by Matt Agorist, The Free Thought Project:

Late Thursday night, without any congressional authorization, president Donald Trump ordered and carried out the assassination of one of the most powerful people in Iran, knowingly setting off what could amount to a new world war. Qassim Suleimani, the leader of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, was killing in Iraq “to protect U.S. personnel abroad,” according to the Pentagon. In reality, however, this move just hurled the United States and its citizens into perpetual danger and inevitable chaos and debt.

The saber rattling began last week when the US accused Iran of killing an American contractor. “Iran killed an American contractor, wounding many,” Trump tweeted. “We strongly responded, and always will. Now Iran is orchestrating an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Iraq. They will be held fully responsible. In addition, we expect Iraq to use its forces to protect the Embassy, and so notified!”

The American contractor, to whom Trump is referring was reportedly killed during an alleged attack on an Iraqi military base. After the alleged attack, Trump immediately blamed Iran via the Iraqi Shi’a militia. US officials offered zero proof that Ketaib Hezbollah was behind the alleged attack, but did say the group has links to Iran’s Quds Forces. Iran immediately denied any involvement and called the US response a “clear example of terrorism.”

Nevertheless, Trump violated the constitution and unilaterally carried out an act of war against Iran, and assassinated the second most powerful person in the country.

Following the assassination of Suleimani, Iran’s National Security Council called an emergency meeting in which they vowed “vigorous revenge against America” for his death. Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif decried the attack, saying it was a “foolish escalation” and that the “US bears responsibility for all consequences of its rogue adventurism.”

Indeed.

To those foolish enough to be supporting such idiotic war games, consider the fact that Iran is not Iraq or Afghanistan or Syria or Libya. Iran’s military is ranked as the 14th most powerful armed forces in the world by Global Firepower’s 2019 Military Strength Ranking. A war with them would not resemble that of a war with Iraq. Instead, Americans would see large scale cyber attacks on our infrastructure, clandestine operations carried out inside the United States, and potential nuclear fallout. Hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties are likely.

The implications of such a war are grave and it appears that many people, at least in the Twitterverse, know this. After the attack, multiple iterations of ‘World War III’ began trending on Twitter.

A reassuring list of trends for the start of #2020 #WWIII etc pic.twitter.com/IkJiGUrVYY

— Bel Trew (@Beltrew) January 3, 2020

This is the current state of America in 2020, war is a distant thought, which takes place elsewhere and can be reduced to a hashtag. Despite the horrific consequences of such a conflict with Iran, neocons have been salivating over the idea for decades and no MAGA folks — who previously did not support the war — are also salivating. In fact, neocons predicted this very instance. In May of 2018, then National Security Adviser, John Bolton predicted that by the end of 2019, the US will be at war with Iran. He was only a few days off.

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