Tag: perpetual war

Leading US Papers Defend the Indefensible in Iran Aggression

The United States and Israel are, for the second time in less than a year, committing “the supreme international crime” against Iran (FAIR.org, 7/3/25). Editorials in three of the United States’ most prominent newspapers, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, offered varying degrees of support for the aggression.

The Times waffled about bombing Iran, the Journal enthusiastically supported it, and the Post had fewer concerns about the war than the Times but more than the Journal. Crucially, however, all three papers rationalized the US/Israeli assault.

The Journal provided full-fledged endorsements of the unprovoked attack, writing in its first editorial (3/1/26), headlined “It’s Too Soon for Iran ‘Off-Ramps,’” that “the first two days . . . have been a striking success.”

“The biggest mistake President Trump could make now would be to end the war too soon,” it said.

The Journal (3/2/26) took the same approach in its next editorial, “Trump Enforces His Red Line on Iran,” calling the aggression a “necessary act of deterrence.” “It carries risks as all wars do,” the piece read, “but it also has the potential to reshape the Middle East for the better and lead to a safer world.” The editors reiterated that their “main concern is that Mr. Trump may stop too soon.”

Killing upward of 175 Iranians at a girls’ elementary school (FAIR.org, 3/2/26) didn’t temper the degree to which the US/Israeli aggression was a “striking success,” nor was the possibility of similar massacres a “risk” or a “concern” of the editors.

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In a World Distracted by Other Conflicts, the Burma Army Continues Its Campaign of Killing and Displacement

Across Burma (Myanmar), 3.7 million people are displaced and in need of medical and food aid, as well as international protection from government airstrikes.

Civilians are being bombed every single day by the Burma Army, and neither the UN nor the international community is doing anything to stop China and Russia’s support of the junta’s army or its access to funding, jet fuel, and weapons.

The Burma war has been ongoing for nearly 80 years, with the world largely ignoring the growing displacement and humanitarian crisis caused by a government at war with its own people.

When the generals launched a coup in February 2021, overturning the results of a free election, the news went largely unnoticed as America was wrestling with its own contested presidential election.

A year later, when Russia invaded Ukraine, coverage was so pervasive that news readers around the world believed it was the world’s only ongoing conflict.

The October 7 Hamas attack on Israel in 2023 diverted some attention away from the Ukraine war and pushed the Burma conflict even further down the list of international priorities.

At least three times during President Trump’s first and second administrations, the United States passed legislation and appeared poised to send some type of relief to Burma.

But with the current Iran conflict underway, Burma has once again fallen out of the international consciousness.

Meanwhile, the Burma Army continues its unrelenting campaign of death and displacement against the country’s civilian population.

Resistance groups are holding the line as best they can, but at this point they are running out of ammunition and have no air-defense systems to counter Burma Army drones and airstrikes.

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2,500 Deployed Marines Heading to the Middle East

The U.S. Marine Corps is sending more than 2,000 men currently stationed in Japan to the Middle East as the joint U.S.-Israeli Operation Epic Fury continues to intensify.

The Wall Street Journal and ABC News reported the deployment shift first and Fox News subsequently confirmed it after speaking with a federal official. Fox’s Chief National Security Correspondent Jennifer Griffin posted on X, “US defense official confirms to Fox News that the Pentagon is sending the USS Tripoli, a Marine Amphibious Ready Group, and the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) to Mideast. The Tripoli is stationed out of Japan and would take about 2 weeks to get to the Mideast. Accompanying the ARG and the MEU are approx. 2500 US Marines.”

Before everyone loses their minds about boots on the ground, it appears that the deployment is primarily connected to air and naval capabilities, as Operation Epic Fury has been using ever since the beginning, as ABC News reported:

The 31st MEU is permanently deployed to Japan and operates in the INDO-PACOM region, but it is now being ordered to head to the Middle East.

Its deployment does not mean that the unit is going to be used as a ground force for use in Iran, but it offers land, amphibious and aviation assets that can be available to military commanders if needed.

This particular MEU also includes a squadron of F-35 fighter jets and a squadron of MV-22 tilt rotor Osprey aircraft.

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War Sec Pete Hegseth Confirms Iranian Supreme Leader is “Wounded and Likely Disfigured” Amid Reports That He’s Lost Limbs and May Be in a Coma

During a press briefing on Friday, War Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed reports that Iran’s new Supreme Leader, 56-year-old Mojtaba Khamenei, has been injured, possibly critically.  

As Hegseth was touting the US Military’s success in incapacitating Iran’s military infrastructure on Friday, he revealed that Khamenei, “the new so-called not-so-Supreme Leader,” is “wounded and likely disfigured.”

“His father dead, he’s scared, he’s injured, he’s on the run, and he lacks legitimacy. It’s a mess for them. Who’s in charge? Iran may not even know,” Hegseth continued.

Hegseth: Their production lines, their military plants, their defense innovation centers, defeated. Iran’s leadership is in no better shape. Desperate and hiding, they’ve gone underground, cowering. That’s what rats do.

We know the new so-called not-so-Supreme Leader is wounded and likely disfigured. He put out a statement yesterday, a weak one, actually, but there was no voice, and there was no video. It was a written statement. He called for unity. Apparently killing tens of thousands of protesters is his kind of unity. Iran has plenty of cameras and plenty of voice recorders. Why a written statement? I think you know why.

His father dead, he’s scared, he’s injured, he’s on the run, and he lacks legitimacy. It’s a mess for them. Who’s in charge? Iran may not even know. With every passing hour, we know and we know they know that the military capabilities of their evil regime are crumbling. They can barely communicate, let alone coordinate. They’re confused, and we know it. Our response, we will keep pressing. We will keep pushing, keep advancing, no quarter, no mercy for our enemies.

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Over 3 million people forcibly displaced by US-Israeli war on Iran: UN

Over 3 million Iranians have been displaced by the ongoing US-Israeli war against the Islamic Republic, the Director of the Division of Emergency and Programme Support at UNHCR, Ayaki Ito, revealed on 12 March.

“Between 600,000 and 1 million Iranian households are now temporarily displaced inside Iran as a result of the ongoing conflict, according to preliminary assessments, representing up to 3.2 million people,”  Ito wrote in the statement.

He added that most of the internally displaced are fleeing Tehran and other major urban areas, and that the number of forcibly displaced “is likely to continue rising as hostilities persist, marking a worrying escalation in humanitarian needs.”

The statement added that refugee families hosted in the country, the majority of whom are Afghan, are particularly vulnerable due to their already “precarious situation” and “limited support networks,” with many now leaving affected areas as insecurity rises and access to essential services declines.

Ito said UNHCR is adjusting its response to the growing displacement, noting that the agency is expanding its operations in Iran through reception areas, helplines, and ongoing support services while working with national authorities and humanitarian partners to assess emerging needs as population movements increase.

He stressed the need to protect civilians and maintain humanitarian access, urging that borders remain open to those seeking safety in accordance with international obligations.

At least 1,300 Iranians have been killed since the US-Israeli war began, including at least 165 children killed in a double-tap strike on a girls’ school, as attacks hit civilian infrastructure, including schools, hospitals, and residential neighborhoods.

Israel’s aggression across West Asia has also triggered a refugee crisis on a smaller but proportionally more intense scale.

Constant Israeli attacks across Lebanon have displaced a staggering 14 percent of the country’s population – over 800,000 people – from the south and Beirut’s southern suburbs.

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“What Kind of F*cking Bullsh*t is This?” – Megyn Kelly GOES OFF After Catching 60 Minutes Fraudulently Splicing Pete Hegseth Interview to Push Pro-Israel Narrative 

Former Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly went off this week on CBS and Bari Weiss this week, saying they “just cannot seem to help themselves making deceptive edits” after they spliced an interview with Pete Hegseth to misrepresent his comments and run cover for the foreign state of Israel. 

“They do not give a sh*t about misleading you over at CBS, the old CBS, or the new CBS, which has a brand new agenda,” Kelly said, accusing CBS of “trying to shove Israel into the debate” by completely changing the framing of a question in post-interview edits.

CBS and its parent company, Paramount, were previously forced to pay millions of dollars to President Trump and agreed to change their editorial policy in a settlement with President Trump following the infamous edited “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris in 2024.

Last year, the network and its parent company were acquired by Skydance Media, led by David Ellison, the son of billionaire Larry Ellison. Skydance is now one of the world’s largest and most powerful media conglomerates, controlling CNN, CBS, HBO, MTV, Paramount+, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, Showtime, TNT, TBS, Adult Swim, and more, following the acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery after Netflix pulled out of a bidding war with Paramount Skydance. Netflix notably pulled out, allowing Skydance to proceed with the deal, after Attorney General Pam Bondi opened an antitrust inquiry into Warner’s already agreed-upon deal with Netflix.

Under Ellison and Skydance, the Free Press co-founder Bari Weiss now serves as CBS’s new editor in chief.

So, naturally, with Trump allies taking over the media landscape, you’d expect the media to be fairer and more honest, but it appears that’s not the case.

In a recent interview with Hegseth, CBS used tactics similar to those previously used with Kamala Harris. They altered the question posed to Hegseth, making it appear that he was defending Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s prosecution of the war in Iran, which Hegseth has admitted isn’t always in alignment with US objectives.

“Do you want to address that criticism?” host Major Garrett asks Hegseth after a narrator says, “Some normally enthusiastic supporters of the President have criticized him, suggesting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pulled the US into a war that, to their minds, did not put American interests first.”

Then, as if Hegseth was defending Netanyahu and Israel, in response to arguments that Israel pulled the US into the war, the clip then shows Hegseth telling Garrett, “All I know is, I’m in the room every day, and I see how President Trump operates and what he’s putting first, and it’s America, Americans, and American interests.”

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FT Report: Iran War Draining Years’ Worth of US Weapons Supplies

The opening phase of the Trump administration’s military campaign against Iran is already revealing the staggering financial and logistical demands of modern warfare. In just a matter of days, the conflict has consumed vast quantities of advanced weapons and billions of dollars in military resources.

According to a new report published by the Financial Times and other outlets, American forces have already burned through stockpiles of critical munitions that would normally last for years. Officials say the pace of weapons usage is raising serious questions inside Washington about the long-term sustainability of the campaign.

During a closed-door briefing on Capitol Hill, Pentagon officials told lawmakers that the first six days of the war alone cost at least $11.3 billion. The estimate primarily reflects the value of munitions used during the initial strikes.

The true cost is likely far higher. Additional expenses include the deployment of forces to the region, logistical support, medical care, and the replacement of aircraft and equipment damaged or lost in combat.

The scale of the spending has begun to alarm lawmakers from both parties. Members of Congress are increasingly demanding clarity about how long the conflict may last and what the administration ultimately hopes to achieve.

Much of the early expenditure has been tied to the use of sophisticated long-range weapons. Among the most significant examples are the Navy’s Tomahawk cruise missiles, which were used extensively in the opening phase of the campaign.

Analysts estimate that American forces fired roughly 168 Tomahawk missiles within the first 100 hours of combat operations. Each missile carries a price tag of approximately $3.6 million, meaning hundreds of millions of dollars in weapons were expended in a matter of days.

Military analysts say this level of consumption could have lasting consequences for the Navy’s inventory. One source familiar with the situation told the Financial Times that the service will likely “feel this expenditure for several years.”

The concern stems from the fact that these missiles cannot be replaced quickly. Over the past five years, the American military has purchased only a few hundred Tomahawks, far fewer than the number now being consumed in combat. For fiscal year 2026, the Pentagon had planned to acquire just 57 additional missiles. That order, costing roughly $206 million, would replace only a fraction of those already fired during the current campaign.

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NYT Reports First ‘Confirmed’ Attack by Gulf Nation Against Iran, as Missiles Were Fired From Bahrain Against the Mullahs’ Regime

Will the Gulf states turn on Iran?

It does seem at this point that the first attack by an Arab nation against the Iranian mullahs has already happened.

The New York Times reported (behind a paywall) that they were able to verify video showing ballistic missiles launched from Bahrain toward Iran.

“A video verified by The New York Times shows ballistic missiles being launched from Bahrain in the direction of Iran, in what appears to be the first confirmed instance of an attack on the Islamic Republic originating from a Persian Gulf country since the war began.”

By hosting the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, Bahrain has been accused by Iran of enabling US military operations.

The footage was originally shared on X by a user calling himself Egypt’s Intel Observer (@EGYOSINT), and was geolocated to northern Bahrain, near the airport.

NYT’s Experts identified the launcher for at least one missile as a U.S.-made M142 HIMARS truck.

“That launcher is a U.S.-made M142 HIMARS truck, according to Wes J. Bryant, a national security analyst who served in the U.S. Air Force, and Fabian Hoffmann, a missile specialist at the University of Oslo.”

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Washington’s 47-Year War Against Iran

The irony of the Big Lie about Iran’s alleged “47-Year War On America” is that the imperatives of Empire caused Washington to take actions in the decades after the February 1979 Iranian Revolution that amounted to the opposite – a relentless five decades long Washington instigated war on Iran.

First, as we showed in Part 1, Washington’s foolish refusal to extradite the Shah and meet the reasonable demands of the hostage-holding students facilitated the takeover of the Revolution by theocratic hardliners; and then in rapid fire succession Washington launched successive overt and covert attacks on the Khomeini-dominated government that caused it to permanently harden its stance against the US government.

The primary and defining battering ram of Washington’s post-1979 attack on the new Iranian government was its extensive aid to Saddam Hussein during his eight year war on Iran. Anyone with at least a passing knowledge of the hundreds of thousands of death and sweeping economic devastation that this war brought to the Iranian people might well understand why the ritual chant “death to America” took hold during these early days of the Islamic Republic.

As it happened, Saddam Husein launched his war in September 1980 partly out of fear that the Islamic revolution in Shiite Iran would spillover into Iraq, where 35% of the population was Shiite; and also because he opportunistically recognized that Iran’s regular military had been badly impaired owing to sweeping purges of suspected pro-Shah officers by the new regime.

Moreover, Hussein also recognized another even more important Iranian strategic disability: Namely, that the new regime had inherited a sophisticated military arsenal largely equipped with U.S.-made hardware from the Shah’s era, including F-14 Tomcat fighters, M-60 tanks, Hawk missiles, and various artillery systems, but that this formidable arsenal had been largely sidelined by lack of maintenance and spare parts.

Again, the Washington keepers of the Empire were the culprit. Determined to show that they would not be pushed around by a rag-tag band of 400 students holed-up in the US Embassy, the Carter Administration imposed a wide array of sanctions and trade embargoes on Iran. These actions included suspensions of arms export licenses, cancellation of pending arms sales and an Executive Order in the spring of 1980, which initiated a trade embargo that stopped the flow of most civilians goods as well as US military exports and spare parts to Iran.

Again, there was no reason for Washington’s hostile act of economic warfare against the incipient Islamic Republic except the imperatives of Empire. If anything, the fall of the Shah should have been a wake up call to Washington to get the hell out of the region because nothing of importance regarding America’s Homeland Security was at stake – even as the new found oil-wealth pouring into these nations and statelets had inherently become an engine of political turmoil and economic dislocation.

In any event, Washington’s embargo on weapons spare parts tilted the balance heavily against Iran when Saddam Hussein invaded the latter in September 1980. Lack of access to essential maintenance components had resulted in the grounding of much of Iran’s air force and rendered most of its ground-based armored units inoperable. By 1982, up to 70-80% of Iran’s U.S.-sourced equipment was non-functional due to lack of parts, forcing the military to cannibalize operational vehicles and aircraft for spares and repairs.

The US embargo not only isolated Iran from its primary supplier but also pressured allies and third-party nations to withhold support, thereby exacerbating the degradation of its conventional capabilities.The Reagan administration intensified these Carter restrictions in 1983 with Operation Staunch, a global diplomatic campaign aimed at blocking arms sales and spare parts to Iran, particularly for its legacy US planes, tanks and other weaponry.

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The War on Iran Fails Every Test of Justice

For nearly two millennia, the Christian intellectual tradition has maintained that war, while sometimes permissible, is never presumptively just. The burden of proof always falls on the party making war, not on the party resisting it. Augustine of Hippo laid the groundwork in the fifth century. Thomas Aquinas refined it in the thirteenth. Their framework has endured because it is rigorous, demanding, and difficult to satisfy. It was designed to be difficult to satisfy. War kills people, and the Christian faith holds that every human person bears the image of God.

The war launched by the United States and Israel against Iran on February 28, 2026 fails every criterion of the just war tradition. Not most of them. All of them.

Legitimate Authority

Aquinas held that war must be waged by a sovereign authority with the responsibility and competence to make such a decision. In the American constitutional order, that authority rests with Congress. Article I, Section 8 is unambiguous: Congress shall have the power to declare war. Not the president. Not the secretary of defense. Not a foreign head of state calling from Jerusalem.

On March 5, the House of Representatives voted on a War Powers Resolution to halt Trump’s unauthorized war. It failed 212–219, but the very fact that it was brought to a vote – after the bombing had already begun – tells you everything about the constitutional posture of this conflict. The war was started without congressional authorization. Only two Republicans, Thomas Massie and Warren Davidson, voted to reassert the legislature’s war powers. The executive branch launched a regime-change war against a nation of ninety million people on its own initiative, and Congress, rather than checking that power, acquiesced after the fact.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has admitted that the United States launched the war in part because Israel was planning to attack Iran unilaterally, and Washington decided to join rather than restrain. This is not sovereign deliberation. This is a tail wagging a dog into a catastrophe. The criterion of legitimate authority is not met.

Just Cause

The classical just war tradition permits war only to correct a grave, public evil – typically an act of aggression against the party going to war or against innocents it has a duty to protect. What was the grave evil that Iran inflicted on the United States?

President Trump, in his State of the Union address on February 24, accused Iran of reviving efforts to build nuclear weapons and possessing advanced missile capabilities threatening the United States and Europe. But the administration’s own intelligence community had reached the opposite conclusion. A classified National Intelligence Council report, completed roughly one week before the attack, found that even a large-scale assault was unlikely to oust the Iranian government. More critically, the intelligence community has never established that Iran was building a nuclear weapon. The International Atomic Energy Agency’s own director acknowledged on air that the Agency had no proof of a systematic Iranian effort to build a bomb.

We have seen this before. In 2003, the United States invaded Iraq on the basis of claims about weapons of mass destruction that turned out to be fabricated. As multiple observers have noted, the rhetorical pattern is virtually identical: unproven allegations of WMDs, claims of imminent threat, and a rush to war that preempts the diplomatic process. The Iranian foreign minister was saying a historic deal was within reach when the bombs fell. The Omani foreign minister, mediating the talks, confirmed that Tehran had agreed to significant concessions. The United States bombed anyway.

There is no just cause here. There is a manufactured one.

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