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US and Israel Launch "Pre-Emptive" Attack Against Iran
From Heather Cox Richardson, bolded text added by me.
"The Trump administration has been able to articulate neither a clear reason for what Trump calls a 'war' against Iran nor a goal to be accomplished by the war that is costing $1 billion a day. On February 19, less than ten days before Trump started bombing Iran, Trump told his 'Board of Peace' that '[w]e’ve done the biggest thing of all. We have peace in the Middle East right now.' Today Trump told reporters that if he hadn’t struck Iran, it would have had a nuclear weapon within two weeks, a conclusion U.S. intelligence agencies reject.
"Trump told reporters today that 'we’re doing very well on the war front, to put it mildly,' rating it 15 on a scale of 1 to 10. But Americans stranded in Middle Eastern countries are desperate to get out, and the government has not been able to help them."
"Notably, Trump had no answer for why there was no plan to evacuate Americans. Instead, he made it clear he is worried about experts’ assessment that the U.S. is low on high-end munitions and interceptors. According to Ellen Mitchell of The Hill, the U.S. is low on those weapons not because it has helped to supply Ukraine, but because it 'blew through 25 percent of its stockpile over just a few days of operations against Iran in June 2025.' And before that operation, the U.S. military used $200 million worth of munitions in three weeks of attacks on the Houthis in Yemen, a bombing campaign that did little to change the Houthis’ behavior."
"Despite the administration’s apparent lack of either planning or goals in its attack on Iran, Senate Republicans today refused to rein in Trump’s attack on Iran with a war powers resolution to bring the war to a stop. While some said they were nervous about the apparent lack of a plan for the conflict, others said it was imperative to demonstrate support for the troops by supporting the war, regardless of how we got into it."
Maybe I am the one becoming demented. Seems to me that, if Iran developed a nuclear weapon, it would aim it at Israel first, risking retaliation from the US of sufficient nuclear weapons to terminate Iran and the middle east. Haven't nuclear weapons been rendered a last, not first, resort? Even in Israel and Iran? OTOH, an uninhabitable middle east would solve some endless problems and support rapid development of new greener energy sources.
Well, their constituents will hold them responsible anyhow. These weasels cannot walk away from responsibility for enabling trump. Voters will know.
They all voted against the war powers resolution. It is on them.
We know there is no plan. That the situation is utterly unpredictable. And that, using trump's own words, and our intelligence agency's information, Iran was making no effort to dig out their nuclear weapons materials.
This was the work of an addled man, with a god-complex, who has surrounded himself with sycophants.
And, just one more example of what doling out your own rope can lead to. War, inflation, upset markets, falling GDP, weak jobs, protests.
Well then let's rename this "Epic Failure" and throw the entire GOP under the bus. Like Pretti and Good let's just kill all manner of innocents for no reason.
Well, their constituents will hold them responsible anyhow. These weasels cannot walk away from responsibility for enabling trump. Voters will know. ...Yes, voters will know. But will it change anything? For a great many of them, it's against their %%^$#@@!!! RELIGION to vote any other way than for Repugnants. I know MINISTERS who voted for the Orange Cockroach TWICE. In my very own first-hand experience, too many voters are utterly clueless. ...Grown adults who don't even know what the Electoral Goddam College is!!! We need to get rid of it, but too many idiot voters keep electing and re-electing the same turds who will not ever make it happen.
"Meanwhile, in Congress, Republicans opposed legislation that would have asserted their constitutional right to have a voice in the decision to go to war with Iran. It did not seem to matter that a strong majority of voters disapprove of Trump’s Mideast misadventure or that the president’s unpopularity may drag many of them to defeat in November’s midterm elections; GOP senators and congressmen will not defy him or risk infuriating their party’s MAGA base."
"For the most part, that base remains solid. It is a fascinating display of mind-bending delusion. No matter how often Trump lies and breaks his promises to them, the MAGA faithful will find a way to keep believing and blame their troubles on straw men."
From this week's Barron's cover story regarding the Iran war.
"Byron Callan, a defense analyst at Washington, D.C.–based Capital Alpha Partners, which advises investors on government policy matters, has handicapped five possible outcomes in Iran. The most likely, with a 40% probability, is Iran left declawed, with internal strife but not a military surrender. Less likely, at 25%, is a government collapse and transition to pro-U.S. rule, or at 20%, remaining leaders striking a U.S. commercial deal, similar to what has happened in Venezuela. A cease-fire with no deal has only a 15% chance but becomes more likely if fighting drags on and the U.S. stock market crashes, according to Callan. The least likely scenario, at 5%, is that Russia or China aid Iran militarily. Russia has limited capacity, and China has deep trading ties with Iran’s Gulf rivals."
"One complication is that although Iran’s government is unpopular at home for sowing poverty and corruption, 'it is much more resilient than a lot of people in the United States think,' says Laura James, senior Middle East analyst at Oxford Analytica, which provides risk assessments for clients modeled on the President’s Daily Brief and is part of Barron’s parent Dow Jones."
"Iran’s leadership has been backed for decades by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a professional military of more than 125,000, plus a civilian paramilitary group called the Basij, with 10 million registered volunteers across virtually every town and university. These act to quickly suppress dissent. 'There isn’t a kind of top that can be blown off in the decapitation strategy and allow the Iranian people to go free,' says James. 'There isn’t even an organized opposition inside the country.'"
PBS News recently launched a new, weekly program called Compass Points. How long the U.S. can sustain the Iran war and Trump's potential endgame (among other themes) are brought up in a discussion moderated by host Nick Schifrin.
@Observant1- Thanks so much for reminding us about that program. It was just excellent- what an intelligent and erudite group of observers and commentators. I've long been an admirer of Nick Schifrin's outstanding reporting from and about overseas military, political and general interest situations.
On another aspect of PBS news reporting- My wife and I feel that there has been just a slight tilt towards more aggressive reporting, particularly in the political area, since the Republicans finally killed the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Perhaps the government's previous financial leash was a loose one, but still a leash.
There is plenty of confusion about President Trump's peace-keeping bombing campaign in the Middle East. Sometimes you have to start a war to prevent a war that was already a war that's technically not even a war! Desi Lydac explains the situation definitively as only she can.
@Observant1- I asked Claude about Nick Schifrin's background as to education and experience:
Claude:
Nick Schifrin is one of the more impressive résumés in American foreign journalism. Here's the rundown: Education Schifrin grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from Columbia University, where he was in a Shakespeare class on the morning of 9/11 — a moment that would later inform a notable essay he wrote. He also holds a Master of International Public Policy degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) , which is one of the premier foreign policy graduate programs in the country.
Early Career / ABC News In 2007 he moved to New Delhi as an ABC News reporter, where he interviewed the Dalai Lama during the 2008 Tibetan unrest and was one of the first international reporters on the scene after the November 2008 Mumbai attacks.
From 2008 to 2012 he served as ABC News' Afghanistan/Pakistan correspondent and bureau chief, running the Islamabad and Kabul bureaus starting at age 28. His biggest get there: he delivered the first video from inside Osama bin Laden's compound after bin Laden's death in 2011, helping ABC win an Edward R. Murrow Award.
Al Jazeera America After ABC, Schifrin became Al Jazeera America's Middle East correspondent based in Jerusalem. He led coverage of the 2014 war in Gaza, reported on the Syrian war from its Turkish, Lebanese, and Jordanian borders, and covered the annexation of Crimea.
PBS NewsHour He joined PBS NewsHour as a special correspondent in late 2015, creating week-long series including "Inside Putin's Russia," "NATO and Ukraine: Fault Lines," "Nigeria: Pain and Promise," and "Egypt 5 Years On."
He was named the full-time Foreign Affairs and Defense Correspondent in 2018.
Awards A notable haul: a 2017 Peabody for "Inside Putin's Russia," the American Academy of Diplomacy's Arthur Ross Media Award in 2020, a 2021 Peabody for COVID-19 coverage, and a 2023 duPont Columbia Award for Afghanistan and Ukraine coverage. Other affiliations He's a visiting fellow at the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service, a Council on Foreign Relations member, and an Overseas Press Club Foundation board member.
The Johns Hopkins SAIS degree is worth noting — it means his reporting instincts are backed by a graduate-level grounding in foreign policy and international economics, which probably explains why his interviews tend to cut deeper than the average correspondent.
You're quite right- very impressive indeed. I really like that guy- he stands out among the PBS News Hour crew, and that's saying a lot right there.
Claude:
Agreed on both counts. The NewsHour bench is genuinely strong — Amna Nawaz, Geoff Bennett, William Brangham, Judy Woodruff before she stepped back — it's not a crew where it's easy to stand out. But Schifrin does, and I think the SAIS degree is a big part of why.
Most foreign correspondents are excellent journalists who learn geopolitics on the job. Schifrin came in with the graduate-level policy foundation already built, so when he's interviewing a defense secretary or a NATO commander, he's not just asking good follow-up questions — he's operating at roughly the same conceptual level as his subject. That tends to produce a different quality of exchange.
The Afghanistan and Pakistan years during a particularly chaotic period probably hardened that further. Running two bureaus at 28 in that part of the world, right through the bin Laden raid — that's a lot of real-world compression of experience in a short time.
He also has a quality that's rarer than it sounds: he asks tough questions without being combative about it. The point seems to be getting to the truth of something rather than scoring a moment, which fits the NewsHour culture well but he takes it further than most.
Glad you brought him up — interesting guy to dig into.
"Fareed Zakaria says that the US approach to the US-Israeli war with Iran is 'scattered, shifting and uncertain,' contrasting it with Israel's clearer objectives."
"Fareed is joined by Biden White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan to discuss the war. Sullivan observes that 'this is basically a race between the US and Israel trying to impose as much damage as possible. . .and the Iranian regime trying to raise the price and the costs as high as possible.'"
Comments: Mr. Zakaria makes the salient point that U.S. and Israeli objectives in the war may be divergent. This important aspect has been largely ignored by the media.
"Iran’s leadership has been backed for decades by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a professional military of more than 125,000, plus a civilian paramilitary group called the Basij, with 10 million registered volunteers across virtually every town and university. These act to quickly suppress dissent. 'There isn’t a kind of top that can be blown off in the decapitation strategy and allow the Iranian people to go free,' says James.'There isn’t even an organized opposition inside the country.'"
Much worse situation than I was aware of. Certainly, Israel knew this before this all began. The only question is if trump knew how bleak this situation is for regime change? Or did his handlers keep it from him? Play him for the fool?
Once again the term "useful idiot" pops into mind.
Iran's Assembly of Experts named Mojtaba Khamenei to succeed his father Ali Khamenei as supreme leader. The son is supposedly more of a hardliner than the father was. Donald J. Trump will surely not be happy with this decision. "If he doesn't get approval from us, he's not going to last long," he told ABC News. Before a leader was announced, Israel threatened to target whoever was selected. We live in interesting times!
Those last two posts are 100% in opposition. "The war is almost over" and that the U.S. approves who leads Iran. It is all just blabbering, at this point.
•The debt and equity markets swooned. •A massive energy shock occurred. •We are running out of defensive munitions. •Serious regime change is basically impossible. •Mid-term elections are coming.
Almost like there was no thought at all behind starting a new war.
Maybe Iran didn't target Greenland because they did stand up to him! So in Trumpthink that makes Greenland an actual enemy, to be taken care of right after Cuba.
Comments
"The Trump administration has been able to articulate neither a clear reason for what Trump calls
a 'war' against Iran nor a goal to be accomplished by the war that is costing $1 billion a day.
On February 19, less than ten days before Trump started bombing Iran, Trump told his 'Board of Peace'
that '[w]e’ve done the biggest thing of all. We have peace in the Middle East right now.'
Today Trump told reporters that if he hadn’t struck Iran, it would have had a nuclear weapon
within two weeks, a conclusion U.S. intelligence agencies reject.
"Trump told reporters today that 'we’re doing very well on the war front, to put it mildly,' rating it 15 on
a scale of 1 to 10. But Americans stranded in Middle Eastern countries are desperate to get out,
and the government has not been able to help them."
"Notably, Trump had no answer for why there was no plan to evacuate Americans.
Instead, he made it clear he is worried about experts’ assessment that the U.S. is low on
high-end munitions and interceptors. According to Ellen Mitchell of The Hill, the U.S. is low on
those weapons not because it has helped to supply Ukraine, but because it 'blew through 25 percent
of its stockpile over just a few days of operations against Iran in June 2025.'
And before that operation, the U.S. military used $200 million worth of munitions in three weeks of
attacks on the Houthis in Yemen, a bombing campaign that did little to change the Houthis’ behavior."
"Despite the administration’s apparent lack of either planning or goals in its attack on Iran,
Senate Republicans today refused to rein in Trump’s attack on Iran with a war powers resolution
to bring the war to a stop. While some said they were nervous about the apparent lack of a plan
for the conflict, others said it was imperative to demonstrate support for the troops
by supporting the war, regardless of how we got into it."
They all voted against the war powers resolution. It is on them.
We know there is no plan. That the situation is utterly unpredictable. And that, using trump's own words, and our intelligence agency's information, Iran was making no effort to dig out their nuclear weapons materials.
This was the work of an addled man, with a god-complex, who has surrounded himself with sycophants.
And, just one more example of what doling out your own rope can lead to. War, inflation, upset markets, falling GDP, weak jobs, protests.
Like Pretti and Good let's just kill all manner of innocents for no reason.
It has that certain ring to it.
And that's it. End of story. "Concerns" duly noted... let's go home now.
...Yes, voters will know. But will it change anything? For a great many of them, it's against their %%^$#@@!!! RELIGION to vote any other way than for Repugnants. I know MINISTERS who voted for the Orange Cockroach TWICE. In my very own first-hand experience, too many voters are utterly clueless. ...Grown adults who don't even know what the Electoral Goddam College is!!! We need to get rid of it, but too many idiot voters keep electing and re-electing the same turds who will not ever make it happen.
to have a voice in the decision to go to war with Iran. It did not seem to matter that a strong majority of voters
disapprove of Trump’s Mideast misadventure or that the president’s unpopularity may drag many of them
to defeat in November’s midterm elections; GOP senators and congressmen will not defy him or risk
infuriating their party’s MAGA base."
"For the most part, that base remains solid. It is a fascinating display of mind-bending delusion.
No matter how often Trump lies and breaks his promises to them, the MAGA faithful will find a way
to keep believing and blame their troubles on straw men."
"Byron Callan, a defense analyst at Washington, D.C.–based Capital Alpha Partners, which advises investors
on government policy matters, has handicapped five possible outcomes in Iran. The most likely,
with a 40% probability, is Iran left declawed, with internal strife but not a military surrender.
Less likely, at 25%, is a government collapse and transition to pro-U.S. rule, or at 20%,
remaining leaders striking a U.S. commercial deal, similar to what has happened in Venezuela.
A cease-fire with no deal has only a 15% chance but becomes more likely if fighting drags on
and the U.S. stock market crashes, according to Callan. The least likely scenario, at 5%, is that Russia
or China aid Iran militarily. Russia has limited capacity, and China has deep trading ties with Iran’s Gulf rivals."
"One complication is that although Iran’s government is unpopular at home for sowing poverty
and corruption, 'it is much more resilient than a lot of people in the United States think,'
says Laura James, senior Middle East analyst at Oxford Analytica, which provides risk assessments
for clients modeled on the President’s Daily Brief and is part of Barron’s parent Dow Jones."
"Iran’s leadership has been backed for decades by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,
a professional military of more than 125,000, plus a civilian paramilitary group called the Basij,
with 10 million registered volunteers across virtually every town and university.
These act to quickly suppress dissent. 'There isn’t a kind of top that can be blown off
in the decapitation strategy and allow the Iranian people to go free,' says James.
'There isn’t even an organized opposition inside the country.'"
How long the U.S. can sustain the Iran war and Trump's potential endgame (among other themes)
are brought up in a discussion moderated by host Nick Schifrin.
On another aspect of PBS news reporting- My wife and I feel that there has been just a slight tilt towards more aggressive reporting, particularly in the political area, since the Republicans finally killed the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Perhaps the government's previous financial leash was a loose one, but still a leash.
I've also long admired Nick Schifrin's reporting and am glad that he is hosting Compass Points.
Sometimes you have to start a war to prevent a war that was already a war that's technically not even a war!
Desi Lydac explains the situation definitively as only she can.
Claude:
You're quite right- very impressive indeed. I really like that guy- he stands out among the PBS News Hour crew, and that's saying a lot right there.
Claude:
Thanks for the background on Nick Schifrin.
contrasting it with Israel's clearer objectives."
"Fareed is joined by Biden White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan to discuss the war.
Sullivan observes that 'this is basically a race between the US and Israel trying to impose as much damage
as possible. . .and the Iranian regime trying to raise the price and the costs as high as possible.'"
Comments: Mr. Zakaria makes the salient point that U.S. and Israeli objectives in the war may be divergent. This important aspect has been largely ignored by the media.
Much worse situation than I was aware of. Certainly, Israel knew this before this all began. The only question is if trump knew how bleak this situation is for regime change? Or did his handlers keep it from him? Play him for the fool?
Once again the term "useful idiot" pops into mind.
The son is supposedly more of a hardliner than the father was.
Donald J. Trump will surely not be happy with this decision.
"If he doesn't get approval from us, he's not going to last long," he told ABC News.
Before a leader was announced, Israel threatened to target whoever was selected.
We live in interesting times!
Trump say the war is almost over
•The debt and equity markets swooned.
•A massive energy shock occurred.
•We are running out of defensive munitions.
•Serious regime change is basically impossible.
•Mid-term elections are coming.
Almost like there was no thought at all behind starting a new war.
Never any doubt.
Remember when his supporters thought that the ongoing tariffs must only be "a negotiating tactic"?