Tag: US – Iran

CAPTURED: COOKED

About: This is the second in my Captured series; about capturing various stories that rocked the world. Call it Season 1, Episode 2.

I have cooked this tongue-in-cheek account of events over the past few months, in a unique flavour and garnished it with special herbs. Hope it tastes good.

It looked like just the other day in the year 2022 that Russia invaded Ukraine and we called it a War- a new front opened in the War Business. Then the terrorist Hamas brutally attacked Israel on 7 October 2023, and took Israelis as hostages, who they painfully released in drops until the finals on 13 October 2025. In-between, Israel raised Gaza to pulp, millions starved, and it took the US President to squeeze out a peace-plan. And then this war dried-up.

However, despite biting efforts, the Russia-Ukraine war ‘drones on’ without an end in sight. Maybe it will end only when Russia’s President thinks it should end, when he has had his full. What are the objectives? Is it an ever-shifting goal-post? Meanwhile, Ukraine has become an expert in Drone-making, and if it actually wins, can re-write Sun Tzu’s, Art of War.

While all this was happening, Iran which was hiding behind the skirts of Hamas-Gaza Strip, Hezbollah-Lebanon, the Houthis- Yemen first tasted America’s bunker busting bombs targeting its nuclear facilities. The taste wasn’t finger-licking and the United States of America (USA) and Israel came to dinner loaded with food on the table. Iran’s Supreme Leader choked and was killed.

With an intent of widening the conflict, Iran retaliated against other Gulf countries, who were enjoying their meals silently for decades and never dreamt of being hit. But they were hit and became hungry for revenge. Now this war meanders on endlessly, joining the ranks of Russia-Ukraine.

Back home, the US President survived an assassination attempt – a fully loaded-with-arms man, hungry for action, simply charged a dinner hosted by the President. He did not get to eat the food on the table, though, and was whisked away from the scene by Secret Service Officers. He lived to feed himself another day.

How many more need to die for man to realise the futility of war? And the importance of eating good, healthy food to stay alive!

In India, Elections to State Assemblies was served to the people. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) scored a hat-trick in Assam: people liked the local food, I guess. In the State of West Bengal a ferocious, fish-eating lady was finally, comprehensively decimated by the BJP, after 15 years of fishing in troubled waters. She lost her seat refused to accept the results, did not resign and had to be dismissed by a clever, no-nonsense Governor imported from the State of Tamil Nadu. The BJP was dumbfounded and stunned, as all it took was for the Prime Minister, during the election campaign, to walk unannounced in to a road-side sweet shop to enjoy the traditional jhalmuri- served well. After winning, it was a burst of sweet jhalmuri, all over the state. Jhalmuri is Kolkata’s most popular street food snack. It is a crunchy mix of puffed rice tossed with vegetables, spices, and a signature pungent mustard oil.

Going South on to Tamil Nadu the ruling Don Quixotic Government, which spent its entire five years fighting against the Centre, at the drop of a reason; building statues of its late Chief- and naming everything they built after him; and whipping up Dravidian Stock divisions, was bushwhacked by a reel Film Star. Tamil Nadu feeds on, and nourishes itself on film stars yet again. Kids – who could not vote-literally coaxed their parents and grandparents to vote for the Star in the name of change: else they said they will starve themselves. Some food for thought. But some wise, old, well-fed elders – without anyone to intimidate them – could not digest a rookie piloting a plane in a mid-air change and pulled back. Result, the Film Star’s party fell short of majority. And riding on horseback, the Star rode to the Governor a couple of times – trying to make hay while the sun shines. Meanwhile, the Opposition, which ran a brilliant campaign and hoped to come back to power found it was stamped out of food in the overall unbelievable scenario, which many called a Black Swan Event. Then, they began eating themselves.

Finally, the Star was fed support from people from across the table of the Evil Forces he had campaigned against and with a lovely ‘suit & boot’ took oath as Chief Minister.

In the State of Puducherry – previously colonised by the French- the BJP Alliance baked well, returning to power in the Assembly Elections. One of its Members, on being disallowed to take ‘Oath of Office’ in French, took it in Malayalam.

In the neighbouring state of Keralam- where they speak Malayalam-which shared its Governor with Tamil Nadu, the Congress Party Alliance, that opposes the BJP at the Centre, won a banquet meal and became so stuffed with it that it took a whole ten days to get it down their throats to their stomachs, an elect a Leader. Talk about stomaching a victory, after a decade in the Opposition!

In the meantime, the US President flew to China and noodled its President to work together as fantastic pals. In the US President’s world everything is great, fantastic, exemplary. Talks focussed on trade, the Iran conflict, Taiwan, and broader US-China relations. Packed like sardines, the US President brought along top US Business CEO’s and high-profile executives, about 17 of them -from technology, finance, aerospace, and other sectors to show economic muscle, and for the meat of trade opportunities in China. And to pressurise China to open-up and gobble up more of US Businesses – breakfast, lunch, and dinner served.

Not to be left behind, India’s Prime Minister(PM) decided he needed some pizza and lean-in on a melody with Italian PM Meloni. He gifted her a pack of the home-grown toffee brand Melody. And it was ‘Melodi’ in the air sang Social Media, where such events fly off the shelves as viral. But he kept the best for the last. And the Indian manufacturer of the Melody Toffee went Instagram with ‘Sweetening relationships since 1983’.

In a 5 nation tour, India’s PM started with the United Arab Emirates where he made clever plans with the Oil Sheiks to strengthen energy ties and storage of precious oil for India, amid the West Air tensions – in the process enabling gas-cooked food on the table, for Indians. In the European leg of Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, and finally Italy, he set out to deepening partnerships in trade, technology, Artificial Intelligence, innovation, green growth, and defence. At almost all the places enthusiastic foreign dancers, after probably eating spicy Indian food, danced to Indian tunes, to Indian dances.I would have loved to see Indians living abroad, after eating foreign food, dancing to foreign tunes, foreign dances!

India’s PM not only had food on his mind he also had plates as well. While in the Netherlands, he charmed them to handing over Leiden (Aanaimangalam) Copper plates one of the first Copper plates to be discovered about the great Cholas of Tamil Nadu. They were excavated by the Dutch, while in India, in the year about 1700 and brought to the Netherlands by a Pastor whose descendants donated it to Leiden University in 1862. The plates were deciphered in 1886 and found that Rajaraja Chola I had issued them and consisted of 21 copper plates held together by a bronze ring with the regal seal. The first 5 plates are in Sanskrit, rest 16 are in Tamil. They weigh about 30 kilograms and are numbered. Plates 2-21 mentions the lineage of Cholas. It also records the historic grant by Rajaraja Chola to the then Ruler of Sri Vijaya, Indonesia, for constructing a Chulamanivarma Vihara in Aanaimangalam of Nagapattinam District of Tamil Nadu. Interestingly, boundaries of the Vihara were determined by the ceremonial circumambulation of a female elephant.

In the summer of 2023, India had submitted a request to Leiden University to return the Chola Plates – with or without food on them.

These plates will now be kept by the Archaeological Survey of India in the capital, New Delhi. Never mind Tamil Nadu cried it wanted it back on its table.

Finally, India’s PM returned with more medals on his famous 56 inch wide chest – enough to make an Army General jealous. What, with many a nation gushing and rushing to honour him with their heaviest medals. I reckon it was wide, on purpose. And a Museum piece?

CAPTURED

About: We love to capture a lot of things, pictures of objects, songs, books, movies, memorabilia, experiences, news…and keep them with us, ‘cell them’ somewhere, in mysterious ways (some venture into capturing animals and humans too). I have captured these stories from the news of the world and am locking them down them. This time it’s about the United States in action, in Venezuela and Iran – along with its buddy, Israel- which captured my attention.

VENEZUELA

The whole of last year, 2025, we had a President, that of the United States of America, who began a 100 metre dash for the Nobel Peace Prize, then a 200m sprint, then a 400m run…growing gradually into a never-ending marathon jog, of sorts. Peace was still not in sight despite honestly bringing the Israel-Hamas war to an end, getting all the hostages released, and making Wild West claims of reigning-in India on its superb Operation Sindoor battering of, ‘living next-door’, Pakistan.

A new weapon called Tariff, was unleashed during 2025, by the US President. Never mind the US Supreme Court called the ‘Bluff’ (and India’s Priyanka Chopra fought hard, with an ancient Pirate blade, to keep the gold).

Meanwhile, the year turned a page and early on 3 January 2026 the President took the Peace Bull by the horns – actually working from behind, screwing its tail. If peace does not get one a Prize maybe surgical action could get one closer? Another President, Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela found himself captured in his sleep- thankfully with his wife Cilia Flores for great company-all in the blink of an eye, in the capital City Caracas. He was into narcoterrorism, drug-trafficking, and other highs affecting the American people and a New York Court wanted him captured and brought to America for justice. The US President’s men did just that. Justice at midnight-lights out, please. It did not matter he was the President of another country!

It was a ‘crack-oiled’ operation, which the Venezuelans could not see happening in the dark and where the world could clearly see the stealth and magnificent superiority of the US Armed Forces. Operation ‘Absolute Resolve’ was absolutely clinical – would make a surgeon proud!

Maduro’s government was purely authoritarian, with electoral fraud the name of the game and with human rights abuses, corruption, censorship, and severe economic hardship permanently up its sleeve: that was the order of the day, and stacking-up into a monumental heap of misdeeds. Those who were caught in the tyranny of the land were the thousands who died in extrajudicial killings and the about 7 million forced to flee the country due to economic collapse.

After the capture, Venezuelans celebrated, a new Government smoothly slid into place and began to seriously look inward at the world’s largest proven Oil Resources, perhaps to oil the US President and the world. That’s where were are.

IRAN

The Venezuelan dust on Nicolas Maduro’s boots had just begun to settle, when the roar of the Lions of Israel and the Eagle-eyes of the United States combined with deadly precision on, 28 February 2026, to send Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, thousands of leagues into the sky. Nevermind he thought he was safe with a supremely reinforced concrete and heavily fortified bunker 200 feet below Iran’s ground level, within his reach. He never got to the lift that would take him down to the underground Bunker in a 5 minute ride, but was killed by Israel’s deadly, ‘Blue Sparrow’ missile while still above ground holding a meeting. His wife, daughter, a son-in-law, a grandchild, along with a few top generals joined him in his journey to the skies above. America’s famous bunker busting GBU-57 burrowing bombs were used later to clean-up the underground world should other Iranian rats use it as a supreme getaway. Sadly, none were captured, but sent to invisible parts of the world.

For over 47 years the fundamentalist Islamic Republic of Iran has been the single greatest prime mover of death in the Middle East. It has funded, armed, and directed terror across the globe. They built Lebanon’s Hezbollah, funded Gaza’s Hamas, armed Yemen’s Houthis, spending billions a year on terrorism. They specifically targeted Americans, Israelis, Jews, Arabs, and anyone standing in their way. ‘Death to America’, ‘Death to Israel/Zionists’, were popular war cries. Others were, ‘Death to hypocrites’, ‘Death to enemies of God/Islam’. All this, on the outside world.

On the inside, all the while, Iran was quietly building nuclear weapons while shaking hands with diplomats from other countries, and bullying its own people. Tens of thousands of Iranians were killed in domestic protests and crackdowns since the year 1979. During the recent, January 2026, crackdown on protestors of the Regime, ‘ssnipers on rooftops shot protestors in their heads. Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps entered hospitals and shot and killed injured protestors in their beds. Relatives were handed over dead bodies on payment of a bullet fee-based on the number of bullets on the body. This January alone, Iran executed the largest massacre of civilians in its modern history.

They shot a 16-year-old girl, Nika Shakarami, in the street. Then snatched her body and tried to bury her in secret before her family could find her. Another 20-year-old man, Amirhesam Khodayarifard walked into a protest and was chanting peacefully. A government agent shot him in the head. They beat to death a 22-year-old woman, Mahsa Amini, over a headscarf issue, after The Guidance Patrol, the Religious Morality Police, had arrested Amini for not wearing the hijab in accordance with government’s ‘gold’ standards! Then there is the heart-wrenching story of Dr Aida Rostami, a 36-year-old Iranian General Practitioner working at the Shahid Chamran Hospital in Tehran who was secretly treating (only because she was true to The Hippocratic Oath) wounded protesters during the nationwide uprising sparked by Mahsa Amini’s death in custody. After tending to several injured people and realising she needed more supplies, she left to buy them. She called her mother earlier that evening, asking if she needed anything on her way home. She never arrived. The next day, police contacted her family claiming she had died in a ‘car accident’. They directed the family to collect her body from the forensics office. What they found instead was undeniable evidence of extreme brutality: a smashed face, broken arms, fractured shoulders, severe bruising on the lower torso indicating signs of sexual assault, and her left eye completely gouged out. The official forensics report vaguely cited death from being ‘hit by a hard object’. But medical examiners told the family privately that they had been ordered to conceal the real cause that she had been tortured and killed by security forces. Dr. Aida is one of the thousands of women who were killed by brutal anti-women Khamenei regime. These are just a few of countless horror stories of the kind. This is who they are. This is who they’ve always been.

The Israel-US joint strike on Iran was called Operation Epic Fury and the objectives centred on weakening Iran’s missile systems, naval power, and nuclear program. And disrupting the network of proxy forces that Iran has used in an asymmetric warfare to influence conflicts across the Middle East.

The strike happened even while negotiations were going-on with Iran, to prevent start of the present war. From the outset, the Iranians asserted that uranium enrichment was Iran’s inalienable right and declared their large stockpile of enriched material-about 9,980 kilograms-was off the table for negotiation. This could yield about 11 nuclear bombs if further enriched: that’s how close they are to a nuclear weapon. What killed any deal-making was probably when they told the negotiators, “We’re not going to give you diplomatically what you couldn’t take militarily.”

Experts in International Law (e.g., Natasha Hausdorff) say the war is legal and legitimate. This is especially in the background of the decades old ongoing armed conflict with Iran during which, it is well known, Iran has been consistently attacking US and Israel interests across the world. The US specifically invoked Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, saying the strikes were for self-defense and pre-emptive, and accused Iran of violating UN Security Council resolutions related to its nuclear activities. Seen in the context in which ‘Operation Roaring Lion’ was launched, Israel joining the US to strike Iran is in accordance with the international law of armed conflict.

Under International Law, the use of force by States is governed primarily by the UN Charter, Article 2(4) of which prohibits the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State. There are two main exceptions: 1-authorization by the UN Security Council under Chapter VII, or 2- self-defense under Article 51, which allows force in response to an ‘armed attack’ until the Security Council acts. Preemptive strikes (preemptive self-defense or anticipatory self-defense) refer to the use of military force by a State against another State (or non-State actor) before an armed attack has actually occurred, but when such an attack is believed to be imminent. Preventive strikes (also called preventive self-defense, preventive war, or preventive attack) refer to the use of military force by a State against another State to neutralise a potential future threat (such as acquiring nuclear weapons capability) that is not yet imminent.

At this time, the US has openly ruptured with the United Kingdom over Iran, base access, and broader British policies on energy and immigration, while treating Germany under Chancellor Friedrich Merz as a more reliable partner and moving to cut trade with Spain over NATO and base issues.

The UK did not join its ‘all-weather’ ally – the US- in the opening strikes and refused to allow its Diego Garcia base to be used by the US. However, later the UK relented and allowed limited use of other bases and even readied an aircraft carrier for duty in the Mediterranean. US President Trump castigated the UK for being very uncooperative and ruining relationships, saying – this is not the age of Churchill and they do not want the UK to join after they have won the war. He said about the same about Spain’s uncooperativeness.

On the other hand, in what never happened in about 50 years, almost all the Gulf countries of UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait of the Gulf Cooperative Council united against Iran. This is because Iran has triggered the Gulf countries to get involved. While primarily targeting US military bases and assets in the region Iran’s return-of-fire also affected civilian infrastructure in several Gulf countries due to direct strikes, interceptions, and falling debris. Overall regional impacts include few killed and over 100 injured across the Gulf, with widespread economic disruptions: thousands of flights canceled, oil prices rising due to halted production, and temporary closures of key ports and airspace. The anger in the Gulf reach a crescendo.

Then suddenly you find the Shia Muslims – Iran- on one side and the Sunni Muslims – Gulf countries on other, but united. The timeless fault lines are as visible as never before.

Looking from another angle, Trump is dismantling the British system of Imperial control, of keeping the Gulf in permanent turmoil through Britain’s much used colonial era divide & rule policy, using Islamist fundamentalism as a battering ram-obviously against Russia-and in the process keeping its commerce paying through the Lloyds Register of Shipping Insurance.

Insurance for nearly all oil tankers going through the Strait of Hormuz is provided by Lloyds and with Iran closing the Strait, Lloyds said it is terminating ‘war risk’ Insurance. Trump then outflanked the UK by ordering his Government, US Development Financial Cooperation, to provide Insurance and ordered the US Navy to ensure safe passage of Oil Tankers. This seems to be the most consequential outcome in the war, thus far, with 300 years of ‘British Crown Control’ broken in a single day.

The US seems to be digging up the former American President Franklin D Roosevelt’s (FDR) ‘America First’ Policy and re-organizing globalisation, to this end. Broadly, this plan is about using America’s methods of economic development and industrialisation on its allies, and is directly opposite to the British Imperial Rule System, which America blames is the cause for many conflicts in the World, beginning with World War I.

FDR saw the British Empire as a barrier to global peace and economic fairness, arguing that colonial systems bred resentment and instability. He advocated decolonization in regions like Africa, India (at that time under British Rule), and Asia, viewing imperialism as ‘unselfish’ only if it advanced civilization without exploitation-but he saw Britain’s model as selfish, exploitative, and outdated. FDR’s anti-colonial push was pragmatic: he feared that maintaining empires would alienate potential allies in the developing world and prolong global conflicts, harming US interests.

Donald Trump seems to be first US President who has seriously latched-on to FDR’s ideas…and is trying to make it work.

Wow, there are so many layers to the present conflict:more than what meets the eye. And surely the Middle East would look a lot different after the US & Israel – Iran War is over. Meanwhile, for Israel, it’s looks like it’s just another day in Office. And India is definitely on the right side of the conflict. India anyway is quietly dismantling the effects of British colonial rule within the country.