Iran claims destruction of US aircraft following reported recovery of second F-15 airman

The US and Iran have made conflicting claims surrounding the destruction of military aircraft involved in the rescue operation

News Desk

APR 5, 2026

https://thecradle.co/articles/iran-claims-destruction-of-us-aircraft-following-recovery-of-second-f-15-airman

Iran announced on 5 April the destruction of multiple US aircraft, including two military helicopters and two C-130 transport planes carrying US special forces seeking to rescue a downed US fighter pilot.

The alleged rescue operation "ended in complete failure with the timely presence of the Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran," a statement issued by the spokesman for the Khatam Al-Anbiya Central Headquarters said.

The statement said that US President Donald Trump was in a "state of panic" and trying to hide the operation's failure, "through lies and psychological warfare."

It also added that the helicopters and transport planes were shot down in a joint operation involving the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC), Army, Basij paramilitary forces, and police commandos.

Iran released images and video Sunday showing the charred wreckage of US military aircraft destroyed at an abandoned airport south of Isfahan. US forces had apparently used the airport as a makeshift base to launch the operation to rescue a US pilot whose F-15 warplane was shot down on Friday.

Footage showed the destruction of at least two C-130 transport planes and one MH-6 Little Bird special operations helicopter. The C-130 is a specially equipped plane used to carry out covert infiltrations and extract troops from behind enemy lines. The MH-6 is a lightweight helicopter used by elite commando units.

Iran's Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf posted an image from the wreckage site on X with a pointed message: "If the United States gets three more victories like this, it will be utterly ruined."

Saturday's special forces operation was launched after Iranian forces shot down an F-15E warplane on Friday. It was the first US fighter jet lost to enemy fire in over 20 years.

US officials claimed both F-15 crew members were successfully rescued in an operation behind enemy lines and that all US personnel had successfully exited Iran.

The first was rescued shortly after the crash, US officials claimed, while the second was allegedly rescued after hiding in the mountains for two days from Iranian forces searching for him.

Trump claimed that the second service member, a colonel, "sustained injuries," but will be "just fine."

US Central Command (CENTCOM) has not issued a statement regarding the pilot's fate.

CNN's national security analyst Alex Plitsas said that had the second crew member been captured, he would have become a "strategic bargaining chip" for Tehran.

US officials cited by the Wall Street Journal and other US outlets also claimed that two transport planes got “stuck” at the remote base during the rescue operation. After they were deliberately destroyed, three additional US aircraft were dispatched to extract all personnel involved in the rescue operation.

According to Fox News, at least one aircraft, possibly a C-130 Hercules, had become "stuck in the mud."

The IRGC's public affairs office issued a statement accusing Trump of fabricating a successful rescue to conceal "a heavy defeat."

"Trump the gambler, the God of the sands of Tabas is still here," the statement said.

"Tabas" is a reference to the failed US operation ordered by US President Jimmy Carter to rescue US embassy employees taken captive in Tehran shortly after the 1979 Islamic Revolution toppled the Shah.

In that operation, eight US special forces were killed when two of their helicopters collided in the air over the Iranian desert. The operation was an embarrassment for Carter, contributing to his defeat by Ronald Reagan in the 1980 presidential election.

The Reagan White House went on to broker the sale of Israeli weapons to Iran for use in the war against Iraq. The US also sold weapons to Iraq in a bid to prolong the war and weaken both countries. According to some estimates, over a million Iraqis and Iranians were killed in the eight-year war.

This incident of the destroyed aircraft comes as Trump's deadline for Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz approaches.

The US president claimed that "hell" will be unleashed if Iran does not open the strategic waterway by Monday.

"Open the F***in' Strait, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH!" wrote the president, adding: “Praise be to Allah.”

US and Israeli warplanes have been bombing Iran since 28 February. According to the Pentagon, the US and Israel have struck over 12,300 targets. Iran has retaliated with multiple waves of drone and ballistic missile strikes against Israel, as well as US bases and assets in the Persian Gulf.

US intel says Iran retains significant launch capability, able to ‘wreak havoc’: Report

Tehran escalated its ballistic missile attacks after US officials claimed recently that Washington’s strikes brought Iranian launches down by 90 percent

News Desk

APR 3, 2026

https://thecradle.co/articles/us-intel-says-iran-retains-significant-launch-capability-able-to-wreak-havoc-report

US intelligence assessments have concluded that Iran “maintains significant missile launching capability” despite Washington and Tel Aviv’s attacks across the country, sources told CNN on 3 April.

The informed sources said assessments say “Roughly half of Iran’s missile launchers are still intact and thousands of one-way attack drones remain in Iran’s arsenal despite the daily pounding by US and Israeli strikes against military targets over the past five weeks.”

One of the sources said Iranian forces are “still very much poised to wreak absolute havoc throughout the entire region.”

“The US intelligence assessment total may include launchers that are currently inaccessible, such as those buried underground by strikes but not destroyed,” the report adds. 

CNN also claims 50 percent of Iran’s drone capabilities remain intact. 

US President Donald Trump said this week that US operations in Iran would finish in two to three weeks. 

One of the sources who reviewed the intelligence assessments said this goal was “unrealistic” because a lot “remains on the playing field for Iran to use.”

“We can keep f**king them up, I don’t doubt it, but you’re out of your mind if you think this will be done in two weeks,” the source went on to say.

Sources also pointed to the difficulty in targeting Iran’s deeply entrenched network of ballistic missiles.

“The ability to go underground is a primary reason why launchers have not been further degraded. Iran has long hid its launchers in extensive networks of tunnels and caves, preparing for conflict like this for decades – making them particularly difficult to target. Iran has had success in shooting and moving the mobile platforms, making it difficult to track the launchers, similar to the challenges the US has had with the Houthis in Yemen,” sources explained.

US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said recently that Iran’s missile launches were down 90 percent. 

Tehran escalated its strikes in the days that followed. One of Iran’s missiles hit an Israeli drone manufacturing facility near Tel Aviv on Thursday.

Over 2,000 Iranians have been killed by the US and Israel since the start of the war in late February.

The attacks have also damaged more than 90,000 homes and nearly 1,000 schools. Key infrastructure, such as bridges and medical facilities, has also been widely targeted. 

Meanwhile, Tehran has continued to escalate its unprecedented retaliatory campaign of strikes on Israel and US military bases across West Asia.

“Hundreds of US personnel have been killed or injured in the region since the US launched a war on Iran just over a month ago,” The Intercept reported this week. 

Western media reports have confirmed that US bases have suffered severe damage, prompting the military to relocate troops to civilian hotels and office spaces. As a result, Tehran has accused Washington of using human shields.

 “Casualty Cover-Up”: The Pentagon Is Hiding U.S. Losses Under Trump in the Middle East

The Pentagon has sent outdated statements on the number of U.S. troops killed or wounded during the Iran war, resulting in undercounts.

Nick Turse

April 1 2026

https://theintercept.com/2026/04/01/iran-war-us-casualty-numbers-trump-hegseth/

Almost 750 U.S. troops have been wounded or killed in the Middle East since October 2023, an analysis by The Intercept has found. But the Pentagon won’t acknowledge it.

U.S. Central Command, or CENTCOM, which oversees military operations in the Middle East, appears to be engaged in what a defense official called a “casualty cover-up,” offering The Intercept low-ball and outdated figures and failing to provide clarifications on military deaths and injuries.

At least 15 U.S. troops were wounded Friday in an Iranian attack on a Saudi air base that hosts American troops, according to two government officials who spoke with The Intercept. Hundreds of U.S. personnel have been killed or injured in the region since the U.S. launched a war on Iran just over a month ago.

President Donald Trump — who wore a blue suit, red tie, and a ball cap to the dignified transfer of the first Americans killed in the war — said casualties were inevitable. “When you have conflicts like this, you always have death,” he said afterward. “I met the parents and they were unbelievable people. They were unbelievable people, but they all had one thing in common. They said to me, one thing, every single one: Finish the job, sir. Please finish the job.”

On Tuesday, Trump teased that he would wind down the war with Iran in as little as two weeks despite not achieving many of his stated aims, such as “freedom for the people” of Iran, “tak[ing] the oil in Iran,” and forcing Iran’s “unconditional surrender.” At one point, the president even declared that the war would last “as long as necessary to achieve our objective of PEACE THROUGHOUT THE MIDDLE EAST AND, INDEED, THE WORLD!”

CENTCOM has sent outdated statements on casualty numbers, meanwhile, resulting in undercounts, including a statement sent Monday from spokesperson Capt. Tim Hawkins noting that “Since the start of Operation Epic Fury, approximately 303 U.S. service members have been wounded.” The comment was three days old and excluded at least 15 wounded in the Friday attack on Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. The command did not reply to repeated requests for updated figures.

CENTCOM also would not provide a count of troops who have died in the region since the start of the war. An Intercept analysis puts the number at no less than 15.

“This is, quite obviously, a subject that [War Secretary Pete] Hegseth and the White House want to keep under major wraps,” said the defense official who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to speak frankly.

In 2024, during the Biden administration, the Pentagon provided The Intercept with detailed chronologies of attacks on U.S. bases in the Middle East that listed the specific outpost that was attacked, the type of strike, and whether — or how many — casualties resulted, along with an aggregate count of attacks by country.

The Trump administration’s numbers, by comparison, lack detail and clarity. The current CENTCOM casualty figures do not appear to include more than 200 sailors treated for smoke inhalation or otherwise injured due to a fire that raged aboard the USS Gerald R. Ford before it limped off to Souda Bay, Greece, for repairs. CENTCOM did not reply to close to a dozen requests for clarification on the casualty count and related information sent this week.

“CENTCOM and the White House should be providing accurate and timely information on the costs and casualties involved in this war. After all, it is American taxpayers who are funding it and U.S. economic prosperity and economic wellbeing that is being undermined by it,” Jennifer Kavanagh, the director of military analysis at Defense Priorities, a think tank that advocates for measured U.S. foreign policy, told The Intercept.

As the U.S. has relentlessly bombed Iran, that country has responded with attacks on U.S. bases across the Middle East using ballistic missiles and drones. CENTCOM refuses to even offer a simple count of U.S. bases that have been attacked during the war. “We have nothing for you,” a spokesperson told The Intercept. An analysis by The Intercept, however, finds that bases in Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and the United Arab Emirates have been targeted.  

On Tuesday, Hegseth said that Iran retained the ability to retaliate for U.S. strikes but that their attacks would be ineffectual. “Yes, they will still shoot some missiles,” he said, “but we will shoot them down.” On Wednesday morning, officials in Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar all reported missile or drone attacks from Iran.

Iranian strikes have forced U.S. troops to retreat from their bases to hotels and office buildings across the region, according to the two government officials. The defense official was livid about the Pentagon’s failure to adequately harden the bases and ridiculed Hegseth’s Tuesday prayer at a Pentagon press conference. “May god watch over all of them, each day and each night. May his almighty and eternal arms of providence stretch over them and protect them,” said Hegseth.

“Why didn’t Hegseth protect them?” the defense official asked. “Anyone with a brain knew these attacks were coming.”

Pentagon spokesperson Kingsley Wilson did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Retired Gen. Joseph Votel, a former head of Central Command, recalled that U.S. troops in the region have faced drone attacks for at least a decade. “At that time we identified a need to protect against this threat, and it has taken far too long for the DoD to respond and provide adequate protection for our deployed troops,” he told The Intercept, referencing drone attacks during the campaign against ISIS in the spring of 2016. “It was a known expectation that, if attacked, Iran would retaliate against our bases, installations, and forces, and I agree that we should have anticipated and been prepared for this inevitability.”

Kavanagh, who previously called attention to the vulnerability of U.S. outposts in the Middle East, echoed Votel. “It has been clear for years that the rapid proliferation of drones and cheap missiles would put U.S. bases and U.S. early detection radars in the region at risk, yet the Pentagon did little to protect them,” she said. “The failure to invest in hardened infrastructure was a choice. Congress should see this failure as evidence that simply giving the Pentagon more money is not a path to national security.”  

“We would be better off if bases across the region were closed for good,” she added.

In public statements, Iran’s foreign minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi called out the U.S. for using civilians in nearby Arab monarchies of the Gulf Cooperative Council states as human shields. “U.S. soldiers fled military bases in GCC to hide in hotels and offices,” he wrote on X last week. “Hotels in U.S. deny bookings to officers who may endanger customers. GCC hotels should do same.”

Votel also expressed concern about troops using hotels and offices, noting it “could turn normal civilian infrastructure into military targets for the regime.”

Last month, an Iranian drone strike on a hotel in Bahrain wounded two War Department employees, according to a State Department cable reviewed by the Washington Post. CENTCOM did not respond to a request to confirm to The Intercept that those injuries stem from a March 2 attack on the Crowne Plaza hotel, a luxury property in Manama, Bahrain’s capital, but one official indicated this was likely.

Votel said that a failure to provide troops with adequate protection may handcuff U.S. operations. “I think this really complicates command and control and could affect unit cohesion and effectiveness,” he told The Intercept, referring to the transfer of troops to hotels and office buildings. “That said, we may not have many options if we cannot protect the military bases where they would normally be bedded down.” 

At least 15 U.S. troops in the Middle East have died since the beginning of the Iran War, including six personnel who were killed in a drone strike on Port Shuaiba, Kuwait, and a soldier who died due to an “enemy attack on March 1, 2026, at Prince Sultan Air Base, Saudi Arabia.” More than 520 U.S. personnel have also been injured, including those who suffered smoke inhalation on the Ford.

Prior to the current war with Iran, U.S. bases in the Middle East were increasingly targeted by a mix of one-way attack drones, rockets, mortars, and close-range ballistic missiles after Israel’s war in Gaza began in October 2023, most of the attacks occurring in the year following the outset of the conflict. At least 175 troops were killed or wounded in those attacks, including three service members who died in a January 2024 strike on Tower 22, a facility in Jordan. Other attacks targeted al-Asad Air Base, the Baghdad Diplomatic Support Center, Camp Victory, Union III, Erbil Air Base, and Bashur Air Base in Iraq and Al-Tanf garrison, Deir ez-Zor Air Base, Mission Support Site Euphrates, Mission Support Site Green Village, Patrol Base Shaddadi, Rumalyn Landing Zone, Tell Baydar, and Tal Tamir in Syria.

The casualty statistics do not include contractors, most of them foreigners who suffered non-combat injuries. Official U.S. statistics show that there were almost 12,900 cases of injuries to contractors in the CENTCOM area of operations during 2024 alone. More than 3,700 were the most serious non-fatal injuries, including traumatic brain injuries, requiring more than seven days away from work. Eighteen contractors were also killed, all of them in Iraq. The numbers are likely significant undercounts, but if even the fractional number of known contractor injuries is added to the tally, the casualty 

Trump's April Fools' Address to the nation

Expectations reached a fever pitch Wednesday, but he neither called for an end to the war nor announced a ground invasion. Bottom line: We're not finished.

Kelley Beaucar Vlahos

Apr 01, 2026

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/trump-address-iran/

Washington was literally sizzling Wednesday with expectations ahead of President Donald Trump's evening address on Iran. Would he announce a ceasefire? Would he just declare the war over, wash his hands of the mess, and leave the Strait of Hormuz to the Persian Gulf and Europe? What about a full land invasion?

Turns out he did none of that — except maybe the part about the Strait, but we'll get to that in a second.

Trump gave a speech that analyst Dan DePetris noted should have been delivered before launching the attacks on Iran on Feb. 28. He spent much of the approximately 15 minutes building a case for bombing the hell out of Tehran for the last 30 days. "The most violent and thuggish regime on Earth," it "continued their relentless quest for nuclear weapons and rejected every attempt at an agreement." The U.S. had no choice. "We took them out. We took them all out so that no one would really dare stop them. And their race for a nuclear bomb, a nuclear weapon, a nuclear weapon like nobody has ever seen before, they were right at the doorstep." He went on:

"Our objectives are very simple and clear. We are systematically dismantling the regime's ability to threaten America or project power outside of their borders. That means eliminating Iran's Navy, which is now absolutely destroyed, hurting their air force and their missile program at levels never seen before, and annihilating their defense industrial base. We've done all of it. Their Navy is gone, their air force is gone. Their missiles are just about used up or beaten. Taken together. These actions will cripple Iran military, crush their ability to support terrorist proxies and deny them the ability to build a nuclear bomb. Our armed forces have been extraordinary. There's never been anything like it. Militarily, everyone is talking about it, and tonight, I'm pleased to say that these core strategic objectives are nearing completion."

So the war is over right? Wrong. According to Trump the U.S. military has "crushed" Iran, but it's not finished. "Over the next two to three weeks, we're going to bring them back to the stone ages, where they belong. In the meantime, discussions are ongoing." (As they say on social media, tell us Iran is fighting back without telling us Iran is fighting back.)

Again, Trump erroneously noted that while he didn't want regime change "they're all dead" and the "the new group is less radical and much more reasonable." He said in his "two to three week" timetable, "if during this period of time...If there is no deal, we are going to hit each and every one of their electric generating plants very hard and probably simultaneously. We have not hit their oil, even though that's the easiest target of all, because it would not give them even a small chance of survival or rebuilding. But we could hit it and it would be gone. And there's not a thing they could do about it."

Iran can retaliate by hitting oil and energy plants in the region harder, but to mention that would say out loud that the Iranians can still fight and are not playing by our rules. Instead, he said not to worry about the high gasoline prices or the oil shortages; we don't get our oil from the Persian Gulf, and we'll get more from Venezuela anyway. As for all of the other global commerce which includes almost everything in our current supply chains, he was non-committal to opening up the Strait of Hormuz by force. In an auspicious twist, he put it on everyone else to open the Strait.

"So to those countries that can't get fuel, many of which refused to get involved in the decapitation of Iran. We had to do it ourselves. I have a suggestion. Number one, buy oil from the United States of America. We have plenty. We have so much," he said. "And number two, build up some delayed courage. Should have done it before. Should have done it with us, as we asked, go to the Strait and just take it, protect it, use it for yourselves. Iran has been essentially decimated. The hard part is done, so it should be easy, and in any event, when this conflict is over, the Strait will open up naturally."

Comparing the 30-day war to the length of the Korean War, Iraq, and World War I, Trump reached for a way to scold Americans for getting antsy but it somehow came off as boasting as though he could completely destroy an enemy in a much lesser time. "(The world) just can't believe what they're seeing...the brilliance of the United States military."

What the world is seeing is this "decimated" Iran hitting targets across the Persian Gulf and in Israel consistently, all the way through the speech, according to Al Jazeera news. The price of oil is up, partners across the region are curtailing energy use and anticipating food shortages. This will hit American households no matter what Trump says. The war is not over not because he says so but because Iran has not given Trump the clear victory he wants. Tonight he clearly threatened more escalation, but it was not as defined as an announced land invasion. He all but said the Strait was not worth it.

Nor did he unilaterally "declare victory" to save face. He did not mention Israel once, but one could sense its influence in every line. Trump says he is going to "finish it" and "fast." Unrelenting, unspecified violence. Anyone looking for more than that turned out to be an April Fool.

Israel’s goal in Iran is not just regime change, but complete collapse

For Israel, a failed Iranian state fractured by civil war is preferable to any other outcome. They don’t want to just change the regime in Iran, they want to collapse the state itself.

By Kate McMahon  March 9, 2026 

https://mondoweiss.net/2026/03/israels-objective-in-iran-is-not-merely-regime-change-but-total-societal-collapse/

After decades of disastrous wars in the Middle East, the U.S. may have finally learned one lesson: regime change is exceedingly difficult. Removing a head of state is the easy part; what comes after is not. If the underlying goal is regime change, it’s expected the US will cultivate an alternative leadership overseeing a somewhat functioning state. This is when things go awry – and why few are meaningfully working towards a regime change in Iran.

The examples of such failed endeavors are numerous. The U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003; they killed Saddam Hussein in 2006. Twenty years later, the U.S. is still in Iraq. Preemptive declarations of “mission accomplished” contradicted the long complications of nation-building that were yet to come. Today, Iraq is deeply divided with a convoluted political system fractured along ethnic lines – still, it is a functioning state, but it took two and a half decades, billions of dollars, around a million dead, and a wave of terror across the region. Whatever stability Iraq has achieved also owes more to Iraqi political adaptation than to American design.

Meanwhile in Afghanistan, the U.S. spent two decades attempting to replace the Taliban – only to get the Taliban, once again. And in Syria, Washington armed rival factions seeking to topple Bashar al-Assad, stoking ethnic tensions and plunging the country into civil war. At one point, militias armed by the Pentagon were fighting those armed by the CIA.

But Libya provides a different kind of cautionary tale. In 2011, U.S. strikes aided in the killing of Muammar Gaddafi. Yet officials in the Obama administration weren’t particularly concerned with installing a replacement or wanted to become enmeshed in the messy business of nation building, leaving Libyans to deal with the aftermath and subsequent power vacuum alone. In 2010, Libya was one of the wealthiest countries in Africa and enjoyed a high standard of living. Today, it’s a failed state primarily run by violent militias and slave traders, marred by years of civil war.

Presently, the U.S. has assassinated Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei under the pretext of bringing democracy to Iran, or because they will soon have nuclear weapons, a false assertion. What comes next?

Though Washington officials may feign efforts to reinstall the Shah, this attempt is perfunctory at best. The exiled son of Iran’s brutal dictator, overthrown in the 1979 Islamic Revolution, is not poised to ride into Tehran on a white horse and set the country right with a monarch’s flair. While he retains a loyal following among the Iranian diaspora in the United States – particularly those from wealthy families who flourished under the violent monarchy – he is deeply unpopular within Iran. Few are seriously entertaining such fantasies that reinstalling a king who has lived in America for four decades will be smooth-sailing.

With the monarchist restoration largely dismissed, attention shifted to the Islamic Republic’s internal line of succession. When discussing a potential successor to Khamanei last week, Trump told a reporter: “The attack was so successful, it knocked out most of the candidates. It’s not going to be anybody that we were thinking of because they are all dead. Second or third place is dead.” In light of Khamanei’s second son being appointed Supreme Leader, Israeli officials have pledged to assassinate him and every subsequent successor. 

American and Israeli strikes on Iran have eliminated viable opposition leaders, including jailed critics of the Islamic Republic. Reportedly, the U.S. is also intentionally targeting leftist activists.

Because ultimately, replacing the Islamic Republic is not the main objective, or even a desirable one. Rather, the goal in Iran is ethnic balkanization and a failed state. They don’t want to change the regime in Iran, they want to collapse the state itself. The purpose of military strikes is to disintegrate the state’s institutions, fueling ethnic tensions and secessionist movements, leaving Iran deeply divided and marred by civil war and sectarian violence — a parallel to 2015 Syria.

Political collapse could intensify separatist pressures among Kurds in the northwest, Baluchis in the southeast, and Azeris in the north, particularly if outside powers sought to weaponize ethnic grievances. Already, the Trump administration has discussedarming separatist groups within Iran, which would mirror the horrific strategy used in Syria and Afghanistan: empowering brutal militias fighting amongst one another. But in this instance without American boots on the ground.

The “Department of War” is thus not concerned with Iraq and Afghanistan syndrome, because they seemingly have no intent on getting entangled in another round of nation-building and forever war. Rather, they intend to destabilize Iran, leave it to the wolves, and withdraw.

This dystopian trajectory clears the way for Israel to eliminate all meaningful military opposition in the region. In Syria, Israel has spent the last year bombing the country’s military infrastructure and obliterating its capacities – despite the new government being a western ally and issuing no threats against Israel. It’s clear Israel will tolerate no one in the region even having the potential to challenge it.

Israel’s security doctrine has long centered on maintaining a “qualitative military edge” – ensuring overwhelming technological and operational superiority over any regional rival. Codified in U.S. law, the principle is clear: no neighboring state should be allowed to develop the capacity to challenge Israeli military dominance. Within that framework, a fragmented state would pose far less of a long-term threat than an independent regional power capable of rebuilding its forces.

It’s evident Netanyahu desires the eradication of any and all regional powers. He has been warning since 1990 that Iran was on the brink of nuclear capability, spending three decades searching for an excuse for the US to intercede on Israel’s behalf and strike Iran. Though weakened, the Axis of Resistance still proves a stubborn obstacle to Israel expanding its borders in pursuit of “Greater Israel” – not just seizing the remaining Palestinian territories, but stretching into Syria and Lebanon. Therefore, the resistance must be eliminated, and the path goes through Iran.

As Danny Citrinowicz, senior researcher at Tel Aviv’s Institute for National Security Studies, told the Financial Times this week, summarizing his government’s position on Iran: “If we can have a coup, great. If we can have people on the streets, great. If we can have a civil war, great. Israel couldn’t care less about the future [or] the stability of Iran.”

From an Israeli perspective, a splintered Iran trapped in civil war is preferable to a new government, however beholden to western interests it may be (See: Syria). Meanwhile, Trump may nominally prefer a regime change to state collapse, but he is unwilling to put forth the resources to achieve it and will eventually disengage when the costs begin to mount.

If the Iranian regime falls, not just figureheads but the state apparatus itself, the inevitable result will be massive destabilization and Libya 2.0, if not worse. This is by design. The U.S. most certainly has no illusions of bringing democracy to Iran, which could potentially be achieved via support for the opposition or reformists organizing within the country, instead of bombing them. But Israel doesn’t want Iran to have a sovereign democracy, it wants incapacitation – clearing the way for its own firepower in the region to go unchecked.

Iran’s security apparatus is deeply entrenched and unlikely to unravel quickly. But if sustained strikes succeed in breaking the state rather than merely weakening its leadership, the consequences would be catastrophic. A country of nearly ninety million people does not fracture quietly. Hundreds of thousands will die, and millions more will be displaced. Because bombs never liberate – they fragment: bodies, countries, societies.

Yes, Iran Is Playing Chess – But Only After Rewriting the Rules of the Game

by Ramzy Baroud | Apr 1, 2026

https://original.antiwar.com/ramzy-baroud/2026/03/31/yes-iran-is-playing-chess-but-only-after-rewriting-the-rules-of-the-game/

The origins of chess are contested, but few dispute that while the game began in India, it was the Sassanian Persian Empire that refined it into a recognizable strategic system. It was Persia that codified its language, symbolism and intellectual framework: the shah (king), the rokh (rook), and shatranj, the modern chess game.

This is not a trivial historical detail. It is, in many ways, a metaphor that has returned with force.

Since the start of the US-Israeli war on Iran on February 28, 2026, political discourse – across Western, Israeli and alternative media – has repeatedly invoked the analogy of chess to describe Iran’s conduct.

The comparison is seductive. But it is also incomplete.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu articulated this framing as early as May 2012. Speaking of Iran’s negotiating posture, he said that “it looks as though they see the talks as another opportunity to delay and deceive and buy time… Iran is very good in playing this kind of chess game, and you know sometimes you have to sacrifice a pawn to save the king.”

That statement was not merely rhetorical; it revealed a long-standing Israeli interpretation of Iran as a strategic actor operating within a calculated, long-term framework.

More than a decade later, that framing has resurfaced with renewed urgency. Analysts, policymakers and commentators now routinely describe Iran’s actions as deliberate, layered and patient – defined not by immediate gains, but by positional advantage accumulated over time.

Some observers contrast this with what they perceive as a fundamentally different approach in Washington: one driven by immediacy, spectacle and the politics of rapid outcomes.

But such a contrast, while tempting, risks oversimplification.

Iran’s approach is rooted in historical continuity. It understands the current war not as an isolated confrontation, but as the latest phase in a decade-long process of pressure, containment and confrontation.

In this sense, the battlefield is not defined by days or weeks, but by political cycles measured in years – if not generations.

The objective of its adversaries, however, has remained consistent: Shāh Māt – checkmate – the dismantling of the Iranian state as a coherent political entity.

Yet this is precisely where the central miscalculation emerges.

When the Iranian Revolution overthrew the US-backed Shah in 1979, the collapse of the system was swift and decisive. But it was not the result of external pressure. It was the inevitable outcome of a structurally brittle system.

That system was vertical – organized as a rigid hierarchy with power concentrated at the apex and legitimacy flowing downward. When the apex collapsed, the entire structure disintegrated.

If the people are the piyādeh – the pawns – then in that moment, they did not merely encircle the king; they overturned the entire board.

This experience helped shape a strategic doctrine that would later define US and Israeli military thinking: the belief that removing leadership – what is often termed “decapitation” – can trigger systemic collapse.

This doctrine appeared to succeed in Iraq following the 2003 invasion and the eventual execution of Saddam Hussein. It appeared to succeed in Libya after the killing of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

In Latin America, the same doctrine has shaped US intervention across decades – from the 1954 CIA-backed overthrow of Guatemala’s Jacobo Árbenz to the 1973 coup against Chile’s Salvador Allende and, most recently, the US kidnapping of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro in Caracas in January 2026. In each case, the assumption was the same: remove the leadership, and the system would collapse with it.

But this model has repeatedly failed when applied to movements and societies rooted in popular mobilization rather than elite control.

In Gaza, Lebanon and, crucially, Iran, the assumption that political systems function as fragile pyramids has proven fundamentally flawed.

These are not systems sustained solely by leadership. They are sustained by social depth. In other words, they are not pyramids – they are networks.

Their resilience lies in their ability to regenerate from within society itself. Leadership can be removed, but the political energy that sustains it cannot be easily extinguished.

Israel has long recognized, at least implicitly, that assassinating Palestinian leaders does not end Palestinian resistance. Yet it has persisted in such tactics, while simultaneously expanding its strategy.

Increasingly, the focus has shifted toward the population itself – raising the cost of resistance by targeting the social fabric that sustains it.

In Gaza, this strategy has reached its most extreme form: the systematic destruction of civilian life and the open pursuit of mass extermination and mass displacement.

In southern Lebanon, a similar logic is evident. Entire communities have been uprooted, towns devastated, and infrastructure erased – not merely as ‘collateral damage’, but as part of a deliberate strategy.

The aim is unmistakable: decapitate the leadership, then erode the people. Yet in Iran, this logic has encountered its most profound limitation.

Both Washington and Tel Aviv appear to have assumed that internal dissatisfaction could be weaponized – that social grievances would override national cohesion in the face of external pressure.

This assumption reflects a deeper misreading – not only of Iranian society, but of how legitimacy itself functions within it.

Iran is not a monolithic system in the way it is often portrayed. Its political life is dynamic, contested and deeply embedded in society. Legitimacy is not imposed from above; it is continuously negotiated within the public sphere – through electoral participation, protests, and other forms of political engagement.

This dynamism produces a system that is far more resilient than it appears from the outside. The removal of a leader, or even multiple leaders, does not signify collapse. Nor does the symbolic destruction of state power.

The system persists because it is not reducible to individuals. It is reproduced through collective political experience.

This is where the chess analogy becomes truly revealing.

Iran’s strategic strength does not lie in protecting a single “king,” but in its ability to reconfigure the board itself.

In this game, continuity is not tied to any one piece. It is embedded in the relationships between them. The rallies, marches and sustained public mobilization that have continued throughout the war are not incidental. They are central.

They represent, in effect, a collective “Shah” – a form of political sovereignty that cannot be eliminated through assassination or decapitation.

Some may argue that Iran is not merely playing chess, but rewriting its rules. That, perhaps, is the most unsettling realization of all.

For if the rules themselves have changed, then the strategy designed to defeat Iran may alr

Donald Trump: A Threat to World Peace

by Michael C. Monson | Mar 31, 2026

https://original.antiwar.com/michael_monson/2026/03/30/donald-trump-a-threat-to-world-peace/

President Trump and his minions assured America that he was a man of peace who would abandon the “failed policy of regime change”. Yet, since taking office in 2025, he has bombed seven countries and threatened several more.

As a man without principles, Trump is an empty vessel into which zealots pour their venom. The xenophobe Stephen Miller dehumanizes immigrants, the mercantilist Peter Navarro extols tariffs, and the indicted war criminal Bibi Netanyahu excoriates Iran.

Netanyahu has met with Trump at least seven times since Trump regained the presidency in 2025. As pointed out by the Times of Israel: “Netanyahu’s last meeting with Trump was a hastily arranged visit on February 11, 2026, which included a three-hour meeting at the White House, uncharacteristically closed to the press. The day after that meeting, the USS Gerald Ford aircraft carrier, the world’s largest warship, departed the Caribbean, where it was supporting US military action in Venezuela, for the Mediterranean.” Secretary of State Rubio first suggested that Israel was the driving force behind the war, and now Trump’s top counter-terrorism expert, Joe Kent, confirms that the war was started “due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby”.

Iran has not initiated an offensive war in 300 years, a fact which apparently failed to register in the mind of President Trump. Trump explicitly stated that “based on what Steve [Witkoff] and Jared [Kushner] and Pete [Hegseth] and others were telling me, Marco [Rubio] is so involved, I thought they were going to attack us”.

Trump and his minions will argue that Iran has attacked us numerous times at the hands of Iraqis, Hezbollah, and Hamas, organizations that Iran has supported. A little over 1,000 Americans have died at their hands, fewer than those who died at the hands of Saudi Arabians on 9/11. More than half a million Iranians died during the eight-year Iran-Iraq War from 1980 to 1988, a war initiated by Iraq but sustained by US support for Iraq, which included critical reconnaissance data, financial aid, and the export of biological and chemical agents usable for weapons of mass destruction.

One thousand dead Americans render Iran a rogue nation. Half a million dead Iranians leaves the US a beneficent one? Just how beneficent is the US?

Iran did not orchestrate a coup to overthrow the elected leader of the US. The US did orchestrate a coup to overthrow the elected leader of Iran in 1953.

Iran did not establish a secret police force used to violently suppress dissent and torture political prisoners in the US. In setting up SAVAK, the American CIA (along with Israel’s Mossad) did so for Iran in 1957.

Iran did not place sanctions or embargoes on the US or encourage other countries to do so. The US has done so to Iran for 47 years.

Iran did not sail warships into American territorial waters. The US has done so to Iran on numerous occasions, from the “Tanker War” of the 1980s through to the present day.

Iran did not shoot down an American civilian airliner flying in a commercial airline corridor. The USS Vincennes shot down Iran Air Flight 655 in July 1988, killing 290 people, including 66 children. The US subsequently lied about the USS Vincennes being in Iran’s territorial waters and initially claimed that the Iranian airliner was not in the commercial airline corridor. The US never apologized, and two officers on the Vincennes were subsequently awarded medals.

Iran did not unilaterally withdraw from the nuclear deal with the US. It was President Trump who did so.

Iran did not conduct military exercises within sight of the US. The US has conducted military exercises in the Persian Gulf on multiple occasions.

Iran did not assassinate a major general of the US. President Trump ordered the assassination of the Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani in January 2020.

Iran did not fly spy drones over US territory. The US has been conducting such flights over Iran for a long period.

Iran did not bomb US territory. The US has bombed Iranian territory in an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities in June 2025 and again beginning on February 28, 2026.

Iran has not killed innocent American children. In the very first hours of the American preemptive war on Iran, one of the very first strikes was on a girls’ school in southern Iran, which killed an estimated 110 children. When President Trump was asked if the US had bombed the school, he said, “No, in my opinion, based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran.” He continued: “We think it was done by Iran – because they are very inaccurate, as you know, with their munitions. They have no accuracy whatsoever. It was done by Iran.”

Iran is constantly castigated for its support of proxies. Indeed, in 2020, the US State Department estimated that Iran spent more than $16 billion on support of its proxies in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen between 2012 and 2020. But that support is dwarfed by American support for its proxies. In 2016, the US signed a law pledging $38 billion in military assistance to Israel from fiscal year 2019 to 2028, and Israel is by far the largest recipient of US aid, amounting to $330 billion (adjusted for inflation) from 1946 to 2024, nearly three-quarters of that being military assistance.

If Iran is complicit in the deaths attributed to its proxies, then America is complicit in the deaths attributed to Israel.

Investigative journalist Ronen Bergman, in his book Rise and Kill First, documents Israel as having carried out more targeted assassinations than any other Western nation since WWII. Many of those assassinated have been Iranians. However, that record may soon be eclipsed by American targeted killings in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Iran, Nigeria, the Caribbean, and the Pacific.

The toll of death from American actions in the Mideast is truly staggering. According to the Watson School of International and Public Affairs at Brown University, US military operations in the Mideast post 9/11 are estimated to have directly killed more than 940,000 and indirectly killed an additional 3.6 to 3.8 million.

Iran is not an imminent threat to the lives of millions; Donald Trump is.