Jan Oberg
TFF director
February 28, 2026
Today, USrael attacked Iran, for the second time within just one year. Today also marks the 40th Anniversary of the murder of Swedish PM Olof Palme (1927-1986).
In the video below, Palme condemns the US bombings of Hanoi, Vietnam, at Xmas 1972. He paid a price for it. He lists the names of places where crimes were committed up till then.
Click on the little square button to get the English subtitles.
Today, we can add places such as Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Gaza – and on this very day, February 28, 2026, we can add Iran, Iran again and again – places Palme was spared the pain from witnessing.
The masters of war do it out of sheer psycho-political projection and accuse Russia, China, Iran and others of threatening – Trump justified his attack by reference to protecting the American people – while them themselves are infinitely more threatening, brutal and law-violating.
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I stand with the Iranian people.
During my travels in Iran, I have talked with so many of all walks of life, old and young, part of the political system and civil society. I have experienced the Iranian history, culture and unique civilisation; I have met kindness, hospitality and civilised manners everywhere – never looked down upon because I came from a region that has only done violence to Iran.
I have seen the suffering of the Iranian people because of the suffocating US sanctions since 1979, the economic war the US has fought against the Iranian people all its – lying – presidents have said they love and respect so much, also Trump today.
No matter what you think about the Iranian theocracy and its repression of the Iranians, none of what the West and Israel do can be justified. It is exactly as barbaric as the places the courageous and visionary Olof Palme mentions.
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Over 35 years, Iran has been accused – particularly by Israeli PM Netanyahu that a) it wants to become a nuclear weapons power and b) it will be able to produce nuclear weapons in a few months. The problem with these invented threats that serve as pretext for aggression is that a) is wrong and b) is right – and that proves that Iran does not want to become a nuclear weapons state. If it did, it could have acquire that status more than 20 years ago. Its leaders at different levels have stated again and again – but never reported in our media – that it does not aim to get nuclear weapons and that nukes belong to “haram” – the list of things that are forbidden in Islamic law.
Indeed, the absurd arguments behind USrael and the aggressions increase the likelihood that a future leadership of Iran will find it necessary to acquire nuclear weapons. Furthermore, it was Trump who took the US out of the JCPOA – a piece of the perhaps finest diplomacy in modern times – and thereby destroyed every kind of trust. He, not Iran, destroyed the mutual understanding and then slammed sanctions on Iran once again.
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Those who keep silent about today’s truly unprovoked aggression – in the midst of negotiations that were nothing but a war for the US to get its military in place – those who do not protest and those who support this ongoing fascism/militarism/Imperialism are complicit with the US/NATO leaders in the mentioned decades of war crimes, crimes against humanity and the systematic destruction of the UN and international law.
Tragically, I am convinced that we shall hear no criticism or protests from EU or NATO leaders. I fail to see that they have the civil courage, the ethics and the intellect to do so.
After dozens of wars and regime changes, the genocide on Palestine and this repeated harassment of the Iranian people, after Greenland, Venezuela, Ukraine, after… one must wonder what it will take before Westerners wake up to the reality about the US – the US as an Empire – and not just a US under a MAGAlomaniac narcissist militarist kind of Emperor.
Do they – naively – believe that after Trump everything will be good again in God’s Own Country? It won’t.
Trump is as American as apple pie and does nothing the Deep State doesn’t endorse first. That is, the MIMIC – the Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complex.
This is about the US Empire, addicted to militarism and arrogance, in rapid decline and bound to fall – sadly hated by more and more people worldwide, not for what it once stood for but for how it has abandoned its own finest qualities, one by one. How it has become a rogue state…
If there is one good thing about Trump it is this: He will accelerate that decline and fall faster that anyone else can. But one must fear how he will react when he and his conspirators recognise that their game is over and the world (except the EU-NATO allies) has turned its back on the US and no longer obey His Master’s Voice?
Hitler did not have access to nuclear weapons in his bunker in Berlin. Trump has too many of them.
In summary, the Trump Regime is the genuine EE – Evil Empire. And thus, the biggest single threat to humanity’s survival.
And Olof Palme’s powerful condemnation of warfare, arrogant humiliation and his later advocacy of nuclear abolition, disarmament and common security stands the test of time – while today Western (and Swedish) leaders have already failed that test.
