iranian permission and following a territorial route dictated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). On Monday, if and when Dong was speaking, a Chinese-owned tanker moved through the Strait. This was the Rich Starry which had loaded 250,000 barrels of methanol at the Emirati port of Hamriyah. The tanker is owned by Shanghai Xuanrun Shipping Co Ltd. but sanctioned by the US because it has been used to transport Iranian crude.
Dong’s fourth sentence is also boilerplate. There are many trade and energy agreements between China and Iran; the most important of them is the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership (2021–2046), signed in March 2021.
It is the Defense Minister’s fifth and sixth sentences which have drawn immediate and serious attention, especially in Teheran and Moscow, where they are interpreted as the first explicit Chinese declaration of support for Iran’s military control of the Strait and the first explicit Chinese warning to reject President Donald Trump’s naval blockade of the Strait which had begun on Monday.
Combined with the exit of the Rich Starry and another tanker, the US-sanctioned Elpis, which had loaded a cargo of Iranian methanol at Bushehr, Dong’s sentences appeared to signal that Beijing had decided to run Trump’s gauntlet and challenge the US Navy blockade.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent replied that “the U.S. blockade of the Strait of Hormuz would ensure that no Chinese ships or others would be allowed to pass. ‘So they’re not going to be able to get their oil. They can get oil. Not Iranian oil,’ Bessent said, adding that China had been buying more than 90% of Iranian oil and it constituted about 8% of their annual purchases.”
As Bessent spoke, several hours after Dong’s speech and the tanker movements, both the speech and the ship courses were reversed. The Chinese Defense Ministry tweeted an official claim that the reports were “fake news” and “entirely fabricated.” The maritime tracking media reported the Rich Starry had stopped in the Gulf of Oman and then made a U-turn towards the Strait. The Elpis was reported to have stopped off the Iranian oil terminal port of Kooh Mobarak, which is located outside and east of the Strait, in the Gulf of Oman.
So now, all things said, what have the Chinese done?
In the world in which President Donald Trump plans his future (lead image), and the presidential dynasty of his sons to succeed him, the gunman believes he can take away both lives and bribes. Unless the victim catches him by surprise, outgunning him and those of his allies who have paid the price of his protection. It’s blood for money.
This is the new stage of Iran’s war. It is the stage which the Iranian and pro-Iranian post-mortem analyses of the Islamabad negotiations have not disclosed; the stage which the US and Israeli propaganda organs cannot comprehend; the stage which the Trump dynasty’s rivals are afraid of, Vice President JD Vance in front.
This stage of Iran’s war is also an example to President Vladimir Putin and President Xi Jinping of the futility of paying bribes, as their advisors tell them; and the vulnerability of Trump and his sons to political defeat at home.For discussion of the tactics now, the operations for the next six months to US Election Day, and the strategy for winning the war to come, view or listen to the discussion with Nima Alkhorshid today.
Inside the Kremlin Wall there is only one man sitting or standing whose closeness to President Vladimir Putin has so excited his ambition to be rich (billion-dollar rich), and to be powerful (the next head of government), that he dares to shout from the ramparts that peace on the Ukrainian battlefield, relief of global economic sanctions, and prosperity with US investments will materialize very soon on condition that Russia puts its unquestioning trust in President Donald Trump.
Unquestioning means, for this man, never criticizing Trump for anything he says or does — no war he wages, no ceasefire or peace agreement he breaks. It also means never questioning Putin’s trust in him.
This man is Kirill Dmitriev, the President’s “Representative for Investment and Economic Cooperation with Foreign Countries” — that’s to say, special negotiator with the Trump family’s money-making regime, including the US Treasury.“I believe he acts with 100% approval of Putin and does indeed speak for him,” says a source in a position to know. “He is Putin’s Whisperer.”
