The helicopters lifting off from Baghdad aren’t just precautionary. They are symbolic. Not of retreat this time, but of the carefully staged theatre that primes the public for conflict. The evacuation of nonessential staff from the U.S. embassy in Iraq, alongside the voluntary departure of military families across Gulf bases, is being spun as a matter of security protocol. But the logic is older, and more cynical: protect the assets, then light the match.
This isn’t just a diplomatic shuffle. It’s a staging ground for confrontation with Iran, weeks after Trump’s Camp David meeting where, according to leaks, military options were very much on the table. The timing isn’t accidental. The nuclear negotiations have hit their terminal phase. Trump set a two-month deadline. That deadline expires this week. As ever, the illusion of diplomacy masks the readiness for force. Israel is reportedly on high alert. Washington is preparing the ground. The evacuation tells us not that war is inevitable—but that its infrastructure is already being assembled.
The language is measured. “Voluntary departures.” “Mission footprint reduction.” “Security posture adjustments.” But beneath the euphemism is a hawkish impulse barely disguised. Tehran has threatened retaliation if its nuclear facilities are struck. CENTCOM claims it’s monitoring. The Pentagon says it’s about safety. But the sudden urgency. The maritime alerts, the movement of personnel, the clearing of soft targets suggests something more than routine threat management.
“This is Trump’s second term writ large: ICE snatch squads and disappearances at home, while the sabre is rattled abroad for the old enemy.”
This is not just a split screen—it is a single picture. This is Trump’s second term writ large: ICE snatch squads and disappearances at home, while the sabre is rattled abroad for the old enemy. Domestic repression and foreign aggression are not two tracks, but one. The militarised border and the bomb bay door are expressions of the same logic. Mass raids on migrants, military on the streets of LA, journalists branded enemy agents. The apparatus of violence is being retooled for both internal and external use. Tehran becomes the perfect external threat: familiar, demonised, historically enmeshed in U.S. imperial fantasy.
This is not strategy, it’s choreography. Drain the region of civilians, ratchet up military presence, then frame every counter-move as aggression. It’s a script. We’ve seen it before in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Syria. The language of protection gives way to the logic of dominance. And the media, for the most part, plays along. The New York Times calls it a “precautionary adjustment.” CNN warns of “regional instability.” It’s the same cautious vocabulary that once sold ‘weapons of mass destruction’ as imminent threat. This is not a crisis of diplomacy. It’s the stage-managed build-up to war.
There’s little public appetite for another war in the Middle East, but that was true in 2003 too. The real audience isn’t the American people; it’s the dominant class, defence contractors, Gulf allies, and the cluster of think tanks and ideologues who’ve been pushing for confrontation with Iran since the Bush years. And now, with Trump back in office and Netanyahu spoiling for a wider regional conflagration, they smell opportunity. However, this time Iran will push back.
“There’s little public appetite for another war in the Middle East, but that was true in 2003 too.”
We are told this is about deterrence. But deterrence against what? A sovereign country pursuing a nuclear programme that, though aggressive, remains a response to decades of sanctions, sabotage, and assassinations? We speak of Iranian aggression, but forget the saboteurs and cyberwarriors already deep inside the reactor rooms. Tehran, for all its own authoritarian reflexes, is acting from a posture of encirclement and survival. Unlike the U.S., it does not have 800 military bases or a naval presence in every ocean.
This is how the war machine works: dominate the language, dictate the timeline, displace the memory. The helicopters over Baghdad are a message. Not to Tehran, but to us. The war machine is turning. Again. Quietly. Predictably. And still, the pundits will ask whether this is a ‘last chance for peace’—as if peace were ever anything more than a talking point between weapons deals.
