Tag: donald trump

Congress, Do Your Job and End This Illegal War of Aggression by the US and Israel

Once again, the United States and Israel are illegally attacking Iran, as they did last June. It is already a regional war, which will take a horrible toll on ordinary people in many countries, with reports a girls’ school was bombed, killing at least fifty people.

Unlike the limited strikes in last June’s 12-day war, this is aimed not just at Iran’s nuclear or military facilities, but at regime change in Iran, as President Trump declared, and government targets in Tehran have been hit, with Israel claiming Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed. Predictably, Iran is firing back at Israel and at US military bases in the region.

Just yesterday, the Foreign Minister of Oman, who has been mediating negotiations between the US and Iran, stated prospects were good for a possible agreement. However, according to an Israeli official, the talks were apparently a treacherous ruse, as the US and Israel had planned coordinated attacks on Iran for months.

This crisis lies at the feet of President Trump, who abrogated the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in his first term. That multilateral agreement had effectively capped Iran’s nuclear program well short of acquiring The Bomb. Now, once again, two nuclear-weapon states are bombing a non-nuclear-weapon state. Meanwhile, Trump has preposterously called for Iranians to overthrow their government.

The timing of this attack, while perhaps planned for months, came as momentum was building in just the last few days for Congressional War Powers Resolution votes in both the House and the Senate. Democratic leadership in both Houses of Congress had coalesced behind the resolutions, Senate Joint Resolution 104, sponsored by US Senators Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Rand Paul (R-KY), with twelve other co-sponsors, and House Concurrent Resolution 38, sponsored by US Representatives Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Ro Khanna (D-CA), with over 80 co-sponsors. That resolution may be voted on as soon as Monday, according to Khanna.

Senator Kaine issued a statement asking, “Has President Trump learned nothing from decades of U.S. meddling in Iran and forever wars in the Middle East?”and “Is he too mentally incapacitated to realize that we had a diplomatic agreement with Iran that was keeping its nuclear program in check, until he ripped it up in his first term?,” while calling the war a colossal mistake and “a dangerous, unnecessary and idiotic action.”

US Representative Jim Himes (D-CT), Ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, stated, “Everything I have heard from the Administration before and after these strikes on Iran confirms this is a war of choice with no strategic endgame,” and “It does not appear Donald Trump has learned the lessons of history.”

Congress must assert its Constitutional authority over matters of war and peace against an out-of-control, rogue president and executive branch, and vote in favor of the Iran War Powers Resolutions. Congress should also impeach, convict, and remove the president from office for this illegal act, as politically unlikely as that appears now.

Anti-war protest demonstrations are already being held this weekend in many cities, including Washington, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago, Princeton, Norwalk, Greenbelt, Canandaigua and others, reflecting not only the illegality of this war but also its unpopularity, as seventy percent of Americans oppose war with Iran, according to a recent poll. The world urgently needs more diplomacy, not more war.

While this may prove impractical as the war has already begun, and may metastasize in unpredictable ways, we should recall the recent Don’t Give Up the Ship video by six US Senators and Representatives, all veterans of the military or intelligence services, reminding members of those services of not only their right, but their obligation, to refuse to obey illegal orders. I don’t know if this illegal attack on Iran was what they had in mind, but it certainly applies.

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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.

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Trump’s Contrasting Regime-Change Strategies in Iran and Venezuela

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.

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Trump Lied About Being for Peace – Just Like Every President Before Him

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.

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US-Israel war on Iran ‘decided ⁠weeks ago’ under cover of nuclear talks: Report

The unprovoked US-Israeli war against Iran launched on 28 February had “been planned for months, and the ⁠launch date ⁠decided ⁠weeks ago,” even as the US and Iran carried out indirect nuclear negotiations, an Israeli defense official told Reuters.

Washington and Tel Aviv renewed negotiations in February over Iran’s nuclear program. President Trump was under pressure from Israel force Iran to give up uranium enrichment, as well as its ballistic missile program and support for regional resistance forces.

Amid the negotiations, Trump sent an “armada” of US naval ships and warplanes to the region, threatening to launch an attack if officials in Tehran refused to make a deal.

After the latest round of talks on Thursday, a senior US official told Axios the talks were “positive.”

Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi, who mediated the talks, said the talks had shown “significant progress.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi also expressed optimism, saying both sides had shown a “clear seriousness” about getting a deal.

However, the US and Israel launched large-scale attacks against Iranian targets early Saturday, suggesting the negotiations had never been serious.

In the wake of the attacks, Omani Foreign Minister Albusaidi said that the negotiations he mediated had been “deliberately undermined.”

Mehran Kamrava, director of the Iranian studies unit at the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies and professor at Georgetown University in Qatar, stated that Israel “appears to have launched an attack designed to derail the negotiations.”

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Going to War, Again, for Israel

Once again, America is going to war for Israel. Once again, many will die for the Zionist state, including American service members. Once again, we will stumble blindly into a military fiasco. Once again, we will do the bidding of a foreign power whose interests are not our interests, but whose lobbyists have bought up our political class, including Donald Trump. Once again, we will violate the U.N. charter by attacking a country that does not pose an imminent threat.

This is not our war. This is part of Israel’s demented vision of Greater Israel, of dominating the Middle East. But Israel needs our military, our taxpayer dollars, our weapons to do it. And we have handed them the keys to our formidable arsenal.

The architects of the war with Iran, which the administration feels no need to justify to the American public or the international community, admit it will not be quick.

Sen. Tom Cotton, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told CBS News on Saturday that the goal is not only to curb Iran’s nuclear program, but “dismantle their terror support network.”

“To do all that is going to take longer than the strikes on their nuclear program last summer,” Cotton said. “We’re probably looking at weeks, not days, of joint efforts by the United States, Israel and our Arab partners, who have also been attacked this morning.”

Israel’s lackeys in the political class, along with their courtiers in the media, including former American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) employee Wolf Blitzer, as well as academia, are shining examples of Israel’s transparent and often illegal meddling in the American political system. Forget Russia. Forget China. No foreign government comes close to exerting Israel’s influence.

Democratic Party leaders are not opposed to attacking Iran — they are opposed to attacking Iran without being consulted. Two dozen Democrats lept to their feet and applauded every time Trump threatened Iran, or lauded Israel, in his State of the Union address. The Biden administration and Democratic Party leadership made no effort to reinstate Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear agreement. It focused instead on sustaining the genocide in Gaza. It cheered Israel’s decapitation of Iranian proxies in Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. Kamala Harris in her feckless and tone deaf presidential campaign promised to continue funding the genocide, which alienated many voters, and labeled Iran our most dangerous enemy.

Endless war is a bipartisan project.

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Iran says it has ‘one word only’ for America in tense standoff between representatives at emergency UN Security Council meeting

Iran‘s representative told an emergency United Nations meeting that they have ‘one word only’ for the United States following the deadly airstrikes on Iran earlier today. 

Iran’s Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani told America to be ‘polite’ at the emergency meeting following Operation Epic Fury, which saw airstrikes targeting Iran’s nuclear and missile programs. 

‘I have one word only,’ Iravani said, at the meeting in New York City on Saturday. ‘I advise to the representative of the United States to be polite.’

‘It will be better for yourself and the country you represented, thank you.’

US Ambassador Mike Waltz hit back at Iravani and said: ‘Frankly, I’m not going to dignify this with another response.’

‘Especially, as this representative sits here, in this body, representing a regime that has killed tens of thousands of its own people and imprisoned many more simply for wanting freedom from your tyranny,’ he concluded. 

The tense meeting saw Iravani describe the war against Iran as one against international law and international legal order under the United Nations Charter. 

‘This morning, the United States regime – jointly and in coordination with the Israeli regime – initiated an unprovoked and premeditated aggression against the Islamic Republic of Iran for the second time in recent months,’ Iran’s ambassador said. 

‘This is not only an act of aggression; it is a war crime and a crime against humanity,’ Iravani continued. 

‘The invocation to “preemptive attack”, claims of imminent threat, or other unsubstantiated political claims, are unfounded legally, morally and politically.’ 

The UN Security Council, charged with ensuring international peace and security is maintained, is comprised of 15 members, including five permanent members; China, France, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States. 

Other current members include Bahrain, Colombia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Denmark, Greece, Latvia, Liberia, Pakistan, Panama and Somalia.

At around 1.15am on Saturday, the US and Israel began hitting Iranian targets to ‘dismantle the Iranian regime’s security apparatus.’ According to the United Nations News, the strikes do not meet the criteria of lawful self-defense and ‘constitute a violation of Article Two’.

In response, Iran said it will invoke, ‘without hesitation,’ the Charter’s Article 51 for its ‘inherent and lawful’ right to self-defense. 

But, Israel’s Ambassador Dany Danon said the attacks were an ‘act of necessity’ to put an end to an ‘existential threat,’ UN News reported. 

‘This is not the anger of a radical fringe,’ Danon said. ‘It is State-sanctioned hatred.’ 

Waltz equally defended the operation, and said: ‘This is a moment in history that requires moral clarity.’

Waltz claimed that the operation had ‘specific and strategic’ objectives in efforts to reduce missile capabilities that threaten allies, target naval assets used in international waters and disrupt machinery that provides militant weaponry. 

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Israeli strike on Iranian school kills over 100 children – media

Over 100 students have been killed and dozens injured in an Israeli airstrike on a girls’ primary school in the city of Minab, in southern Iran, according to the country’s news agency Tasnim. The attack comes amid ongoing airstrikes on the Islamic Republic by Israel and the US.

Israel launched what it described as a pre-emptive operation against Iranian military and nuclear-related targets on Saturday, saying the strikes were aimed at neutralizing threats posed by Iran. US President Donald Trump later said Washington was joining the operation, citing the failure of nuclear diplomacy as a direct trigger for the renewed bombing.

One of the strikes reportedly targeted an elementary school in the city of Minab, killing at least 148 students and leaving 95 others injured, according to local officials.

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U.S. Strikes Iran in Unconstitutional Attack, Breaking Major Trump Campaign Promise of No More Foreign Wars

President Trump broke a key campaign vow today by ordering an attack on Iran.

American war planes hit targets across the nation, including the capital Tehran, because negotiations to stop Iran from developing atomic weapons were unsuccessful and, Trump said in short speech, to protect American “national security.”

Iran retaliated, striking the headquarters of the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, and poured missiles into Israel. Iran also hit targets across the Middle East.

Top Republicans rightly called the U.S. air raid unconstitutional.

The Attack

“In the initial wave, the U.S. carried out dozens of strikes with attack planes launched from bases around the Middle East and from one or more aircraft carriers, a U.S. official said, The New York Times reported:

The warplanes are part of the largest U.S. military buildup since the Iraq War in 2003, and the deployment includes two aircraft carriers, a number of naval destroyers and more than 50 fighter planes.

The focus of the American strikes for the moment is military targets in Iran, a U.S. official said. Besides its nuclear facilities, Iran is believed to have more than 2,000 missiles, primarily short- and medium-range ballistic missiles that threaten Israel and American forces across the region. Those missiles are scattered at launch sites across Iran and were among the first targets, U.S. military officials said.

Announcing “major combat operations” in an eight-minute speech, Trump called the Iranian regime “a vicious group of very hard, terrible people” whose “activities directly endanger the United States, our troops, our bases overseas, and our allies throughout the world.”

Trump said that the regime has chanted “Death to America” for almost 50 years and “waged an unending campaign of bloodshed and mass murder, targeting the United States, our troops and the innocent people in many, many countries.”

He also noted the attack on the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979; the taking of American hostages, who were held for 444 days; and the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983.

“From Lebanon to Yemen and Syria to Iraq, the regime has armed, trained and funded terrorist militias that have soaked the earth with blood and guts,” Trump said:

And it was Iran’s proxy, Hamas, that launched the monstrous Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, slaughtering more than 1,000 innocent people, including 46 Americans, while taking 12 of our citizens hostage. It was brutal, something like the world has never seen before.

Iran is the world’s number one state sponsor of terror, and just recently killed tens of thousands of its own citizens on the street as they protested. It has always been the policy of the United States, in particular my administration, that this terrorist regime can never have a nuclear weapon. I’ll say it again, they can never have a nuclear weapon. That is why in Operation Midnight Hammer last June, we obliterated the regime’s nuclear program at Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan. After that attack, we warned them never to resume their malicious pursuit of nuclear weapons, and we sought repeatedly to make a deal. We tried. They wanted to do it. They didn’t want to do it. Again they wanted to do it. They didn’t want to do it. They didn’t know what was happening. They just wanted to practice evil. But Iran refused, just as it has for decades and decades.

Trump said the regime has “rejected every opportunity” to end their “nuclear ambitions, and we can’t take it anymore.” 

“This regime will soon learn that no one should challenge the strength and might of the United States Armed Forces,” Trump said:

I built and rebuilt our military in my first administration and there is no military on earth even close to its power, strength or sophistication. My administration is taking every possible step to minimize the risk to U.S. personnel in the region. Even so, and I do not make this statement lightly, the Iranian regime seeks to kill. The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties. That often happens in war. But we’re doing this not for now. We’re doing this for the future.

“Take Over Your Government”

Trump also urged Iran’s army, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, to lay down their weapons or “face certain death,” and urged Iranians to overthrow their government.

“Your hour of freedom is at hand,” he said. And “when we are finished, take over your government,” he said:

It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.

In his state of the union speech, Trump promised to attack Iran because of its supposed intransigence on nuclear weapons.

The IRG comprises about 200,000 members, the Times reported:

Iran has a fleet of hundreds of fast boats that specialize in swarm attacks in the Persian Gulf. It has a massive arsenal of 3,000 to 6,000 naval mines that can enable it to temporarily close off the Strait of Hormuz.

Aside from striking Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and sending missiles at Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates, Iran closed the Straight of Hormuz, a vital seaway for the world’s oil supplies. One estimate said the price for a barrel could rocket to $250.

“We have closed the Strait of Hormuz until further notice,” the Iran Military Monitor wrote on X:

“Let the Orange Pig open it if he can!”

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Trump Threatens to “Take Over the Whole Thing” After Iran Strikes Kill Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

President Trump broke his silence following the Iran strikes on Saturday morning, telling Axios of potential “off-ramps” in the conflict. 

“I can go long and take over the whole thing, or end it in two or three days and tell the Iranians: ‘See you again in a few years if you start rebuilding [your nuclear and missile programs],” Trump told Axios in a phone interview from Mar-a-Lago.

This is the first time Trump commented on the strikes since releasing a statement early on Saturday morning.

As The Gateway Pundit reported, Trump announced earlier that American forces are engaged in what he described as a “massive and ongoing operation” aimed at neutralizing the Iranian regime’s ability to threaten US troops, American allies, and the homeland itself.

Trump pointed to the 1979 US Embassy hostage crisis in Tehran, where dozens of Americans were held captive for 444 days, the 1983 Beirut Marine barracks bombing that killed 241 US military personnel, Iranian-backed militias responsible for killing and maiming hundreds of American troops in Iraq, and continued proxy attacks against US forces and commercial vessels in Middle Eastern shipping lanes.

He further said that after Operation Midnight Hammer last June, where US forces bombed three nuclear facilities in Iran, “we warned them never to resume their malicious pursuit of nuclear weapons, and we repeatedly sought to make a deal.”

“We tried. They wanted to do it—they didn’t,” Trump said. “They wanted to do it—again—they didn’t want to do it.”

In closing his statement, Trump encouraged the Iranian people to seize control of their government.

“When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take,” Trump said to the people of Iran.

“This will probably be your only chance for generations. For many years, you have asked for America’s help, but you never got it. No president was willing to do what I am willing to do tonight.”

Israel further confirmed it had launched a pre-emptive strike on Iranian territory, joined by a broader US military offensive targeting military and nuclear sites across Tehran and other major cities, including areas near the office of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Khamenei has since been confirmed dead by Israeli officials.

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