The US-Israeli war on Iran is already pretty weird, even before we start factoring in Chinese-alien intel technologies, mind-waves controlling Trump, psychedelic “jellyfish” drone formations terrifying pilots and taking down F-15s, EMF weapons that cause droughts (and yield downpours when you blow them up), Uri Geller issuing red-alert Mullah-telepathy warnings as he attempts to eat kosher hummus with a flaccidly drooping spoon…do we even need such stuff to see this as the oddest war ever?

It is deeply strange that a mid-level regional power like Iran can utterly defeat the world’s most powerful military. It’s bizarre that the supposed religious fanatics who rule Iran speak and act with tact, reason, consistency, and restraint, while the president of the United States blathers incoherently, alternating drooling obscenity-laced threats with equally incoherent outbursts radiating peace, love, and call-option-friendly investment optimism. And perhaps the most bizarre sight of all is the global economy drifting slowly and inexorably towards a cliff, like an unconscious canoeist drifting towards Niagra Falls, while gathered onlookers (the markets) seem oblivious to the catastrophe that is about to unfold.

Already cursed to live in interesting times, we don’t need the curse to get worse (and presumably even more interesting). But Iran war fringe stuff is definitely a thing, and as far as I can tell nobody has tried to bring it all together.

I asked Gemini:

Has anyone written a comprehensive article about “fringe” phenomena from the Iran war? I’m talking about reports like:

*Uri Geller says Iran is using mind waves to control Trump.

*F-15 pilots are terrified of Iranian drones flying in “alien jellyfish” formations.

*Iran accuses the US of weather warfare and claims it ended its drought by blowing up US radars in the Gulf States.

Gemini answered:

“There is no single, all-encompassing article that covers all of these ‘fringe’ and unusual stories.”

Until now.

And I’m the man for the job. Before I learned Arabic and became an Iranian-TV Middle East expert, I moonlighted as Dr. Weirde, author of Dr. Weirde’s Weirde Tours: A Guide to Mysterious San Francisco. What’s more, my academic training included studying reports of fringe phenomena as background for a Ph.D. dissertation comparing miraculous and supernatural claims in medieval Moroccan saints’ legends to contemporary personal experience narratives. So the precise spot where Islamic-world-geopolitics meets high weirdness is my bailiwick.

Where to begin? We might as well start with the jellyfish. Last Wednesday, Press TV’s headline announced: “Downed F-15 pilot’s account of ‘alien’ Iranian jellyfish formation shocks US intel.” According to the report:

The US military and intelligence community were thrown into a state of profound shock and disbelief when an American F-15 pilot, shot down over Iran in April, reported witnessing a sight that defied conventional understanding of Iranian military capabilities.

According to a report by CNN on Tuesday, which cited four sources familiar with the incident, the pilot described seeing multiple Iranian drones hovering in the air, moving in perfect unison, in a formation that eerily resembled a jellyfish.

CNN quoted one of the pilots:

“Multiple drones interconnected and moving as one with smaller drones below the bigger drones like legs,” one of the sources familiar with the pilot’s witness account told CNN. “Real alien sh*t.”

But is it “alien sh*t” or Chinese sh*t? China is famous for its amazing sky displays featuring drones flying in incredibly dense and complex formations.

While Iranian drone engineers may be cooperating with their Chinese counterparts, we shouldn’t imagine that Iran isn’t capable of breakthrough drone innovations without outside help. Iran is an engineering powerhouse, as the US military is learning the hard way. Google tells us:

Iran produces roughly 230000 to 250000 engineering graduates annually. It routinely ranks in the top 3 to 5 countries globally for total engineering graduates outperforming major economies like Germany and Japan. A standout characteristic of Iran’s engineering landscape is that women comprise up to 70% of its STEM and engineering graduates one of the highest ratios in the world.

Wait a minute…Isn’t Iran a medieval theocracy that keeps women barefoot and pregnant? That’s what Fox News and the Iranian royalists in Beverly Hills keep telling us. I guess those barefoot and pregnant Iranian housewives must be finding the spare time to sit around in their chadors earning online engineering degrees and building extraterrestrial-looking drone swarms that can take down F15s. Radical Islam at its absolute scariest!

So there’s probably nothing extraterrestrial or supernatural about Iran’s “alien jellyfish drones.” As the Ukrainians found out the hard way, Iran has good drone engineers.

And while we’re debunking dubious legends, let’s quickly disabuse ourselves of:

*The Khordad “UFO” Sightings & Metallic Spheres: An AI hallucination…ask your favorite AI about this and it will spin a completely fictitious yarn, inventing a tale that will make the accounts of the craziest human UFO abductee seem relatively plausible.

*The Persian Gulf “Cthulhu” / Caspian Sea Monster Reports: Another AI hallucination, in which Gemini takes a deep whiff of DMT and tells us:

* The Claim: A fringe maritime rumor alleged that sonar technicians aboard coalition warships detected massive, unidentified biological anomalies in the Strait of Hormuz. The more extreme versions of the rumor claimed Iran had “weaponized deep-sea creatures” or unearthed an ancient anomaly to attack naval vessels blocking the strait.

* The Reality: This rumor was a highly distorted game of telephone regarding Iran’s asymmetric naval tactics. To counter American naval primacy, Iran deployed hundreds of semi-submersible, low-profile speedboats and remote-controlled explosive aquatic drones to bottleneck the Strait of Hormuz. To sonar operators and radar systems, these small, erratic, wave-skimming signatures looked highly unusual, which internet forums quickly spun into “sea monster.”

But there is no such rumor. Gemini hallucinated it by taking the insane American psy-op about Iran supposedly weaponizing kamikaze dolphins, adding a pinch of HP Lovecraft and a very real fleet of Iranian speedboats, and turning the mixture into a bad acid trip.

*The ‘New Nostradamus” predicted the Iran war. It seems that on or around February 22, some British guy who calls himself “the new Nostradamus” predicted the US would go to war with Iran in March. But you didn’t have to be Nostradamus to notice the US had sent nearly all its available military assets to the region and would likely attack. What’s more, the self-styled soothsayer Craig Hamilton-Parker expected the war to end almost instantly, saying it would be: “a swift and limited operation: It will escalate quickly, then stop.” The tabloid Times of India tells us: “He also references symbolic imagery from earlier readings, ‘yellow and red flags’ and ‘a lion soaring above Iran.’” In other words, Hamilton-Parker expected the Iranian royalists, who are despised by nearly all of the Iranian people, to take over Iran in the wake of a swift US victory! Wow. Talk about a Nostra-dumb-ass!

Real Paranormal Rumors

Setting aside the ridiculous claims of hallucinating AIs and ill-informed fortunetellers, there actually are some interesting paranormal rumors about the US-Israeli war on Iran. Some can be sourced to the Iranian side. According to some Iranian sources, Iran has not only been waging war on the Epstein class, but also against the child-sacrificing worshippers of Baal. Iranian demonstrators, and pro-Iran demonstrators around the world, have repeatedly burned statues of Baal in “a symbolic protest linked to renewed online conspiracy theories surrounding the late financier Jeffrey Epstein and alleged child abuse by Western elites.”

The Jerusalem Post tell us that these are just “antisemitic conspira...