"He does not play four-dimensional chess. There's just him and what we know he's like. This president appears to have grown his enormous and excitable new appetite for military intervention in just this one year back in office apparently just became he thinks war is easy. It's exciting."

#Trump #Iran #war
/2

"It earns him not only close attention but even occasionally plaudits from the very serious people who are professionally inclined that there's some rationale, some strategery, some good thinking behind the start of every war, particularly in the Middle East. …

He sees war as something he gets to do on his own say-so, in a baseball hat from home, that is exciting, that is controversial, that is all about him, &, not for nothing, it's the world's greatest change of subject."

#Trump #Iran
/3

"In his election night victory speech in November 2024, Trump told his supporters: 'I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.' Two months later, in his inaugural address, he went even further in trying to establish himself as a global peacemaker. 'We will measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end – and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into.', he said"

~ Mohamad Bazzi

#Trump #Iran #war
/4

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/01/trump-promised-no-wars-now-hes-a-bush-style-regime-change-president

"And yet in his first year back in office, Trump bombed seven countries: Yemen, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia and Venezuela."

#Trump #Iran #war
/5

"I understand the inclination to believe that Trump is acting erratically when he seemingly arbitrarily bombs Iran. But this is the culmination of a long-term plan for which the chief beneficiary is, unsurprisingly, himself. ...

Let’s be clear: Trump doesn’t care about foreign countries meddling in our elections. If he did, he’d be bombing Russia right now."

~ Brian Tyler Cohen

#Trump #Iran #war
/6

https://plus.briantylercohen.com/p/the-real-reason-for-trumps-iran-bombing

"So why then would Trump invoke Iran interfering in our elections as he bombs the country? Put simply, he is trying to validate the claim that our elections are not secure, so that he can use that as a pretext to usurp control of our elections in the name of national security."

#Trump #Iran #war
/7

"The real reason for the war with Iran has come into view over the last twenty-four hours — and it has nothing to do with foreign policy, nuclear programs, regime change, or democracy-building. Or, at least, none of these are the primary reasons whatsoever.

Donald Trump inadvertently told us the quiet part out loud yesterday, while using bombs to do it."

~ Julie Roginsky

#Trump #Iran #war
/8

"Several hours after American strikes began in Iran, Trump posted on Truth Social that 'Iran tried to interfere in 2020, 2024 elections to stop Trump, and now faces renewed war with United States,' ...

He yoked foreign interference to a hot war and wrapped himself in the one cloak that reliably silences institutional resistance in Washington: national security."

#Trump #Iran #war
/9

"If he loses our attention, the jig is up. Not just his presidency, but the entire Republican Party. The minute we collectively focus on the reality of what has actually happened to America, to see it in all of its layers of criminality, Trump loses everything.

The next obvious step for Trump is to use this self-inflicted war with Iran to invoke emergency powers so he can interfere with the midterm elections."

~ Jim Stewartson

#Trump #Iran #war
/10

https://www.mind-war.com/p/epsteins-fury-the-inevitable-calculus

"Donald Trump has confirmed that the United States will continue bombing Iran without interruption for as long as he says is necessary, following reports of the death of Iran’s Supreme Leader."

~ Aaron Parnas

#Trump #Iran #war
/11

https://aaronparnas.substack.com/p/important-saturday-night-news-update-20e

"Terror is Trump’s one preferred, constant, predictable strategy when faced with any policy goal, domestic or foreign. Diplomacy, coordination with allies, persuasion, negotiation, investigation—all the myriad lawful, powerful tools that presidents generally use to advance their goals are useless to Trump, mostly because he lacks any interest in understanding them."

~ Noah Berlatsky

#Trump #Iran #war
/12

https://www.everythingishorrible.net/p/trumps-strategy-is-always-terror

"For him, the best path is always to find some innocent somewhere to torture or murder in the hopes that other people will pity them and knuckle under. ...

There is just a great deal of evidence that he takes pleasure in violence and pain for their own sake, and that he gathers around him people like himself who do the same."

#Trump #Iran #war
/13

"Once again, diplomacy has been aborted in favor of violence."

~ Robin Wright

#Trump #Iran #war
/14

https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/donald-trump-launches-a-war-of-epic-fury-on-iran

"Iran’s parents had just dropped their children off for class on Saturday morning when they found themselves racing back to school gates, as bombs began to fall across the country in a joint US-Israel attack.

At one elementary school, according to Iran’s state-controlled media, they arrived to find devastation."

~ Deepa Parent and Tess McClure

#Trump #Iran #war
/15

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/28/children-dead-as-missile-hits-elementary-school-in-southern-iran

"At least 100 children had been killed in the strike on Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ school in Minab, southern Iran, the Mizan news agency reported, with dozens more unaccounted for.

In one video circulating on social media, purportedly showing the immediate aftermath of the strike, smoke rises from the burnt-out walls, and debris lies spread across the road. Hundreds of onlookers gathered at the site, some in obvious distress. Screams can be heard in the background."

#Trump #Iran #war
/16

"Remember to see this whole escalating series of military adventures in the proper light. Trump is very unpopular and growing more so every day. He now faces what seems close to the certainty of losing at least one House of Congress. As his public support ebbs his power and the power to dominate ebb as well. For Trump that is akin to a psychic death."

~ Josh Marshall

#Trump #Iran #war
/17

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/prerogative-powers-and-presidential-self-care

"So, as a matter of psychological balancing and self-care more than strategy, he is leaning heavily into the presidential prerogative powers where his power is most untrammeled, where the loss of political power doesn’t really matter. Almost no presidential power is more clearly in that character as the president’s control over the military. Put simply, he’s leaning into those powers as a matter of psychological compensation."

#Trump #Iran #war
/18

"Here’s the real reason for this war. Trump wants it to divert Americans’ attention from everything that’s gone to shit on his watch: the economy, ICE’s cruel raids and murders, the crisis in public health as exemplified by the measles epidemic, our loss of friends and allies around the world, his boundless corruption, and his increasing unpopularity as shown in plummeting polls."

~ Robert Reich

#Trump #Iran #war
/19

https://robertreich.substack.com/p/sunday-thought-the-mounting-costs