How is going for the US in Iran? Early lessons from the war - American Perfidy and Jewish thuggery will lose; and China is helping Iran to win Hua Bin Mar 5

In psychology, there is something called the Dunning-Kruger effect.

It’s a phenomenon that essentially describes the paradox that people with low ability or knowledge tend to overestimate their own competence and judgement.

The Trump administration is Exhibit A.

From Trump to Vance, Rubio, and Hegseth, the entire US political leadership responsible for waging war against Iran is composed of a clueless orange-colored fraud and his incompetent sycophant entourage.

As described by the Dunning Kruger effect, this group of the stupidest and least qualified people have thought they were so smart to launch a sneak attack on Iran and would win easily.

Things have not worked out the way they were hoping.

Predicting the outcome of any ongoing military conflict is tricky with the fog of war as well as non-stop propaganda and gaslighting.

But it seems reasonable to conclude the US and Israel (or USrael for short) have failed to achieve their primary war objective – regime change.

Trump and his Jewish handlers were betting on a sneaky decapitation attack under the cover of fake negotiations that would trigger a domestic insurrection to overthrow the Iranian government.

This way, they would achieve a quick victory (4 to 5 days, in Trump’s first estimate) and avoid any serious retaliation.

Reality hasn’t quite worked out the way the real estate mogul and “reality” star hoped for.

The Iranians didn’t capitulate. They have fought back. They didn’t fragment and rise up against the regime. They have united and rallied around the flag.

In short, USrael just kicked a hornet’s nest.

Supporters of USrael are celebrating the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the extensive bombing of Iranian cities as signs of success.

However, serious observers ask –

- How has murdering an 86-year-old cancer patient under the pretence of negotiation diminished Iran’s capabilities and advanced USrael’s war objective?

- How is the war progressing for USrael beyond the first day’s “success”?

- How is it working for Israel and the Gulf lackeys?

- Have the Iranians risen up to overthrow the government or have they united to seek revenge?

- Can USrael bomb Iran into submission when it has failed to do that in Gaza?

Sure, Iran is taking a pounding and probably will suffer heavier losses than USrael and their vassals in the region.

However, the success of a military campaign is not how many bombs you have dropped and how many people you have killed. By such measures, the US won the Viertnamese War.

True victory is measured by the achievement of political goals.

In this case, the ultimate political goal of the USrael war against Iran is regime change. Iran will win as long as it survives and defies USrael’s war objective.

In other words, Iran doesn’t have to win, just not to lose.

As the war broadens to involve all the Gulf states, it is turning into a protracted conflict. In such conflicts, winning is not just about who has the ability to inflict pain, but also who has the endurance to absorb pain.

Iran is demonstrating its capacity to absorb attacks while inflicting its own destruction against its foes.

Let’s turn to some lessons the world can learn from the war. Specifically, what China has learned so far and how it can help Iran to survive the existential war posed by USrael.

Lessons learned

- There is no low that is too low for the US and the Jews.

USrael launched a sneaky attack under the cover of “negotiations” and during Ramadan, the Muslim holy month. They did the same low blow last June.

This is a repeat of the terrorist “decapitation” tactics USrael has carried out numerous times – with the Hamas and Hezbollah negotiators, with Iranian scientists, with Maduro in Venezuela, and with Ebrahim Raisi, the last Iranian president who died in helicopter “accident” in May 2024.

It is the same tactics USrael proxy Ukraine has deployed repeatedly against Russian generals.

Not so long ago, nations in war didn’t sink this low. Even in World War 2, the bloodiest conflict in human history, no significant assassinations of political or military leaders were carried out at this scale and with such duplicity.

However, the Jew state Israel and its vassal the US have pioneered this lowly behavior since the Cold War. Now, they have sunken to a new low.

USrael is also attacking civilians indiscriminately – girls’ schools, hospitals, and local cafes. This is a large-scale demo of Israel’s “Dahiya doctrine”, which calls for using disproportionate force against civilians to pressure populations.

To USrael’s dismay, the killing of Khamenei and the massacre of civilians not only failed to foment a rebellion against the regime, it has served to unite the country and mobilize Iran for a total war.

- The negotiations were a sham, designed to buy time and launch surprise attacks.

Trump’s chief “negotiator” Steven Witkoff told the Fox News the US made four demands on Iran during the “negotiation” – denuclear completely; give up all ballistic missiles; stop supporting regional allies; and dismantle the Iranian navy.

Such maximalist demands are capitulation terms for Iran to disarm. They are not designed for compromise but for buying time to ready the attacks.

Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, affectionately known as Shitkoff and Jarhead by their staff, are the chief US “negotiators” and are both hardened Zionist Jews. They sure represent US interests, rather than Jew interests (wink wink).

You should know the US has no honest interest to negotiate when you see who Trump sends to lead that.

- The American Perfidy: like its imperial predecessor, Britain, the US is a dishonest rogue state that cannot be trusted.

Like the “Perfidious Albion”, the US has shown habitual bad faith and treachery in diplomacy. In less than a year, it launched two sneak attacks on Iran under the cover of negotiations.

Like the perfidious Britain, the US hides its insidious foreign policies under high-mined moralistic façade such as “democracy”, “human rights”, “regional stability”, “rule-based international order”, and “Right to Protect”.

It uses such noble-sounding propaganda to incite unrest of the Iranian people against their own government and their own interests. USrael cannot care less about the lives of ordinary Iranians.

- The US is a pawn of the Jews. It’s not the tail that wags the dog; Israel is the head of the dog.

Trump & Co. has done yet another “bait and switch” with the clueless American electorate. MAGA is always MIGA.

5 days into the war, the US has already notified the Gulf sheikdoms that it will not protect them and only Israel is worthy of expending US air defense interceptors.

The military bases the Arab states host for the Americans are bull’s eye target for Iran. Any collateral damages are to be born by the Arabs themselves.

Kissinger was right – being America’s enemies is dangerous; being its “friends” is fatal, except for Israel and the Jews of course.

American servicemen must happily die for Israel to bring about the “second coming”, as demanded by Pete Hegseth.

- Most of the west is shameless vassal for USrael. Their self-righteousness is directed at the victim, not the perpetuators.

Predictably, Germany, France, UK, NATO, EU, Australia, and Canada have again chosen to stand with the aggressors and blame the victims.

Just like what they did with the Israeli genocide in Gaza.

Alone in the West, Spain stood up against USrael, which it also did with Gaza. Salute to Spain, its leadership, and its great people.

Contrast the West’s support of USrael with the accusations of Russia’s “unprovoked” invasion of Ukraine.

Most of the West want to be spineless junior partners of the Mafia Don in the “rule-based international order”. They want to live on their knees when Iran is willing to die on its feet.

The West’s indignation towards the US is reserved for the time when the gun is pointed at their heads like with the Greenland takeover.

Of course, even such offenses are quickly forgotten and forgiven.

The rest of the world now know the true nature of the beast.

- The ruling class in the West resorts to foreign wars to distract its bewildered and clueless public from domestic scandals and corrupt rule. And it works every time.

Since the start of the war, the Epstein Files is forgotten. Nobody is talking about the ICE killings in Minnesota or the supreme court’s ruling about Trump’s illegal tariffs.

The sheeple is easy to rule. Just show them a new shiny object.

- Most importantly, the USrael military might is a mirage.

Apart from the under-handed assassination of Khamenei and the criminal massacre of nearly 200 schoolgirls, the USrael attacks have achieved few obvious victories.

The Iranians are retaliating with missiles and drones; Israel and all the regional vassals have been hit; and the Iranians have closed the Strait of Hormuz.

Three F-15Es have been shot down in one morning on March 2. The US claims they were downed by “friendly fires”, which I am not sure makes it less embarrassing.

The last time such a “friendly fire” happened was when USS Gettysburg shot down a F/A-18F Super Hornet in Yemen in December 2024, when the “world’s greatest military” was fighting the Houthis to a tie.

Three multi-million-dollar jets downed in a single morning by “friendly fire” must be a world record worthy of a golden trophy.

The lie sounds less plausible for people who have heard of Identification of Friend or Foe (IFF) system that every military uses in the world.

A $1.1 billion AN/FPS-132 Upgraded Early Warning Radar (UEWR) at the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar was blown to pieces by a $10,000 Iranian suicide drone.

Three Patriot and THAAD air defense systems were destroyed in the region, according to al Jazeera.

US carrier and warships have been attacked and had to retreat hundreds of miles to stay out of the Iranian missile range.

Iran has deployed ballistic missiles with cluster bombs to attack Israeli targets. Hezbollah has launched multiple rounds of rockets into Israel.

Social media videos clearly show a majority of Iranian missiles and drones are breaking through air defense and impacting targets in Tel Aviv, Dubai, Doha, and Bahrain.

The famed Iron Dome, Patriot, David Sling, and THAAD systems have failed quite spectacularly. Perhaps they are running low with interceptors and preserving ammo for the more valuable targets.

Most US bases in the region are now closed and the GIs pulled out to hide elsewhere. US embassies, CIA stations, Israel military and government facilities, and hotels housing USrael personnel have been struck.

In addition, the cost exchange is horrible for USrael – they are firing 2 or 3 interceptors costing between 2 to 4 million dollars each to shoot down a single Iranian missile or drone that cost less than 5 or 10% of each interceptor.

If you compare Iranian firepower against its military budget, the battle so far is simply lopsided in Iran’s favor.

Iran’s 2025 military budget is $7.9 billion, less than half of Singapore’s ($17 billion), while Israel spends $47 billion a year on top of US aid.

Saudi’s military spending is $80 billion and the US over $900 billion. Almost every Gulf Arab state spends more than Iran.

However, Iran has not only withstood the pounding by USrael, it has taken on the whole region.

The vaulted military power of USrael simply hasn’t delivered a knockout blow to a weaker opponent. Instead, Iran is punching back hard.

While it is too early to tell which side will prevail, it is clear that this war will last more than 4 or 5 days.

The day before yesterday, Trump changed his timeline to 4 or 5 weeks.

Yesterday, Trump angrily denied USrael is running short on ammo, claiming the US has the weapons to “fight forever”. Now it’s becoming a new “forever” war?

There is an old Chinese proverb exactly for such occasions called 此地无银三百两 (don’t look; there is no silver buried here).

Implication for China and how it will support Iran

I wrote about China’s perspective on the Middle Eastern conflict last June when Iran was attacked in the 12-day war.

What role China should play in the Iran Israel war - a realist view

Hua Bin · June 19, 2025

Many Chinese strategists, way smarter and better informed than myself, are working on the issue as we speak. I have implicit trust they will reach the right course of action to protect China’s national interests in the ongoing crisis.

Read full story

Beijing’s position remains largely the same, although there is an elevated need for China to help Iran to resist USrael and defeat their war objective this time.

The main difference is the 12-day war was mainly about Iran’s nuclear capabilities while the goal of current USrael aggression is regime change.

Iran is a critical node in the multipolar world order China envisions. It is also in a critical geostrategic region that the world depends on for energy security.

Beijing’s position on the war seems to consolidate around several pillars, based on a review of official pronouncements, think tank analysis, and social media commentaries.

First, China will offer continued diplomatic and economic support to Iran. About 20% of Iran’s economy depends on trade with China, which also helps Iran get around the sanctions and dollar restrictions imposed by the West.

Secondly, China is deepening intelligence sharing and supplying critical technologies to Iran.

Chinese firms such as MizarVision have been supplying and publishing high-definition satellite images of US military deployment in the Middle East.

Beijing has supplied Iran with the Beidou navigation and guidance system, which has massively improved the accuracy of Iranian missile strikes since the US cannot switch off or jam Beidou signals as it does with the GPS system.

Space-based intelligence is a critical node in high tech wars and beyond the reach of most. Such support can deliver a step-function improvement to Iran’s attack lethality.

China has accelerated parts and components supply to Iran’s missile and drone production, including the propulsion fuel for Iran’s ballistic missiles.

China is also providing AI-enabled surveillance technology to help Iran’s security forces to identify and capture moles and infiltrators within Iran.

Despite Beijing’s traditional posture not to provide kinetic weapons to countries in war (including Russia), it is accelerating military cooperation with Iran and likely to transfer both defensive and offensive weapons in the future.

Third, the US is indeed a “paper tiger”. It is physically incapable to fight a prolonged war with large casualties despite its posturing.

The US military industrial complex suffers from the same issue as the rest of the financialized economy. It is not optimized to deliver weapons at scale and cost to win wars. It is optimized for profit maximization.

The MIC is driven by just-in-time efficiency and zero surge capacity in order to achieve highest return on capital, rather than to achieve resilience for large scale conflicts.

The high-tech, overengineered weapons in the US arsenal can be easily exhausted and, once depleted, almost impossible to replenish.

Just 5-days of high-intensity conflict with Iran has shown its vulnerabilities.

The US is simply incapable a war of attrition with China, with its inexhaustible industrial capacity (called “overcapacity” by the West) and national resilience.

Given its ever expanding strength over the US, China can afford the long game and strategic patience to wait for the inevitable decline and implosion of US power.

Fourth, Beijing is keenly aware the need for caution when navigating the cesspool of Middle Eastern politics.

The war has shown the Gulf monarchs are still very much vassals of the US and Israel.

According to the Washington Post, Mohammed bin Salman was heavily lobbying Trump to attack Iran.

This is despite the rapprochement Beijing brokered between Iran and Saudi Abria in 2023. Clearly, the sheiks are not to be trusted.

Turkey’s Erdoğan is a double-headed snake who publicly decried Israel’s genocide in Gaza while supplying Israel with its oil lifeline.

He stabbed Russia in the back with treacherous collusion with the Jews in Syria to overthrow Bashar Assad.

The Middle East will return to camel land once oil and gas is exhausted or becomes irrelevant as a result of the green energy revolution China is driving.

For now, China is managing its energy vulnerability by strategic stockpiling and diversifying its supplies away from the Middle East to countries like Russia, Brazil, and Angola.

Fifth, the Iran war is proving the US military bases in the Persian Gulf are not strategic assets, but liabilities and sitting ducks.

If Iran can prevail the defenses of these bases with its missile and drone salvos, China can hit the US bases in the First Island Chain with much bigger barrages.

The US air defense doctrine is simply technically and financially unsustainable against high-velocity saturation attacks.

Those states hosting US assets, including Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines, are targets with a bull-eye painted on their back. They will face the same fate as the Gulf states hosting US bases.

Lastly, Beijing is fully aware of the American Perfidy. The US is a rogue state unworthy of trust.

By launching an unprovoked war against Iran, the US is operating as an interloper that believes it can fundamentally alter the cultural and political trajectory of a 5,000-year old civilization through the application of air power.

And it launched the war under pretense of “negotiations” – behavior of a “barbarian” state.

Clearly, the US is willing to destabilize an entire region to pursue its hegemonic dominance. It is a state that believes power is a substitute for legitimacy.

The US actions serve as a clear warning to small and medium-sized powers that if international law can be suspended to remove the leadership of a nation as significant as Iran (the most populous country in the Middle East), no nation’s sovereignty is truly secure.

Beyond the US, the collective West is a hypercritical and bad-faith actor.

By supporting USrael’s illegal war against Iran while condemning Russia’s war in Ukraine as “unprovoked”, the West has revealed its ugly double standard and its total vassalage to the US and Israel.

There is an old Chinese saying “国虽大，好战必亡；天下虽安，忘战必危。” It translates as “Though a state may be large, if it is fond of war, it will perish; though the world may be at peace, if one forgets about war, one will be in danger.”

In the West, similar phrases include “Those who live by the sword, die by the sword” and “He who sows the wind will reap the whirlwind”.

The warmongering by the US will eventually boomerang back to damage itself.

Beijing understands wars are easy to start, but hard to stop. It is pleased to see the US step into a bear trap of its own making, yet again.

By exercising strategic patience, Beijing is waiting for Washington’s inevitable implosion.

What we are witnessing today

In the peak of its global power, the US military interventions over the past two decades have cost trillions of dollars and caused millions of civilian casualties.

These interventions utterly failed to achieve their intended geopolitical goals and have significantly weakened American strengths and legitimacy.

Now the US is already in a weakened state, these past interventions pale in comparison with the likely new disaster awaiting the US as Iran is much more powerful than Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, or Syria.

As the proverb warns, even the most powerful nation, if strategically overextended, faces resource depletion and national decline.

The Trump regime, like its predecessors, has failed to understand military superiority doesn’t equal strategic success.

With the Operation Epic Fury, the US has dropped the pretense of any “rule-based order”. It is now openly acting as a hegemon using force to reshape an old civilization, on behalf of Zionist Jews.

The fact that Iran has immediately retaliated by striking US and Israeli assets across the Gulf suggests that the Iranian state is not going to collapse, even with the death of its leadership.

What we are seeing is a 5,000-year-old civilization, even when wounded and destabilized, is more resilient than an interloper state that relies on the “sham” of temporary military dominance.

 

Trump's war on Iran is already losing the home front

New surveys find that Americans broadly disapprove

Ben Armbruster

Mar 02, 2026

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/polls-trump-iran-war/

A series of new polls show that the American public is overwhelmingly opposed to President Trump’s war on Iran.

Nearly three days after the beginning of the joint U.S.-Israel attack, Trump and his top aides have offered a series of shifting (or baseless) justifications for the attack and have failed to articulate an end game or timeline on how long the conflict will last. While the U.S.-Israeli strikes have killed Iran’s Supreme Leader and other top government and military officials, they’ve also killed dozens of civilians, including more than 165 school children in southern Iran.

The Iranian response has begun to incur costs, with damage to U.S. military bases throughout the region and at least 6 U.S. service members killed. With the strong possibility that the war will only get worse, the American public has already had enough.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Sunday found that just 27% supported the strikes, while 43% disapproved and 29% said they were unsure. More than half of Republicans polled said they supported the attack, but 42% said they would be less likely to back the war if it leads to "U.S. troops in the Middle East being killed or injured." Forty-five percent of all respondents said they would be less likely to support the war if gas and oil prices increase in the United States.

And a new CNN poll released on Monday found that 59% disapproved of Trump’s decision to start a war with Iran. Sixty percent said they don’t think Trump has a clear plan and 62% said he needs to acquire congressional approval for any further military action. (Both the House and Senate will reportedly consider the matter this week.)

Meanwhile, the Washington Post texted 1,003 Americans on Sunday and asked them what they thought of Trump’s attack on Iran. More than half (52%) said they opposed while 39 percent said they supported. Of the five options — oppose strongly, oppose somewhat, unsure, support somewhat, and support strongly — “oppose strongly” received the most support at 39%.

A plurality in the Post survey (47%) also said Trump should stop the strikes on Iran now, whereas just 25% said they should continue.

Americans’ sentiment about Trump’s attack now lines up with where they were before the war, as a series of polling from a variety of firms leading up to the U.S. attack found them to be against getting into another Middle East conflict. But these latest numbers are also quite significant, especially when compared with polling released just days after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Back then, a whopping 72% of Americans supported then-President Bush’s war on Iraq.

For his part, President Trump doesn’t seem too concerned.

“I think that the polling is very good, but I don’t care about polling,” he told the New York Post on Monday. “I have to do the right thing. I have to do the right thing. This should have been done a long time ago.”

Stuck in Another Disastrous Middle East War

by Ron Paul | Mar 3, 2026

https://original.antiwar.com/paul/2026/03/02/stuck-in-another-disastrous-middle-east-war/

Unfortunately, President Trump listened to the neocons and Benjamin Netanyahu instead of his MAGA base and other voices of caution as he launched a surprise attack on Iran over the weekend. For the second time in nine months, the US Administration used negotiations with Iran as a cover to launch a pre-planned attack.

Last week’s talks produced “progress” according to all sides, with technical teams set to meet this week to work out the details. President Trump, however, suddenly announced that he was not happy with the talks because the Iranian side refused to say “the magic words” that they would not pursue nuclear weapons.

But Iran has been insisting for decades that they have no interest in producing a nuclear weapon and our own intelligence has confirmed that they are not doing so.

Shortly after President Trump’s announcement, the US and Israel launched their attack, killing Iran’s religious leader along with some 40 other political and military leaders in a “decapitation” strike.

It was supposed to be like the Venezuela operation. Quick and painless for the US. Kill the leadership and the long-suffering people would take to the streets and reclaim their country. It may make a good plot for a Hollywood movie, but in real life these regime change operations have never worked. Millions did take to the streets in Iran, but it was to mourn the slain Ayatollah and to reaffirm support for their government.

Just like we “rallied around the flag” after the attacks on 9/11.

Quickly, Iranian retaliation for the attacks began to take their toll on US assets and Israel. US soldiers have been killed and US fighter jets have been shot down. US bases in the region are either damaged or destroyed. Likewise, US embassies and consulates have come under attack, including by Iraqis likely still furious over the US destruction of their country 20 years ago.

And, with the Pentagon warning that the operation may go weeks instead of days, we are quickly running out of missiles.

Billions of dollars have already been spent on this unprovoked attack, and when the smoke clears – if it does – we may see hundreds of billions or maybe much more having been wasted on yet another Middle East war. Just what President Trump promised he would not do.

The neocon “cakewalk” crowd, including Lindsey Graham and others, have been proven wrong again. Tragically, more American servicemembers may die while the neocons blame someone else for the fiasco they helped launch.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said of the US/Israeli attack that “this combination of forces enables us to do what I have longed to do for 40 years…”

But the purpose of the US military is not to fulfill the decades-old wishes of foreign leaders. There is a good reason we have a Constitution that says only Congress can declare war.

Launching a military strike during negotiations will have lasting negative effects for the United States. Who would ever trust US diplomacy again if talks are used as a distraction for pre-planned attacks?

The Administration is doing its best to spin this unfolding disaster as all going according to plan, but what is the plan? No one knows. Do they know?

Here’s a plan: End this today. Return the destroyed US bases to the countries where they are located. And just come home. That is what a real “America first” movement looks like.

No Mandate, No Peace: America’s War of Choice Against Iran

by Jenny Williams | Mar 2, 2026

https://original.antiwar.com/jenny_williams/2026/03/01/no-mandate-no-peace-americas-war-of-choice-against-iran/

Early Saturday, the United States joined Israel in launching a major strike on Iran, with President Donald Trump announcing that “major combat operations” were underway. The first thing Americans should notice is not the fireworks on cable news, but the emptiness where a legal and democratic mandate ought to be. This attack was not authorized by the United Nations Security Council, and it was not authorized by Congress. It was sold to the public after the fact, as bombs were already falling.

In his analysis for The Guardian, Julian Borger reported that Trump’s own words point to something far bigger than a limited punitive strike. The president warned Iran’s Revolutionary Guard to surrender or be killed, vowed to smash Iran’s armed forces, and openly invited Iran’s ethnic minorities to rise up and bring the government down. That is not a narrow mission. That is regime change, declared in prime time.

Regime change is not self-defense. Under the United Nations Charter, the use of force is broadly prohibited, and the main exception is the inherent right of self-defense “if an armed attack occurs,” as spelled out in Article 51. If Washington wants to claim that exception, it has to show an actual armed attack or a truly imminent one. “Iran is bad” is not a legal argument; it is a bumper sticker. Yet the public case from the White House has leaned heavily on sweeping characterizations and contested claims about Iran’s capabilities rather than a concrete, imminent threat, as even Reuters noted in its review of Trump’s assertions.

The domestic legal picture is just as bleak. The Constitution gives Congress – not the president—the power “to declare War.” You can read that authority in Article I, Section 8. Modern presidents have tried to stretch their commander-in-chief role into a blank check, but the point of the system was to make war hard to start. After Vietnam, Congress tried to claw back some of that authority through the War Powers Resolution, which requires consultation “in every possible instance” and rapid reporting once hostilities begin. Whatever one thinks of the War Powers Resolution’s enforcement, the spirit is clear: the president is not supposed to take the country into war first and explain later.

What makes this moment even more alarming is the timing. According to Borger, the strikes were launched while diplomatic efforts were still underway to limit Iran’s uranium enrichment, with talks continuing just days before the bombs. That pattern – negotiations on one track, military escalation on the other – turns diplomacy into theater. It suggests the “deal” was never meant to be a deal at all, but an ultimatum backed by a “beautiful armada” assembled in the region.

Trump’s defenders will say that none of this matters if the operation “works.” But “works” for whom, and at what cost? The president appears to be betting that shock and awe will do what years of sanctions and covert action did not: fracture the Iranian state from within. History is not kind to that bet. Decades after Vietnam, the Pentagon’s own strategists still write about the limits of relying primarily on bombing to achieve political ends; see, for example, the National Defense University’s assessment of the limits of airpower in Vietnam. And when air campaigns do topple regimes, the aftermath can be chaos, as Congressional Research Service testimony has described in post-2011 Libya.

There is also the small matter of what Iran does next. Regime change is an existential threat, and governments rarely respond to existential threats with restraint. Within hours, the region was already sliding toward escalation. The Guardian reported Iranian retaliatory strikes aimed at Israel and multiple U.S. bases across the Middle East, alongside calls for an emergency UN Security Council meeting. See Patrick Wintour’s reporting. Whether or not every reported strike lands, the direction of travel is obvious: wider war, more casualties, and more opportunities for miscalculation.

Supporters of intervention often talk as if war is a tool that can be picked up and put down at will. In practice, it is a fuse. Once lit, it burns through realities that press releases cannot manage: grieving families, retaliatory cycles, emergency powers at home, and the steady erosion of law abroad. If Washington is serious about rules, it cannot treat the UN Charter as an optional suggestion, invoked against rivals and ignored by itself. The UN’s own legal materials make plain that Article 2(4)’s prohibition on the use of force is meant to be a cornerstone, not a talking point.

Congress still has choices, even if it was sidelined in the rush to war. It can demand a public accounting of the alleged threat. It can insist that any continued hostilities require specific authorization. It can use the power of the purse to prevent an open-ended escalation. None of those steps are radical. They are what constitutional government looks like when leaders remember that soldiers are citizens, not props.

The United States has spent a generation paying for the arrogance of “easy” wars sold as quick fixes. Launching another war of choice – while wrapping it in the language of peace, and while bypassing both international law and democratic consent – does not make America safer. It makes America more dangerous: to others, and to itself. The fastest path back from the cliff is a ceasefire, urgent diplomacy, and a hard national reckoning with the idea that bombs are a substitute for politics.

US and Israeli attack on Iran: At least 148 girls killed in strike on school

Eyewitness tells MEE girls aged between seven and 12 seen lying dead across their school

By MEE correspondent in Tehran

Published date: 28 February 2026 

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/least-24-girls-killed-us-strike-elementary-school-southern-iran

At least 148 people, almost all of them young girls, have been killed in an air strike on a primary school in southern Iran, according to the city’s governor.

The attack on Saturday morning hit Shajareh Tayyebeh school in the city of Minab, in Hormozgan province, as the United States and Israel began launching strikes on targets across Iran.

The victims were between seven and 12 years old, according to Iran's Tasnim and Fars news agencies.

A staff member at the Minab school, who asked not to be named, told Middle East Eye she remains in shock at the intensity of the attack.

Through tears, she said she used to watch the young girls playing at school every day. After today’s strikes, however, she saw their bodies lying on classroom benches and in different corners of the school.

She said she had stepped out of the school to take care of something when she suddenly heard a horrifying sound. Within seconds, a missile - or something like it - hit the school building.

After hearing the blast, she ran back towards the school and was faced with a scene she says she would never forget. 

“I felt like I had gone mute. I couldn’t speak,” the staff member told MEE. “You could hear the sound of children crying and screaming.”

When rescue teams arrived, she said, they began to understand the scale of the disaster.

“We still don’t know how many are under the rubble. Some are even saying more than 100. Some of these small children are severely injured. Their parents have come to the school, and this place has turned into a house of mourning.”

The air strike on the school left many inside the building trapped beneath the rubble.

There were 170 female students at the school at the time of the attack. So far, at least 45 people have also been reported wounded.

Footage posted by Telegram accounts affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps appeared to show people digging through the rubble.

Smoke could be seen rising from surrounding buildings, while a wrecked car lay in the street. People were heard screaming and wailing; others appeared to be in shock.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi denounced the attack on X and said the deaths of the children would "not go unanswered".

"The destroyed building is a primary school for girls in the south of Iran. It was bombed in broad daylight, when packed with young pupils," he wrote.

"Dozens of innocent children have been murdered at this site alone."

Country-wide attacks

US and Israeli strikes on Iran have also heavily targeted Tehran. Explosions echoed across the capital as Iranians set out for work on the first day of the week, before quickly spreading across the country.

Attacks were reported in a range of cities, including the holy city of Qom, as well as Karaj, Isfahan and Kermanshah.

US President Donald Trump said the joint attacks were aimed at "eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime".

"Short time ago, US military began major combat operation in Iran. Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating threats from the Iranian regime," he said.

Trump also made a number of other statements and predictions without offering any concrete evidence, such as Washington's refusal to allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon.

"We are going to annihilate their navy. We are going to ensure that the region’s ‘terrorist’ proxies can no longer destabilise the region or the world.

"We will ensure that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon. It is a very simple message." 

Trump deliberated on Iran for weeks. His ‘massive and ongoing’ operation comes with acknowledgment US lives could be lost

Kevin Liptak

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/02/28/politics/trump-iran-strikes-decision

President Donald Trump’s announcement of a “massive and ongoing” US military campaign against Iran — and his explicit call for the country’s citizens to shake off their oppressive leadership — put on display his fresh appetite for geopolitical risk and thrust his presidency into a deeper period of uncertainty.

“The United States military is undertaking a massive and ongoing operation to prevent this very wicked, radical dictatorship from threatening America and our core national security interests,” he said of Iran in a video posted to Truth Social early Saturday morning, in which he starkly acknowledged that US lives may be lost in the operation.

The eight-minute recording laid bare both the president’s objectives in Iran — which had been unclear — and the potential for dire consequences. Trump appears hopeful his major air operation can successfully result in a change in Iran’s regime, despite the vast uncertainties about what might replace it and the limited historical examples of air power alone ousting a country’s leader.

“They rejected every opportunity to renounce their nuclear ambitions, and we can’t take it anymore,” said Trump, who a US official said is continuing to monitor the strikes from Mar-a-Lago.

The president reached his decision after weeks of deliberation and an attempt by his envoys to strike a rapid diplomatic agreement that would have forced Iran to abandon long-held red lines. The US military is planning for several days of attacks, two sources told CNN, and Iran has already retaliated across the Middle East, including targeting the US Navy base in Bahrain that is home to the Fifth Fleet, a US official said.

Trump never fully publicly laid out his case for war, even during his State of the Union address on Tuesday, despite strikes being a politically perilous move at home, especially for a president who campaigned on ending foreign entanglements. He noted on Saturday the potential cost to American lives.

“The Iranian regime seeks to kill. The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost and we may have casualties — that often happens in war — but we’re doing this not for now. We’re doing this for the future, and it is a noble mission,” the president said, adding that US had “taken every possible step to minimize the risk to US personnel in the region.”

To many of Trump’s allies, military action had long appeared inevitable. After telling Iranian protesters at the start of the year that he would come to their support, warning the US was “locked and loaded” to attack, he felt obligated to enforce his red line.

“When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations,” Trump told the Iranian people in his video.

“For many years, you have asked for America’s help, but you never got it. No president was willing to do what I am willing to do tonight. Now you have a president who is giving you what you want, so let’s see how you respond,” he said.

Trump’s motivations for his second set of strikes within Iran since returning to office — conveyed mostly in curt, off-hand public remarks — appeared to shift over time, moving from protecting protesters to curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions to ousting the Iranian regime. He’s also cited Iran’s arsenal of missiles and destabilizing support for regional proxy groups, like Hezbollah and Hamas.

How the latest military action from both the US and Israel advances all, or any, of those objectives remains to be seen. Nor was it clear what the president has been told to expect in the aftermath.

Behind the scenes ahead of the strikes, officials wrestled with a slate of imperfect options that all stopped short of a decisive mission like the one Trump ordered in January to capture Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in Caracas. US intelligence is uncertain on who would replace Iran’s senior leaders if they are taken out.

Military officials have also warned the president about the steep risks for retaliation. Thousands of American troops based in the Middle East could now potentially be targets for Iran as it carries out promised reprisals.

During intense Situation Room meetings over the last several weeks, Trump and senior officials peppered top Pentagon brass, including Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, with questions about each options’ likelihood of success. The answers were often inconclusive, even as Trump ordered a massive military buildup in the Middle East.

In his vague public remarks leading up to the strikes, Trump issued threats not backed by US intelligence — including that Iran would soon have a missile that can hit the US.

“They should make a deal, but they don’t want to quite go far enough,” he said Friday during a stop in Texas. “They don’t want to say the key words: ‘We’re not going to have a nuclear weapon.’”

Yet if Iran’s words alone were the bar for avoiding conflict, the hurdle had already been cleared. The country has repeatedly said it is not pursuing nuclear weapons, including this week.

There are many reasons to question that claim, including Iran’s previous enrichment of uranium to near-weapons grade. But Trump’s emphasis on the country’s words alone only seemed to raise more questions about what, precisely, he was looking for in a deal with the country’s leaders.

He allowed diplomacy to proceed, despite warnings from some senior officials that Iran was notoriously difficult to negotiate with. Some questioned whether Iran’s Supreme Leader, who has ultimate sign-off, would agree to any of Trump’s terms — even if his negotiators seemed more willing to negotiate.

Many inside Trump’s orbit encouraged him to pursue a deal. His envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who engaged in three rounds of indirect talks with the Iranians, entered the discussions with guarded hopes for success.

But others were less encouraging. GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham publicly scoffed at some reported concessions offered by the Iranians. And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in an urgent visit to Washington this month, said there would unlikely be a more opportune moment to strike Iran.

Throughout, Trump had appeared to people around him wary of taking the country to war, far preferring a diplomatic outcome that he could sell as stronger than the Obama-era nuclear deal he withdrew from. But he was impatient for an agreement, setting short timelines that did not yield the concessions he was seeking from Tehran.

In ordering the strikes, Trump overcame certain misgivings at launching an operation his military advisers warned could have an uncertain outcome and could prompt outsized retaliation by Tehran.

And the new operation — which follows limited US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities last June — poses significant political risk for a president whose base has opposed foreign wars. In all, Trump has used the US military to target sites in more than than a half-dozen countries in his second term. It’s not clear how long this operation may last or cost, either in terms of money or lives.

In an interview this week, Vice President JD Vance — who has previously warned about sending US troops into harm’s way for uncertain purposes — suggested any operation in Iran would not result in a prolonged conflict akin to the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan.

“I do think we have to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. I also think that we have to avoid overlearning the lessons of the past,” he told the Washington Post. “Just because one president screwed up a military conflict doesn’t mean we can never engage in military conflict again. We’ve got to be careful about it, but I think the president is being careful.”

Trump acknowledged the risk of a prolonged conflict in his own assessment on Friday. “I guess you could say there’s always a risk. You know, when there’s war, there’s a risk in anything, both good and bad.”