Video Suggests Trump’s ICE Lied About Its First Known Killing of a US Citizen Last March

“He was shot at point-blank range through his side window by an ICE agent who was in no danger,” said lawyers for the family of Ruben Ray Martinez.


Body camera footage shows federal immigration agents and police officers surrounding Ruben Ray Martinez after he was shot on March 15, 2025 in South Padre Island, Texas.
(Image via South Padre Island Police Department)

Julia Conley
Mar 09, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

Materials released over the weekend by the Texas Department of Public Safety regarding a homeland security officer’s killing of 23-year-old Ruben Ray Martinez last March in Texas appeared to provide the latest evidence that federal agents have misled the public about the circumstances surrounding fatal shootings.

American Oversight, a government watchdog group, revealed last month that nearly a year before the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis, Martinez was the first known US citizen to be killed by an agent of the Trump administration who was carrying out official duties.


‘How Many Other Killings Are They Concealing?’ ICE Shot Ruben Ray Martinez in Texas Last March

Since then, a grand jury has declined to indict the accused officer, Homeland Security Investigations agent Jack C. Stevens, and American Oversight as well as Martinez’s family and lawyers have demanded that state authorities release the findings of their investigation into the killing, with the watchdog filing a Freedom of Information Act request.

The body camera footage released on Saturday called into question statements that were made by the Department of Homeland Security after Martinez’s killing was publicly revealed, when a DHS spokesperson said the young man “intentionally ran over” an agent.

Internal documents also claimed officers commanded Martinez to get out of his car after he approached the scene of a vehicle accident and that he “accelerated forward, striking a HSI special agent who wound up on the hood of the vehicle.”

The video that was released came from a body camera worn by a South Padre Island, Texas police officer who was one of a number of local, state, and federal agents securing an area after a car accident.



About 21 minutes into the officer’s footage, someone can be heard saying, “Keep going” as Martinez’s car approaches the scene. The car briefly stops for some pedestrians, and officers soon appear to become concerned, running toward the vehicle and shouting, “Stop him” and, “Get him out.”

Martinez’s car appears to be moving slowly, with the brake lights on, as three gunshots are heard and just after.

The video then shows an officer removing Martinez from the car and throwing him on the ground while his friend who was in the car with him, Joshua Orta, is taken into custody.

The internal DHS documents said a second HSI agent Hector Sosa, was struck by the car in his legs, falling over the hood. The footage is taken from behind the car, making it unclear whether Sosa was hit—but it does not show Martinez accelerating.

If an officer was hit, University of South Carolina criminal justice professor Geoffrey P. Albert told the Washington Post, based on the footage of the car it would have been a case of “officer-created jeopardy.”

“The contradictory orders are confusing and may have been a strong influence,” Alpert told the Post. “The speed is slow and doesn’t appear threatening. Could the officer have moved away? At worst, all he has to do is step aside.”

He added that the body camera video raises “a lot of red flags.”

Lawyers for Martinez’s family, Charles M. Stam and Alex Stamm, said in a statement that the videos confirm the 23-year-old’s car “was barely moving when he was shot.”

“He was shot at point-blank range through his side window by an ICE agent who was in no danger,” said the attorneys.

Orta, who was killed last month in an unrelated vehicle accident in San Antonio, provided a witness statement after Martinez was killed, saying “I state clearly and without hesitation that Ruben did not hit anyone,” Orta wrote. “The trooper seemed to be trying to get in front of the car, like he wasn’t moving out of the way when we tried to turn around and leave like the police officer told us to do.”

More than a dozen people have been killed by federal immigration officers since President Donald Trump took office for his second term in January 2025.

In the case of Good, an independent autopsy was conducted as part of a civil investigation into her killing and found “strong evidence” against the agent who shot her, calling into question the Trump administration’s claim that the officer had killed the 37-year-old in self-defense.

A preliminary government investigation into Pretti’s killing did not find that the legal observer had threatened or attacked the Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protection agents who fatally shot him, as the administration had first claimed.

Both Pretti and Good were immediately denounced as “domestic terrorists” by administration officials.

DHS also claimed that Marimar Martinez, a Chicago resident who was shot several times by a federal agent but survived last October, had “rammed” officers’ vehicles. Body camera footage and text messages from officers later undermined those claims. Federal prosecutors abruptly dropped their criminal case against Martinez weeks after she was shot.

The video of Martinez’s killing in Texas, said columnist Nicholas Kristof, suggests that the DHS account of that incident “may be a lie” as well.

'Ridiculous': DHS deputy blows millions on 'unusable' vehicles that are now in 'hiding'

Masked law enforcement officers, including HSI and ICE agents, walk into an immigration court in Phoenix, Arizona, U.S., May 21, 2025. REUTERS/Caitlin O'Hara/File Photo

Adam Lynch

March 09, 2026

ALTERNET

The Washington Examiner reports that former DHS head Kristi Noem was not the only division head prone to blow cash on big adventures such as a $220 million series of television advertisements. A former Trump administration official wasted millions of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement taxpayer dollars purchasing thousands of employee vehicles that are now unusable, according to three sources

“ICE’s top brass are quietly searching for a way to amend the remainder of a massive order of pick-up trucks and SUVs that were ordered last year and slated to be wrapped with the agency’s name, logo, and motto, as well as storing away many vehicles that have been delivered to ICE facilities across the country,” reports the Washington Examiner.



“ICE has never had marked vehicles,” one source familiar with the purchases told the Examiner. “In talking to people, they’re like, ‘We don’t want to use these, we can’t.'”

The saga, according to Examiner, “is the latest controversial expenditure of taxpayer money within the Department of Homeland Security and speaks to the different ways political appointees at the department have tried to approach operations versus how career law enforcement officials have historically done so.”

President Donald Trump’s One Big, Beautiful Bill allocated $170 billion over four years for border security and immigration enforcement, and people in charge of purchase orders appear to be giving less thought to how that money is spent. For example, assaults against ICE personnel have risen 8,000 percent over the past year, according to the DHS. The threat is so serious that federal police now opt to hide their faces while conducting business in public. They also frequently resort to rental vehicles, and they switch license plates on rental vehicles to avoid detection by activists, who track the plates of suspected ICE vehicles with crowdsourced databases.


But despite the value of secrecy in today’s hostile environment, ICE’s former deputy director, Madison Sheahan apparently placed an expensive purchase of a bulk order for vehicles marked clearly with ICE’s logo.

Last November, the Examiner reports the agency announced it would spend $2.25 million in a no-bid contract with a prominent Republican donor, Rick Hendrick, to buy 25 Chevrolet Tahoes emblazoned with ICE’s new logo. The Examiner reports the department then spent an additional $174,000 to $230,000 to three companies to wrap the vehicles in their new markings.

“It’s ridiculous because you don’t want to advertise what you’re doing,” the first source said. “We’re just hiding them in a parking garage somewhere because we don’t want to drive them. Who wants to drive the marked vehicles?”


Sheahan was hand-picked by Noem to be the second-in-command of the 20,000-employee federal agency and its $9 billion budget. Her prior experience included serving as a political director when Noem was South Dakota’s governor. She also served as executive director of the South Dakota Republican Party, and as secretary of the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.

A second source said the marked vehicles are now being used for custodial pick-ups, or when ICE retrieves someone from a local jail or state prison — not in general enforcement.

Trump's new DHS pick can't stop embarrassing himself — and he hasn't even started

John Casey
March 7, 2026 

RAW STORY


Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) speaks to the media near the Senate floor. REUTERS/Nathan Howard

There just might be a second reason — besides the constant fawning praise for Dear Leader — why Donald Trump chose Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) as his new Secretary of Homeland Security.

Trump has floated the idea of hosting a UFC fight on the White House grounds on July 4th, trampling the memories of John-John and Caroline Kennedy playing on those lawns, and presidential dogs Rex, Barney, and Beau scampering about.

So what could top an ultimate marquee match between Mullin and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth? Let’s call it the “Cabinet Clash:” two Trump testosterone toadies, going mano a mano.

Because if you actually look at Mullin’s qualifications for his new role, there isn’t much that recommends him, other than that he compiled a 5–0 record in professional Mixed Martial Arts.

There was a time when the Secretary of Homeland Security was perhaps the most serious and consequential cabinet post. The job was created after 9/11 to coordinate intelligence, secure our borders, and manage the immense responsibility of protecting 330 million Americans.


Prestigious names have led the department: Tom Ridge, Janet Napolitano, Jeh Johnson. During Trump’s first administration, Gen. John Kelly. Serious people for a serious job.


Then the gravitas of the position took a nosedive when Kristi Noem rode in on her horse. Only this week was she thrown off, for being far less than forthright.

And now there’s Sen. Mullin, a man whose most notable pre-politics credential is that 5–0 MMA record.

Politically speaking, Mullin’s MMA stands for Macho Mixed-Up Ass.


Let’s start with the “mixed-up” part.

This week, Mullin pulled an Abbott and Costello routine, simultaneously arguing regarding strikes on Iran that the U.S. is and is not at war.

First he declared, “This is war, and we’re taking out the threat.”


Then he tried to clarify: “What I was saying was that they’ve declared war on us, but war is ugly. It always has been ugly.”

He finished with this gem: “We haven’t declared war. So if we haven’t declared war, then I don’t see that. The president hasn’t asked us to declare war yet, but they have declared war on us.”

Who’s on first, what’s on second, “I don’t know” is on third, and somewhere on that field of battle Mullin is still milling around, trying to decipher his own explanation.


If you thought Hegseth had captured the trophy for inauthentic and immature machismo, Mullin may give him a run for his money.

In November 2023, Teamsters President Sean O’Brien appeared before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. Famously, Mullin challenged him to a fight.

“This is the time, this is the place,” Mullin said. “If you want to run your mouth, we can be two consenting adults. We can finish it here.”


Sure sounds like a sane, responsible adult to me.

This year, at the State of the Union, Mullin grabbed a protest sign from Rep. Al Green (D-TX). Frankly, Mullin would make a fine ICE agent. He’s had practice roughing up a person of color.

And if you’re a member of the media, take note.


In April last year, Mullin posted a video recounting an 1890 incident in which a reporter was shot by a congressman in the U.S. Capitol. Mullin suggested “fake news” might decrease if modern disputes could be handled that way. He said it was a joke. Haha.

Mullin does enjoy “joking” around on Fox News, where he has made something of a habit of embarrassing himself.

In one segment, he waxed poetic about how war has a particular smell and a particular taste. The only problem was that Mullin has never served a single day in uniform.

Even back home in Oklahoma, he has hardly been a profile in integrity.


Mullin ran for Congress on a term-limits pledge, then broke it twice. In 2013 his plumbing business was the subject of an ethics investigation. More recently, he racked up STOCK Act violations, meant to stop members of Congress profiting from insider information.

He called Rand Paul, a senator who will be overseeing his confirmation, a “freaking snake.”

Come to think of it, Paul v. Mullin would also make a great MMA fight.


So this Macho Mixed-up Ass is the man who would oversee the Secret Service, FEMA, Customs and Border Protection, ICE, and the TSA. A man who endorses war — and not war — violence against the press and political opponents, who is ethically challenged and has zero background in security, intelligence, or managing a massive federal bureaucracy.

And all that said, Mullin might yet need to be reminded who his boss actually is.

A few days ago, while discussing Iran on Fox News, Mullin repeatedly referred to Defense Secretary Hegseth as “President Hegseth.” He made the slip twice before awkwardly correcting himself.

The Department of Homeland Security was built in the wreckage of the worst intelligence failure in American history. The job requires toughness but also judgment, patience, legal sophistication, and the ability to manage roughly 260,000 employees across more than two dozen agencies.

So while I joke about a Hegseth-Mullin cage match, Mullin’s nomination is no laughing matter.

Whether he realizes it or not, the United States faces real threats from adversaries around the world, and those adversaries are watching this spectacle of discombobulation, inexperience, and bravado.

When the real test comes, America may discover the difference between a man who talks about the smell of war, and a leader who actually knows how to prevent one.

John Casey was most recently Senior Editor, The Advocate, and is a freelance opinion and feature story writer. Previously, he was a Capitol Hill press secretary, and spent 25 years in media and public relations in NYC. He is the co-author of LOVE: The Heroic Stories of Marriage Equality (Rizzoli, 2025), named by Oprah in her "Best 25 of 2025.”

‘Shield of the Americas’: Trump Assembles His Fascist Hemispheric Fan Club

The group of Caribbean and Latin American leaders attending Trump’s weekend summit in Miami are the fan club of his aggressive interventionism, his so-called “war on narco-terror,” and his administration’s attacks on left-wing governments and movements.


Argentinian President Javier Milei and US President Donald Trump shake hands during a February 22, 2025 meeting in Washington, DC.
(Photo by White House)

Alexander Main

Jake Johnston
Mar 07, 2026

Center for Economic and Policy Research


For nearly three years the Dominican Republic had been excitedly preparing to host the region’s biggest multilateral event: the 2025 Summit of the Americas, bringing together the leaders of nearly every government in the Western Hemisphere. But on November 3, only a month before the summit was to take place, the DR’s foreign ministry abruptly announced the postponement of the event citing “recent climatic events” (i.e., hurricanes) and “profound divisions that currently hamper productive dialogue in the hemisphere.”

Indeed, regional “divisions”—others might say “alarm” or “outrage”—had intensified during the fall of 2025 following the US’ massive military build-up in the Caribbean, its air strikes against alleged drug boats—resulting in scores of extrajudicial killings—and the threats of a US attack on Venezuela. Past summits, including the 2022 summit in Los Angeles, had seen Latin American leaders fiercely push back against US regional policies. Fearing a potential public relations disaster, DR President Luis Abinader—following consultations with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio—decided that pulling the plug was the best option.

So far there’s no word of a new date for the Summit of the Americas. This weekend, however, President Donald Trump will convene a far smaller hemispheric summit at his golf resort in Miami. The group of Caribbean and Latin American leaders that will be attending Trump’s summit—entitled “Shield of the Americas”—are fans of his aggressive interventionism, his so-called “war on narco-terror,” and his administration’s attacks on left-wing governments and movements in the region. They have earned their exclusive invitations through various forms of tribute and by pledging their continued loyalty, though it remains to be seen whether Trump and Rubio will succeed in garnering support for every point on their agenda, in particular for their effort to push China out of the region.

***

Featuring a who’s who of the Latin American hard right, Trump’s divisions-free summit is reminiscent of recent Conservative Political Action Conferences (CPACs) held in Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay. Like those conferences—in which Argentina’s anarcho-capitalist president Javier Milei and Chile’s far-right president-elect José Antonio Kast have shared the stage with MAGA luminaries like Steve Bannon—the “Shield” summit appears designed to further promote Trump-aligned far-right cultish ideologies in the Americas. As an added bonus, it will be held at the National Trump Doral Miami, ensuring a solid weekend of revenue for Trump’s resort as well as quick, easy travel to and from Mar-a-Lago for the US president.

Still, it remains to be seen whether Trump—whose overall attitude toward the region and its inhabitants oscillates between contempt and indifference—will be willing to invest real time and energy in cultivating this group of leaders.

Each of the summit invitees—numbering 12 at last count—can claim to have advanced the US administration’s regional objectives in one way or another. Many have engaged in sustained attacks against left-wing governments and movements that have resisted Trump’s imperial ambitions. Milei, for instance, has repeatedly insulted President Lula da Silva of Brazil and thrown his support behind former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, convicted last year of plotting a military coup against Lula.

Daniel Noboa of Ecuador, in addition to persecuting left-wing opponents at home, has engaged in an unprovoked tariff war against Colombia’s progressive president—and vocal Trump critic—Gustavo Petro. On March 4, for no apparent reason other than that of wanting to please Trump and Rubio, Noboa expelled the entire diplomatic staff at Cuba’s embassy in Quito. Similarly, Honduras’ recently-elected right-wing president Nasry Asfura rescinded a medical cooperation agreement with Cuba, leading to the departure of more than 150 Cuban doctors that had been serving low-income communities. This offering will have surely warmed the heart of Marco Rubio, who has been pressuring countries around the world to terminate similar agreements in order to eliminate one of Cuba’s few sources of foreign income.

Above all, the cohort of right-wingers attending the summit have been supportive of Trump’s “war on narco-terror,” currently the main vehicle for advancing Trump’s policy of expanding US political and economic influence in the region, referred to both mockingly and seriously as the “Donroe Doctrine.” The first signs of this “war” date back to the first day of Trump’s second term, when he instructed Rubio to designate various drug cartels and Latin American gangs as “foreign terrorist organizations.” It became real when, in late July of last year, the US president ordered a massive build-up of naval and aerial military assets in the south Caribbean and directed US Southern Command (Southcom) to conduct illegal aerial strikes against suspected drug boats, leading so far to over 150 extrajudicial killings of mostly unknown civilians.

On January 3, following months of threats of US intervention in Venezuela, US forces conducted an unprovoked military attack and invasion of Venezuela and abducted President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, who were flown to New York to await trial on dubious charges. The next day, the members of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC, by its Spanish initials) met and discussed a statement denouncing the illegal attack on Venezuela. Nine governments opposed the statement and effectively blocked its release. The leaders of those governments, except for that of politically unstable Peru, are now on the “Shield of the Americas” invitation list. Two other leaders who’d been elected but hadn’t taken office—Kast of Chile and Asfura of Honduras—defended the attack, and have been invited as well.

A number of governments have gone even further in embracing Trump’s “narco-terror war.” After the US administration designated the fictitious Venezuelan drug organization “Cartel de los Soles” as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist, later identifying Maduro as its leader, the presidents of Argentina, Ecuador, Paraguay, and the DR (all “Shield” invitees) did the same. Given the lack of real evidence that this so-called cartel exists, the US Department of Justice removed the term from its indictment of Maduro; however, the terrorist designation remains in the books in the US and in those four Latin American countries.

Many of the governments represented at the Miami summit have adopted the term “narco-terror” in official discourse and policy statements. Noboa, whose security forces are allegedly responsible for forced disappearances and widespread human rights abuses, has launched his own “war on narco-terror” in Ecuador. On March 3 the US and Ecuador announced joint military operations targeting “terrorist organizations” with US special forces supporting Ecuadorian commandos to “combat the scourge of narco-terrorism,” per Southcom. Other summit invitees, including Argentina, the DR, Bolivia, and El Salvador appear to be getting in the game as well and Paraguay, like Ecuador, has signed a Status of Forces Agreement with the US administration, allowing the presence of US troops and providing them with immunity from local prosecution.

It’s possible that the Trump administration considers that framing US military expansionism in the hemisphere as a combined war on terrorism and drug-trafficking is helpful in garnering public support, though there’s not much indication that it has, outside of the Republican MAGA base. But it’s hard to claim, with a straight face, that President Trump is genuinely determined to fight drug trafficking knowing that he recently pardoned former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, who was serving a 45-year sentence for his role in enabling the importation of more than 400 tons of cocaine to the US. Or when one considers that one of his primary partners in his drug war is President Noboa, whose family’s business appears to be implicated in cocaine trafficking, according to a recent investigation by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.

As of the writing of this article, there are few details about the agenda of the summit except that apparently “security” and “foreign interference” will be discussed. Regarding “security,” Trump, Rubio, and Defense Secretary Peter Hegseth—who are all reportedly attending—probably won’t need to do much to convince their allies to double down further on the “narco-terror” threat. Given recent events, it’s likely they’ll focus more on shoring up regional support for the war with Iran, which has so far received mostly tepid backing, with the exception of presidents Milei, Kast, and Santiago Peña of Paraguay, who have all cheered on the joint US-Israeli attacks. They may also seek more overt backing for the intense US regime change effort targeting Cuba, which involves an oil blockade that could soon cause a “humanitarian collapse,” according to the United Nations. Trump and many Republicans have said that when they’re done in Iran, “Cuba is next.”

By “foreign interference” the White House is presumably not referring to US interference in Latin America and the Caribbean, which has been a constant for many decades but has reached new heights under Trump. Instead, the term is widely understood in Washington as primarily a reference to China’s growing regional influence. Here it is far from certain that Trump and his team will make much progress given the massive economic benefits derived from Chinese trade and investment. China is currently the top trading partner for Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, and Paraguay and the second biggest trading partner for nearly all of the other countries represented at the summit.

Many of these leaders have engaged in strident rhetoric against the PRC, but ultimately have quietly chosen to strengthen relations with the world’s second-biggest (and soon biggest) economy. Milei, for instance, referred to the Chinese government as “assassins” and said that he refused to do business with communists. He has completely changed his tune now: At Davos this year he called China “a great trading partner” and said that he plans to visit Beijing this year.

According to a schedule that the White House shared with the media, President Trump will participate in the “Shield of the Americas” summit for two and half hours and then fly back to Mar-a-Lago in the afternoon. With 12 other heads of state present, it’s doubtful that much will be achieved. There will be speeches—one can expect a long, rambling speech by Trump in which he’s likely to congratulate himself again for his “success” in Venezuela—there will doubtless be many selfies taken with Trump, but it’s unlikely that there will be anything resembling real dialogue.

Instead, the summit’s goal appears to be, first, offering the leaders limited face time with Trump as a sort of recompense for their loyalty and various good deeds. Some of these leaders have already received decisive support from Trump. Shortly before a key congressional election in Argentina, the US Treasury offered Milei’s government a $20 billion bailout, which stabilized the country’s economy and helped Milei’s party clinch a major electoral victory. Late last year, Trump interfered in a big way in Honduras’ election by endorsing Asfura’s candidacy and threatening to exact an economic punishment on the whole country if voters didn’t elect him. Asfura ended up winning by a razor thin margin that was contested by his opponents.

For leaders of some of the smaller countries, participating in the summit is itself a big reward, one that allows them to show domestic constituencies that their pliant behavior has paid off in the form of privileged access to the US president. For Trinidad’s Persad-Bissessar, who supported Trump’s boat strikes even after Trinidadian civilians were killed, and Guyanese president Irfan Aali, who promised US oil companies “preferential treatment” in their bids to operate in Guyana’s booming oil sector, the participation in such an exclusive event with Trump is, in itself, the reward.

Finally, it’s likely that, through this brief summit, Trump and Rubio are hoping to consolidate a hemispheric posse of sorts—a group of obedient allies who will continue to defend the administration’s interventionism and its violations of sovereignty and international law and that will eagerly participate in the expansion of the US’ militarized security agenda.

Still, it remains to be seen whether Trump—whose overall attitude toward the region and its inhabitants oscillates between contempt and indifference—will be willing to invest real time and energy in cultivating this group of leaders. His appointment of Kristi Noem as “special envoy” to the summit, as part of a maneuver to remove her from the position of Homeland Security Secretary, doesn’t send the most positive signal to his far-right guests. Even they may be cringing at the thought of the future of the summit being in the hands of a firebrand immigration enforcer who played a key role in the persecution and stigmatization of migrants that beckoned primarily from Latin America and the Caribbean.

Why the Trump Administration Doesn’t Just Break the Law

But Uses Legality (in a Distinctly Lawless Fashion)

By Maha Hilal

March 6, 2026

Source: Tom Dispatch

Lady Justice / Public Domain Photo

In response to his sentencing following his conviction on 34 felonies in May 2024, President Trump stated that he had “won the election in a massive landslide, and the people of this country understand what’s gone on. This has been a weaponization of government.”

Despite his conviction, Judge Juan Merchan sentenced him to an unconditional discharge with no consequences like prison, probation, or even fines. The judge determined that this was the “only lawful sentence” that avoided infringing on the authority of the presidency. Had that been Donald Trump’s first encounter with the law (which, of course, it wasn’t), it would have been a stark lesson in impunity.

It’s no surprise then that, in an interview last year with Kristen Welker on Meet the Press, when asked about his obligation to uphold the Constitution, Trump responded, “I don’t know.” In his conversation with Welker, he also defied a Supreme Court decision that ordered the return of immigrant Kilmar Armando Ábrego García from El Salvador, where he had been deported thanks to what the Trump administration termed “an administrative error.” Blaming the deferral of that decision on Attorney General Pam Bondi, the president stated that he was “not involved in the legality or illegality” of the case.

Despite his seemingly ambivalent feelings in that interview, he has emphatically asserted his position with respect to the law elsewhere, especially when it came to him.  For example, on February 16, 2025, he wrote on X, “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.” Nonetheless, outright violations of the law have been a signature characteristic of his administration writ large.  For example, last March, when Judge James Boasberg ordered the return of planes carrying migrants being deported from the United States to El Salvador’s CECOT prison (known for its brutality), Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem instructed the two flights to continue in clear violation of the court order. The Justice Department would subsequently argue in a court filing that the administration hadn’t violated the judge’s order because the flights carrying the migrants were no longer over U.S. territory when the ruling was issued.  

In short, although the attitudes of President Trump and his administration toward legality have been guided by the belief that their power is in no way meaningfully constrained by the law, it would be a mistake to assume that they’ve governed through lawlessness alone. To focus solely on lawlessness would be to minimize the way the president and his administration have simultaneously relied on and weaponized the law itself to legitimize their violence and their violations. They have pursued an America First strategy that has centered on the expansion of executive power and the protection of narrowly defined national interests, while tossing aside both human rights and international legal norms. To fully grasp the depths of the Trump administration’s violence, lawlessness must be examined alongside the strategic use of the law to manufacture a sense of legality and a facade of legal legitimation.

Legalizing Boat Strikes to “Save Americans”

On Tuesday, September 2, 2025, on President Trump’s order, U.S. military forces conducted an airstrike against a boat that the administration claimed belonged to the Latin American gang Tren de Aragua, which he had previously designated a terrorist organization and described as “narcoterrorists.” Since that first strike conducted in the waters of the Caribbean Sea, there have been 46 subsequent boat strikes in both the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific Ocean that have killed 147 people to date. Despite the view of legal experts that such strikes are illegal extrajudicial killings, the Trump administration has insisted on their legality. In late November, for example, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth stated on X that “our current operations in the Caribbean are lawful under both U.S. and international law, with all actions in compliance with the law of armed conflict — and approved by the best military and civilian lawyers, up and down the chain of command.”

The approval Hegseth referred to came in the form of a memorandum from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. Although that memo has not been made public, sources familiar with its contents report that it frames the strikes as acts of collective self-defense undertaken in the interests of the United States and several Latin American countries. The memo also argues that, because the U.S. is in an armed conflict with the drug cartels, the strikes don’t require Congressional approval, being both in the national interest and sufficiently limited in scope, nature, and duration not to qualify as war-making. That memo has been criticized in numerous ways, with some experts insisting that the legal arguments are not only flawed, but were put together to legitimize a political decision already made by the White House.  

In the last quarter-century of the War on Terror, weaponizing the label of terrorism has been repeatedly invoked to justify repressive interventions. As law professor Sirine Sinnar notes, “Through invoking terrorism, the Trump administration targets its political enemies, pushes an openly racist and xenophobic agenda, and flouts international law more brazenly than its predecessors. But it can do all this so easily because the concept of terrorism has long been selective, political, and racialized, and because Congress and the Supreme Court have largely shielded counterterrorism from accountability.” The designation of individuals as “narcoterrorists” reflects the enduring currency of this post-9/11 framework, demonstrating how the language of terrorism can be redeployed in new contexts through strategically constructed threat narratives.

The Spectacle of “American [In]Justice”

In a speech on January 3rd, President Trump announced the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores de Maduro, accusing them of conducting a “campaign of deadly narco-terrorism against the United States and its citizens,” and insisting that “hundreds of thousands — over the years — of Americans died because of him.” Further justifying his capture, Trump also claimed that the Venezuelan leader had been sending members of the Tren de Aragua gang to the United States to spread drugs and terror. As it happens, though, not only was there a lack of evidence of that, but the claim wasn’t even mentioned in the Justice Department’s indictment of the Venezuelan president. The Maduros, Trump asserted, would “soon face the full might of American justice and stand trial on American soil.” Despite such a projection of power and the assumed superiority of “American justice,” the Trump administration’s entire governing strategy has proven that just as legality is malleable, so, too, is justice.

Many have described the Trump administration’s capture of the Maduros as simply lawless, but the administration’s officials didn’t act without considering the law (in their own lawless fashion). They even requested that the Office of Legal Counsel produce an opinion on whether the president could legally direct U.S. military forces to support law enforcement in seizing Maduro and bringing him to the United States for prosecution (without, of course, any congressional action).

A heavily redacted version of the memo responding to that, dated December 23, 2025, was released on January 13th, 2026. It frames the sending of U.S. special forces and air power into Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, to capture the Maduros as a law-enforcement action to arrest a fugitive, not a military invasion (despite all the Venezuelans who died). It argues that, because of the limited duration and narrow scope of the operation, the action falls under the president’s constitutional authority and isn’t an act of war that would require congressional authorization. Although the memo did avoid making a definitive argument that the operation didn’t violate international law, it essentially tried to make that determination inconsequential by deeming the actions legal under domestic law.

Performing Legality, Producing Impunity

While the contents of the memo are certainly important, it’s no less critical to understand the purpose and function of such memos to begin with. Like other such “legal” documents, memos from the Office of Legal Counsel are designed to offer a version of “legality” that minimizes scrutiny, enables repetition, and contributes to normalizing state violence in its many forms.

Some have compared the boat-strike memos to the torture memos drafted under the Bush administration. John Yoo, one of the infamous authors of those memos, argued that, for abuse to rise to the level of torture, the result had to be nothing less than organ failure or death. So, consider it ironic that he actually criticized those boat-strike memos, despite their similarity to the torture memos’ form of impunity. In fact, when asked if he regretted the decisions he had made, Yoo said, “The only thing I regret was just the pressure of time that we had to act under.” But he also added that he “would probably do the same things again.”

Yoo nevertheless expressed skepticism about the Trump administration’s rationale for the boat strikes, saying about those supposed drug boats, “They’re not attacking us because of our foreign policy and our political system…They’re just selling us something that people in America want. We’re just trying to stop them from selling it. That’s traditionally, to me, crime. It’s something that we could never eradicate or end.” 

Yoo, of course, neglected to mention that, while justifying the most brutal forms of torture at the Bush administration’s prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in CIA “black sites” globally, the torture memos provided impunity for anyone involved in creating that torture regime in the wake of the 9/11 attacks of 2001.  And no court ever formally ruled those memos illegal, while Yoo, like all the other Bush administration officials involved in sanctioning the torture apparatus, never faced the slightest accountability.  Even when a report on those memos was released by the Department of Justice’s Office of Professional Responsibility in 2009, recommending that Yoo and an associate of his be disciplined, it was vetoed by Associate Deputy Attorney General David Margolis, who viewed the memos as resulting from poor decision-making rather than unethical behavior. Like the torture memos, then, the boat-strike memos are meant to offer a facade of legality, while ensuring impunity.

What Yoo’s critique also conveniently overlooks is that legal memoranda like the torture memos don’t just interpret the law. Instead, they offer a threatening “legal” reality to justify certain all-too-grim interventions. Under the Bush administration, this included the denial of Geneva Convention protections based on the argument that the United States was fighting a new kind of war with non-state actors who don’t abide by the laws of war. According to their logic, if the enemy does not follow the laws of war, the United States is not required to extend full protection. This discursive rationale was used to disregard the fact that adherence to Geneva protections is non-reciprocal.

Those memos also exploit perceived gaps in existing legal frameworks to manufacture ambiguity, while, above all, staging a performance of legality. Like the torture memos, the memo authorizing the capture of President Maduro was designed to be a buffer against legal, political, or diplomatic challenges, minimizing the vulnerability of the Trump administration to judicial scrutiny and congressional action.

In his article “Citizen in Exception: Omar Khadr and the Performative Gap in the Law,” Matt Jones has written about the consequences of such performances of legality. He argues that “the law’s reliance on continual performance interventions means that gaps in the law may in fact become enshrined in law if a given authority, such as a judge, recognizes them as legitimate within the jurisprudential history of past performances.” In other words, challenging state actions as illegal, whether the conduct occurred as a result of sheer lawlessness or unsound legal rationales, can actually end up rendering the behavior legal.

Legal rationales like those provided in the torture memos also offer an administration the opportunity to act as if its behavior were legal. As Jones points out, when it came to Guantanamo, for example, “the Bush administration’s creative interpretation of the law allowed them to operate ‘as if’ their behavior were legal, knowing that, by the time the law’s reality caught up, the strategic tasks they wanted accomplished in Guantanamo would have long been completed.”

To this day, Guantanamo remains open and there has never been the slightest accountability for anyone involved in past crimes there or the indefinite institutionalization of that infrastructure of state violence.

The Architecture of Hyper-Legality and the Law’s Double-Edged Sword

To understand why the Trump administration has not always chosen to completely violate or disregard the law, it’s useful to consider the concept of hyper-legalism. In “International Refugee Law, ‘Hyper-Legalism’ and Migration Management: The Pacific Solution,” author Claire Inder, special assistant to the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, suggests that hyper-legalism “implies a commitment to lawfulness and rule-following, with an underlying disingenuousness in the understanding of ‘legality.’ It suggests that the applicability of the rules themselves is infinitely malleable by the actor purporting to comply.”

Although Inder focuses on refugee law, hyper-legalism’s relevance to a broader spectrum of governing policies is clear when it comes to Donald Trump and his administration, where a performance of legality has all too often been considered sufficient to allow them to pursue their ultimate objective of justifying whatever intervention they may deem necessary. However, that doesn’t mean that Trump and members of his administration don’t understand the limits of hyper-legalism. As Daniel Ghezelbash, director of the Kaldor Center for International Refugee Law, has argued, some actions are so egregious under international law that no amount of formalistic sophistry can legitimize them. And when that’s the case, states can resort to obfuscation as a tactic. “Obfuscation,” as he puts it, “is achieved through secrecy about what actions the government is taking and deliberate silence as to the purported legal justifications.”

The Trump administration’s refusal to release the Office of Legal Counsel memo that has provided it with supposed legal cover for those boat strikes in the Caribbean and the Pacific is emblematic of hyper-legalism and its limits. More broadly, the fact that its officials are using the law to justify egregious conduct while rejecting any semblance of transparency makes such legal arguments difficult, if not impossible, to challenge in the immediate moment. That, in turn, risks the further institutionalization of sanctioned violence, while, of course, providing legal rationales for future acts of state violence.

In his article “Hyperlegality,” legal scholar Nasser Hussain questions common assumptions about the operation of emergency laws and the idea that the measures implemented are just temporary deviations from the norm. Although he focuses on the United Kingdom, his analysis is distinctly relevant to Donald Trump’s America. He argues that antiterrorism legislation in Great Britain hasn’t just functioned as a short-term, reactive response to crisis, but has produced structural and enduring transformations in the legal order. And that’s just what’s now happening in the United States, where the latest “emergency laws” and defenses of exceptional interventions are helping to create legal frameworks and blueprints that will, in the future, only strengthen and entrench the ability of the state to enact egregious violence. In short, while the violence of the Trump administration may seem exceptional, the historical trajectory of the War on Terror should be a reminder that what we are witnessing isn’t new and isn’t likely to disappear in the future.

In analyzing the Trump administration’s governing strategy, it’s important to remember that, as Hussain argues, “the rule of law is and has always been capable of accommodating a range of repressive but legal measures.”  In other words, even as the Trump administration’s remarkable disregard for the law in so many cases poses urgent challenges, the malleability of the law, as demonstrated throughout the history of the United States, should offer a warning against the seemingly commonsensical response of simply instituting more rules, regulations, conventions, and laws.  After all, the law’s primary function is to preserve the state, not to deliver justice.

All too often, the law operates as a double-edged sword: it can secure rights and constrain power, but it can also legitimize repression, exclusion, and harm. Our task, then, is to understand how to wield the law strategically to challenge the violence and power of the state and to demand justice and accountability.

Whether the Trump administration cloaks its actions in legal rationales or disregards legality altogether, communities at home and abroad continue to resist. Recognizing that the law alone will not save us is not a call to despair but a call to organize and build our power. Because nothing has ever altered the course of injustice except the organized power of the people — and nothing else ever will.

War in Iran: When ‘Operations’ Kill — The Permanent Harm Behind Sanitized Violence

By George Cassidy Payne

March 6, 2026

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.

Image by Osps7, Creative Commons 3.0

When a bomb falls on a school, a hospital, or a home, no euphemism can soften the truth. Babies die in incubators. Teenage girls die in classrooms. Civilians experience violence not as a “military operation” or a “strike,” but as death delivered with impunity. Yet political leaders and military strategists insist on language that sanitizes catastrophe, as if calling mass killing an “operation” could contain the human cost.

In the opening days of the 2026 Iran war, an airstrike hit the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in Minab, a city in southern Iran. Iranian authorities reported that 165 people were killed, most of them schoolchildren, with dozens more wounded, though independent verification of exact numbers remains unavailable. Satellite imagery and media reporting show the school was struck alongside nearby civilian and military buildings. Neither the U.S. nor Israel has claimed responsibility, and both states have denied targeting civilians, though the U.S. has said it is investigating. The lack of clarity allows political and military actors to distance themselves from accountability.

Beyond euphemism, the strike exposes a democratic fault line. In the United States, the Constitution grants Congress the power to declare war. Yet presidents have often authorized military actions without seeking approval, including recent strikes on Iran. By acting unilaterally, the executive bypasses open debate, limiting public scrutiny and democratic oversight. The choice to frame such actions as “military operations” enables swift action without the deliberation the Constitution envisages.

Across continents, states have employed similar linguistic strategies to shape perception. On February 24, 2022, President Vladimir Putin framed the invasion of Ukraine as a “special military operation,” limiting the language without limiting the destruction. Russian media were barred from using the words “war” or “invasion,” and official messaging emphasized objectives such as “demilitarization” and “denazification.” Putin made the decision unilaterally, without public debate or a referendum, leaving the Russian people without a choice. The euphemism muted scrutiny and reinforced executive control, shielding the decision from accountability.

Language like this is deliberate. Calling a bombing an “operation” evokes surgery or machinery, controlled, precise, morally neutral. But when children are killed in Minab or civilians trapped in Kyiv, the words ring hollow. The lived reality is immediate: fear, pain, and death, regardless of political framing.

This is not mere semantics. International law draws a sharp line between combatants and civilians. Deliberately targeting civilians is a war crime. Reckless or disproportionate attacks on civilian infrastructure can also violate humanitarian law. Euphemisms such as “precision strike,” “collateral damage,” and “operation” obscure responsibility. In Minab, lives were destroyed alongside homes and classrooms. In Ukraine, a “special military operation” framed prolonged invasion as orderly. In both cases, sanitized language shields power while the human toll tells the unambiguous story.

Babies in incubators, children in classrooms, mothers clutching lifeless children, do not experience legal technicalities or political rationalizations. They experience violence in one universal language: death. Yet states insist on narratives of control and rationality, as if words alone could contain the consequences of power. Euphemisms sanitize death; ambiguity deflects blame. The human cost is revealed only when photographs, eyewitness accounts, or satellite imagery pierce official narratives.

Language is not neutral. It is a tool of power. By shaping perception, governments justify aggression and make mass violence appear contained. “Surgical strike” suggests precision. “Collateral damage” suggests inevitability. “Military operation” suggests order. But the children killed in Minab or Kyiv know the truth: no word can diminish their suffering. Reality resists euphemism.

History is clear: words may delay accountability, but they cannot erase it. Every euphemism conceals a moral choice: to name death for what it is, or to obscure it behind bureaucratic language that distances the powerful from the powerless. The erosion of democratic oversight compounds this moral danger. When leaders bypass debate and executive decisions escape scrutiny, the human cost becomes a secondary consideration.

The lesson is urgent. Calling a hospital bombing an “operation” is a choice. Calling a school strike what it is, a mass killing, is also a choice. And the innocent caught in the crossfire bear the unambiguous truth: violence remains violence, death remains death, and moral responsibility is unavoidable.

As Mahatma Gandhi observed, “I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.” Euphemistic language may promise control or strategy, but the suffering it leaves behind is enduring. The fleeting objectives of power cannot erase the permanent cost borne by the innocent.

George Cassidy Payne, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is a Rochester-based writer whose work sits at the intersection of politics, ethics, and lived experience. A poet, philosopher, and 988 crisis counselor, he covers issues of democracy, justice, and community resilience.

Covering for International Abusers, Media Reverse Victim and Offender in Iran

By Jim Naureckas

March 7, 2026

Source: FAIR

People who study domestic violence have an acronym, DARVO, for the set of tactics abusers use to avoid accountability: Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender.

It’s that last tactic that came to mind while reading news reports of the United States and Israel’s unprovoked and illegal attack on Iran, and the assassination of Ali Khamenei, its leader. US corporate media frequently presented Iran as responsible for the predictably violent consequences of the US/Israeli aggression.

Sometimes the reversal is straightforward, as when an NBC News “analysis” (2/28/26) warned that “Iran’s Retaliatory Strikes Threaten an Escalation Across the Region”—as though it is Iran’s response, and not the ongoing attacks by the US and Israel, that poses a threat to the region.

‘Pretty much all its neighbors’

Iran and its many neighbors (Google Maps).

Another NBC analysis (2/28/26), by Richard Engel, more subtly tried to pin the blame on Iran, noting in the headline that “Iran Is Now in Conflict With Pretty Much All of Its Neighbors.” Wrote Engel:

Today Iran has launched drones and missiles not only at Israel, but also at US military installations in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Iraq…. It puts Iran in a difficult position, because now it is at conflict with pretty much all of its neighbors.

Pretty much all of its neighbors, that is, except for Turkiye, Armenia, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan. (Azerbaijan said Iranian drones crashed in its territory on Thursday; Iran denies targeting the country.) And if we’re going to count Jordan as Iran’s “neighbor,” then Georgia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan as well. Aside from those, though, pretty much all of them.

The point of depicting Iran as “in conflict” with “pretty much all of its neighbors,” of course, is to paint it as the country that no one can get along with. In reality, the countries Iran isn’t getting along with are the ones allowing the US to use them as platforms for launching bombs and missiles at it—behavior that will put a damper on any relationship.

‘Good reason to be worried’

USA Today (3/1/26) reports that “Sec. Pete Hegseth Reveals Trump Assassination Plot”—not “Hegseth Alleges,” because Hegseth wouldn’t say it if it weren’t true.

USA Today (3/1/26) told its American readers that they were the ones who should be worried as their government carried out continuous airstrikes against Iran, “due to Iran’s long history of plotting retaliatory attacks.”

“The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security have both announced they are on war footing,” domestic security correspondent Josh Meyer wrote. “And…veteran Iran watchers said there is good reason for them to be worried.”

Why is that? “The Iranian regime has a long history—dating back at least 46 years—of assassinations and other terrorist plots on US soil and against Americans overseas.” The article mentions exactly one instance of alleged Iranian violence on US soil—a former aide to Shah Reza Pahlavi who was killed in Bethesda, Maryland, 46 years ago. The rest are all “plots” that were “disrupted”—and that we should take the FBI and Department of Homeland Security’s word for. (FBI chief Kash Patel, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and former national security advisor John Bolton are all offered with a straight face as experts on security threats.)

Meyer quotes DHS on “the likelihood of violent extremists in the Homeland independently mobilizing to violence.” And he notes the Department’s warning “that terror plots weren’t the only concern”: Cyberattacks “by pro-Iranian hacktivists are likely” as well.

‘Abandoned by their leaders’

The New York Times (2/28/26) seemed to blame Iran’s government—and not the Times‘ own government’s unprovoked attacks—for the fact that “highways leading out of [Tehran] were backed up for miles,” and “online access was severely disrupted across Iran.”

As major US media tell it, even Iranians being killed by US or Israeli bombs can be Tehran’s fault. Under the headline “As US Bombs Tehran, Some Iranians Feel Abandoned by Their Leaders,” Farnaz Fassihi wrote in the New York Times (2/28/26) that Iran’s

government provided little guidance to its millions of citizens about what to do and where to go for safety…. State television said little about how to stay safe from the bombs.

Perhaps in the news-you-can-use spirit, the New York Times could give readers some tips on how one can “stay safe” from cruise missiles and the 2,000-pound bombs Trump has provided to Israel.

‘Operation Epic Fury’ – Anatomy Of A War Of Aggression

By David Edwards

March 5, 2026

Source: Media Lens

Commenting last week on the build-up of US military forces targeting Iran, Robert A. Pape, Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, got it right:

‘This represents 40-50% of the deployable US air power in the world. Think air power on the order of the 1991 and 2003 Iraq war. And growing. Never has the US deployed this much force against a potential enemy and not launched strikes.’

Just prior to the US and Israeli launch of ‘Operation Epic Fury’, Trump’s name for the onslaught that began last Saturday, Professor Pape commented again:

‘250+ combat US aircraft poised to strike Iran. Trump is cocking the gun— not for 1 day of strikes, but weeks long air campaign to grind down the regime.’

In fact, we know the goal is regime change. In announcing the war, Trump declared:

‘Finally, to the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand. Stay sheltered. Don’t leave your home. It’s very dangerous outside. Bombs will be dropping everywhere. When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.’

Of course, a central theme of Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ campaign was his supposed determination to end Forever Wars. In 2016, he said:

‘We will stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about, that we shouldn’t be involved with.’

As recently as November 2024, the big slogan was:

‘Vote the pro-peace ticket. Vote Trump-Vance’

In the Guardian, Julian Borger described this latest war as ‘an unprovoked attempt at regime change in collaboration with Israel, with no legal foundation, launched in the midst of diplomatic efforts to avert conflict, and with minimal consultation with Congress or the American public’.

Borger’s use of the adjective ‘unprovoked’ is interesting. Endlessly repeated in describing Russia’s supposedly ‘unprovoked’ war of aggression on Ukraine, there are scarce mentions in current media coverage of ‘Operation Epic Fury’. Borger added:

‘The attack on Iran is a clear violation of the UN charter, in any absence of any credible, imminent Iranian threat to the US.’

Again, the word ‘illegal’ is absent from almost all media coverage. By contrast, Jeremy Diamond, CNN Jerusalem Correspondent, commented:

‘BREAKING: Israel has launched pre-emptive strikes against Iran and a state of emergency has been declared across Israel in anticipation of Iranian retaliation.’

There were no quote marks around ‘pre-emptive’, even though there is no evidence that Iran was about to attack. Reuters pushed the same propaganda:

‘Israel has launched a preventative attack against Iran, defence minister says.’

Even the BBC’s Jeremy Bowen perceived the mendacity:

‘The word preemptive has been used. Now that’s a word that suggests there was an imminent threat, that is an imminent attack before these strikes started. There’s no evidence of that. It looks very much as if this is a war of choice that Israel and the US have done.’

The US has since tragicomically claimed the war was ‘preemptive’ in the sense that they knew Israel was going to attack, so had to become involved.

Hours before the war began, Oman’s foreign minister – the chief mediator in US-Iran negotiations – told CBS a deal could be reached ‘tomorrow’ and warned that it would be derailed by military action. Patrick Wintour, the Guardian’s diplomatic editor, reported:

‘The Iranian delegation believes that if American negotiators convey the current reality in the negotiation room to the White House and Washington trusts the IAEA as a specialized arbiter in non-proliferation matters, Tehran’s proposed initiatives address Trump’s claimed concern about the necessity of the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program.’

Which would have left us pretty much where we were in 2018, before Trump wrecked the highly successful Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear agreement (see below).

Filmmaker and journalist Richard Sanders described coverage of a major massacre of civilians by three US-Israeli missiles:

‘The killing of dozens of girls at a primary school in Iran is not on the front page of a single British newspaper.

‘A simple test – imagine the reaction if they were Israelis.’

Later that day, the BBC devoted a leading headline to nine people killed in Israel, while the 148 children then estimated to have been killed remained what they had been the previous day, a second-order story lower down the page. After the school death toll was revised to 165 killed, the BBC shamefully dropped the story from its ‘Summary’.

The BBC subsequently posted two articles on the same morning. In one report, four US troops killed in an Iranian attack were pictured, named, ages given, backgrounds described. They were fully humanised, as they should have been. In a separate report on the school massacre, none of the Iranian schoolgirls or staff were pictured, named or humanised. As usual, they were lumped together as an anonymous mass.

As in Venezuela, the BBC claims a significant portion of the target population is actually relieved to be subject to one of the most intense bombing campaigns in modern history:

‘But, says BBC Persian, at the same time there appears to be a sense of relief – even celebration – among those who believe the regime’s downfall can only come through military intervention.’

Considering the state of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, the future must look bright indeed.

As expected, only two British political leaders responded with integrity and humanity. Jeremy Corbyn, who will soon be made leader of Your Party, said:

‘The attacks on Iran by Israel and the United States are illegal, unprovoked and unjustifiable. Peace and diplomacy was possible. Instead, Israel and the United States chose war. This is the behaviour of rogue states — and they have jeopardised the safety of humankind around the world with this catastrophic act of aggression.’

Green Party leader Zack Polanski – currently being subjected to the same campaign of defamation and dehumanisation directed at Corbyn – said:

‘This is an illegal, unprovoked and brutal attack that shows once again that the USA and Israel are rogue states.’

Piers Morgan found Polanski’s comments appalling:

‘Now watching @ZackPolanski spewing shockingly naive and delusional nonsense about Iran. God help us if he and his extreme left-wing Green Party ever win real power. He makes Corbyn look mainstream.’

On X, Mehdi Hasan of Zeteo News skewered Morgan with great precision:

‘Zack is taking an antiwar position that you took in 2003, Piers. You were attacked in the same way you are now attacking Zack.’

In 2004, Morgan had said:

‘History will judge the Mirror’s campaign on the Iraq war as one of the strongest, bravest and best campaigns that any newspaper ever waged against anything ever, and I believe that passionately.’

‘Shockingly naïve,’ Morgan was so convinced that conditions in Iraq had become so appalling that he argued in all seriousness that Saddam should be put back in power:

‘Armed fighters are swarming all over Iraq. We have devastated the region beyond any repair in the short term at all. None of this was going on while Saddam was in charge of things…’.

Presumably, Morgan can perceive no prospect of a similar catastrophe occurring now.

Trump-level hypocrisy abounds elsewhere. In 2015, Reform Party leader Nigel Farage boldly opined:

‘We don’t need to take foreign policy advice from the American President. The last time we did that it was called the Iraq War.’

Last week, Farage posted on X:

‘The Prime Minister needs to change his mind on the use of our military bases and back the Americans in this vital fight against Iran!’

At the far-distant extreme of ethical ‘mainstream’ commentary, Peter Hitchens of the Mail on Sunday wrote:

‘It is interesting that dissent on foreign policy is almost invariably slandered as support for the foreign state to which we are being urged to be hostile. When it is in fact a desire to keep my own country out of needless danger.’

Does concern for our own safety really represent the limit of our moral vision? Dissent is also driven by respect for international law, by concern for the horrendous consequences for civilians under our bombs, and by the keen awareness that, for decades, ‘our’ foreign policy has been controlled by greed-driven interests lacking any moral compass. Ultimately, by standing against wars of aggression we are standing up for our own humanity. We are not monsters.

Journalist Glenn Greenwald commented on the notion that Trump is concerned about the welfare of Iranian people:

‘Trump – whose favorite regimes on the planet are the most savagely and viciously tyrannical: Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, etc., and whose 2025 National Security Strategy said we don’t care if other governments offer freedom – says his main goal is that Iranians be free.’

Iran – ‘Transparently, Verifiably, And Fully Implementing The JCPOA’

But why attack at all? And why now? Two weeks ago, a post from the Jerusalem Post reported ominously:

‘Iran is about a week away from having the ability to make industrial-grade bombs, US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff told Fox News on Saturday, while offering a rare glimpse into Trump’s decision-making process on the issue.’

That seemed clear – Iran was a week away from possessing an atomic bomb. Readers had to click the link to find the truth:

‘The US envoy left out that Iran currently has no access to its material, no machines to enrich it, and no weapons program to use it for any operational purpose.’

Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University supplied some background:

‘The fact of the matter is that the claim that Iran wants a nuclear weapon and is just about to get a nuclear weapon has been the false propaganda literally for 30 years. Netanyahu, who is a war criminal, has been saying for 30 years since 1996.’

In 2019, the US Defense Intelligence Agency reported:

‘Iran’s military strategy is basically defensive and is designed to deter an adversary, survive an initial strike, and retaliate against an aggressor to force a diplomatic solution.’

We can be confident that the case for war is as bogus as ever because, in 2015, Iran signed up to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), an agreement to limit the Iranian nuclear programme in return for lifted sanctions. For reasons best known to Trump and (no doubt) Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018. Trump described the deal as ‘disastrous’, saying, ‘The Iran Deal was one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into.’

As Trump would say, this was ‘fake news’. Between 2016 and early 2019, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the official ‘watchdog’ tasked with monitoring Iranian compliance, issued eleven consecutive reports confirming ‘that Iran is implementing its nuclear-related commitments’.

The EU High Representative repeatedly stated that the JCPOA was ‘working and delivering on its goal, namely, to ensure that the Iranian programme remains exclusively peaceful, as confirmed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 11 consecutive reports’.

The UN Secretary-General issued biannual reports to the Security Council that consistently reflected the IAEA’s findings, confirming that Iran was meeting its nuclear-related obligations. In 2017, the US State Department twice certified to Congress that Iran was compliant with the deal:

‘Iran is transparently, verifiably, and fully implementing the JCPOA; it has not committed a material breach with respect to the JCPOA; and Iran has not taken any action during the reporting period, including covert activities, that could significantly advance an Iranian nuclear weapons program.’

Ignoring all of the above as non-existent, the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg commented on the difficulty of dealing with Iran in an interview with Zack Polanski:

‘They have shown for years to be [sic] completely disinterested in negotiation or respecting international rules and regulations.’

Pure, mendacious propaganda on prime-time BBC TV.

The Protests And Death Tolls

Estimates on the number of people killed in protests in Iran from December 2025 to January 2026 range from 3,000 to 36,000. The Iranian government claims some 200 security personnel were killed.

Journalist Alan MacLeod reports that ‘… the source of many of the most inflammatory claims and shockingly high casualty figures reported in the press’ are ‘bankrolled by the Central Intelligence Agency, through its cutout organization, the National Endowment for Democracy’.

As with false claims made before the 2003 Iraq war, politicians have used extreme claims sponsored by the US government to sell their war of aggression as humanitarian intervention. Thus, UK foreign secretary Yvette Cooper, who said Iran’s government is ‘… a regime which we know has brutally killed tens of thousands of its own people’.

In fact, nobody has a clear idea of how many people were killed during the protests or by whom. But then nobody in the ‘mainstream’ cares about the methodology or evidence behind the high death toll estimates – concerns that arise only when claims reflect badly on the West, as in the case of Iraqi and Palestinian civilian casualties.

Similarly, press coverage blithely ignores the clear involvement of Israeli agents provocateurs. On December 29, The Jerusalem Post reported:

‘On Monday, the Mossad [Israeli secret service] used its Twitter account in Farsi to encourage Iranians to protest against the Iranian regime, telling them that it will join them during the demonstrations.

‘“Go out together into the streets. The time has come,” the Mossad wrote.

‘It continued, “We are with you. Not only from a distance and verbally. We are with you in the field.”’

Mike Pompeo, former director of the CIA and former Secretary of State, posted on X:

‘Happy New Year to every Iranian in the streets. Also to every Mossad agent walking beside them…’

It would hardly be a surprise if, as in Syria, Western forces worked hard to make the protests as violent as possible, presumably as part of their preparation for ‘Operation Epic Fury’. The BBC reported:

‘The protests began as a reaction to the spiralling cost of living and soon focused on the whole regime, whose policies people blamed for their difficulties.’

The key point:

‘Since May 2018, when Donald Trump pulled the United States out of a nuclear deal with Iran and reinstated wide-ranging sanctions on the country, the Iranian currency has lost more than 95% of its value against the US dollar on the open market… The rapid fall in the value of the rial sparked the protests in Tehran’s bazaar in late December, which soon spread across the country.’

In fact, the US has been destroying Iran’s economy in an attempt to destabilise the country and achieve regime change. This is conscious policy. In February, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent openly stated that the ‘Maximum Pressure’ sanctions campaign was specifically ‘designed to collapse [Iran’s] already buckling economy’ by driving oil exports to zero and denying the regime access to hard currency. Many other US politicians have made the same point. This lethal policy would certainly have been the key focus, if the BBC had been reporting on Russian attempts to economically destabilise a Western ally. In the event, the word ‘sanctions’ was mentioned just twice, both buried in the middle of the piece.

A BBC headline described Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s last Shah, as being ‘at centre of protest chants’. In 2018, journalist Nafeez Ahmed reported:

‘Altogether, since 2006, successive US administrations have invested tens of millions of dollars a year on “democracy promotion” efforts in Iran, serving as cover for longstanding ‘regime change’ aspirations.

‘Much of the media programming funded by the State Department has focused on glorifying the reign of the Shah of Iran, the brutal US-UK backed dictator who was deposed by the 1979 revolution. The propaganda appears to have worked, with many participants in the latest protests calling for the Shah’s exiled son, Reza Pahlavi, to return to power in Iran.’

Naturally, this ‘democracy promotion’ of the Shah’s son requires the omission of some embarrassing historical facts.

In 1953, US-supplied armoured cars took to the streets of Iran deposing the democratically elected nationalist Mohammad Mosaddegh and replacing him with the Shah. According to then CIA agent Richard Cottam, ‘…that mob that came into north Teheran and was decisive in the overthrow was a mercenary mob. It had no ideology. That mob was paid for by American dollars and the amount of money that was used has to have been very large’. (Quoted, Mark Curtis, ‘The Ambiguities of Power’, Zed Books, 1995, p.93)

As in Iraq 2003, Libya 2011 and Venezuela 2026, the motive was oil.

The BBC made vague mention of ‘human rights abuses’ under the Shah. In fact, according to Amnesty International, Iran had the ‘highest rate of death penalties in the world, no valid system of civilian courts and a history of torture’, which was ‘beyond belief’, in a society in which ‘the entire population was subjected to a constant, all-pervasive terror’. (Martin Ennals, Secretary General of Amnesty International, cited in an Amnesty Publication, Matchbox, Autumn 1976)

None of this troubles our ‘free press’, who are busy following the line adopted by journalist John Sweeney in 1999:

‘Life will only get better for ordinary Iraqis once the West finally stops dithering and commits to a clear, unambiguous policy of snuffing out Saddam. And when he falls the people of Iraq will say: “What kept you? Why did it take you so long?”’ (Sweeney, ‘The West created a monster. Now it’s time to destroy him. As a good liberal, I personally vote for obliterating Saddam’, The Observer, 10 January 1999)

One would be hard-pressed to find a ‘mainstream’ commentator currently concerned about human rights in Iraq. Last week, Antiwar’s Jason Ditz reported:

‘Once and possibly future Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s candidacy is increasingly in doubt this weekend, with reports that President Trump’s demand he not be allowed to return to office increasing the possibility that the Coordination Framework bloc may withdraw him as their choice for premier…

‘Late last month, Trump demanded that Maliki step down from the nomination, but he refused at the time, saying that the US should stay out of Iraq’s internal affairs. Maliki was already Iraq’s PM from 2006 through 2014.’

Ditz explains how the US controls Iraq’s ‘democracy’:

‘Underpinning this whole thing is that after the 2003 US invasion and occupation of Iraq, the country was restructured such that all of Iraq’s oil revenue was paid in US dollars through the New York Federal Reserve Bank. Since that revenue is almost the entirety of Iraq’s government budget, that means the US can virtually seize Iraq’s treasury at any time and bankrupt the country on a moment’s notice.’

This is the kind of ‘freedom’ that awaits Iranians in the event of US-Israel ‘regime change’, which would actually mean conquest and colonisation.

Oil remains a key goal, of course. In 2015, Noam Chomsky described the deeper motives:

‘The answer is plain: the rogue states that rampage in the region… do not want to tolerate any impediment to their reliance on aggression and violence. In the lead in this regard are the U.S. and Israel, with Saudi Arabia trying its best to join the club….’Email

David Edwards

David Edwards (born 1962) is a British media campaigner who is co-editor of the Media Lens website. Edwards specialises in the analysis of mainstream, or corporate, mass media, which are normally considered impartial or liberal, an interpretation he believes is disputable. He authored articles published in The Independent, The Times, Red Pepper, New Internationalist, Z Magazine, The Ecologist, Resurgence, The Big Issue; monthly ZNet commentator; author of Free To Be Human – Intellectual Self-Defence in an Age of Illusions (Green Books, 1995) published in the United States as Burning All Illusions (South End Press, 1996: www.southendpress.org), and The Compassionate Revolution – Radical Politics and Buddhism (1998, Green Books).

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