Iran
Meanwhile, there is no agreement requiring Iran to end its support for regional armed groups, including the Houthis, Hamas and Hezbollah. These groups have continued carrying out attacks across the region throughout the war, including Houthi missile and drone strikes in Yemen and the Red Sea, Hezbollah drone attacks against Israeli forces, and attacks by Hamas and other Palestinian militants in Gaza.
Globally, the war has metastasized into a full-blown international crisis, with more than a dozen countries subjected to attacks, military operations, or other direct consequences of the fighting, while several others have been reluctantly pulled into supporting roles. Early on, the U.S. sank an Iranian warship off the coast of Sri Lanka, more than 2,000 miles from Tehran. NATO forces shot down a missile headed into Turkey’s airspace and multiple drones even crossed over into Azerbaijan.
Over 1,000,000 people were driven from their homes in Lebanon at the height of the crisis, and more than 330,000 remain displaced across Lebanon today. The U.S. military targeted Iranian-backed militias so – just like that – we were back in combat in Iraq. An Iranian-backed drone assault hit the Baghdad Diplomatic Support Center, a large logistical hub for U.S. diplomats near Iraqi military bases and the Baghdad airport, and a U.S. Air Force refueling aircraft crashed after an apparent accident involving two KC-135 tankers, killing six American service members.
Our Gulf allies have been royally screwed by this entire mess. Even though many of them tried hard in the months leading to Operation Epic Fury to get the Trump/Vance administration to understand the dire consequences of an all-out war in Iran, they now face weakened economies, major oil market disruptions and massive regional instability, not to mention bombed out energy infrastructure that will take years and years and billions and billions to rebuild.
A Congressional Research Service report found that Iran fired more than 6,700 drones and missiles at Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states between February 28 and May 17 alone. All six GCC countries were attacked. In its April regional outlook, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) projected GCC economic growth of just 2 percent in 2026 – a 2.3-percentage-point downward revision from its October 2025 forecast. By July, economists surveyed by Reuters had downgraded most Gulf economies again as hopes for a rapid normalization of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz faded.
There is also understandable infuriation among them that the war has unraveled their reputation as regional safe havens for business and tourism – a huge blow for nations that have tried hard to transform the region into a center of finance, aviation, technology and tourism. Their airports, five-star hotels, and data centers have been bombarded; tourists have cancelled; expats are rethinking their futures; and real-estate deals are on hold. During the initial weeks of fighting, the World Travel & Tourism Council estimated that the war was costing the region around $600 million a day in lost tourism revenue.
Dubai billionaire Khalaf Ahmad Al Habtoor, chairman of the Al Habtoor Group, gave voice to that anger when he addressed President Trump in a post on X: “Who gave you the authority to drag our region into a war with Iran? And on what basis did you make this dangerous decision? You have placed the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council and the Arab countries at the heart of a danger they did not choose.” He ended with this: “Who gave you permission to turn our region into a battlefield?”
And now – regardless of what happens from here – our allies are stuck with an empowered, resentful, defiant, and extremely ticked-off Iran that has nothing to lose.
Then there’s the fate of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium (HEU) – which is far (FAR!) from resolved. In the last verified inventory from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) before the June 2025 strikes, the agency estimated that Iran possessed 440.9 kilograms – roughly 970 pounds – of uranium enriched to 60 percent. The IAEA believed that most of it, though less than 70 percent, was stored in an Isfahan tunnel complex (satellite imagery from June 2025 appeared to show a truck moving blue barrels – possibly overpacked HEU containers – into the Isfahan tunnel complex). IAEA Director General Grossi had said publicly that Iran’s HEU was held across Isfahan, Natanz, and Fordow.
Although it’s impossible to know with certainty the extent of the damage done to Iran’s nuclear program during Operation Midnight Hammer – the June 2025 assault by the U.S and Israel – a convincing consensus seems to be that the military strikes destroyed and/or rendered inoperable only one of Iran’s three principal nuclear facilities, the Fordow site, where B-2 stealth bombers dropped twelve GBU-57 ground-penetrating bombs through two ventilation shafts (two additional GBU-57s hit Natanz). The intelligence evidently suggests that the attack destroyed perhaps thousands of nuclear centrifuges at the deepest levels of Fordow (estimated to be over 250 feet under a mountain), although, again, it’s unclear whether the centrifuges were destroyed or just rendered inoperable.
The extent of the damage at the other two nuclear enrichment facilities, Natanz and Isfahan, is harder to determine, but the general assumption seems to be that neither was taken out completely – even though Natanz had been targeted by Israel for days and was finally hit with two Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs. By March 2026, even with the new U.S. and Israeli strikes, U.S. intelligence officials told The New York Times that Iran or others could now get to Iran’s primary store of highly enriched uranium that had been buried under Isfahan through a very narrow access point (the uranium is in gas form and stored in canisters).
Of course, before Operation Midnight Hammer, Iran’s nuclear capabilities reached much further than Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan and, even though it appears Iran lost many of its nuclear scientists in the June 2025 Israel-Iran war, it still likely had the knowledge and sophistication to rebuild. To that end, by September 2025, satellite imagery was picking up signs of new construction underway at Pickaxe Mountain – a location that has never been attacked, mainly because it’s estimated to be buried 80 to 100 meters below ground, even deeper than the Fordow facility, and even the Massive Ordnance Penetrators may not be able to get to it.
The massive underground complex, located about a mile south of Natanz, has also never been inspected by the IAEA, so there is no way to know exactly what is inside. Iran claims Pickaxe was constructed to replace an advanced centrifuge assembly facility destroyed in 2020, but outside experts believe it’s large enough to accommodate considerably more – potentially including centrifuge production and assembly, uranium enrichment, storage, and other nuclear-related activities. HOW’S THE JCPOA LOOKING ABOUT NOW, AMERICA?
We were going to try to just move past this, but we simply cannot let the firehose of lies that spew from Donald Trump, JD Vance, Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth and most of the rest of this administration go. After Operation Midnight Hammer targeted Iranian nuclear facilities in June 2025, President Trump and others in the administration swore to the American people that Tehran’s nuclear program had been “totally obliterated.”
President Trump said this over and over and over: “Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated” AND “Monumental Damage” has been done to “all Nuclear sites in Iran… Obliteration is an accurate term!” AND “It was my great honor to Destroy All Nuclear facilities & capability” AND “THE NUCLEAR SITES IN IRAN ARE COMPLETELY DESTROYED!”
On NBC’s Meet the Press, JD Vance said: “We destroyed the Iranian nuclear program.” Afterward, he qualified that somewhat, saying, “I think we set that program back substantially,” but days later, he again said that Iran’s nuclear program had been destroyed and was no longer capable of producing a nuclear weapon. Marco Rubio said of the damage beneath Fordow: “This was complete and total obliteration.”
At a Pentagon briefing, Pete Hegseth said, “We devastated the Iranian nuclear program” and “Iran’s nuclear ambitions have been obliterated.” Later, he went even further: “Our bombing campaign obliterated Iran’s ability to create nuclear weapons. You want to call it destroyed, you want to call it defeated, you want to call it obliterated – choose your word.” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on ABC that, “We are confident, yes, that Iran’s nuclear sites were completely and totally obliterated” and, three days later, she reiterated that the strikes represented “a total obliteration” and described the three facilities as “completely demolished.” Steve Witkoff called suggestions that Midnight Hammer had failed to achieve its objective “completely preposterous.”
But then, to justify starting Operation Epic Fury, the Trump/Vance administration and some congressional Republicans claimed that Iran not only still had its nuclear program but was developing long-range missiles that would be able to hit the United States. Really soon. Nearly three months after the war started, Energy Secretary Chris Wright told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Iran was “frighteningly close” to a nuclear weapon. Steve Witkoff even said on Fox News on February 21st that Iran was “probably a week away from having industrial-grade bomb making material.” … just a downright, flat-out lie.
Four days before the war began, President Trump told Congress in his February 24th State of the Union address that Iran was developing long-range missiles that “could soon reach the American homeland.” Later, he said, “If we didn’t hit within two weeks, they would’ve had a nuclear weapon” AND “Remember, they were two weeks away”.… “If we didn’t knock the hell out of them, they would have had a nuclear weapon within two to four weeks.”
Were they lying then or are they lying now – because both things can’t be true. There’s also the fact that they started this war in the first place. We can’t imagine how betrayed MAGA feels, after Donald Trump promised them in three straight presidential campaigns that he wouldn’t be a war president. “I’m not going to start wars,” he vowed on election night in 2024. “I’m going to stop wars.” In his second inaugural address, he said his “proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker.” How can anyone still believe anything that comes out of this man’s mouth?
Here are a few facts: Three U.S. officials with access to current intelligence about Iran’s missile programs told The New York Times that President Trump had “exaggerated the immediacy of the threat posed to the United States.” One official said some intelligence analysts were concerned that senior officials had inflated the threats, or that intelligence was being selectively presented or distorted.
On February 27th – the day before the war began – Reuters reported that three sources familiar with U.S. intelligence reports said President Trump’s claims that Iran would soon possess missiles capable of striking the United States was not backed by the intelligence assessments they had reviewed. The sources said they were unaware of any U.S. intelligence assessment concluding that Iran was developing a missile that could soon reach the American homeland.
Two sources told Reuters that there had been no change to the Defense Intelligence Agency’s 2025 assessment that Iran could take until 2035 to develop a “militarily viable intercontinental ballistic missile” from its existing space-launch technology. Another source said that even with technological assistance from China or North Korea, Iran would probably need as long as eight years to produce something operational at the ICBM level – obviously a far cry from “soon.”
While Iran’s missiles could strike U.S. military bases throughout the Middle East and reach Israel and portions of Europe, it’s existing missiles generally have maximum ranges of approximately 2,000 kilometers, or roughly 1,240 miles. This matters when Tehran is approximately 10,000 kilometers from Washington, D.C.
Just two days before the war began, Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, wrote that “there is no imminent threat. Iran is not close to ‘weaponizing’ its nuclear material so as to justify another U.S. attack.” That assessment was consistent with what International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Grossi said after the war began. Asked directly whether Iran had been days or weeks away from building a nuclear bomb, Grossi said no. Just say’n...
So, how much has this strategic loss and profound humiliation cost the United States of America? Earlier, we covered the actual cost: In September, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that the war had already cost about $38 billion through August 1st and was continuing to cost another $2 billion to $3 billion every month. Then U.S. Central Command provided Congress with an even newer estimate: at least $43.6 billion through September 3rd, including roughly $28 billion just to replace munitions already expended and another $4.3 billion in lost or damaged equipment.
And even that $43.6 billion figure is not the full bill. There is the expensive weapons stockpiles depletion situation, but this number also doesn’t include the future cost of repairing or rebuilding U.S. military bases damaged by Iranian attacks. In just one incident, three American F-15E Strike Eagles were mistakenly shot down by Kuwaiti air defenses during an Iranian attack – aircraft worth $100 million each. In early April, Iranian fire brought down another U.S. F-15E Strike Eagle over Iran and an A-10 Warthog attack aircraft. Two U.S. combat-search-and-rescue helicopters also came under Iranian fire during the operation, and two MC-130J Commando II transport aircraft used in the rescue mission were subsequently abandoned at a makeshift airstrip inside Iran and deliberately destroyed by U.S. forces after they could not be flown out.
Iranian drones and missiles have significantly damaged U.S. military facilities across the Middle East. On the very first day of the war, Iran targeted several major U.S. installations, including Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia; Ali Al Salem Air Base and Camp Buehring in Kuwait; and Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, one of the largest U.S. air bases in the Middle East.
The attacks continued from there, damaging bases, barracks, hangars, fuel depots, aircraft, radar and communications systems, and critical air-defense infrastructure across the region. Some of the heaviest damage was concentrated at Naval Support Activity Bahrain – headquarters of the U.S. Fifth Fleet – and three U.S. bases in Kuwait: Ali Al Salem Air Base, Camp Arifjan and Camp Buehring.
It’s undeniable that the Iran war has tied down an extraordinary share of U.S. military power. Even before the first bombs fell, the Pentagon had massed two aircraft-carrier strike groups, 16 surface warships and hundreds of combat and support aircraft in and around the Middle East – a buildup that some analysts estimated represented roughly 40 to 50 percent of America’s globally deployable air power.
As the war dragged on, the buildup only grew. By March, the Army had mobilized roughly 2,000 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division, joining a U.S. force in the region that swelled past 50,000 troops. Six months later, much of that force is still there. Roughly 50,000 U.S. troops and 19 warships – including two aircraft carriers and 13 guided-missile destroyers – remain deployed across the region, while elements of the 82nd Airborne have had their deployments extended into 2027.
The toll this war has already taken on our troops came into stark relief when families of those on the USS Abraham Lincoln reported that the roughly 5,000 sailors and Marines onboard faced severe supply shortages, deteriorating living conditions, and a mounting mental health crisis – after the 1,100-foot warship left its homeport of San Diego in November 2025 for a routine Pacific cruise but was redirected to the Middle East by January 2026.
Families said the crew suffered from shortages of fresh food, rationed meals, and a lack of basic hygiene items like soap, toothpaste, and deodorant at the ship’s store. There were also reports of broken laundry facilities and toilets, moldy showers without hot water, and chronic mail disruptions. Many relatives reported that their family members were raising alarms over extreme exhaustion and psychological distress, recounting stories of sailors expressing suicidal thoughts and/or self-harm and even attempting to jump overboard.
During a town hall meeting, family members spoke directly to Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao and other senior officials. One spouse, through tears, shared that she had received a message from her husband saying “he hopes he doesn’t wake up tomorrow.”
Finally, after 286 total days at sea, including 264 consecutive days without a port visit, the USS Abraham Lincoln began its journey home after making a scheduled port visit in Thailand. The ship arrived in Thailand for its first full port call in nearly nine months, visibly covered in rust from bow to stern thanks to an extraordinary nine-month deployment without routine maintenance.
Naturally, the full extent of the mayhem and destruction to our military facilities emerged only gradually as the Pentagon tried to gaslight the American people. A Washington Post investigation using satellite imagery ultimately identified at least 228 damaged or destroyed structures and pieces of equipment at 15 U.S. military sites – including Patriot and THAAD air-defense equipment, satellite communications systems, an E-3 Sentry command-and-control aircraft and a refueling tanker. The Post concluded that the damage was far more extensive than the U.S. government had publicly acknowledged.
Complicating efforts to determine the full extent of the damage, the U.S. government asked commercial satellite-imagery providers to withhold recent images of the war zone. Planet Labs complied, ultimately imposing an indefinite hold on imagery dating back to March 9 and moving to a managed-access system. The restrictions made it considerably more difficult for journalists and independent analysts to assess Iranian strikes on U.S. facilities. Vantor also restricted access to imagery from parts of the Middle East, although the company said those restrictions were imposed under its own conflict-zone policies and that it had not been contacted by the U.S. government.
Meanwhile, our interests in other parts of the world are now precariously exposed as the war is 1) distracting us from what China is doing in the Indo-Pacific, which includes building a military base on Antelope Reef in the Paracel Islands and imposing widespread airspace restrictions covering waters facing Japan and South Korea, and 2) as mentioned earlier, draining our missile stockpiles and stretching our forces, threatening our readiness for what may happen in the Yellow, East and South China seas. A terrifying example is that, as of early September, we have no aircraft carrier strike group forward-deployed in the western Pacific – precisely the region where we would need substantial naval power if China decided to make a move against Taiwan.
The Gulf, home to about half of the world’s proven oil reserves, has been in turmoil since February 2026, and the International Energy Agency has called the conflict the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market.
Because shipping through the Strait of Hormuz – which before the war carried roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil and one-fifth of global liquefied-natural-gas trade – remains severely restricted, prices at American pumps were nearly a dollar higher by Labor Day 2026 than a year earlier… and the highest Labor Day gasoline price on record. Diesel prices also reached a record national average of $5.85 per gallon in early September. And remember, before the U.S. and Israel launched their attacks on Iran on February 28th, the Strait had been operating as a major free-flowing international shipping artery.
Now there is another major problem. In September, Iran-aligned Houthi forces swept through Yemen’s Red Sea coast, capturing the strategic port of Mocha and Perim Island in the middle of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait – another of the world’s most important shipping chokepoints. This had become an increasingly important alternative for Saudi oil exports after traffic through Hormuz was disrupted. Houthi attacks and territorial gains have now sharply reduced traffic there as well, threatening to squeeze global energy supplies from both directions and putting additional upward pressure on oil prices.
And even the principal land-based workaround has been hit. Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline – built to carry oil from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea and bypass the Strait of Hormuz – was attacked in September, disrupting shipments through the Red Sea port of Yanbu. Saudi Aramco subsequently halted some October crude deliveries to European refiners. So, pressure is now being applied not only to the two critical maritime chokepoints, Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb, but also to one of Saudi Arabia’s most important routes for bypassing them.
Although traffic through Hormuz is still well below prewar averages, some ships are starting to get through. But with the Bab el-Mandeb route now also under severe pressure, there is even less room for the global oil market to compensate for disruptions in the Gulf. And energy prices could remain elevated even if crude prices decline because of a phenomenon economists call “rockets and feathers”: gasoline prices tend to rise like rockets when oil prices increase but fall like feathers when oil prices come back down.
Plus, missile and drone strikes have damaged more than 80 energy facilities across the Middle East, with more than one-third sustaining severe or very severe damage. Repairing some of the hardest-hit facilities, including Qatar’s Ras Laffan LNG complex, could take years. Rystad Energy initially estimated regional energy-infrastructure repair costs at more than $25 billion but subsequently raised its estimate to between $34 billion and $58 billion, with a $46 billion midpoint.
Incidentally, because the Trump/Vance administration authorized a massive emergency release after the war disrupted tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, America’s emergency oil stockpile has fallen to a level not seen since the Reagan era. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) dropped to 298.7 million in early August, its lowest level since January 1983, and by August 28th it had fallen further to roughly 286.6 million barrels (the reserve held roughly 415 million barrels in mid-March).
But the only costs that truly matter are heartbreaking. As of mid- September 2026, the latest U.S. Defense Department figures put total American military casualties at 808: 18 killed and roughly 790 wounded/injured.
But those numbers may understate the human toll. In September, The Washington Post reported that six U.S. officials familiar with the Pentagon’s internal casualty data said more American service members have died than the military has publicly acknowledged. Five put the death toll at at least 22 and a sixth said 23 service members have died since the war began on February 28th (although not every additional death has been established as directly caused by the conflict). Three U.S. contractors based in the region have also died.
It’s no surprise there are discrepancies because the Trump/Vance administration has tried like hell to keep these numbers hidden. Which is just hideous. On September 2nd, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick claimed there had been no American deaths in the Iran war (he later claimed he meant there had been no deaths in Venezuela). The Pentagon keeps emphasizing that many of the injured troops “just” have/had “minor concussions.” President Trump has constantly tried to minimize the deaths in Iran by comparing them with Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and Korea, even posting charts contrasting 18 U.S. deaths in Iran with the thousands killed in those much longer wars.
In perhaps the most hideous of the hideous, the Pentagon’s official casualty counts suddenly fell from 18 dead to 14 on July 23rd, and the reported wounded count fell from 482 to 420. The Pentagon initially blamed the abrupt decline on a “temporary data disruption,” but subsequently removed the four July deaths from the Iran-war tally altogether, classifying them – and hundreds of wounded troops – under the newly created category “Overseas Operations.” The missing casualties were eventually restored to the Pentagon’s overall accounting, but not to the Operation Epic Fury tally.
This fits a pattern. Even though, by their count, 808 U.S. soldiers had been killed or wounded/injured in Iran, on September 3rd Vice President JD Vance said he wouldn’t call it a war at all: “I wouldn’t call it a war. Right now, there is no active shooting.” The very next day, President Trump called the Iran conflict “small potatoes:” “I call it a military conflict because it’s small potatoes for us. It’s not a big thing.”
As for the toll on the Iranian people, although the exact number is uncertain, the best available evidence suggests that at least 3,600 people have been killed inside Iran since the U.S.-Israeli war began. This includes those killed in a devastating strike on the Shajarah Tayyebeh Girls’ School in Minab, where at least 175 people were killed, most of them students.
The pain the strike on the school caused in Iran was already unbearable, but the American president blatantly lying about it made it so much worse – for all of us. An initial in-depth investigation by The New York Times – including analysis of old and new satellite imagery and verified videos – found that the school appeared to have been damaged by a precision strike that occurred at the same time as attacks on an adjacent naval base operated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. A video released after the Times’ initial investigation shows a Tomahawk cruise missile striking the naval complex beside the school; although several U.S. allies possess or have ordered Tomahawks, the United States was the only participant in the conflict known to be using them. Additional photographs subsequently showed mangled missile fragments bearing serial numbers, manufacturers’ names and other markings consistent with a U.S.-made Tomahawk cruise missile.
Reuters later reported that a preliminary U.S. military investigation pointed to American forces as the likely source of the strike, although the investigation had not yet reached a final conclusion. Gen. Dan Caine also confirmed that U.S. forces were conducting strikes in southern Iran at the time, and a map he displayed showing targets struck during the operation’s first 100 hours included the Minab area.
Nevertheless – huge surprise – both President Trump and Pete Hegseth blamed Iran for the school strike before the Pentagon’s investigation had reached a conclusion, with the U.S. president saying that, based on what he had seen, he believed it had been caused by Iran’s inaccurate munitions… of course, as usual, offering ZERO evidence for this claim. President Trump even kept saying things like Iran “also has some Tomahawks” – which was just another a bald-faced lie.
Finally, on March 11th, it was reported that the U.S. military’s preliminary investigation concluded that U.S. forces were likely responsible for the Minab school strike, and subsequent reporting has revealed that the Pentagon’s own inquiry uncovered serious failures in the intelligence and targeting process. Investigators found that a U.S. analyst had identified the building as a school years earlier, but the warning never made its way into the authoritative targeting database. Planners were also relying on years-old imagery and other outdated intelligence when the target was approved. An independent general submitted a more extensive investigation to U.S. Central Command in April, but months later the Pentagon still had not publicly released its findings or formally acknowledged responsibility for the strike.
And Donald Trump wonders why the Iranian people don’t believe him when he claims to have their backs? On January 2, 2026 – as large-scale demonstrations, triggered by dire economic issues, raged in the streets of Iran – Donald Trump said the United States was “locked and loaded” to come to the “rescue” if the Iranian regime responded to widespread protests lethally.
Iran security services answered by slaughtering their own citizens. The Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), a U.S.-based human-rights organization focused on Iran, reports that the regime’s sweeping crackdown on anti-government demonstrations resulted in at least 53,777 arrests and nearly 26,000 civilian injuries. HRANA has documented 7,007 deaths – including thousands of protesters and hundreds of children – while another 11,744 reported deaths remain under investigation.
On January 10th, President Trump warned the Iranian government it “better not start shooting” at protesters because “we’ll start shooting, too.” He continued: “If they start killing people like they have in the past, we’ll be hitting them very hard where it hurts.” Three days later, he made a direct appeal to the protesters, calling on them to defy efforts to stop their demonstrations and encouraging them to take over state institutions. “HELP IS ON ITS WAY,” he posted on his Truth Social platform.
But help wasn’t on its way.
And yet he still expected them to just trust him. In the 8-minute video posted on his Truth Social that declared the United States had begun “major combat operations in Iran,” Donald Trump told the 92 million people in the world’s most combustible region that the future is “yours to take”: “To the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand. … Now is the time to seize control of your destiny, and to unleash the prosperous and glorious future that is close within your reach. This is the moment for action. Do not let it pass.”
Yes, Iranians! All you have to do is emerge from your homes – dodging bombs and missiles, of course – be brave, rise up, and overthrow your government! Simple!
Never mind that you don’t have arms, you live in a police state, and you’ve heard all this from this American president before. We're sure they seriously questioned – as we did – what would honestly happen if security forces started slaughtering people in the streets again. What would Donald J. Trump really do about it? Ground troops?
This is not theoretical; this is stone-cold reality. After the first attack, the intelligence branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) immediately started sending text messages to millions of Iranians, warning that street protests “will be considered an example of direct cooperation with the enemy.” An IRGC commander warned parents not to let their kids take to the streets: “If they show sympathy for the enemy, there is a shoot-to-kill order.”
Although they live under a brutally oppressive and mismanaged government, Iranians have witnessed the consequences of Western intervention across the region, where lofty promises of freedom and democracy have too often given way to chaos, civil war, or prolonged foreign occupation. In Afghanistan, for example, American support for anti-Soviet mujahideen fighters through the 1980s, followed by years of civil war and neglect after the Soviet withdrawal, helped create the conditions in which the Taliban and transnational jihadist movements like al-Qaeda emerged – ultimately drawing the United States into another two decades of war after 9/11.
Then there is what happened in their own country in 1953, when the United States and Britain orchestrated a coup – codenamed Operation Ajax – that overthrew Iran’s democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, and consolidated the power of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. This was long treated by Washington as an open secret rather than an admitted fact, until the CIA itself declassified documents in 2013 formally acknowledging its role in planning and executing the coup.
What followed was more than seven decades of accumulated grievances and retaliation: America’s support for the Shah’s increasingly repressive rule until he was overthrown by the Iranian people in 1979; Iranian revolutionaries seizing the U.S. Embassy and taking 66 Americans hostage, 52 of whom would remain captive for 444 days; Washington tilting toward Saddam Hussein during Iraq’s devastating eight-year war against Iran, providing Baghdad with intelligence and other forms of assistance even as the Reagan administration secretly facilitated arms sales to Iran; Hezbollah and other Iran-backed militants carrying out devastating attacks against Americans in Lebanon, including the 1983 U.S. Embassy and Marine barracks bombings; the United States and Iran effectively fighting an undeclared naval war in the Persian Gulf, culminating in Operation Praying Mantis in 1988; and, less than three months later, the USS Vincennes shooting down Iran Air Flight 655 after mistaking the civilian Airbus for an Iranian F-14, killing all 290 people aboard.
Decades later, Iran would arm, train and fund militant groups that repeatedly attacked American forces in Iraq, with declassified U.S. military assessments attributing to the deaths of over 600 American service members between 2003 and 2011 to Iran and its proxies.
That’s A LOT of history to add to President Trump’s broken promises of early 2026. But nevertheless, almost seven months into the war, he was still at it: “When are the Iranian people going to rise up and fight?” he asked on Truth Social.
By now, though, the Iranian people had seen their country blown to smithereens by the very man who claimed he wanted to help them. At the time of the April 7th “ceasefire,” The New York Times had independently verified damage to at least 22 schools and 17 health-care facilities – some directly hit and others damaged by strikes on nearby targets – reiterating that its findings represented only a fraction of the likely devastation to Iran’s civilian infrastructure. Iran’s Red Crescent Society reported a far greater toll, saying that at least 763 schools and 316 health-care facilities had been damaged or destroyed during the war.
Military strikes have also damaged many of Iran’s most cherished cultural treasures – losses that extend far beyond buildings themselves to sites deeply entwined with the country’s history and identity. Among them are Isfahan’s 17th-century Safavid-era Ali Qapu Palace and Chehel Sotoun palace and garden, as well as the ancient Jameh Mosque, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the great surviving monuments of Islamic architecture. The centuries-old Golestan Palace in Tehran – transformed into the royal residence and seat of power of the Qajar dynasty – was also damaged, as was the ancient Falak-ol-Aflak castle in Khorramabad. Iran’s Ministry of Cultural Heritage now says experts have documented damage to 149 historical monuments across 18 provinces and 29 cities.
Iran’s Ministry of Culture and Heritage confirmed it installed blue flags on all its cultural and heritage sites to signal to Israeli and U.S. jets that they were protected – which is international wartime protocol – but it didn’t seem to matter.
The iconic Azadi Sports Complex in Tehran – home to Iran’s national soccer stadium and the site of the 2025 match that clinched the country’s place in the World Cup – is among the sports and youth facilities badly damaged during the U.S.-Israeli assault. The complex also occupies an emotional place in Iran’s struggle for women’s rights. It was at Azadi Stadium that Sahar Khodayari, a young Iranian woman barred from attending men’s soccer matches, was arrested in 2019 after attempting to enter disguised as a man. Facing prosecution and fearing that she would be imprisoned, Khodayari later set herself on fire outside a courthouse. She died from her injuries a week later. Known afterward as “Blue Girl,” for the colors of her beloved Esteghlal soccer club, her death sparked outrage inside and outside Iran.