Donald Trump delivers a video address on social media announcing the US and Israeli attack on Iran on February 28thIn 2007, John McCain, then seeking the Republican Party nomination for the United States presidency, sang “bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran” to the tune of the Beach Boys’ hit version of Barbara Ann at a campaign event in South Carolina. In 2019, political scientist Marco Overhaus said: “Trump’s Iran policy looks like a pressure cooker without a release valve.” Now the cooker has exploded. There was a time when Iranian nationalists, dealing with the imperialism of Britain and of Russia, captured the Irish nationalist imagination. The Iranian nationalist press reciprocated by embracing the nationalist martyrdom of Roger Casement, executed after the 1916 Rising. What struck her, in looking at centuries of Iranian history, was “the propensity of Iranians to mount mass movements that challenge, often successfully, the powers that be”.

Source: The Irish Times March 06, 2026 15:03 UTC