The US/Israeli Attack Was to
Prevent Peace Not Advance It
March 2, 2026
The aftermath of an airstrike on Shajareh Tayyebeh school. Photograph Source: Tasnim News Agency – CC BY 4.0
Last Friday, the mediator of the U.S. and Iranian nuclear negotiations in Oman, that country’s foreign minister Badr Albusaidi, pulled the rug out from President Trump’s deceptive pretense, threatening war with Iran because it had refused his demands that it give up what he claimed was its drive to build its own atom bomb. The Omani foreign minister explained on CBS’s Face the Nation that the Iranian team had agreed not to accumulate enriched uranium and offered “full and comprehensive verification by the IAEA.”
This new concession was a “breakthrough that has never been achieved any time before. And I think if we can capture that and build on it, I think a deal is within our reach” to achieve an “agreement that Iran will never, ever have a nuclear material that will create a bomb. This is, I think, a big achievement.”
Pointing out that this breakthrough “has been missed a lot by the media,” he emphasized that by calling for “zero stockpiling,” it went far beyond what had been negotiated during President Obama’s administration, because “if you cannot stockpile material that is enriched, then there is no way you can actually create a bomb.”
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – who already had issued a fatwa against doing any such thing, and had repeated this position year after year – called Iran’s Shi’a leaders and military chief to discuss ratification of the agreement to cede control of its enriched uranium in order to prevent war.
But any such capitulation was precisely what neither the United States nor Israel could accept. A peaceful resolution would have prevented the long-term U.S. plan to consolidate and weaponize its control over Middle Eastern oil, its transportation and the investment of its oil export revenues, and to use Israel and al Qaeda/ISIS as its client armies to block independent oil-producing countries from acting in their own sovereign interests.
Israeli intelligence apparently alerted the U.S. military to suggest that the meeting at the Ayatollah’s compound offered a great chance to decapitate the leading decision makers all together. This followed the U.S. military handbook advice that killing a political leader whom the U.S. deems to be undemocratic will liberate popular dreams of regime change. That was the hope of bombing President Putin’s country residence last month, and it was in line with the U.S. recent Starlink attempt to mobilize popular opposition for revolution in Iran.
The joint U.S.-Israeli attack makes it clear that there is nothing that Iran could have conceded that would have deterred the long-standing U.S. drive to control Middle Eastern oil and using Israel and ISIS/Al Qaeda client armies to prevent sovereign nations in the region from emerging to take control of their oil reserves. That control remains an essential arm of U.S. foreign policy. It is the key to the U.S. ability to hurt other economies by denying them access to energy if they do not adhere to U.S. foreign policy. This insistence on blocking the world’s access to energy sources not under American control is why the U.S. has attacked Venezuela, Syria, Iraq, Libya and Russia.
The attack on negotiators (the second time America has done this to Iran) is a perfidy that will go down in history. It was to prevent Iran’s intended move to peace, before its leaders could have disproven Trump’s false claim that Iran had refused to give up its desire to obtain its own atom bomb.
It would be interesting to know how many of Trump’s insiders placed big bets that oil prices will soar when markets open on Monday morning. The markets last week were vastly underestimating the risk of closing the Straits of Hormuz and the Oil Gulf. U.S. oil companies will make a killing. China and other oil importers will suffer. U.S. financial speculators also will make a killing, because their oil production is domestic. This fact may even have played a role in the U.S. decision to end the world’s access to Middle Eastern oil for what promises to be a lengthy period.
The trade and financial disruption, in fact, will be so worldwide that I think we can think of Saturday’s attack on Iran as the true trigger of World War III. For most of the world, the imminent financial crisis (to say nothing of the moral outrage) will define the next decade of international political and economic restructuring.
European, Asian and the Global South countries will be unable to obtain oil except at prices that make many industries unprofitable and many family budgets unaffordable. The rise in oil prices will also make it impossible for Global South countries to service their dollar debts falling due to Western bondholders, banks and the IMF.
Countries can save themselves from having to impose domestic austerity, currency depreciation and inflation only by recognizing that the U.S. attack (supported by Britain and Saudi Arabia, with ambiguous Turkish acquiescence) had ended the U.S. unipolar order – and with it the dollarized international financial system. If this is not recognized, acquiescence will continue until it becomes unsustainable in any case.
If this is the inaugural real battle of World War III, it is in many ways a final battle to decide what World War II was all about. Will international law crumble as a result of the unwillingness of enough countries to protect the rules of civilized law supporting the principles of national sovereignty, free from foreign interference and coercion from the 1648 Peace of Westphalia to the UN Charter? And with regard to wars that inevitably are to be waged, will they spare civilians and non-belligerents, or will they be like Ukraine’s attack on its Russian-speaking population in its eastern provinces, Israel’s genocide against ethnic Palestinians, Wahabi religious cleansing of non-Sunni Arab populations, or indeed the Iranian, Cuban and other populations under U.S.-sponsored attack?
Can the United Nations be saved without freeing itself and its member countries from U.S. control? An early litmus test of where alliances are sorting out will be which countries join the legal move to declare Donald Trump and his cabinet war criminals. Something more than the present ICC is needed, given the U.S. Government’s personal attacks on ICC judges who found Netanyahu guilty.
What is required is a Nuremberg-scale trial against the Western military policy that has been seeking to plunge the entire world into political and economic chaos if it does not submit to the U.S.-unipolar ruler-based order. If other countries do not create an alternative to the US-European-Japanese-Wahabi offensive, they will suffer what U.S. Secretary of State Rubio called (in his recent Munich speech) a resurgence of the Western history of conquest to the basic principles of international law and equity.
An alternative requires restructuring the United Nations to end the U.S. ability to block majority resolutions. In view of the fact that U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said that it may be bankrupt by August and have to close its New York City headquarters, this is a propitious time to move it out of the United States itself. The U.S. has banned Francesca Albanese from entering the United States as a result of her report describing Israeli genocide in Gaza. There can be no rule of law as long as control over the U.N. and its agencies remains in U.S. hands and those of its European satellites.
Oman’s Foreign Minister Said US-Iran Deal Was ‘Within Our Reach.’ Then Trump Started Bombing
“The Omani FM decided to go public,” suggested one observer, “so that the American people knew that peace was within reach when Trump instead opted for war.”
Oman’s foreign minister, Badr Albusaidi, looks on during an event on November 5, 2025 in Madrid, Spain.
(Photo by Pablo Blazquez Dominguez/Getty Images)
Jake Johnson
Feb 28, 2026
COMMON DREAMS
Hours before President Donald Trump announced his decision to bomb Iran and pursue the overthrow of its government, the foreign minister of Oman appeared, in person, on one of the most prominent US television news programs to declare that a diplomatic breakthrough was possible.
“I can see that the peace deal is within our reach,” Badr Albusaidi, the mediator of recent talks between the US and Iran, told “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan on Friday. “I’m asking to continue this process because we have already achieved quite a substantial progress in the direction of a deal. And the heart of this deal is very important, and I think we have captured that heart.”
Pressed for specifics, Albusaidi said that Iran committed during the talks to renounce the possibility of amassing “nuclear material that will create a bomb”—a pledge that Trump claimed Iran refused to make as part of his justification for Saturday’s strikes.
“This is something that is not in the old deal that was negotiated during President Obama’s time,” Albusaidi said, referring to the 2015 nuclear accord that Trump ditched during his first term in the White House. “This is something completely new. It really makes the enrichment argument less relevant, because now we are talking about zero stockpiling. And that is very, very important, because if you cannot stockpile material that is enriched, then there is no way you can actually create a bomb, whether you enrich or don’t enrich. And I think this is really something that has been missed a lot by the media, and I want to clarify that from the standpoint of a mediator.”
“There is no accumulation, so there would be zero accumulation, zero stockpiling, and full verification,” the Omani foreign minister continued. “Full and comprehensive verification by the [International Atomic Energy Agency].”
In a social media post following the interview, Albusaidi reiterated that a deal “is now within reach” and implored all parties to “support the negotiators in closing the deal.” Prior to Saturday’s attacks, additional US-Iran talks were scheduled for next week.
Watch the full segment, which critics highlighted as evidence that the US-Israeli attacks on Saturday were aimed at forestalling a diplomatic resolution:
Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the US-based Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, wrote in response to Albusaidi’s remarks that “the Omanis are famously cautious.”
“The Omani FM going on CBS to reveal what has actually been achieved in the negotiations is quite unprecedented. And what has been achieved is significant—Trump can indeed declare victory. Listen to this segment—it goes way beyond what Obama achieved,” Parsi wrote. “But everything indicates that Trump won’t take yes for an answer. That he will start a war of choice very soon.”
“Which is probably why the Omani FM decided to go public,” Parsi added. “So that the American people knew that peace was within reach when Trump instead opted for war.”
According to one survey released earlier this month, just 21% of Americans support “the United States initiating an attack on Iran under the current circumstances.”
War on Iran
March 2, 2026
Image by Mohammed Ibrahim.
The Illogic of War
The Trump administration reportedly cannot understand why Iran is refusing to accede to US demands that it halt uranium enrichment, limit the range of its ballistic missiles, and stop supporting militant groups in the region. After all, Iran’s economy is in dire straits, people have resumed demonstrating against the regime, and the US has arrayed enough firepower offshore to conduct a world war.
Trump is acting as though he wants to finish the job he started last June, when it turned out that Iran’s nuclear facilities had not been obliterated as claimed. Yet with all those negative signs, Iran has refused to fold.
This situation is hardly new to US foreign policy specialists. An opponent that appears to be weak and facing overwhelming power nevertheless refuses to capitulate.
Think North Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, North Korea, Cuba over decades, or even Venezuela until recently. Logically, weak regimes ought to give in rather than face destruction. But that is not always where logic leads. Ask the Ukrainians.
Why is the capacity to resist often outweighed by the necessity to resist? A regime facing an adversary with awesome military power may consider that to give in would be to surrender its legitimacy. And regime legitimacy is crucial to political survival.
Leaders in all those countries that have faced US threats came to power in revolutionary movements directed against an “imperialist” enemy. Their right to rule vanishes if they fail to confront that enemy, no matter the odds. Moreover, they must assume that the enemy’s real aim is not merely to further weaken the regime but to displace it.
“For Iran, submitting to U.S. terms is more dangerous than suffering another U.S. strike,” said Ali Vaez, the Iran director of the International Crisis Group. “They don’t believe that once they capitulate, the U.S. will alleviate the pressure. They believe that would only encourage the U.S. to go for the jugular.”
Regime change, in other words. Thus, Ali Khomeini (or his successor) may have no choice but to reject US demands that would amount to surrender of what Iran considers sovereign rights: nuclear enrichment for civilian purposes and missiles to deter or counter an Israeli or US attack.
Iran’s leaders surely also calculate that the Trump administration is in political trouble at home. Attacking Iran would probably not improve Trump’s political fortunes. It will have costs: lives will be lost, anti-war public opinion will intensify, and the US will have few if any allies behind its action other than Israel.
Trump’s joint chiefs chairman, General Dan Caine, is said to have informed Trump that “shortfalls in critical munitions and a lack of support from allies” increase the risks of an attack on Iran.
Why is fighting preferable to talking? Obama was able to reach a nuclear agreement with Iran that Trump discarded. Why, many will (and should) ask, can’t Trump reach a deal with Iran?
Iran seems committed to talking. “We are ready to reach an agreement as soon as possible,” Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Majid Takht-Ravanchi told NPR in an interview February 24. “We want to do whatever is necessary to make it happen.”
Iran has taken a nuclear weapon off the table, reiterating a longstanding position that it does not seek to possess one. Trump said he prefers a diplomatic resolution, and that could include Iran’s willingness to pledge a no-nukes policy, subject to international inspection, in return for US acceptance of Iran’s right to uranium enrichment for energy.
Trump attacked, possibly in the belief he can get better terms, but the minister said, “we will respond in accordance with our defensive planning. Therefore, everybody should be aware that a war can be started, but to end that war, it is not easy. …The whole region will suffer as a result of an aggression against Iran.”
The current debate about US war making neglects the more important question: What gives Trump the right to attack? What legal or moral basis is there for waging war against a country that does not have, and may not seek, a nuclear weapon, and does not pose a danger to the US or to other vital US national interests?
Trump’s secretary of state is informing several members of Congress about US policy, but the President is clearly not seeking their approval. The administration has yet to make a case for war to all of Congress or to the public; it is simply moving ahead with one. Some Congressional Democrats are once again (as with Venezuela before the US seized Nicolas Maduro) trying to gain support for the War Powers Resolution. But they won’t get it.
Neglect to give the same serious attention to these questions as to military strategy has undermined US foreign policy on many past occasions. Does Trump think Iran will be as easy to defeat as Venezuela, or that he’ll be the de facto leader of Iran just as he thinks of himself as Venezuela’s real president?
Another attack on Iran, far beyond last June’s, will not only risk a quagmire, political instability in some Middle East countries, and large-scale losses of life. It will also cement the Trump administration’s reputation as an aggressor state—a reputation future administrations will have great difficulty overcoming.
And Now
Trump delivered his war speech in the dead of night. No need to awaken the American people or members of Congress. He made clear that regime change is the US aim, that the attacks seek destruction of Iran’s political leadership and military forces, and that US casualties are to be expected. Iran is responding with attacks on Israeli targets. Trump seems to believe that bombing will lead the Iranian people to rise up and overthrow the Khomeini regime.
Even if that were to happen, it would not justify US aggression.
Trump’s war on Iran should be opposed by anyone who respects international law, democratic processes, and the value of negotiating over fighting. Trump deserves to be repudiated by US allies, Congress, and international organizations.
I believe US military leaders are deeply concerned about being put in the position of waging war against a country that does not pose a national security threat. The US is likely to face new tensions and further conflict in the Middle East while Russia and China look on.
We, Israel, and the Middle East as a whole are far less secure now thanks to the Trump regime’s outrageous decision.
The Policy of “Maximum Pressure” on Iran
March 2, 2026
Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair
Americans should not be fooled or led astray by the corporate media or the Beltway consultant class: fact-free fearmongering and warmongering about Iran have been among the most thoroughly bipartisan positions in Washington for many decades. For all of the turgid language within U.S. government and media circles about rogue regimes and state sponsors of terrorism, we almost never get around to mentioning the fact that the United States has long been the world’s greatest offender and violator of international law. It’s important to be clear about the facts of the matter: Iran is not a real threat to the United States, and it is Washington that has always been the aggressor in the relationship. Iran does not have intercontinental ballistic missiles, and Donald Trump himself has claimed repeatedly that Iran’s nuclear program was “obliterated” last summer.
The U.S. government itself bears much of the responsibility for the theocratic dictatorship that rules Iran today, the seeds of which grew after the CIA helped to overthrow the country’s elected leader in the summer of 1953. A few years later, with the eager assistance of the CIA and Israel’s intelligence services, among others, the Shah’s regime set up a brutal and repressive domestic security and intelligence service, called SAVAK. SAVAK’s extreme censorship and abuses helped to radicalize Iranians, who correctly associated the regime’s violence and authoritarianism with the foreign powers that helped to train and equip it. With rival political parties and civil society groups stamped out, religious organizations became the vehicle for political revolution, and thus for the revolution that ushered in the Islamic Republic.
Today, the U.S. government’s sanctions regime is a direct attack on innocent Iranians, not on an insulated ruling class in Tehran, which can easily and comfortably withstand the costs of Washington’s economic stranglehold. As scholars and commentators have long pointed out, “The breadth and scope of the United States’ ‘maximum pressure sanctions’ pushed Iranians into poverty and increased income inequality, leading to widespread suffering. They also weakened the population and made Iranians increasingly dependent on the state, which has become more militarized and securitized, leading to an overall sentiment of resignation.”
The Solidify Iran Sanctions Act (SISA), which passed the House last year, is part of the culmination of a decades-long trajectory, removing the sunset provision of the ‘96 Iran Sanctions Act. The SISA would make the earlier law’s sanctions authorities permanent unless repealed. (Senate passage of the SISA is not urgent since the ‘96 law will not expire until the end of the year.) The overwhelming bipartisan support for the SISA is one of many examples of how the “maximum pressure” framework toward Iran has become a permanent feature of U.S. law. Human rights groups have long called attention to the fact that innocent Iranians—who despise the government more than any American politician—bear the brunt of this cruel and inhumane maximum pressure policy.
This policy has long united ruling classes in Washington and Tel Aviv, and Benjamin Netanyahu’s maximalist position on Iran has steadily become the consensus in elite American politics. Israel’s prime minister was the first foreign leader to visit the White House after Trump came back to power, and he has returned more than any other leader, six times in just over a year, with his most recent visit coming earlier this month. This is significant in part because Israel’s longest-serving prime minister (over 18 years over three separate periods of 1996-1999, 2009-2021, and 2022-present) has lobbied the U.S. government for war with Iran obsessively for decades, both inside and outside of his official capacities. Speaking to the Knesset as a member in 1992, Netanyahu warned that Iran would “become autonomous in its ability to develop and produce a nuclear bomb” within three to five years. He repeated this and similar clearly false claims again and again in subsequent years, including during an infamous address to a joint session of Congress as prime minister in 1996.
But Israel is far from the only foreign country that has pushed the U.S. further toward conflict with Iran. The United States’ key allies in the Persian Gulf, for example, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, have maintained deep financial ties with the Washington think-tank and consultancy world, using their immense wealth to influence U.S. policy and press the case for aggressive and militaristic policies toward Iran. More recently, Qatar gave Trump a $400 million Boeing jet described as a “flying palace,” a move widely seen as an illegal and unconstitutional bribe. The UAE, meanwhile, has poured money into the Trump family, raising eyebrows with a “deal to acquire a 49% stake in World Liberty Financial, the crypto company founded by the Trump family and several allies in the fall of 2024 during Trump’s presidential campaign, was backed by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, one of the most powerful officials in the UAE.”
The United States and Israel have been meddling violently and illegally in the affairs of the Iranian people for close to 75 years now. Both halves of the Washington uniparty bear responsibility for Trump’s latest imperialist foray and the catastrophic consequences it will bring. Whether they admit it or not, congressional leaders in both parties knew this was coming and could have pushed to ensure that the U.S. government would not enter into another war absent congressional action.
The sad truth is that they wanted this outcome, because it aligns with and serves powerful interests clustered around the Beltway, the military-industrial complex chief among them. They just didn’t want to have to vote for it or against it; they want to be reliable partners for those interests and social media celebrities without having to go on the record on anything important. Hence, the imperial presidency.
Americans continue to be surprised that we don’t learn from Vietnam, Iraq, etc., but the truth is our openly corrupt and imperialistic ruling class has learned a great deal, and they are now sure that we will never stand up to their villainy here at home or abroad. The U.S. government long ago abandoned even the merest pretense that its foreign policy of aggressive wars of choice and mass civilian starvation has anything at all to do with the safety or our concrete interests of Americans. What Americans need to learn is not that Washington’s illegal wars have failed, but that they have failed for us and the world while they enrich a tiny elite of war profiteers.
Trump’s Contrasting Regime-Change Strategies in Iran and Venezuela
by Ted Galen Carpenter | Mar 2, 2026 |
President Donald Trump has made it clear that the new U.S.-Israeli air war against Iran is aimed at nothing less than the overthrow of the country’s clerical regime. Such an ambitious objective should not come as a surprise. Both the powerful Israel lobby and most of the conservative movement in the United States have endorsed the goal of forcible regime change in Tehran since the Islamic revolution overthrew the Shah in 1979. Even a sizable percentage of anti-war liberals have tended to make an exception with respect to policy toward Iran.
The ostensible goal embraced by nearly all of Tehran’s critics has always been to oust the mullahs and bring a secular democratic government to power. In December 2025, prominent conservative organizations, media outlets, and individuals in the United States and Europe voiced emphatic support for anti-regime protests that had erupted in Iranian cities. On January 15, 2026, Trump himself openly threatened to intervene militarily if Iranian security personnel continued to crack down on demonstrators.
Tehran’s adversaries in the United States and other Western countries insist that they want to see a secular, fully democratic government emerge in Iran. Trump’s rhetoric during the initial phases of his new war is consistent with that objective. The administration’s supposed embrace of an ambitious regime-change agenda for democracy in Iran, though, stands in dramatic contrast to Washington’s much more pragmatic conduct in Venezuela. Such a substantive difference raises justifiable uncertainty about the nature and extent of U.S. regime-change goals in Iran, even if the current war proves to be successful militarily.
Although the Trump administration ousted Venezuela’s left-wing dictator Nicolas Maduro in early January 2026, Trump allowed Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, and most other members of the regime to remain in power. That restraint infuriated libertarians and many conservatives in the United States. Most of them wanted to see Washington install in office opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and an outspoken advocate of free markets. Indeed, Machado is the darling of prominent libertarian organizations, especially the Cato Institute.
However, Trump and his policy team seemed perfectly content with continuing an authoritarian socialist regime in Caracas, as long as the leaders were willing to do Washington’s bidding. Policy concessions from Rodriguez’s government with respect to the treatment of the U.S. oil industry and a willingness to display less receptivity to China’s economic penetration of South America came quickly, and the White House appeared to be placated.
The cynical pragmatism of U.S. policy in Venezuela should make U.S. crusaders for Iranian democracy wonder about the sincerity of the Trump administration’s commitment to that value in Iran. There also are major elements in the internal movement opposing the clerical regime who appear to be more than a little unsavory and might be willing to play a role similar to Delcy Rodriguez’s adopted role in her country.
During the demonstrations that erupted in December and January, an especially visible spokesperson for anti-regime factions was Reza Pahlavi – the son of the late Shah. It is difficult to identify a more hated figure for millions of ordinary Iranians than the leader of the Pahlavi family. Although the younger Pahlavi officially embraces the goal of democracy, and one should not assume that he and other leaders of the current generation of anti-clerical activists are authoritarians like their parents and grandparents, we should reserve judgment and not casually assume that they are dedicated democrats either.
Another prominent and dubious faction among the anti-clerical forces is the MEK (Mojahedin-e-Khalq) – a domestic insurgent group that the U.S. government formerly listed as a terrorist organization. Despite that well-deserved reputation, some of the most prominent American and West European hawks have long embraced the MEK and touted it as a movement devoted to liberating Iran and establishing a democratic government.
Enthusiasts about Trump’s new regime-change war need to be wary for multiple reasons. The United States has launched a blatant war of aggression, setting yet another unhealthy precedent in world affairs and creating the prospect of more chaos throughout the Middle East and perhaps globally. It also is purely a war of choice on Washington’s part – something that proponents of a foreign policy based on realism and restraint hoped that Trump would repudiate . Even worse, it is explicitly a regime-change crusade, precisely the kind of disastrous, potentially open-ended venture that Trump vowed to avoid during all three of his presidential campaigns.
Finally, it is far from certain that even a successful war would produce a truly democratic Iran devoted to free markets and limited government. The prominence of both Reza Pahlavi and the MEK in the anti-clerical movement are not encouraging developments. Americans may discover that they will merely acquire another autocratic foreign client to support financially and militarily.
Dr. Ted Galen Carpenter is a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute and the Libertarian Institute. He is also a contributing editor to National Security Journal and The American Conservative. He also served in various senior policy positions during a 37-year career at the Cato Institute. Dr. Carpenter is the author of 13 books and more than 1,600 articles on defense, foreign policy and civil liberties issues. His latest book is Unreliable Watchdog: The News Media and U.S. Foreign Policy (2022).
The US/Israeli Attack Was to
Prevent Peace Not Advance It
March 2, 2026
The aftermath of an airstrike on Shajareh Tayyebeh school. Photograph Source: Tasnim News Agency – CC BY 4.0
Last Friday, the mediator of the U.S. and Iranian nuclear negotiations in Oman, that country’s foreign minister Badr Albusaidi, pulled the rug out from President Trump’s deceptive pretense, threatening war with Iran because it had refused his demands that it give up what he claimed was its drive to build its own atom bomb. The Omani foreign minister explained on CBS’s Face the Nation that the Iranian team had agreed not to accumulate enriched uranium and offered “full and comprehensive verification by the IAEA.”
This new concession was a “breakthrough that has never been achieved any time before. And I think if we can capture that and build on it, I think a deal is within our reach” to achieve an “agreement that Iran will never, ever have a nuclear material that will create a bomb. This is, I think, a big achievement.”
Pointing out that this breakthrough “has been missed a lot by the media,” he emphasized that by calling for “zero stockpiling,” it went far beyond what had been negotiated during President Obama’s administration, because “if you cannot stockpile material that is enriched, then there is no way you can actually create a bomb.”
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – who already had issued a fatwa against doing any such thing, and had repeated this position year after year – called Iran’s Shi’a leaders and military chief to discuss ratification of the agreement to cede control of its enriched uranium in order to prevent war.
But any such capitulation was precisely what neither the United States nor Israel could accept. A peaceful resolution would have prevented the long-term U.S. plan to consolidate and weaponize its control over Middle Eastern oil, its transportation and the investment of its oil export revenues, and to use Israel and al Qaeda/ISIS as its client armies to block independent oil-producing countries from acting in their own sovereign interests.
Israeli intelligence apparently alerted the U.S. military to suggest that the meeting at the Ayatollah’s compound offered a great chance to decapitate the leading decision makers all together. This followed the U.S. military handbook advice that killing a political leader whom the U.S. deems to be undemocratic will liberate popular dreams of regime change. That was the hope of bombing President Putin’s country residence last month, and it was in line with the U.S. recent Starlink attempt to mobilize popular opposition for revolution in Iran.
The joint U.S.-Israeli attack makes it clear that there is nothing that Iran could have conceded that would have deterred the long-standing U.S. drive to control Middle Eastern oil and using Israel and ISIS/Al Qaeda client armies to prevent sovereign nations in the region from emerging to take control of their oil reserves. That control remains an essential arm of U.S. foreign policy. It is the key to the U.S. ability to hurt other economies by denying them access to energy if they do not adhere to U.S. foreign policy. This insistence on blocking the world’s access to energy sources not under American control is why the U.S. has attacked Venezuela, Syria, Iraq, Libya and Russia.
The attack on negotiators (the second time America has done this to Iran) is a perfidy that will go down in history. It was to prevent Iran’s intended move to peace, before its leaders could have disproven Trump’s false claim that Iran had refused to give up its desire to obtain its own atom bomb.
It would be interesting to know how many of Trump’s insiders placed big bets that oil prices will soar when markets open on Monday morning. The markets last week were vastly underestimating the risk of closing the Straits of Hormuz and the Oil Gulf. U.S. oil companies will make a killing. China and other oil importers will suffer. U.S. financial speculators also will make a killing, because their oil production is domestic. This fact may even have played a role in the U.S. decision to end the world’s access to Middle Eastern oil for what promises to be a lengthy period.
The trade and financial disruption, in fact, will be so worldwide that I think we can think of Saturday’s attack on Iran as the true trigger of World War III. For most of the world, the imminent financial crisis (to say nothing of the moral outrage) will define the next decade of international political and economic restructuring.
European, Asian and the Global South countries will be unable to obtain oil except at prices that make many industries unprofitable and many family budgets unaffordable. The rise in oil prices will also make it impossible for Global South countries to service their dollar debts falling due to Western bondholders, banks and the IMF.
Countries can save themselves from having to impose domestic austerity, currency depreciation and inflation only by recognizing that the U.S. attack (supported by Britain and Saudi Arabia, with ambiguous Turkish acquiescence) had ended the U.S. unipolar order – and with it the dollarized international financial system. If this is not recognized, acquiescence will continue until it becomes unsustainable in any case.
If this is the inaugural real battle of World War III, it is in many ways a final battle to decide what World War II was all about. Will international law crumble as a result of the unwillingness of enough countries to protect the rules of civilized law supporting the principles of national sovereignty, free from foreign interference and coercion from the 1648 Peace of Westphalia to the UN Charter? And with regard to wars that inevitably are to be waged, will they spare civilians and non-belligerents, or will they be like Ukraine’s attack on its Russian-speaking population in its eastern provinces, Israel’s genocide against ethnic Palestinians, Wahabi religious cleansing of non-Sunni Arab populations, or indeed the Iranian, Cuban and other populations under U.S.-sponsored attack?
Can the United Nations be saved without freeing itself and its member countries from U.S. control? An early litmus test of where alliances are sorting out will be which countries join the legal move to declare Donald Trump and his cabinet war criminals. Something more than the present ICC is needed, given the U.S. Government’s personal attacks on ICC judges who found Netanyahu guilty.
What is required is a Nuremberg-scale trial against the Western military policy that has been seeking to plunge the entire world into political and economic chaos if it does not submit to the U.S.-unipolar ruler-based order. If other countries do not create an alternative to the US-European-Japanese-Wahabi offensive, they will suffer what U.S. Secretary of State Rubio called (in his recent Munich speech) a resurgence of the Western history of conquest to the basic principles of international law and equity.
An alternative requires restructuring the United Nations to end the U.S. ability to block majority resolutions. In view of the fact that U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said that it may be bankrupt by August and have to close its New York City headquarters, this is a propitious time to move it out of the United States itself. The U.S. has banned Francesca Albanese from entering the United States as a result of her report describing Israeli genocide in Gaza. There can be no rule of law as long as control over the U.N. and its agencies remains in U.S. hands and those of its European satellites.
Oman’s Foreign Minister Said US-Iran Deal Was ‘Within Our Reach.’ Then Trump Started Bombing
“The Omani FM decided to go public,” suggested one observer, “so that the American people knew that peace was within reach when Trump instead opted for war.”
Oman’s foreign minister, Badr Albusaidi, looks on during an event on November 5, 2025 in Madrid, Spain.
(Photo by Pablo Blazquez Dominguez/Getty Images)
Jake Johnson
Feb 28, 2026
COMMON DREAMS
Hours before President Donald Trump announced his decision to bomb Iran and pursue the overthrow of its government, the foreign minister of Oman appeared, in person, on one of the most prominent US television news programs to declare that a diplomatic breakthrough was possible.
“I can see that the peace deal is within our reach,” Badr Albusaidi, the mediator of recent talks between the US and Iran, told “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan on Friday. “I’m asking to continue this process because we have already achieved quite a substantial progress in the direction of a deal. And the heart of this deal is very important, and I think we have captured that heart.”
Pressed for specifics, Albusaidi said that Iran committed during the talks to renounce the possibility of amassing “nuclear material that will create a bomb”—a pledge that Trump claimed Iran refused to make as part of his justification for Saturday’s strikes.
“This is something that is not in the old deal that was negotiated during President Obama’s time,” Albusaidi said, referring to the 2015 nuclear accord that Trump ditched during his first term in the White House. “This is something completely new. It really makes the enrichment argument less relevant, because now we are talking about zero stockpiling. And that is very, very important, because if you cannot stockpile material that is enriched, then there is no way you can actually create a bomb, whether you enrich or don’t enrich. And I think this is really something that has been missed a lot by the media, and I want to clarify that from the standpoint of a mediator.”
“There is no accumulation, so there would be zero accumulation, zero stockpiling, and full verification,” the Omani foreign minister continued. “Full and comprehensive verification by the [International Atomic Energy Agency].”
In a social media post following the interview, Albusaidi reiterated that a deal “is now within reach” and implored all parties to “support the negotiators in closing the deal.” Prior to Saturday’s attacks, additional US-Iran talks were scheduled for next week.
Watch the full segment, which critics highlighted as evidence that the US-Israeli attacks on Saturday were aimed at forestalling a diplomatic resolution:
Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the US-based Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, wrote in response to Albusaidi’s remarks that “the Omanis are famously cautious.”
“The Omani FM going on CBS to reveal what has actually been achieved in the negotiations is quite unprecedented. And what has been achieved is significant—Trump can indeed declare victory. Listen to this segment—it goes way beyond what Obama achieved,” Parsi wrote. “But everything indicates that Trump won’t take yes for an answer. That he will start a war of choice very soon.”
“Which is probably why the Omani FM decided to go public,” Parsi added. “So that the American people knew that peace was within reach when Trump instead opted for war.”
According to one survey released earlier this month, just 21% of Americans support “the United States initiating an attack on Iran under the current circumstances.”
War on Iran
March 2, 2026
Image by Mohammed Ibrahim.
The Illogic of War
The Trump administration reportedly cannot understand why Iran is refusing to accede to US demands that it halt uranium enrichment, limit the range of its ballistic missiles, and stop supporting militant groups in the region. After all, Iran’s economy is in dire straits, people have resumed demonstrating against the regime, and the US has arrayed enough firepower offshore to conduct a world war.
Trump is acting as though he wants to finish the job he started last June, when it turned out that Iran’s nuclear facilities had not been obliterated as claimed. Yet with all those negative signs, Iran has refused to fold.
This situation is hardly new to US foreign policy specialists. An opponent that appears to be weak and facing overwhelming power nevertheless refuses to capitulate.
Think North Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, North Korea, Cuba over decades, or even Venezuela until recently. Logically, weak regimes ought to give in rather than face destruction. But that is not always where logic leads. Ask the Ukrainians.
Why is the capacity to resist often outweighed by the necessity to resist? A regime facing an adversary with awesome military power may consider that to give in would be to surrender its legitimacy. And regime legitimacy is crucial to political survival.
Leaders in all those countries that have faced US threats came to power in revolutionary movements directed against an “imperialist” enemy. Their right to rule vanishes if they fail to confront that enemy, no matter the odds. Moreover, they must assume that the enemy’s real aim is not merely to further weaken the regime but to displace it.
“For Iran, submitting to U.S. terms is more dangerous than suffering another U.S. strike,” said Ali Vaez, the Iran director of the International Crisis Group. “They don’t believe that once they capitulate, the U.S. will alleviate the pressure. They believe that would only encourage the U.S. to go for the jugular.”
Regime change, in other words. Thus, Ali Khomeini (or his successor) may have no choice but to reject US demands that would amount to surrender of what Iran considers sovereign rights: nuclear enrichment for civilian purposes and missiles to deter or counter an Israeli or US attack.
Iran’s leaders surely also calculate that the Trump administration is in political trouble at home. Attacking Iran would probably not improve Trump’s political fortunes. It will have costs: lives will be lost, anti-war public opinion will intensify, and the US will have few if any allies behind its action other than Israel.
Trump’s joint chiefs chairman, General Dan Caine, is said to have informed Trump that “shortfalls in critical munitions and a lack of support from allies” increase the risks of an attack on Iran.
Why is fighting preferable to talking? Obama was able to reach a nuclear agreement with Iran that Trump discarded. Why, many will (and should) ask, can’t Trump reach a deal with Iran?
Iran seems committed to talking. “We are ready to reach an agreement as soon as possible,” Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Majid Takht-Ravanchi told NPR in an interview February 24. “We want to do whatever is necessary to make it happen.”
Iran has taken a nuclear weapon off the table, reiterating a longstanding position that it does not seek to possess one. Trump said he prefers a diplomatic resolution, and that could include Iran’s willingness to pledge a no-nukes policy, subject to international inspection, in return for US acceptance of Iran’s right to uranium enrichment for energy.
Trump attacked, possibly in the belief he can get better terms, but the minister said, “we will respond in accordance with our defensive planning. Therefore, everybody should be aware that a war can be started, but to end that war, it is not easy. …The whole region will suffer as a result of an aggression against Iran.”
The current debate about US war making neglects the more important question: What gives Trump the right to attack? What legal or moral basis is there for waging war against a country that does not have, and may not seek, a nuclear weapon, and does not pose a danger to the US or to other vital US national interests?
Trump’s secretary of state is informing several members of Congress about US policy, but the President is clearly not seeking their approval. The administration has yet to make a case for war to all of Congress or to the public; it is simply moving ahead with one. Some Congressional Democrats are once again (as with Venezuela before the US seized Nicolas Maduro) trying to gain support for the War Powers Resolution. But they won’t get it.
Neglect to give the same serious attention to these questions as to military strategy has undermined US foreign policy on many past occasions. Does Trump think Iran will be as easy to defeat as Venezuela, or that he’ll be the de facto leader of Iran just as he thinks of himself as Venezuela’s real president?
Another attack on Iran, far beyond last June’s, will not only risk a quagmire, political instability in some Middle East countries, and large-scale losses of life. It will also cement the Trump administration’s reputation as an aggressor state—a reputation future administrations will have great difficulty overcoming.
And Now
Trump delivered his war speech in the dead of night. No need to awaken the American people or members of Congress. He made clear that regime change is the US aim, that the attacks seek destruction of Iran’s political leadership and military forces, and that US casualties are to be expected. Iran is responding with attacks on Israeli targets. Trump seems to believe that bombing will lead the Iranian people to rise up and overthrow the Khomeini regime.
Even if that were to happen, it would not justify US aggression.
Trump’s war on Iran should be opposed by anyone who respects international law, democratic processes, and the value of negotiating over fighting. Trump deserves to be repudiated by US allies, Congress, and international organizations.
I believe US military leaders are deeply concerned about being put in the position of waging war against a country that does not pose a national security threat. The US is likely to face new tensions and further conflict in the Middle East while Russia and China look on.
We, Israel, and the Middle East as a whole are far less secure now thanks to the Trump regime’s outrageous decision.
The Policy of “Maximum Pressure” on Iran
Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair
Americans should not be fooled or led astray by the corporate media or the Beltway consultant class: fact-free fearmongering and warmongering about Iran have been among the most thoroughly bipartisan positions in Washington for many decades. For all of the turgid language within U.S. government and media circles about rogue regimes and state sponsors of terrorism, we almost never get around to mentioning the fact that the United States has long been the world’s greatest offender and violator of international law. It’s important to be clear about the facts of the matter: Iran is not a real threat to the United States, and it is Washington that has always been the aggressor in the relationship. Iran does not have intercontinental ballistic missiles, and Donald Trump himself has claimed repeatedly that Iran’s nuclear program was “obliterated” last summer.
The U.S. government itself bears much of the responsibility for the theocratic dictatorship that rules Iran today, the seeds of which grew after the CIA helped to overthrow the country’s elected leader in the summer of 1953. A few years later, with the eager assistance of the CIA and Israel’s intelligence services, among others, the Shah’s regime set up a brutal and repressive domestic security and intelligence service, called SAVAK. SAVAK’s extreme censorship and abuses helped to radicalize Iranians, who correctly associated the regime’s violence and authoritarianism with the foreign powers that helped to train and equip it. With rival political parties and civil society groups stamped out, religious organizations became the vehicle for political revolution, and thus for the revolution that ushered in the Islamic Republic.
Today, the U.S. government’s sanctions regime is a direct attack on innocent Iranians, not on an insulated ruling class in Tehran, which can easily and comfortably withstand the costs of Washington’s economic stranglehold. As scholars and commentators have long pointed out, “The breadth and scope of the United States’ ‘maximum pressure sanctions’ pushed Iranians into poverty and increased income inequality, leading to widespread suffering. They also weakened the population and made Iranians increasingly dependent on the state, which has become more militarized and securitized, leading to an overall sentiment of resignation.”
The Solidify Iran Sanctions Act (SISA), which passed the House last year, is part of the culmination of a decades-long trajectory, removing the sunset provision of the ‘96 Iran Sanctions Act. The SISA would make the earlier law’s sanctions authorities permanent unless repealed. (Senate passage of the SISA is not urgent since the ‘96 law will not expire until the end of the year.) The overwhelming bipartisan support for the SISA is one of many examples of how the “maximum pressure” framework toward Iran has become a permanent feature of U.S. law. Human rights groups have long called attention to the fact that innocent Iranians—who despise the government more than any American politician—bear the brunt of this cruel and inhumane maximum pressure policy.
This policy has long united ruling classes in Washington and Tel Aviv, and Benjamin Netanyahu’s maximalist position on Iran has steadily become the consensus in elite American politics. Israel’s prime minister was the first foreign leader to visit the White House after Trump came back to power, and he has returned more than any other leader, six times in just over a year, with his most recent visit coming earlier this month. This is significant in part because Israel’s longest-serving prime minister (over 18 years over three separate periods of 1996-1999, 2009-2021, and 2022-present) has lobbied the U.S. government for war with Iran obsessively for decades, both inside and outside of his official capacities. Speaking to the Knesset as a member in 1992, Netanyahu warned that Iran would “become autonomous in its ability to develop and produce a nuclear bomb” within three to five years. He repeated this and similar clearly false claims again and again in subsequent years, including during an infamous address to a joint session of Congress as prime minister in 1996.
But Israel is far from the only foreign country that has pushed the U.S. further toward conflict with Iran. The United States’ key allies in the Persian Gulf, for example, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, have maintained deep financial ties with the Washington think-tank and consultancy world, using their immense wealth to influence U.S. policy and press the case for aggressive and militaristic policies toward Iran. More recently, Qatar gave Trump a $400 million Boeing jet described as a “flying palace,” a move widely seen as an illegal and unconstitutional bribe. The UAE, meanwhile, has poured money into the Trump family, raising eyebrows with a “deal to acquire a 49% stake in World Liberty Financial, the crypto company founded by the Trump family and several allies in the fall of 2024 during Trump’s presidential campaign, was backed by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, one of the most powerful officials in the UAE.”
The United States and Israel have been meddling violently and illegally in the affairs of the Iranian people for close to 75 years now. Both halves of the Washington uniparty bear responsibility for Trump’s latest imperialist foray and the catastrophic consequences it will bring. Whether they admit it or not, congressional leaders in both parties knew this was coming and could have pushed to ensure that the U.S. government would not enter into another war absent congressional action.
The sad truth is that they wanted this outcome, because it aligns with and serves powerful interests clustered around the Beltway, the military-industrial complex chief among them. They just didn’t want to have to vote for it or against it; they want to be reliable partners for those interests and social media celebrities without having to go on the record on anything important. Hence, the imperial presidency.
Americans continue to be surprised that we don’t learn from Vietnam, Iraq, etc., but the truth is our openly corrupt and imperialistic ruling class has learned a great deal, and they are now sure that we will never stand up to their villainy here at home or abroad. The U.S. government long ago abandoned even the merest pretense that its foreign policy of aggressive wars of choice and mass civilian starvation has anything at all to do with the safety or our concrete interests of Americans. What Americans need to learn is not that Washington’s illegal wars have failed, but that they have failed for us and the world while they enrich a tiny elite of war profiteers.
The Trump Regime Proves again to be the
Single Largest Danger to Humanity’s Future
There were only two things that surprised me – and would have been fitting – namely that he had been dressed in military battle uniform (I predict that, as Supreme Commander, he will soon show up in that), and that he did not argue that he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize even more for what he has now announced.
That said, here is how you speak when you are a danger to the world:
- WE ARE THREATENED BY EVIL ITSELF
You accuse Iran of being a threat to the American people – while the US itself is the biggest military power on earth and has surrounded Iran, not the other way around. Only an insane mind would see Iran as capable of attacking the US homeland or occupy it or, for instance, conduct a regime shift in Washington. - WE ARE VICTIMISED
You present yourself as a victim – Trump gave examples of how Iran has (allegedly) killed US militaries who were deployed illegally abroad, for instance in Syria. He omits the US killings of Iranian – civilians and militaries – for instance his own liquidation of General Solimani. - WE ARE INNOCENT
You play innocent, we never did anything wrong – not a word, of course you may say, about US harassment of Iran for decades, the US/British coup against the first democratically elected Iranian leader in 1953, the support to the ruthless Shah, giving Israel nuclear weapons; not a word about the US economic sanctions since 1979. - WE ARE EXCEPTIONAL
We can do what what others cannot do because we are exceptionally good – we will never allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons (an invented event anyhow) while we never mention Israel’s nukes or our own. Since we are the – exceptionally – good guys and they are the bad guys, that is morally defensible. They can never have what we have and what we threaten them with. The same applies to long-ranger missiles. We have plenty of them, but Iran cannot have it – we threaten no one, but Iran does.
Since we are exceptional, international law does not apply to us. - WE ARE SUPERIOR & INVINCIBLE
We have the raw power to humiliate and beat them into submission – a God-given right to humiliate and defeat others, and we do it to achieve our exceptionally noble goals. Our military is second to none, and no one should ever challenge us. If you do, we promise total destruction. Because we can. - WE DICTATE THE RULES OF THE GAME, NO COMPROMISE
We set the conditions, the rules of the game – you morally and otherwise weak Iranian military have to either surrender or face death. You are a bunch of killers, we provide freedom to all Iranians and sacrifice our own servicement for this – “noble” mission. Conspicuously, Trump did not mention the ongoing negotiations which we must assume now served only to win time to get the US military in place. - WE DO HARD REGIME CHANGE AND DON’T CARE ABOUT THE UNITED NATIONS OR INTERNATIONAL LAW.
We generously sacrifice to liberate you because you asked us for our help – you, the fantastic Iranians, and we know that 100% of you hate your leaders, so what could be more right and noble for the US but to hear your call? Norms and ethics are long out of the US window. - GOD IS ON OUR SIDE
Perhaps it is a ritual but rounding off this speech with “God save…” means exactly that.
In contrast to, say, the European leaders, Trump propagates Christianity as he goes to war. That is significant since the US is constantly at war with presumed inferior Muslim countries. If he can appeal to God to save American lives, he probably feels that he has a nice backup and confirmation from up above – and American love that in God’s own country. Fortunately, we cannot know what God thinks about Trump and US policies, but we can imagines various interpretations… - IN SUMMARY
These are classical psycho-political elements of militarism/fascism operators legitimating going to war – absolutely nothing new. Also no lessons learned – for instance, that changing the top leader(ship) usually is no guarantee that a better society emerges – think Iraq, Syria, Libya.
The whole thing is delusional. It overestimates one’s own power, the evil of ‘the other,’ the righteousness of ‘our’ course and how noble ‘we’ are – and how we are threatened in spite of being innocent and doing good. It denies that conflict is about problems that stand between parties and assumes that conflict is only cause by the other side.
It signifies how manifest it is that where military might goes in, analysis, truth, consequence evaluations, ethics and decency goes out. It’s called hubris…There was not one word based on any intellectual analysis or aiming at prudent statesmanship and caution. It was a speech worthy of a gangster.
What will happen now?
Well, the USrael attack may “succeed” in either taking over the leadership in Iran, in mass killing civilians on the way, in destroying more military installations (which it has already done before), in providing for Israel to continue to create a Greater Israel, in getting a lot of American soldiers killed and US installations in the region destroyed – and perhaps in getting the Strait of Hormuz closed.
It may “succeed” in getting some Arab countries to gang up against Iran and, perhaps, getting the Shah’s son back.
None of this will be a political success or create a better life for a single Iranian. It will be a long-war catastrophe for all involved and become a predictable fiasco for Trump and the US Empire.
And even if a short war, it will cause an indefinite hatred among people throughout the region and the rest of the world – also on top of the Gaza genocide, Venezuela, Greenland, etc. Under all circumstances, Iran will be moving into unchartered lands because of this completely unnecessary war – unnecessary simply because, throughout the Western world, intelligent diplomacy is now a thing of the past.
The West now runs exclusively on a world-endangering kakistocratic and militarist mindset. And it will continue until death does it part from the Rest. In that – tragic – perspective the war that started today will become yet another nail in its coffin.
Trump Launches War on Iran: Will Americans Support It?
Monday 2 March 2026, by Dan La Botz
President Donald Trump promised to be the “president of peace” and to avoid foreign wars of regime change such as America’s “endless wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now Trump has launched just such a war on Iran and the question is: Will his base and the American people support or even tolerate it?
Trump declared war on Iran, and together with Israel, bombed several cities including Teheran, the capital, killing Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, and other top Iranian officials, as well as striking military bases and nuclear facilities. Iran then retaliated by attacking Israel and U.S. bases in Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Jordan, and Oman; so now there is a regional war.
A diplomatic resolution of U.S. differences with Iran was possible, but Trump, who calls himself “the peace president,” chose war. As is always the case in war, there are innocent victims, such as the 148 children and teachers killed by a military strike on a girls school in Iran. The war has just begun and hundreds have already been killed in Iran, some in Israel and in other nations in the region.
Trump launched the war saying, “Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime. A vicious group of very hard, terrible people. Its menacing activities directly endanger the United States, our troops, our bases overseas, and our allies throughout the world.”
Trump suggested that war was necessary because Iran would soon have nuclear weapons and missiles that could reach the United States, though recent U.S. government reports denied that. “For that reason, he promised, “We’re going to destroy their missiles and raze their missile industry to the ground.” He added, presenting himself as a liberator, “Finally, to the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand… When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take.” So, this appears to be just the sort of war for regime change that Trump when he was a candidate for president had promised to avoid.
Trump launched the war without consulting or even informing the U.S. Congress, which under the U.S. Constitution is the only arm of government with the power to declare war. Democrats had announced earlier that they planned to go to Congress on March 2 with a war powers resolution which would have prevented Trump from going to war with Iran. But Trump beat them to the punch. Democrats will present the resolution this week in an attempt to stop the war.
Both some Democrats and Republicans have criticized Trump’s turn to war. Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican, who is co-leading the effort in the House to force a war powers vote, called the strikes on Iran “acts of war unauthorized by Congress.” Democratic Senator Ruben Gallego said, I lost friends in Iraq to an illegal war. Young working-class kids should not pay the ultimate price for regime change and a war that hasn’t been explained or justified to the American people. We can support the democracy movement and the Iranian people without sending our troops to die.”
In cities around the country there were small protest demonstrations as the war began, but the largest with only a few hundred participants. Some of those organizing these protests actually support Iran’s government, claiming it is, “anti-imperialist.” But there is little popular support for Iran’s regime since Khamenei had the Islamic Revolutionary Guard murder between 25,000 to 35,000 protestors who opposed the authoritarian regime in January.
Will the American people accept Trump’s war? Will his base turn against him for violating his promise to avoid just this sort of war? Will the Democrats stop him in Congress? Or can the anti-war movement stop him in the streets? That’s our challenge.
1 March 2026
There were only two things that surprised me – and would have been fitting – namely that he had been dressed in military battle uniform (I predict that, as Supreme Commander, he will soon show up in that), and that he did not argue that he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize even more for what he has now announced.
That said, here is how you speak when you are a danger to the world:
- WE ARE THREATENED BY EVIL ITSELF
You accuse Iran of being a threat to the American people – while the US itself is the biggest military power on earth and has surrounded Iran, not the other way around. Only an insane mind would see Iran as capable of attacking the US homeland or occupy it or, for instance, conduct a regime shift in Washington. - WE ARE VICTIMISED
You present yourself as a victim – Trump gave examples of how Iran has (allegedly) killed US militaries who were deployed illegally abroad, for instance in Syria. He omits the US killings of Iranian – civilians and militaries – for instance his own liquidation of General Solimani. - WE ARE INNOCENT
You play innocent, we never did anything wrong – not a word, of course you may say, about US harassment of Iran for decades, the US/British coup against the first democratically elected Iranian leader in 1953, the support to the ruthless Shah, giving Israel nuclear weapons; not a word about the US economic sanctions since 1979. - WE ARE EXCEPTIONAL
We can do what what others cannot do because we are exceptionally good – we will never allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons (an invented event anyhow) while we never mention Israel’s nukes or our own. Since we are the – exceptionally – good guys and they are the bad guys, that is morally defensible. They can never have what we have and what we threaten them with. The same applies to long-ranger missiles. We have plenty of them, but Iran cannot have it – we threaten no one, but Iran does.
Since we are exceptional, international law does not apply to us. - WE ARE SUPERIOR & INVINCIBLE
We have the raw power to humiliate and beat them into submission – a God-given right to humiliate and defeat others, and we do it to achieve our exceptionally noble goals. Our military is second to none, and no one should ever challenge us. If you do, we promise total destruction. Because we can. - WE DICTATE THE RULES OF THE GAME, NO COMPROMISE
We set the conditions, the rules of the game – you morally and otherwise weak Iranian military have to either surrender or face death. You are a bunch of killers, we provide freedom to all Iranians and sacrifice our own servicement for this – “noble” mission. Conspicuously, Trump did not mention the ongoing negotiations which we must assume now served only to win time to get the US military in place. - WE DO HARD REGIME CHANGE AND DON’T CARE ABOUT THE UNITED NATIONS OR INTERNATIONAL LAW.
We generously sacrifice to liberate you because you asked us for our help – you, the fantastic Iranians, and we know that 100% of you hate your leaders, so what could be more right and noble for the US but to hear your call? Norms and ethics are long out of the US window. - GOD IS ON OUR SIDE
Perhaps it is a ritual but rounding off this speech with “God save…” means exactly that.
In contrast to, say, the European leaders, Trump propagates Christianity as he goes to war. That is significant since the US is constantly at war with presumed inferior Muslim countries. If he can appeal to God to save American lives, he probably feels that he has a nice backup and confirmation from up above – and American love that in God’s own country. Fortunately, we cannot know what God thinks about Trump and US policies, but we can imagines various interpretations… - IN SUMMARY
These are classical psycho-political elements of militarism/fascism operators legitimating going to war – absolutely nothing new. Also no lessons learned – for instance, that changing the top leader(ship) usually is no guarantee that a better society emerges – think Iraq, Syria, Libya.
The whole thing is delusional. It overestimates one’s own power, the evil of ‘the other,’ the righteousness of ‘our’ course and how noble ‘we’ are – and how we are threatened in spite of being innocent and doing good. It denies that conflict is about problems that stand between parties and assumes that conflict is only cause by the other side.
It signifies how manifest it is that where military might goes in, analysis, truth, consequence evaluations, ethics and decency goes out. It’s called hubris…There was not one word based on any intellectual analysis or aiming at prudent statesmanship and caution. It was a speech worthy of a gangster.
What will happen now?
Well, the USrael attack may “succeed” in either taking over the leadership in Iran, in mass killing civilians on the way, in destroying more military installations (which it has already done before), in providing for Israel to continue to create a Greater Israel, in getting a lot of American soldiers killed and US installations in the region destroyed – and perhaps in getting the Strait of Hormuz closed.
It may “succeed” in getting some Arab countries to gang up against Iran and, perhaps, getting the Shah’s son back.
None of this will be a political success or create a better life for a single Iranian. It will be a long-war catastrophe for all involved and become a predictable fiasco for Trump and the US Empire.
And even if a short war, it will cause an indefinite hatred among people throughout the region and the rest of the world – also on top of the Gaza genocide, Venezuela, Greenland, etc. Under all circumstances, Iran will be moving into unchartered lands because of this completely unnecessary war – unnecessary simply because, throughout the Western world, intelligent diplomacy is now a thing of the past.
The West now runs exclusively on a world-endangering kakistocratic and militarist mindset. And it will continue until death does it part from the Rest. In that – tragic – perspective the war that started today will become yet another nail in its coffin.
Monday 2 March 2026, by Dan La Botz
President Donald Trump promised to be the “president of peace” and to avoid foreign wars of regime change such as America’s “endless wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now Trump has launched just such a war on Iran and the question is: Will his base and the American people support or even tolerate it?
Trump declared war on Iran, and together with Israel, bombed several cities including Teheran, the capital, killing Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, and other top Iranian officials, as well as striking military bases and nuclear facilities. Iran then retaliated by attacking Israel and U.S. bases in Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Jordan, and Oman; so now there is a regional war.
A diplomatic resolution of U.S. differences with Iran was possible, but Trump, who calls himself “the peace president,” chose war. As is always the case in war, there are innocent victims, such as the 148 children and teachers killed by a military strike on a girls school in Iran. The war has just begun and hundreds have already been killed in Iran, some in Israel and in other nations in the region.
Trump launched the war saying, “Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime. A vicious group of very hard, terrible people. Its menacing activities directly endanger the United States, our troops, our bases overseas, and our allies throughout the world.”
Trump suggested that war was necessary because Iran would soon have nuclear weapons and missiles that could reach the United States, though recent U.S. government reports denied that. “For that reason, he promised, “We’re going to destroy their missiles and raze their missile industry to the ground.” He added, presenting himself as a liberator, “Finally, to the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand… When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take.” So, this appears to be just the sort of war for regime change that Trump when he was a candidate for president had promised to avoid.
Trump launched the war without consulting or even informing the U.S. Congress, which under the U.S. Constitution is the only arm of government with the power to declare war. Democrats had announced earlier that they planned to go to Congress on March 2 with a war powers resolution which would have prevented Trump from going to war with Iran. But Trump beat them to the punch. Democrats will present the resolution this week in an attempt to stop the war.
Both some Democrats and Republicans have criticized Trump’s turn to war. Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican, who is co-leading the effort in the House to force a war powers vote, called the strikes on Iran “acts of war unauthorized by Congress.” Democratic Senator Ruben Gallego said, I lost friends in Iraq to an illegal war. Young working-class kids should not pay the ultimate price for regime change and a war that hasn’t been explained or justified to the American people. We can support the democracy movement and the Iranian people without sending our troops to die.”
In cities around the country there were small protest demonstrations as the war began, but the largest with only a few hundred participants. Some of those organizing these protests actually support Iran’s government, claiming it is, “anti-imperialist.” But there is little popular support for Iran’s regime since Khamenei had the Islamic Revolutionary Guard murder between 25,000 to 35,000 protestors who opposed the authoritarian regime in January.
Will the American people accept Trump’s war? Will his base turn against him for violating his promise to avoid just this sort of war? Will the Democrats stop him in Congress? Or can the anti-war movement stop him in the streets? That’s our challenge.
1 March 2026
Dan La Botz
Trump Lied About Being for Peace – Just Like Every President Before Him
Trump's bombing of Iran continues to prove that so-called “peace candidates” in the American political system are merely a hopeful illusion
Reprinted with permission from The Screeching Kettle at Substack.
Three years ago, Donald Trump referred to himself as “the candidate who delivers peace.” This weekend, his administration bombed Iran. While it may seem unusual, the historical record suggests otherwise, clearly demonstrating that Trump follows a long line of American politicians who spent a lot of time talking about being against wars only to wage them once elected president.
During the 2000 presidential debates, George W. Bush claimed he wanted a “humble” foreign policy, adding that he doesn’t think US troops “ought to be used for what’s called nation-building.”
By 2003, the Bush administration was at war in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
According to researchers at Brown University, the Iraq War directly caused at least 190,000 deaths and is projected to cost US taxpayers roughly $2.2 trillion when long-term veteran care and related expenses are included.
Bush also oversaw a brutal torture program that included waterboarding, sensory deprivation, auditory overload, and “rectal rehydration”.
In February 2007, Barack Obama told an Illinois crowd that they came to see him speak “because you believe in what this country can be. In the face of war, you believe there can be peace. In the face of despair, you believe there can be hope.” In 2008, he said that events in Iraq “have reminded America of the need to use diplomacy and build international consensus to resolve our problems whenever possible.”
Obama received a Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”
Three days after his inauguration, Obama ordered the CIA’s first Pakistani drone strike, killing at least nine civilians. During his first term, Obama outpaced Bush in the number of drone strikes he authorized, blew up weddings and funerals, bombed Libya, launched cyber attacks and imposed crushing economic sanctions against Iran, while also openly targeting US citizens in Yemen.
In 2013, Obama boasted that “after a decade of grinding war, our brave men and women in uniform are coming home.” And yet, by the time he left office in January 2017, US troops remained in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, Bush-era CIA torture was brushed under the carpet, and the US had bombed at least seven different countries.
In 2016, Donald Trump claimed if he became president, “the era of nation-building will be brought to a very swift and decisive end.”
Less than a week into his first term, Trump oversaw a commando raid in Yemen that resulted in the death of an 8-year-old girl.
Over the course of a single term in office, the US under Trump doubled Obama’s drone strikes, attempted a humiliating coup in Venezuela, bombed Syria, and in 2020, assassinated a high-ranking Iranian commander, risking all-out war.
While running for president in 2020, Joe Biden pledged to end America’s “forever wars” which, he said, have cost the US “untold blood and treasure.”
Nevertheless, the Biden administration saw troops occupying Syria and Iraq, bombing campaigns in Yemen and Somalia, billions of tax dollars funneled into the war in Ukraine, all while giving a blank check to Israel to wage a genocidal war on Gaza.
Remarkably, in 2024, Biden claimed to be the “first president of this century to report to the American people that the United States is not at war anywhere in the world.”
That same year, Trump won a second term in the White House and, during his victory speech, blatantly lied, stating that when he was last in office, the US “had no wars”.
Trump’s second term has so far been marked by the continuation of the bloodbath in Gaza, additional funding for the war in Ukraine, the kidnapping of Nicholas Maduro in Venezuela, and, most recently, US strikes on Iran.
At the time of publication, several high command Iranians are dead, including Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and more than 100 people were also reportedly slaughtered after Israeli airstrikes ripped apart two Iranian schools.
Decades of bipartisan warmongering make it painfully obvious that no president who reaches the White House with vows of peace is constrained by them once in power.
What reigns in Washington is permanent war.
Jon Reynolds is a freelance journalist covering a wide range of topics with a primary focus on the labor movement and collapsing US empire. He writes at The Screeching Kettle at Substack.
Reprinted with permission from The Screeching Kettle at Substack.
Three years ago, Donald Trump referred to himself as “the candidate who delivers peace.” This weekend, his administration bombed Iran. While it may seem unusual, the historical record suggests otherwise, clearly demonstrating that Trump follows a long line of American politicians who spent a lot of time talking about being against wars only to wage them once elected president.
During the 2000 presidential debates, George W. Bush claimed he wanted a “humble” foreign policy, adding that he doesn’t think US troops “ought to be used for what’s called nation-building.”
By 2003, the Bush administration was at war in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
According to researchers at Brown University, the Iraq War directly caused at least 190,000 deaths and is projected to cost US taxpayers roughly $2.2 trillion when long-term veteran care and related expenses are included.
Bush also oversaw a brutal torture program that included waterboarding, sensory deprivation, auditory overload, and “rectal rehydration”.
In February 2007, Barack Obama told an Illinois crowd that they came to see him speak “because you believe in what this country can be. In the face of war, you believe there can be peace. In the face of despair, you believe there can be hope.” In 2008, he said that events in Iraq “have reminded America of the need to use diplomacy and build international consensus to resolve our problems whenever possible.”
Obama received a Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”
Three days after his inauguration, Obama ordered the CIA’s first Pakistani drone strike, killing at least nine civilians. During his first term, Obama outpaced Bush in the number of drone strikes he authorized, blew up weddings and funerals, bombed Libya, launched cyber attacks and imposed crushing economic sanctions against Iran, while also openly targeting US citizens in Yemen.
In 2013, Obama boasted that “after a decade of grinding war, our brave men and women in uniform are coming home.” And yet, by the time he left office in January 2017, US troops remained in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, Bush-era CIA torture was brushed under the carpet, and the US had bombed at least seven different countries.
In 2016, Donald Trump claimed if he became president, “the era of nation-building will be brought to a very swift and decisive end.”
Less than a week into his first term, Trump oversaw a commando raid in Yemen that resulted in the death of an 8-year-old girl.
Over the course of a single term in office, the US under Trump doubled Obama’s drone strikes, attempted a humiliating coup in Venezuela, bombed Syria, and in 2020, assassinated a high-ranking Iranian commander, risking all-out war.
While running for president in 2020, Joe Biden pledged to end America’s “forever wars” which, he said, have cost the US “untold blood and treasure.”
Nevertheless, the Biden administration saw troops occupying Syria and Iraq, bombing campaigns in Yemen and Somalia, billions of tax dollars funneled into the war in Ukraine, all while giving a blank check to Israel to wage a genocidal war on Gaza.
Remarkably, in 2024, Biden claimed to be the “first president of this century to report to the American people that the United States is not at war anywhere in the world.”
That same year, Trump won a second term in the White House and, during his victory speech, blatantly lied, stating that when he was last in office, the US “had no wars”.
Trump’s second term has so far been marked by the continuation of the bloodbath in Gaza, additional funding for the war in Ukraine, the kidnapping of Nicholas Maduro in Venezuela, and, most recently, US strikes on Iran.
At the time of publication, several high command Iranians are dead, including Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and more than 100 people were also reportedly slaughtered after Israeli airstrikes ripped apart two Iranian schools.
Decades of bipartisan warmongering make it painfully obvious that no president who reaches the White House with vows of peace is constrained by them once in power.
What reigns in Washington is permanent war.
Jon Reynolds is a freelance journalist covering a wide range of topics with a primary focus on the labor movement and collapsing US empire. He writes at The Screeching Kettle at Substack.
Iran, Epstein, and Human Sacrifice
Everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned.
— W.B. Yeats, “The Second Coming”
Today the Trump Administration, at the behest of the decrepit Netanyahu government, was instrumental in the bombing of a girls’ elementary school, killing 57 children. Let that sink in. Journey to the center of the world of American leaders’ madness and ruin to see desperate Iranian parents picking through rubble, searching for any signs of their little girls.
Now tell those parents, as we are being told, that America has done this so the Iranian people can be free. It’s the Empire’s new equation, Freedom = Death.
This murderous approach that the Trump Administration has wantonly indulged is identical to the policy of the Netanyahu government to bomb schools in Gaza and to murder innocent children as a (psychopathic) determination of heading off retribution in the future. The murder of children has become a state sacrament.
This is, in fact, an extension of the Epstein saga, the destruction of innocence through child rape, murder and cannibalism by powerful people whose thirst for blood will never be slaked in this cartwheeling carnival of human sacrifice called war.
Peter Berger, in Pyramids of Sacrifice drew the equation between the Aztec civilization’s cult of human sacrifice and the collapse of its empire, writing: “Thus the great pyramid of Cholula provides a metaphorical paradigm for the relations among theory, power and the victims of both – the intellectuals who define reality, the power wielders who shape the world to conform to the definitions and the others who are called upon to suffer in consequence of both enterprises.”
Consider the wider context in which these events occur: The rise of predatory Zionism, with its execution of a strategy of annihilation, ethnic cleansing, mass murder and genocide and with ambitions for an Empire from the Euphrates to the Nile; the attempt to stifle dissent on U.S. college campuses, threats to university funding; changes in first amendment law at state levels to punish critics of Israel; the domination of both political parties in U.S. politics by AIPAC and affiliated groups; the domination of the media by those more dedicated to the shameful cause of the Likud Government of Netanyahu, Smotrich and Ben Gvir than they are to the United States Constitution.
We have a front row seat at the steady decline of Western “civilization,” led by the U.S. government, more recently precipitating the Iraq-Iran War, the war in Afghanistan, the War in Iraq, the War against Lebanon, the War against Syria, the War against Gaza and the West Bank, the War against Yemen and now presenting the (second) U.S. war against Iran.
Renaming the Department of Defense to the Department of War is splendid Truth in Advertising.
Simultaneously, the collapse of the American economy is in the offing, mired in debt, yet preparing to appropriate $1.5 trillion dollars a year for war, most of next year’s discretionary spending which would otherwise be used for the health, education and general welfare of the American people.
Today the US, the “most powerful military in the world” has been reduced to being an arm of the Israeli government, in service of greater Israel.
That we have made Netanyahu’s long-desired war upon Iran our own, is a sign that Lincoln’s Prayer of a “Government of the People, by the People and For the People, Shall not Perish, is no longer part of our national invocation. Nor are George Washington’s admonitions about foreign entanglements regarded, nor President Eisenhower’s warning about the military industrial complex.
No today, America’s leaders cast aide centuries of accumulated wisdom of governance and descend into a circle of Hell, lower than Dante imagined in the Inferno, a place reserved for those who sacrifice their nations for personal wealth and power and for whom nothing is immoral, there is no spiritual code and no divine being other than themselves.
The modern punishments of Impeachment and trial by the Hague are insufficient to deal with such beings.
The Apologists for the Attack on Iran
Roguish Justifications
February 28, 2026. Another attack, another breach of the United Nations Charter. A gross violation of international law. As usual, a violation celebrated as ethical, necessary, and high-minded in principle by the powerful who dictate such terms. Not squalid, dangerous, destabilising. Not, apparently, following the same pattern as before: interventions in Iraq, Libya. Not, goodness, another intervention to overthrow the regime of this same country orchestrated by the United States and Britain in 1953.
Yes, this was Iran, bombed for a second time in under a year, its hierarchy targeted, again, only more comprehensively. The supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was slain, along with his advisor Ali Shamkhani and a number of senior officials in the armed forces, intelligence services and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. This time, the joint operation between Israel and the United States took two different forms. (These distinctions seem to have eluded the inattentive press hacks.) The Israeli side of the bargain is Operation Lion’s Roar; the American, Operation Epic Fury. Both are equally mendacious in their justifications, the former focused on neutralising Iran’s nuclear program and ballistic missile capabilities, the latter more broadly on crippling Iran’s influence in funding proxies and fostering the conditions for regime change.
For Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s the objective was ending “the threat of the Ayatollah regime in Iran.” The clerical tyrants were “plotting to rebuild their nuclear and missile capabilities” and placing them “underground, where we cannot reach them. If we do not stop them now, they will become invulnerable.”
The February 28 statement from US President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social justified the pre-emptive attack with some spectacular nonsense. Tehran had decided to “rebuild their nuclear program and to continue developing long range missiles that can now threaten our very good friends and allies in Europe, our troops stationed overseas, and could soon reach the American homeland.” Their ballistic missile industry would be razed, the navy annihilated, their armed proxies crippled. Members of the Revolutionary Guard would be given complete immunity in laying down their arms; Iranian citizens should, given the chance, rise up and seize the reins of power.
With these deeds of outlawry, what could we expect from countries so keen to impress upon others the merits of international law? The answer: not much. The farrago of lies from Netanyahu and Trump were of no interest to Australia, with the Albanese government quick in its support and conniving in the breach of international law. Showing no interest in whether Iran had a nuclear capability or posed an imminent threat, Canberra simply “recognised that Iran’s nuclear program is a threat to global peace and security. The international community has been clear that the Iranian regime can never be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon.”
Disingenuously, the statement referred to the reimposition of UN Security Council sanctions on Tehran for not complying with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action without mentioning that Trump, with Israeli pressure, sabotaged it in the first place. “We support the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to prevent Iran continuing to threaten international peace and security.” If ever a servile poltroon could be expected to write a note of approval for the savaging of international law and the undermining of the UN order, this was it.
The Canadian government of Mark Carney took much the same line. “Canada,” stated Prime Minister Carney and Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand, “supports the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, and to prevent its regime from further threatening international peace and security.” This endorsement of unlawful aggression prompted Lloyd Axworthy, a previous foreign affairs minister, to call it “an abandonment of a long-standing element of our foreign policy.” Former Canadian diplomat Sabine Nölke also noted that there was no “logical connection to why we are now supporting a prima facie illegal act of war of aggression.” There was no necessity in attacking Iran; this was but a “war of choice.”
France, Germany and the United Kingdom, in a joint statement, reiterated the scolding line of Iran as the all central threat, be it with its nuclear and ballistic missile program, its subversive activities, and its human rights abuses. The only strikes to be condemned were not the pre-emptive ones of Israel and the United States, in which the three countries played no part, but Iran’s “indiscriminate military strikes.”
The European Union was also mealy mouthed, never condemning the US-Israeli actions as a breach of international law in its March 1 statement, focusing instead on its meritorious sanctions policy on Iran, Tehran’s bleak human rights record, and “Iran’s ballistic missile and nuclear programmes, and its support for armed groups in the Middle East.” The EU had consistently urged Iran to end its “nuclear programme, curb its ballistic missile programme, refrain from destabilizing activities in the region and in Europe, and to cease the appalling violence and repression against its own people.”
All the blame for the illegal pre-emptive assault on Iran had been its own fault. With staggering omission of the obvious, Tehran was accused of being the aggressor by countering attacks on itself with strikes on US bases and facilities in other countries. Nonetheless, “maximum restraint, protection of civilians and full respect of international law, including the principles of the United Nations Charter, and international humanitarian law” was called for, despite there being no international humanitarian law to keep, nor a Charter to protect. “Iran’s attacks and violation of sovereignty of a number of countries in the region are inexcusable. Iran must refrain from indiscriminate military strikes.” Clearly, breaching the UN Charter was perfectly excusable for Israel and the US. The object, ultimately, was to ensure that Iran never acquired a nuclear weapon. The EU would assist diplomatically in that regard, ignoring that diplomatic talks were underway between Washington and Tehran when the attacks took place.
The European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, instead of condemning the attacks as having the potential to sunder regional security, demanded a “credible transition in Iran”. Kaja Kallas, the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, seemed to celebrate the killing of Ali Khamenei as “a defining moment in Iran’s history.” While uncertainty had presented itself, there was “now an open path to a different Iran, one that its people may have greater freedom to shape.” Both officials are clearly untutored on the disasters of imposed change upon Iran and other countries in the Middle East, where the people’s wishes are inconsequential to foreign meddlers.
Most European states, cowed and shrinking, refused to mention the illegality of the Israeli-US action. It was Iran’s actions that were to be blamed in all senses. With haughty hypocrisy, Iran was told that it could never acquire a nuclear weapon, leaving aside the uncomfortable fact that Israel was an undeclared nuclear power that avoided international regulations and scrutiny of its program. Czechia’s Prime Minister Andrej Babiš, for instance, preferred to ignore history by simply calling Iran’s nuclear program “uncontrollable”. That, along with its “support for terrorism are a danger for us and to all of Europe.” Estonia’s Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna, in keeping with the parochial pathologies of his country and other Baltic states, thought the killing of the Ayatollah “a significant setback for Iran’s ally, Russia”.
The only EU leader to show sense and awareness of the unfolding conflict was Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchéz, who rejected “the unilateral action by the United States and Israel” which had contributed “to a more uncertain and hostile international order.” While also repudiating the actions of Tehran and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, the PM lamented that, “We cannot afford another prolonged and devastating war in the Middle East.” That may be exactly what we get, whether affordable or otherwise.
No Mandate, No Peace: America’s War of Choice Against Iran
Early Saturday, the United States joined Israel in launching a major strike on Iran, with President Donald Trump announcing that “major combat operations” were underway. The first thing Americans should notice is not the fireworks on cable news, but the emptiness where a legal and democratic mandate ought to be. This attack was not authorized by the United Nations Security Council, and it was not authorized by Congress. It was sold to the public after the fact, as bombs were already falling.
In his analysis for The Guardian, Julian Borger reported that Trump’s own words point to something far bigger than a limited punitive strike. The president warned Iran’s Revolutionary Guard to surrender or be killed, vowed to smash Iran’s armed forces, and openly invited Iran’s ethnic minorities to rise up and bring the government down. That is not a narrow mission. That is regime change, declared in prime time.
Regime change is not self-defense. Under the United Nations Charter, the use of force is broadly prohibited, and the main exception is the inherent right of self-defense “if an armed attack occurs,” as spelled out in Article 51. If Washington wants to claim that exception, it has to show an actual armed attack or a truly imminent one. “Iran is bad” is not a legal argument; it is a bumper sticker. Yet the public case from the White House has leaned heavily on sweeping characterizations and contested claims about Iran’s capabilities rather than a concrete, imminent threat, as even Reuters noted in its review of Trump’s assertions.
The domestic legal picture is just as bleak. The Constitution gives Congress – not the president—the power “to declare War.” You can read that authority in Article I, Section 8. Modern presidents have tried to stretch their commander-in-chief role into a blank check, but the point of the system was to make war hard to start. After Vietnam, Congress tried to claw back some of that authority through the War Powers Resolution, which requires consultation “in every possible instance” and rapid reporting once hostilities begin. Whatever one thinks of the War Powers Resolution’s enforcement, the spirit is clear: the president is not supposed to take the country into war first and explain later.
What makes this moment even more alarming is the timing. According to Borger, the strikes were launched while diplomatic efforts were still underway to limit Iran’s uranium enrichment, with talks continuing just days before the bombs. That pattern – negotiations on one track, military escalation on the other – turns diplomacy into theater. It suggests the “deal” was never meant to be a deal at all, but an ultimatum backed by a “beautiful armada” assembled in the region.
Trump’s defenders will say that none of this matters if the operation “works.” But “works” for whom, and at what cost? The president appears to be betting that shock and awe will do what years of sanctions and covert action did not: fracture the Iranian state from within. History is not kind to that bet. Decades after Vietnam, the Pentagon’s own strategists still write about the limits of relying primarily on bombing to achieve political ends; see, for example, the National Defense University’s assessment of the limits of airpower in Vietnam. And when air campaigns do topple regimes, the aftermath can be chaos, as Congressional Research Service testimony has described in post-2011 Libya.
There is also the small matter of what Iran does next. Regime change is an existential threat, and governments rarely respond to existential threats with restraint. Within hours, the region was already sliding toward escalation. The Guardian reported Iranian retaliatory strikes aimed at Israel and multiple U.S. bases across the Middle East, alongside calls for an emergency UN Security Council meeting. See Patrick Wintour’s reporting. Whether or not every reported strike lands, the direction of travel is obvious: wider war, more casualties, and more opportunities for miscalculation.
Supporters of intervention often talk as if war is a tool that can be picked up and put down at will. In practice, it is a fuse. Once lit, it burns through realities that press releases cannot manage: grieving families, retaliatory cycles, emergency powers at home, and the steady erosion of law abroad. If Washington is serious about rules, it cannot treat the UN Charter as an optional suggestion, invoked against rivals and ignored by itself. The UN’s own legal materials make plain that Article 2(4)’s prohibition on the use of force is meant to be a cornerstone, not a talking point.
Congress still has choices, even if it was sidelined in the rush to war. It can demand a public accounting of the alleged threat. It can insist that any continued hostilities require specific authorization. It can use the power of the purse to prevent an open-ended escalation. None of those steps are radical. They are what constitutional government looks like when leaders remember that soldiers are citizens, not props.
The United States has spent a generation paying for the arrogance of “easy” wars sold as quick fixes. Launching another war of choice – while wrapping it in the language of peace, and while bypassing both international law and democratic consent – does not make America safer. It makes America more dangerous: to others, and to itself. The fastest path back from the cliff is a ceasefire, urgent diplomacy, and a hard national reckoning with the idea that bombs are a substitute for politics.
Jenny Williams is an independent American journalist and writer with an interest in foreign policy, human rights, and peace. She aims to provide thoughtful commentary on U.S. engagement abroad and its consequences. Contact: jennywilliams9696@gmail.com | Twitter: @Jenny9Williams.
