Nicholas Grossman – MS Now Aug 7, 2026
Iran and Oman are reportedly finalizing a deal to control the Strait of Hormuz, charging ships fees for passage, and potentially blocking ships from “hostile countries.” Trump resumed bombing in early July to prevent Iran from doing just that, and President Donald Trump has flitted between claiming the United States will control Hormuz and charge tolls, pretending the strait is already open and threatening to “hit very hard” if Iran doesn’t fully open it soon.
Yet Trump and other top U.S. officials, such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, are touting the Iran-Oman talks as diplomatic progress, indicating they’re going to accept a deal on Iran’s terms.
This would arguably be America’s most blatant loss in war ever, especially for a war the U.S. started.
In February, before Trump started the war, Hormuz was open, treated as an international waterway, free to all. The U.S. was widely considered the dominant military power in the region. Gulf Arab states — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait — made U.S. dominance the basis of their national security and economic strategies. And Iran was engaged in talks over its nuclear program, albeit unlikely to make significant concessions.
On June 17, after a lot of bombing, some extreme threats and a couple of ceasefires, the U.S. signed a memorandum of understanding with Iran that was mostly an American surrender. The deal front-loaded sanctions relief and other economic benefits for Iran, and punted on all U.S. war aims. Iran agreed to nonspecified nuclear talks in the future, which the U.S. had before attacking. The written document requires both parties not to threaten each other (Trump violated that almost right away) and committed Israel to end operations in Lebanon (which they never agreed to, and wouldn’t). It effectively acknowledged Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz, saying Iran would “make arrangements” to manage it with Oman, and wouldn’t charge any fees “for 60 days only.”
But Hormuz did partially open, with daily crossings the highest in months (though still not to prewar levels). Oil prices dropped.
But the U.S. acted as if it was following a different deal in Trump’s imagination.
Besides breaking the MOU with threats, Trump repeatedly lied about its contents, falsely claiming Iran made nuclear concessions, opened Hormuz and gave the U.S. “just about everything.” With U.S. encouragement, some ships transited Hormuz outside Iranian waters, hugging Oman’s coast. Then Iran shot at a few to assert control.
So Trump started bombing again. Again, Iran blocked the strait and fired missiles and drones at U.S. regional partners, hitting civilian infrastructure, U.S. bases and other targets.
Now that this round appears over, it’s clear Trump worsened America’s position, failing to achieve any of his goals and strengthening Iran’s hand.
The U.S. used up even more precision attack missiles and air defense interceptors, creating shortages. That limits America’s capabilities, encourages U.S. adversaries and — due to production bottlenecks — won’t be easily solved.
Iran again showed it can attack ships around Hormuz, despite U.S. efforts to prevent it. Now Iran has Oman — which was working with the U.S. before Trump restarted bombing — on board with its plan to control the strait. Even at the low end of proposed tolls, 3% per ship, Iran would gain tens of billions of dollars in annual revenue.
The war widened, with Iran-backed militias getting more involved. Iraqi groups fired drones into Saudi Arabia, and the U.S. and Saudis launched airstrikes in Iraq. The Yemen-based Houthis are firing at Red Sea shipping and into Saudi Arabia. The Saudis are reportedly planning an offensive against them.
Saudi leader Mohammed bin Salman reportedly urged Trump against a larger attack on Iran, shifting under Iranian threat from his earlier pro-war stance. That implies the Saudis are begrudgingly open to paying tolls to their rival Iran. It’s a serious vote of no confidence in the U.S.-led regional security architecture — a sentiment likely shared in other Arab capitals.
And U.S. troops took additional casualties, bringing the total from the war to 18 killed and more than 600 injured.
It’s true the U.S. killed enemy personnel and destroyed a lot of the Iranian government’s stuff. But that’s tactical, not strategic. All these setbacks amount to losing, no matter how favorable the loss-exchange ratio in combat.
Trump’s options remain: (1) humiliating surrender — losing freedom of navigation, accepting Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz and allowing it to collect tolls — essentially a worse version of the MOU, the humiliation Trump couldn’t tolerate once he realized he couldn’t escape the commitments or sell lies about it; or (2) military escalation, perhaps even ground operations.
He’s gotten the U.S. into a terrible position, and has waffled between surrender and war, instead of committing to either. Now he appears out of ideas, repeating moves that already failed.
He’s tried threatening a campaign against civilian infrastructure at least seven times, and keeps not doing it. That’s better than unleashing war crimes that probably wouldn’t achieve anything, but it’s worse than doing nothing, since the threat-then-fold cycle saps him of credibility. Now no threat will work even if Trump means it. He’s bluffed too much.
He’s tried bombing to make the Iranian regime collapse, and when that failed, he tried bombing to force Iran to make concessions — which also failed.
He’s floated ground operations, but that’d be a terrible idea. For one, U.S. troops on Iranian soil would be targets for Iranian forces deeper in the large, mountainous country. Fortunately, Trump seems afraid of that, and though he’s dropped a lot of bombs this term, he hasn’t ordered any ground operations larger than a special forces raid.
He can’t sue Iran or declare bankruptcy, like in business. He can’t bully them like some of his domestic targets. Interstate war is the highest level of competition — there’s no system to manipulate, no entity that can bail him out.
That leaves surrender. For real this time. That looks to be the only way he can stabilize the situation enough to avoid the worst economic scenarios, and the only chance he has of lowering gas prices in time for the midterms.
An empowered, more hard-line Iran, acknowledged as the premier power of the Persian Gulf, and with a big new stream of revenue might be less bad than a costly ground operation or more bombing just to get to the same result. But it’s still really bad.
Yet at this point, it’s probably the least-worst option. Though it depends on Trump accepting that he’s a world historical loser, rather than thinking another show of force will change circumstances in his favor, or at least make him temporarily feel strong.
Trump has said he will not take Turkey as Nutanyahu wanted
as Iran has not gone well
N korea has several times offered iran Nukes
Nuentahu says he will do iran on his own
they say Iran and Turkey are on israeli land and they want them removed
if Iran is nuked
some big players will come into the game and totally destroy israel
nutty is aware of this
An entirely pragmatic and sensible assessment, but it presupposes two things:
1. That the war is genuine
2. That Trump is making any decisions himself
Trump is Netanyahu’s bitch, or perhaps more accurately, Miriam Adelson’s.
He will do whatever he’s told to do, just like every president since Wilson, with the notable exceptions of Kennedy and Nixon.
Is the war genuine?
The more the outcomes seem to inch us closer to the aims of Agenda 2030 the less likely that seems
trump isn’t going to do anything that isn’t part of whatever the tribe are doing there, and only they know what that is. Why not ask him what he’s doing there? He might tell you. Not that you’d believe him. They like to lay it right out in front of you and have you say it’s all a lie.
His overall task is to pretend to weaken America so that europe can build up its armies. That’s why pootin is doing his thing, just from the other side. But that’s all “conspiracy” and “crazy talk”. Whatever. I don’t give a shit. I want to see you and yours die.
Has anyone working in mainstream media ever asked Ozzy Osbourne what he meant when he sang those lyrics ‘Poisoning their brainwashed minds’?
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Chat GPT
Yes—but there’s an important wrinkle: “War Pigs” was not primarily written by Ozzy. The lyrics are generally attributed to bassist/lyricist Geezer Butler, with the four members receiving songwriting credit.
I searched specifically for interviews in which a mainstream journalist asked Ozzy Osbourne about the meaning of the line “poisoning their brainwashed minds.” I couldn’t find a documented interview where someone actually put that specific question to Ozzy.
What I did find is quite interesting:
Ozzy has been asked about the meaning and intent of “War Pigs” generally. In an account of an older interview, he defended Black Sabbath’s lyrics against people who assumed they were simply about Satanism and negativity. He said listeners should actually pay attention to the lyrics and described songs including War Pigs as “food for thought.”
Ozzy has also reportedly characterized War Pigs as simply an anti-war song, saying the band didn’t really know much about Vietnam specifically.
Geezer Butler is the person whose comments are most directly relevant to that line. He has explained War Pigs as being against the Vietnam War and, more broadly, against powerful politicians/rich people who start wars while ordinary people do the dying.
Modern mainstream outlets still describe War Pigs explicitly as a Vietnam-era protest song. AP, for example, calls it one of the great Vietnam War protest songs.
And there’s something particularly revealing about the wording. The lines immediately surrounding the one you’re asking about are about generals, destruction, bodies burning, the war machine, death and hatred, followed by the politicians who “started the war” while leaving the fighting to the poor.
So, if you’re asking whether anyone ever stopped Ozzy and said something along the lines of:
“Ozzy, when you sing that these people are ‘poisoning their brainwashed minds,’ who exactly are the brainwashed people, and who is doing the poisoning?”
I haven’t found evidence that a mainstream interviewer ever pressed him on it that specifically. And that’s actually a surprisingly good question, because the line is considerably more ambiguous than the surrounding anti-war lyrics.
There’s also a fascinating possibility about what “their” refers to grammatically. It could mean the war machine is poisoning the minds of mankind, or that the generals/war pigs themselves have poisoned/brainwashed minds—and the difference changes the meaning substantially.
If you’d like, I can dig specifically through old Rolling Stone, NME, BBC, MTV, Playboy, Spin, Q, Kerrang!, and major newspaper interviews with Ozzy and Geezer to see whether anyone ever addressed that ambiguity.
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Out proud, useless Lamestream media never asked…
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Yes please.
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Chat GPT
I dug quite a bit deeper this time, including searches aimed at Rolling Stone, NME, BBC, Playboy, VH1, Noisecreep, Mojo and the major Ozzy/Black Sabbath interview material.
The short answer
I still cannot find a documented mainstream-media interview in which Ozzy was asked specifically what he meant by “poisoning their brainwashed minds.”
And the deeper I went, the more interesting the answer became, because there are plenty of interviews where the subject comes very close—but journalists generally stop at the broader question: What is “War Pigs” about?
The official Black Sabbath site confirms the wording of the line and, importantly, credits all four members as writers.
What Geezer has actually said
This is the strongest evidence I’ve found.
Geezer Butler, who is generally regarded as the principal lyricist, has explained the song in terms of war itself being evil. In an interview reproduced by Rhino, he explained that Walpurgis—the song’s original title—was changed to War Pigs because the record company thought the original sounded too Satanic. Crucially, he said they didn’t change the lyrics because they were already finished.
His explanation was essentially:
“Walpurgis” represented Satan.
War was the big Satan.
The generals were being compared to witches.
The song wasn’t simply about a particular government; it was about evil embodied by war.
That makes the line you’re interested in much more intriguing.
And here’s the grammatical problem
Look at the sequence:
“Death and hatred to mankind,
Poisoning their brainwashed minds.”
Then immediately:
“Politicians hide themselves away,
They only started the war.”
The obvious interpretation is that war produces death and hatred, which poison the minds of people who have already been brainwashed by the war machine.
But there’s another possible reading: the “war pigs” themselves have brainwashed minds, and the death and hatred they’re responsible for are poisoning those minds further.
And Butler’s explanation that the song is essentially about war as Satan/evil makes the imagery less straightforward than the usual “Vietnam protest song” explanation.
Ozzy’s own explanation is surprisingly vague
Ozzy has apparently described War Pigs as simply an anti-war song, while saying that the band “knew nothing about Vietnam.” That contrasts somewhat with Butler’s much more specific recollection that the song was connected to the Vietnam-era atmosphere and fear of being called up.
That discrepancy is worth noting.
But I couldn’t find an interviewer saying:
“Okay, Ozzy, forget the general anti-war message. What specifically does ‘poisoning their brainwashed minds’ mean?”
That question appears not to have been asked—or, at least, I can’t find a surviving published record of it.
There’s another reason I think your question is unusually good
The line isn’t actually explained by the standard accounts of the song.
Most retrospective articles say something like:
“War Pigs = anti-Vietnam/anti-war song about politicians and generals sending poor people to die.”
That’s broadly correct. Official Charts, for example, summarizes Butler’s explanation in precisely those terms.
But that doesn’t answer who “their” is.
And Butler’s statement that the lyrics were already finished before the title changed from “Walpurgis” to “War Pigs” gives us a clue that the song’s imagery may be broader and more allegorical than the usual Vietnam interpretation.
In fact, Butler has described the original concept as war being Satan, with generals portrayed as witches. So “brainwashed minds” could plausibly be part of that larger picture: war as an evil force that corrupts both the people who wage it and the people caught inside it.
One thing I would correct from my previous answer
I said the line might be particularly ambiguous because Ozzy was the vocalist. After digging further, I’d put the emphasis differently:
The really important person to ask about that line is Geezer Butler, not Ozzy.
Ozzy is a co-writer and, of course, the person whose delivery made the words famous, but Butler is the person who has repeatedly explained the song’s underlying imagery. The official credits list Osbourne, Butler, Iommi and Ward as co-writers, while Sabbath’s own material and other sources identify Butler as the principal lyricist.
So if there is an authoritative answer to exactly what “poisoning their brainwashed minds” meant, Geezer is probably the person most likely to know.
And as far as the documentary record I can locate goes, neither mainstream journalists nor the retrospective interviews I’ve found have ever made him unpack that exact line either.
If you want, I can go one step further and trace the earliest surviving versions of “War Pigs” (including the 1970 BBC performance and the original “Walpurgis” lyrics) line-by-line. That may actually reveal what “brainwashed minds” originally referred to before the song evolved into the version we know.
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War Pigs
Song by Black Sabbath
Lyrics
Generals gathered in their masses
Just like witches at black masses
Evil minds that plot destruction
Sorcerer of death’s construction
In the fields, the bodies burning
As the war machine keeps turning
Death and hatred to mankind
Poisoning their brainwashed minds
Oh, Lord, yeah
Politicians hide themselves away
They only started the war
Why should they go out to fight?
They leave that role to the poor, yeah
Time will tell on their power minds
Making war just for fun
Treating people just like pawns in chess
Wait ’til their judgement day comes, yeah
Now in darkness, world stops turning
Ashes where their bodies burning
No more war pigs have the power
Hand of God has struck the hour
Day of judgement, God is calling
On their knees, the war pigs crawling
Begging mercy for their sins
Satan laughing, spreads his wings
Oh, Lord, yeah
Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Ozzy Osbourne / Terence Michael Butler / William T. Ward / F. Frank Iommi
War Pigs lyrics © Westminster Music Ltd., Westminster Music Ltd
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Thanks to media censorship, ‘Dynamic Silence’ it was 2010 on the internet when I first heard this ‘War Pigs’. I should add I am no novice when it comes to Western Popular Music. I probably was put off by Black Sabbath music because of their name. Definitely heard ‘Paranoid’ on the radio and thought it was OK, but that was really all I knew of them.
‘War Pigs’ is a great song. It’s surprising a band called Black Sabbath could and would write a song on this particular subject matter.
Trump is a war pig. So is Satanyahu. I hope they realize it is time for them to stop…
https://rumble.com/v7dv3zi-emj-live-181-breaking-the-jew-taboo.html?
e9s=src_v1_cbl%2Csrc_v1_ucp_a
Great stream yesterday from Dr E.Michael Jones
https://rumble.com/c/EMichaelJones?e9s=src_v1_cbl
EMJ Live 181: Breaking the Jew Taboo