Trump Launches War on Iran and His Approval Ratings
Precision U.S.-Israeli strikes successfully kill five students at Iranian all-girls school
Feb. 28: Special Well He Fuckin’ Did It Bonus Edition: Fatalities reported in Iran, UAE … Constitution still prohibits waging war without congressional authorization … Trump calls on Iranian people to take over their government somehow and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard to surrender to someone … America’s only allies in attack: Israel and Jesus …
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The U.S. and Israel — and literally no one else this time — this morning began a massive assault on Iran that appears designed to take out military defenses and clear the way for a sustained campaign to overthrow the regime, all of which is illegal and unpopular but presumably will somehow lead to another stolen Nobel Peace Prize.
The joint strike was coordinated and ordered by Pres. Donald Trump and Israel’s Pres. Benjamin Netanyahu to decapitate the Iranian government and possibly individuals in the Iranian government, as well as destroy what’s left of Iran’s nuclear program and their own approval ratings.
Israel said the campaign had been planned for months, giving the Trump administration enough time to keep Congress in the dark, and that it would be “much more powerful” than its 12-day war — including three U.S. air strikes on nuclear targets — last year.
Iran, which has a shit-ton of non-nuclear missiles, retaliated almost immediately against U.S. allies, bases, and targets in the region, killing at least one person in the United Arab Emirates.
The first blood drawn by the U.S. and Israeli strikes was five students killed at an all-girls elementary school, just the latest in a years-long series of attacks by Trump on all-girl facilities. Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard has a base in the city, suggesting that U.S.-Israeli ballistics are now precise enough to aim missiles at targets no bigger than a single city.
Iranian controlled news media reported that the school death toll was in the dozens.
The deployment of ships, planes, and troops to the region was the largest since the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the greatest assemblage of military might ever unleashed to distract1 from The Epstein Files™.
The attack itself was the worst presidential loss of impulse control since Pres. Bill Clinton did that thing with you know who.
The illegal war — and “war” is what Trump called it in an early-morning video — threatens to ignite hostilities throughout the region.
Rebel Houthis in Yemen — who had lain low since the Israel-Gaza peace deal (which has led to an additional 600 Palestinian deaths) — said they’ll resume attacking U.S. shipping targets in the Red Sea.
Trump called on the Iranian people to rise up “when we are finished” and take down their government, now that 30,000 of their most active protest leaders have been killed and thousands more wounded or imprisoned.
He also called on Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, its elite military force, to lay down their arms and surrender although it’s not clear why they would be carrying arms since there’s no one to shoot and it’s not clear who they’d surrender to or how other than by swimming out to the U.S. ships bombing them from miles away. And I seriously doubt they’ll try boats.
Trump promised the Revolutionary Guard “total immunity,” which is weird because they were nowhere near the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Israel issued warnings beforehand, ordering Iranians in Persian that “Your presence” near arms factories and military sites “puts your lives at risk.” TFN fact-checkers confirm, however, that Israeli presence put their lives at risk.
The New York Times notes that history gives few if any examples of air campaigns leading to regime change. In fact, the war appears more likely to spell doom for the theocratic regime in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Trump’s call for the Iranian people to take over their country — kinda like he called for his people to take over our country — and for the Revolutionary Guard to surrender, appears to have fallen on deaf ears. With Iran’s internet down to just four-percent capacity, and mobile phone service out, it’s believed fewer people saw Trump’s message than the last hour of his state of the union speech.
CASUS BELAYED I’ve written before about the barely disguised teeth-gritting rage of David Sanger of the New York Times over Trump’s failure to make a case to the public — American, let alone Iranian — for this war.
Well, I hope Sanger’s dentist knows that he’s still gritting his teeth. Some of his jewels this morning:
Trump “made little effort to argue that any immediate threat had prompted the latest U.S. and Israeli strikes.”
“He repeated the allegation he made in the State of the Union address that Iran was working on missiles that could soon reach the United States. But the Defense Intelligence Agency had concluded in 2025 that no decision had been made by the Iranian government to pursue an intercontinental ballistic missile.”
“While Trump repeated that Iran could never be permitted to obtain nuclear weapons, he did not attempt to make the case that Iran was closer to producing one.”
“[T]here is no one for them [Iran’s Revolutionary Guard] to surrender to, no one to take them prisoner or to implement Trump’s offer of ‘total immunity.’”
“Just hours before the attacks began, senior officials from Arab states and European allies were saying that the White House was still not telling them what the objective of the strikes would be.”
Maybe there’s an app?
And perhaps the most important of this morning’s Sangerisms:
“There are almost no successful examples in modern history of regime change through an air campaign.”
Well, of course it sounds bad if you limit it to successful examples.
GHOSTS OF STILL-LIVING PRESIDENTS PAST Like many people, Trump was radicalized by the Iraq War. Like many presidents, he’s echoing it.
Using the phrase “Major combat operations”: ✅
Referring to “evil” like a scared child: ✅
Weapons of mass destruction: ✅
Strategery: ✅
According to the New York Times, Israeli officials said the initial strikes were planned to catch Iran by surprise, enabling the U.S. and Israel to take out regime leaders before they had a chance to secure themselves.
Let the record note that Trump’s been warning of an attack for weeks. Surprise! Bet they never saw that coming after Trump said it’s coming!
Existential threat: ✅
Hilariously, two days ago, political analyst Osama Abu Irshaid, a Washington-based political analyst told Al Jazeera that Pres. George W. Bush “benefitted from the post-9/11 anger to link Iraq to an existential threat … [but] Trump doesn’t have that.”
But he does have Netanyahu! Who said the attacks were to “remove an existential threat.”
WMD pivot: ✅
While it took Bush months to pivot from scary WMDs as a casus belli to freedom that Americans don’t give a shit about, Trump did it in just hours.
In a call with the Washington Post this morning, Trump went off-script. “All I want is freedom for the people,” Trump said, referring to the people of Iran, not Minneapolis.
He did not say whether he would enrich Iran’s freedom enough for them to be free to enrich uranium.
And in his video this morning, Trump gave Iranians a similarly confusing message about freedom: “[T]he hour of your freedom is at hand. … Don't leave your home.”
Understandably, the Washington Post pressed him on what he meant by freedom.
Trump responded by failing to acknowledge the irresolvable tension between freedom and security that he hasn’t even resolved here, saying, “I want a safe nation, and that’s what we’re going to have.”
Again, and I can’t emphasize this enough, referring to Iran.
Gravitas: ✅
In the runup to the Iraq War, Bush paired somber national-security pronouncements with the joys of a luxurious lifestyle deftly and occasionally undeftly:
Of course, Bush at least made the effort of touring the country before his 2003 invasion of Iraq to build American support for it by doing them the basic courtesy of lying to their faces.
Trump by contrast couldn’t be bothered to tour, build, or lie to make a case for war. Instead, last night, as the U.S. military prepared to set the Middle East on fire again, Trump went to a Texas Whataburger and made a case for their great milkshakes.
SURRENDERING The attack on Iran has already led to wholesale surrenders on the home front, where only a handful of Democrats are putting up any meaningful resistance.
Congressional Democratic leadership laid down its arms before the first missiles flew.
Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, didn’t get any more warning than Iran did, and knew less than Israel did.
Just hours before the attack, Reed said, “if war is unnecessary, it should be avoided.” He did not say that if war is illegal it should be prosecuted.
No congressional Democrats appear to have promised impeachment proceedings, let alone criminal prosecution, for launching an illegal war and killing people.
None seem to have warned military commanders that there will be accountability for compliance with illegal orders once the executive branch is no longer lawless. In fact, Democrats appear to have let a defector from their rivals take point.
Just minutes after news came of the attack, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) took a break from hammering Trump with The Epstein Files™ to post that it constituted “acts of war unauthorized by Congress.” He joined his Democratic allies in not vowing impeachment or prosecution.
ASSUMING OTHER COUNTRIES STILL COUNT International reaction included dying in the (UAE), but the U.S./Israeli isolation goes beyond other nations not participating. Some are also speaking out, however gingerly. And some are already bearing the brunt of Iran’s response.
Lebanon
For weeks now, Israel has been bombing targets in Lebanon. Strikes Friday night, just before the attack on Iran, aimed to take out Hezbollah rocket launch sites and underground shafts.
Iraq
A drone attacked an Iranian-backed militia site in Iraq, killing two people and wounding four more.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein urged de-escalation. But on the other hand, Iraqi, so, y’know, biased!
Oman
Badr Albusaidi, Oman’s foreign minister, got nothing but miles for his flight to the U.S. to assure officials here that diplomatic talks to head off military conflict were making progress.
Iran was still holding firm on several issues — ballistic missile ranges and cutting ties with the Houthis, Hamas, and Hezbollah — but Albusaidi reportedly said the regime had agreed never to stockpile enriched uranium, which if memory serves was like the thing the U.S. cared about.
God’s Country
America’s only other known ally in the war with Iran is The Lord, whose son is the only undocumented immigrant Trump isn’t willing to yank from America’s classrooms.
In his video early this morning, Trump said, “We ask God to protect all of our heroes in harm's way, and we trust that with His help, the men and women of the armed forces will prevail.”
Second only to Israel, God Almighty could turn out to be a key ally in a conflict where total omnipotence could provide the edge America needs.
PUTTING AMERICA FIRST IN HELPING IRAN In remarks directed to the people of Iran and not at all to MAGA, Trump said, “No president was willing to do what I am willing to do tonight. Now you have a president who is giving you what you want.”
Man, what’s that like?
HYPOCRISY POLICING As with every president, their military adventures fly missiles in the face of their past rhetoric.
In this case, Trump’s current rhetoric flies missiles in the face of the fact that it was Trump, not Iran, who blew up the nuclear deal that Pres. Barack Obama negotiated and Trump failed to renegotiate.
He also violated his vow not to start wars, which he said Vice President Kamala Harris would do if she were elected president.
And, of course, Trump is old enough to have forgotten when he was old enough to remember opposing war with Iran:
WEAPONS OF MEH DESTRUCTION Iran had previously imposed a unilateral limit on its own missile reach, not making any missiles capable of striking more than 1,240 miles away, which sounds like a random number until you convert it to 2,000 kilometers.
No evidence has been made public of Iran pursuing intercontinental ballistic missiles, at least not to the American continent or America’s intercontinent president.
Iran has also said it isn’t/won’t enriching/enrich uranium, which the U.S. can’t confirm because Trump blew up Obama’s nuclear deal.
That said, Iran reportedly has a large supply of drones and non-intercontinental missiles and is likely to keep striking out at U.S. and allied targets throughout the region.
MASTURBATERS OF WAR The U.S. attack on Iran has been officially dubbed “Operation Epic Fury,” presumably also the Secret Service codeword for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s alone time.
Military operations are typically named to facilitate official bouts of tearful rage-masturbation. Last year’s U.S. operations in Iran were called “Midnight Hammer,” also the name of Hegseth’s peter.
Last month’s illegal attack — to illegally remove a national leader in this hemisphere, Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro — was “Operation Absolute Resolve,” which is what you need in the build-up, while Israel’s current mission is “Operation Lion’s Roar,” euphemistically referring to the climax.
Rejected names for the U.S. campaign include “Operation Mature Restraint,” “Operation Calmly Carrying On,” and “Operation What’s the Plan Again?”
HAPPY ENDING At least the price of gas will go up!
TCB
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Go get ‘em, kids! As Stormy Daniels will confirm, Trump doesn’t have the stamina to keep this up for long…
TFN creator and writer Jonathan Larsen co-created Up w/ Chris Hayes and wrote for Countdown with Keith Olbermann at MSNBC, helped launch CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and Air America Radio, and has also worked at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Young Turks.
I don’t actually believe this is to distract from The Epstein Files™, especially since the knee-jerk response to everything now is to call it a distraction from The Epstein Files™.
If you stare into the Abyss long enough you find Donald Trump staring back at you.
This strike is so bad and so pointless. It deepens the anger in the Middle East against American interests. We will not recover from that.