The Last Days of the Iranian Regime

 by Roger Kimball

Some nearly stochastic notes on Iran. I begin by singing the same song I have been crooning since President Trump announced the ceasefire and naval blockade in mid-April. The war is over. If this were a novel, we’d be in epilogue territory where we tie up some loose threads in the plot and learn about the fates of various characters.

First, let’s talk about money, or rather Iran’s lack thereof. On February 28, the US and Israeli militaries unleashed Operation Epic Fury (“Roaring Lion” in Israel). Despite what you hear from the Left (and from the Iranian propaganda mill), that was one of the most successful and also one of the quickest military operations in history. But the inventory of ships sunk, air defenses obliterated, drones and ballistic missiles incinerated, arms manufacturing infrastructure exploded, and regime leaders eliminated tells only part of the story. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent outlined another current of the narrative in his ongoing description of Operation Economic Fury.

The naval blockade, which interdicts shipping to and from Iranian ports, is costing the regime some $500 million per day. The current exchange rate is nearing two million Iranian rials for one US dollar. Iran’s effort to circumvent the blockade via land routes from Pakistan will never amount to much. Bessent summarized the status quo for regime leaders who might be puzzled:

It is very difficult for rats in a sewer pipe to know what’s going on in the outside world. Some color for the Iranian leadership as they literally sit in the dark:

1.   The United States has complete control of the Strait of Hormuz.

2.   There is a hard currency, i.e., U.S. dollar, shortage.

3.   Food and gasoline rationing are in place.

4.   The entire international community has turned against you.

5.   The BLOCKADE will continue until there is pre-February 27 Freedom of Navigation.

Many of the thugs running Iran and enforcing its terror regime have retirement accounts and other assets outside the country. The US Treasury knows all about them. “The retirement funds they thought they had outside of Iran, we are freezing. Same with their villas in the South of France. We are going to track them down, and we are going to continue the economic pressure as well as the blockade.”

According to a bulletin posted by CENTCOM on May 1, the US Navy has so far encountered 45 commercial vessels attempting to evade the blockade. All were forced to turn around. Even The Wall Street Journal, no friend of President Trump or the war in Iran, has acknowledged the success of Operation Economic Fury. “Iran Is Grasping for a Solution to an American Blockade It Can’t Break,” reads a headline from April 30.

Tehran thought it was gaining the upper hand after the war started in February as it attacked ships navigating the Strait of Hormuz, shutting down commercial traffic and blocking a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas supplies. Six weeks into the conflict, the US responded by blockading shipments from all Iranian ports.

That shut down Iran’s network of shadow ships, which for years defied US sanctions on Iran’s substantial oil exports by going dark at sea before clandestinely transferring their cargoes to China. The tankers have been unable to breach a cordon of US warships that have chased them all the way to the Indian Ocean.

How do you spell “desperation”? How about deploying mine-laying dolphins to harass maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz? That’s one of the regime’s latest tactics, suicide dolphins, along with sundry threats to cut internet cables and telecommunications infrastructure that cross the Strait.

The situation on the ground for ordinary Iranians is dire. There is a stream of reports about the regime torturing and executing protesters. Recently, notices have been plastered on city streets announcing that cell phones, Starlink hardware, satellite dishes, and VPNs are illegal. One brave Iranian using Starlink issued a harrowing story about a young father who used Starlink to get the news:

They are openly hunting us for daring to seek truth.

And they just proved they mean it.

This innocent Iranian father [second image] was using Starlink—just like me—to get real news for his family in the middle of the blackout and get the censored information out to the world. They arrested him. They tortured him. They beat him to death.

A father. A husband. A man who only wanted to protect his children from the regime’s lies.

I am using Starlink right now to write these words to you. Every single day, the regime’s agents threaten me. Every single day I know I could be next. My heart is shattered. My soul is on fire. The fear is real, and it never leaves.

But I will not stop. My country is on the line. My people are on the line. 90 million Iranians are suffocating in this 47-year nightmare.

That’s one part of the story. The other part involves ordinary citizens smashing into regime sympathizers with their cars, killing them, or members of the Iranian diaspora happily reporting on an explosion that eliminated 14 IRGC leaders. Biggest understatement of the moment: the Iranian regime is collapsing before our eyes. President Trump gave an update a few days ago:

We don’t even know who the hell we’re talking to. We call, and Mohammed picks up, the cousin of the brother-in-law of the barber . . . and I tell them: Are you the leader? We’re looking for a REAL LEADER, not a scared duck! . . .

Whoever grabs the job lasts less time than a kebab in my hand. They’re like a headless duck team: they quack, they flap . . . and in the end, one always ends up fried.

Tehran’s current line is that they will stop their attacks in the Strait of Hormuz—piddly little expostulations that they are—if the US ends the war, lifts the blockade, and postpones talk about Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Trump’s answer? Forget it. And by the way, he noted, he doesn’t want Iran to abandon its nuclear program for 5 years, 10 years, 20 years. Iran may never acquire nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, as the clock ticks and Iran’s economy slips into drain-swirling oblivion, CENTCOM commander Admiral Brad Cooper has just briefed President Trump on “final blow” strike options, including “Iran’s remaining military equipment and installations, regime/IRGC leadership, and other infrastructure.”

President Trump may very well choose to redeploy the kinetic option. We’ll see. Either way, the regime is finished. Let’s leave the last word to Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy:

We’ve learned two things from our conflict with Iran:

1.   If you turn the other cheek with Iran, they’ll stab you in the neck.

2.   President Trump has oranges the size of beach balls.

https://amgreatness.com/2026/05/03/the-last-days-of-the-iranian-regime/

What if Republicans Threatened Obama The Way Democrats Threaten Trump?

 

In the photo above, there is no light in former President Barack Obama’s eyes. That’s what struck me. Obama’s eyes are black holes framing his gleaming white teeth as he stares at President Donald Trump.  All you see is Obama’s teeth flashing.  I found the photo on Wikimedia Commons, after the Democrat left failed to assassinate the president for the third time in the past 22 months.

The Democrats responded to the assassination attempts by scoffing, smirking, laughing, protected and supported by legacy corporate media, and accusing Trump of staging the attempts on his own life.

But none dared stand up to the rabid  left that has tried to take Trump’s life and threatened the lives of other Republicans, from Republicans in Congress shot by an angry leftist at a baseball practice, to conservatives on the Supreme Court. And I wondered:

What would happen if Obama’s life had been repeatedly threatened with assassins failing three times in a matter of months and Republicans called Obama a fascist What if conservatives appear on late night TV talk shows to mock Michelle Obama the way ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel tastelessly mocked First Lady Melania Trump, and dared say Michelle was “glowing like an expectant widow?” How long would he have a show?

Don’t think of it as some parlor game. Think of it happening right now, for real.

Would Kimmel keep his $16 million salary and perks if he mocked Michelle? Would the blue cities burn at the hands of angry blacks as the cities burned during the Democrat “Summer of Love in 2020 when the left turned the violent drug-addicted thug George Floyd into a saint?

The broken legacy media won’t address this and or dare challenge their rabid leftist subscriber base. I don’t see the Chicago Tribune and the rest of Chicago media demanding that Illinois Gov. J.B Pritzker shut his Ozempically skinny lips and insist he stop inciting assassination by repeatedly screaming lies that Trump is a Nazi and Fascist?

I’m sure you can outline the issue. Three assassination attempts and they will continue because the hard left demands it.

In July 2024, a sniper tried to blow Trump’s head off on national television at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The assassin missed and took off a piece of Trump’s ear. Two months later came a second failed attempt at the president’s Palm Springs Florida golf course. And recently came that third failed attempt at the White House Correspondents Dinner on April 25th.

The above photo of Obama staring at Trump was taken by U.S. Air Force Sgt. Marianique Santos at  Trump’s, Jan. 20, 2017 Inauguration. President Trump is also showing teeth. He doesn’t appear to be all that happy.

How could he have known that  Obama had held secret meetings with his CIA and FBI chiefs, John Brennan and James Comey and others, asking them to cook up evidence falsely portraying Trump as the servant of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, as per the hysterical paranoid fantasies of Hillary Clinton.

Shortly before the photo was taken, top Obama operative Susan Rice wrote a strange email from the White House, insisting rather frantically that Obama had done everything “by the book.” Really Susan?

I’m not the only one of the opinion that the “by the book’ memo was a desperate attempt at Obama using a mindless hateful servant to cover his behind. 

In February, Rice warned that when Democrats again take power, there will be retribution aimed at Trump supporters. So gird your loins.

“If these corporations think that the Democrats, when they come back in power, are going to, you know, play by the old rules, and, you know, say, ‘Oh, never mind. We’ll forgive you for all the people you fired, all the policies and principles you’ve violated, all, you know, the laws you’ve skirted.’ I think they’ve got another thing coming,” Rice said.

In other words, if Democrats retake power and win the mid-term elections, there will be pain. And followed by Congressionally mandatory ” Two Minutes Hate.”

As Jimmy Kimmel basks in all the attention he’s getting, has anyone had the good manners to think of Tuffy Gessling?

You’ve forgotten Tuffy?

He’s the Missouri rodeo clown banned for life for mocking Obama, daring to ask the crowd if they wanted to see another clown in an Obama mask “get run down” by a bull.

Gesseling was forced to march the walk of shame and he was banned. FOR LIFE. And he was a real clown not some buffo from Chicago who had the crooked influence peddler Tony Rezko buy him a Chicago dreamhouse while presenting publicly as some kind of virtuous political reformer.

And the great Hank Williams Jr. had an iconic song, one of my favorites,  titled Are you ready for some football? It was deleted from Monday Night Football.” He called Obama some kind of Hitler. And apparently only white male Republicans  can be called the ‘h’ word, but Obama may never be mocked that way. Never, ever.

But ESPN/ABC currently defends Kimmel for his tasteless attacks on The First Lay Melania Trump and the Trump family.

The rodeo clown ws banned for life from the Missouri State Fair and said Obama supporters threatened him.

“I’ve had somebody threaten to run me over; one of them wanted to burn the house down,” Tuffy Gessling said in an interview with Kansas City CBS affiliate KCTV. “I’ve had one lady spit in my face – called me a dirty name, spit in my face and walked off.”

 

The temptation is to find a cave and wait this storm out. But the Democrats–like their Bolshevik ancestors won’t let you hide. They will pack the Supreme Court and blow up the Senate filibuster for the sake of power. They will do anything, including dragging you out of your cave to inflict the kind of pain promised by Obama commissar Susan Rice.

Obama said he didn’t know what drove Cole Tomas Allen to try to storm the White House Correspondents Dinner. That is a lie. He’s a corrupt silky. If you doubt it, look at his eyes in the photo at the top of this column. He was at the Trump inauguration but he’d already set in motion his plots to strangle the republic by the book. And Susan Rice told you what she wants done.

It’s all in the eyes. All you have to do is look and pay attention.

 

John Kass spent decades as a political writer and news columnist in Chicago working at a major metropolitan newspaper. He left when the newsroom began supporting George Soros. He is co-host of The Chicago Way podcast. And he just loves his “No Chumbolone” hat, because johnkassnews.com is a “No Chumbolone” Zone where you can always get a cup of common sense.

https://johnkassnews.com/could-republicans-threaten-the-life-of-president-obama-and-succeed/

OPEC+ to raise output by 188K bpd in June

 The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its partners (OPEC+) said on Sunday that crude oil production is set to increase by 188,000 barrels per day (bpd) in June, confirming expectations.

The official statement read that the adjustment stems from additional voluntary cuts announced in April 2023 and may be reversed depending on market conditions, emphasizing a cautious approach and flexibility in output decisions under Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee (JMMC) monitoring.

The seven OPEC+ countries stressed that they will continue to monitor conditions and adjust output if necessary. The next meeting is set for June 7, 2026.

https://breakingthenews.net/Article/OPEC+-to-raise-output-by-188K-bpd-in-June/66205064

Platner details scheme to paralyze Trump admin

 Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner unveiled a plan during an interview on Thursday to “shut this White House down” so that the Trump administration is not able to function.

“Something we’re going to have to do if we’re in the majority [is] we need to use the power we get to shut this White House down,” Platner told MS NOW host Jen Psaki during “The Briefing.” “We do that, I think one of the best ways is through committee hearings and investigations. I want the Trump Administration not to function, because everyone in the White House is being hauled under subpoena in front of a Senate committee, day after day after day, not just because one, we have so many crimes to investigate at this point, We could probably be doing this for the next 30 years.”

Platner said the Democrats need to adopt a “theory of power,” and establish goals.

“I think we need to understand that the Democratic Party needs to form a theory of power. I don’t think it’s had one for a long time,” he said. “You have to define the end state. What is the goal? What do you want to use your power in the service of? And then, how are you going to craft the policies to get there, and more importantly, build the political will and the political power to make those policies a reality?”

U.S. Senate candidate from Maine Graham Platner speaks during a campaign event with the Maine AFL-CIO, on May 1, 2026 in Portland, Maine.Getty Images

Platner said he wanted to wield the power, should the Democrats take back the House and Senate, to keep members of the administration “busy” by bringing them in for investigations.

“It’s a lever of power, using subpoena power, bringing people in for investigations, that keeps them busy and that doesn’t allow them to go start another stupid war, that doesn’t allow them to continue to give billionaires more and more and more of our economy,” he said. “And so, I think it’s very important that if we are in the majority, we’re going to wield the power that we have to rein this thing in.”

“Graham Platner is saying the quiet part out loud: Democrats’ one and only priority is obstructing the Trump Administration. President Trump and Republicans delivered historic tax cuts, created hundreds of thousands of private sector jobs, secured our border, and restored America’s standing in the world. Meanwhile, Democrats are embracing Nazi-loving communists like Graham Platner and an agenda of anarchy,” RNC Spokesperson Kristen Cianci told Fox News Digital in a statement.

Platner also argued that not a single Democratic senator should vote for a Trump administration nominee.

“I think we need to use all of the power we have around funding and the power of the purse to stop paying for these kinds of stupid wars, stop paying for agencies like ICE, stop paying for the things that the Trump Administration is doing, that are materially hurting our democracy and hurting working people,” he said. “But we need to get people into office who have a theory of power, and who understand that the purpose of power isn’t just to have it, it’s to use it. It’s to wield it.”

Platner has run a controversial campaign, including being the subject of multiple controversies, such as accusations that a tattoo he has resembles a “Totenkopf,” a Nazi SS symbol.

He was running in Maine’s Democratic Primary against Gov. Janet Mills, who announced Thursday that she is dropping out.

Mills had the full backing of the Democratic machine when she entered the Senate race last year, receiving endorsements from Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and prominent Democratic groups.

However, Platner was backed by Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., and Martin Heinrich, D-N.M.

https://nypost.com/2026/05/01/media/lefty-senate-candidate-graham-platner-details-scheme-to-stop-trump-admin-from-functioning/

Omar’s name came up 6x in $250M fraud case as she loosened oversight of fed funded food plans

 “Squad” Rep. Ilhan Omar’s name appears at least six times in recently resurfaced court documents from the $250 million Feeding Our Future fraud case, fueling speculation about whether the Minnesota socialist had a hand in the widespread scam in her district.

The documents were part of the 2025 federal trial of Aimee Bock, the founder of the Feeding our Future nonprofit who was convicted of wire fraud, conspiracy, and bribery for masterminding the scheme that falsely claimed to serve millions of meals to children while pocketing federal funds through bogus food sites and shell companies. Bock is in custody awaiting a sentencing hearing on May 21.

Omar came up in a Feb. 5, 2021 email chain with Bock, with the subject line “help with USDA food program,” the trial exhibits show.

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Omar’s name appears at least six times in recently resurfaced court documents from the fraud case.James Keivom

The Congresswoman’s MEALS act loosened oversight of federally funded food programs during the pandemic, which critics said paved the way for the Feeding Our Future’s fake claims and inflated reimbursements.

A few days after Bock’s email to Omar, on Feb. 28, Bock exchanged messages with Abdikerm Eidleh, a Feeding Our Future employee who fled the country after he was indicted in 2022. The subject line of their emails was “Ilhan’s Office,” according to the court documents.

While the list of exhibits is public, the contents have been sealed by the court.

The exhibits also include a text message string between Bock and Omar, which was uncovered during a raid of Bock’s Minnesota house, records show.

Bock has been leaking documents from behind bars through her college-age son ahead of her sentencing to try to shift some of the blame to elected officials, Minnesota federal prosecutors have alleged.

It’s unclear if those leaked documents were related to Omar.

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Bock was convicted of wire fraud, conspiracy, and bribery for masterminding the Feeding Our Future scheme.Leila Navidi/TNS via ZUMA Press Wire / Shutterstock

After she failed to show up last week to a hearing of the Minnesota Fraud Committee on the case, committee chair and state assemblywoman Kristin Robbins sent Omar a letter demanding she turn over correspondence related to the case.

“I think it shows just incredible arrogance and disdain for the people of Minnesota,” Robbins, who’s running as a GOP candidate to take over lefty Tim Waltz’s job as governor, told The Post.

“She is refusing to show up and answer questions in person, she’s refusing to respond to our requests for data, and I mean, honestly, she’s even refusing to respond at all. When I say they ghosted us, it’s because we’ve had no replies. She’s an elected public official, she should at least want to share with the public how her office was involved in this, and I think taxpayers deserve that.”

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Bock, posing with a man in a black luxury convertible, is in jail awaiting sentencing on May 21.Obtained by NY Post

“We need to understand what they were communicating about.”

Omar has until May 5 to turn over documents to the committee.

https://nypost.com/2026/05/02/us-news/ilhan-omars-name-came-up-6-times-in-resurfaced-trial-exhibits-from-feeding-our-future-fraud-case/