Friday Bite 13 March 2026

Operation Epic Flub

“Death, Fire, and Fury will reign [sic] upon them…” Donald Trump, 9 March.

“We’ve won. Let me tell you, we’ve won. You know, you never like to say too early you won. We won,” Donald Trump, 11 March

“This is Ronald Reagan Plus. Donald Trump is resetting the world in a way nobody could have dreamed of a year ago. He is the greatest commander in chief of all time. Our military is the best of all time. Iran is going down, and Cuba is next.” Lindsay Graham, 8 March

“I assure everyone that we will not forgo taking vengeance for the blood of your martyrs,” Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, 12 March

A WEEK IS a long time in war.

Within hours of Israel’s and the United States’ attack on Iran, many European and Commonwealth countries lent their support by sending ships to the Mediterranean and the Gulf – France sent its entire fleet – or opening up their air bases to American planes. Not so the United Kingdom. Sir Keir said no, inviting an immediate response from Donald Trump that he was “no Churchill”. The prime minister argued that the UK was not in the business of attacking other countries, unless it was in self-defence. And, indeed, when Iran fired back, the United Kingdom agreed to allow American bombers to use its military bases, got HMS Dragon out of hibernation and put the aircraft carrier Prince of Wales and the landing ship, RFA Lyme Bay on notice.

Too little, too late. The damage was done; the “special relationship” in tatters.

However, for once, Sir Keir appears to have been on the right side of history, since the cries of “illegal war” have been echoing across the world.

Nonetheless, Sir Keir’s prime ministership continues to be on a knife-edge, and if it weren’t for the fact that there is no one to replace him, Thursday’s release of documents revealing that he was fully informed of Mandelson’s hugely compromised position in regard to Jeffrey Epstein, Starmer would no longer be a lame duck, but a dead one.

AS I WATCH news coverage of the war in Iran, my heart sinks. Earlier today (Thursday) a written statement, purportedly by the newly elected Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, who may or may not be injured, in a coma or dead, was read out on Iranian television. It was clear that this was no leader and no regime ready to lay down arms and head to the negotiating table. If anything, they have doubled down. Khamenei vowed to keep the Strait of Hormuz closed and stated that Iran would continue to attack US bases in the region. The Supreme Leader demanded compensation from the United States and threatened to expand the war further afield.

Without the benefit of a time of birth, there is not a lot to take away from the above chart. The Sun in Virgo suggests he is a thinker and more of a behind-the-scenes player, yet the Sun is square Mars so he’s a fighter and not afraid to take risks, nor to say what he thinks. The Moon is in Leo, and if he was indeed born in the morning, transiting Pluto will be opposing the Moon, which would certainly chime with his entire family having been wiped out by the American/Israeli attack. Another interesting factor is that the major transits of the time – the Saturn-Neptune conjunction opposing natal Uranus and transiting Uranus opposing Neptune – are suggestive of a greater force currently at work in his life.

IN LAST WEEK’S Bite I mentioned that the war on Iran was America’s folly, and events of the past few days have done nothing to change my mind.

“My feeling is… that this war is America’s folly. The attack on Iran, its whys and wherefores and its legitimacy are in doubt and typical of Neptunian chaos and confusion, illusion and delusion. It has been ill-conceived and there are far too many unseen factors to contend with. At the very least, this war will be a stain on Donald Trump’s presidency… America will pay a heavy price for its actions… and this war will have untold consequences. Maybe we’ll see signs of light once Mercury turns direct (20 March) but even if the missiles stop in a matter of weeks, what has been stirred up may take years to settle down. And, one way or another, Iran and its proxies will not let its enemies’ actions go unacknowledged. There will be trouble. And on the streets of Western cities.”

It has always seemed to me from the perspective of Iran’s charts, that the leadership, which is still intact by the way, and, according to US intelligence “not at risk of collapse any time soon” remains strong. And Iran, despite having its navy decimated, its missile-launching capacity largely destroyed and much of its infrastructure severely damaged, was in a stronger position than the US, which is suffering from the Saturn-Neptune conjunction on its IC and Uranus squaring its Moon. So I am not in the least surprised that Iran has not only fought back but that it now has the upper hand.

In the video I recorded on Monday and will air on Saturday, I discussed the possibility of the war ending, or at least the bombs stopping, before the end of March. The war began when Mercury was in retrograde so there is likely to be a change of pace and direction when Mercury heads into direct motion on 20 March. The trouble is, even if the Trump administration “declares victory and leaves”, Iran is by no means done, and its intention appears to be to continue a war of attrition for years.

The prevailing view is that Trump, now backed into a corner and in no mood to admit defeat, will put boots on the ground. I hope this is not the case, but we will probably find out in the next few days. What I do know is that regardless that the world would be a safer place without this barbarous and pitiless Iranian regime in situ, America and Israel’s war is and was not the answer. And, far from making the world a safer place and Iran Great Again, has instead made the threat of World War III a lot more real.

Friday Bite 6 March 2026

Known Knowns, Known Unknowns and Unknown Unknowns

“So many of our traditional allies who wring their hands and clutch their pearls, hemming and hawing about the use of force. America, regardless of what so-called international institutions say, is unleashing the most lethal and precise air power campaign in history…. No stupid rules of engagement, no nation-building quagmire, no democracy-building exercise, no politically correct wars. We fight to win, and we don’t waste time or lives.  Pete Hegseth, 2 March.

“[The assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader is a] cynical violation of all norms of human morals.” Vladimir Putin, 28 February.

“Hey, Kristi Noem, don’t let the door hit you on the way out. Here’s your legacy: corruption and chaos. Parents and children tear-gassed. Moms and nurses, U.S. citizens getting shot in the face. Now that you’re gone, don’t think you get to just walk away. I guarantee you, you will still be held accountable.” JB Pritzker, Governor of Illinois, 5 March.

LAST WEEK’S FRIDAY Bite was published around seven in the evening, UK time. My final words proved prescient: “Last June Operations Midnight Hammer and Rising Lion took place on a Mars-Uranus square so it is not inconceivable and certainly astrologically appropriate that another strike on Iran is in the pipeline, very possibly in the days surrounding the total lunar eclipse.”.

And so it was that in the early hours of Saturday morning, three days before the total lunar eclipse, Operation Epic Fury began. In the following days, outrage and praise in equal measure rained down on the United States and Israel, yet as each hour goes by the future of this war grows more uncertain while it spreads incrementally across the Middle East.

It was still Friday night in America when US and Israeli missiles began to fall on cities across Iran; just after eight in the morning, the first day of the working week for Iranians. It has emerged that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and several top government officials were among the first targets to be successfully eliminated – and just for the record, it took 50 jets and 100 bombs to destroy the underground bunker used by the Iranian leadership – since then, 1,114 Iranians have been killed, 150 of them children at an elementary girls’ school in Minab, southern Iran, 120 people in Lebanon, 28 Israelis and six US military personnel.

During the course of the past five days, the Iranian military has launched counter attacks across the region sending missiles and drones into Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE, Jordon, Iraq and Azerbaijan. Cyprus, where Britain has a military base from which coordinated operations with the US have been conducted, was also the target of a drone attack. Major international hotels have been hit, air travel disrupted, tourists stranded and in consequence oil prices have soared and markets have plunged. Iran has effectively closed the major international shipping lane, the Strait of Hormuz, through a combination of actual drone attacks and the fear of more to come. And within the last twenty-four hours, Israel has launched massive strikes against the southern suburbs of Beirut after ordering a mass evacuation – more than 500,000 people – from the area. Just where are half a million people meant to go?

Donald Trump, after initially assuring the American public that the war would not last long, is now talking about “as long as it takes” and demanding “unconditional surrender” before any talks can begin. Indeed, far from reassuring America and the rest of the world that this offensive is going according to plan, if not better than expected, the lack of coherence and cohesion among Trump, his top officials and various administration spokespeople would say otherwise.

Prime Minister Starmer found himself on the naughty step once again, after initially refusing to allow the United States to use bases on British soil to which it is entitled, while Spain is no longer a trading partner with the US due to its fierce stance against the war and its insistence on the pre-eminence of international law, which America appears to have flouted.

So, while the fire and fury threaten to spread throughout the Middle East, if not beyond, relationships between America and its allies are in disarray to say the least. Is this how World War III begins? Or are we already there? Or is this simply another war in another part of the world that will at some point end?”

I’m going to start with the chart of Operation Epic Fury from the standpoint of the United States. The planets occupy the same degrees as they do from Tehran’s perspective but, of course, they fall in different parts of the horoscopic circle. Scorpio rises, placing Pluto, the ruler, in the third house, opposing the Moon in the ninth. In a nutshell, America is sending a powerful message to the peoples of a distant country! Mars, the old ruler of Scorpio, is placed at 28 degrees of Aquarius (the degree of the recent solar eclipse) and closely squaring Uranus in the seventh house. In a nutshell, America is using its fighting power against an “open enemy”. That the degree of the solar eclipse is picked up, in this case by Mars, adds a certain aura of fate and destiny to the mix.

The Moon, however, is void of course – it is not making an applying major aspect to any planet before it leaves the sign of Cancer – although it is forging an applying quincunx to Mars, which I am tempted to allow, especially since it is the degree of a solar eclipse.

If the Moon is void of course, it is said that nothing will come of the matter. That, I believe, is spurious as far as this particular event is concerned, because something will very definitely come of the matter, whether America succeeds in muzzling Iran and preventing it from sponsoring terror and threatening the world by developing nuclear weapons, or it turns out to be the precursor to another world war, if not the biblical end times.

My feeling about this chart, based on the Saturn-Neptune conjunction, which is currently conjoining the US natal IC, and the Venus-Mercury conjunction which is opposing the US Neptune, is that this war is America’s folly. The attack on Iran, its whys and wherefores and its legitimacy are in doubt and typical of Neptunian chaos and confusion, illusion and delusion. It has been ill-conceived and there are far too many unseen factors to contend with. At the very least, this war will be a stain on Donald Trump’s presidency.

With five planets in the twelfth house, even though Iran was not unprepared for an American-Israeli strike, when it came, it was out of the blue. The Trump administration had done an effective job with its disinformation programme, courtesy of Neptune. Aries rises, and within four degrees of Iran’s Sun (Islamic Republic chart, April 1979) placing Mars (on the eclipse degree) in the eleventh house squaring Uranus. Jupiter is strengthened by its conjunction to the IC and squaring the Ascendant-Descendant axis. And Jupiter serves a highly protective function.

What is also worthy of note is that the Ascendant-Descendant axis picks up America’s natal Saturn. This connection has two main meanings, first, that America believes it is its responsibility, if not its destiny, to “take out” Iran, or at least its barbaric leadership, and second, that America will pay a heavy price for its actions.

It is clear, listening to a pumped-up Hegseth, that the administration has no regard for the rules of engagement or the ethics of war – no care for international law, even if it is largely a “gentleman’s agreement”. What matters is winning. Might is right. In Trump world, you shoot first and don’t answer questions later. It is a far cry from yesteryear.

My belief is that this war will have untold consequences. Maybe we’ll see signs of light once Mercury turns direct (20 March) but even if the missiles stop in a matter of weeks, what has been stirred up may take years to settle down. And, one way or another, Iran and its proxies will not let its enemies’ actions go unacknowledged. There will be trouble. And on the streets of Western cities.

Just in case you were too young to remember the Iraq War (2003-2011) the words at the top of this Friday Bite were spoken by the late Donald Rumsfeld, former US Secretary of Defence in regard to the weapons of mass destruction Saddam Hussein may or may not have had. They seem eerily appropriate.