nuclear-news

The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry Fukushima Chernobyl Mayak Three Mile Island Atomic Testing Radiation Isotope

Non-corporate, and even some corporate, nuclear news this week

Some bits of good news –  

Chile made waves with its conservation plans.   Teen leaders take on child marriage in Bangladesh.  

 Virunga National Park Sees Hundreds of Elephants Return and Rare Gorilla Twins Born During Hopeful Year.

TOP STORIES. Israel launches strikes on nuclear sites as Iran warns of retaliation.

Doomsday Double Standard: U.S. Silent on Israel, Loud on Rivals.

Trump’s $200 billion Iran spending request reveals scale of US war plans.

US/Israel War against International Law.

Nuclear Power Equals Trump ProfitsThe Nightmare of Fukushima 15 Years Later.
Renewables are taking the wind out of new nuclear’s sails – ALSO AT 

Renewables are taking the wind out of new nuclear’s sails.

From the archives – Iran’s president vows to never build a nuclear bomb in his United Nations General Assembly speech.

Climate. Oceans take in a lot of heat as Earth’s energy imbalance hits record – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=574S9kGALng What a recent court win reveals about the Trump administration’s unlawful attacks on climate science.

Noel’s notes. Titanic misconceptions that things will be OK


AUSTRALIA. The high costs of Albo’s rubber-stamp war in the Middle-East.                                                                 How climate and renewables “disinformation networks” are fuelling a major national security threat.      Western Australia submarine’s base the only reason for AUKUS.                                                                              The war against Iran:Lessons still unlearned.                                                                                                                   The weakest link: Australia’s submarine hopes depend on the UK, but Britannia no longer rules the waves.    The Iran war is Australia’s margin call.      

 Trump is the most dangerous man in the world 

NUCLEAR-RELATED ITEMS

ART and CULTURE War Becomes Spectacle in Trump’s Horrific Propaganda Promoting War in Iran. The Inheritance of Fear: From the Cold War to Trump’s World.
CLIMATE. Fears huge nuclear dump buried under concrete dome could be unleashed into the sea. Coastal erosion raises questions over protection for £40bn Sizewell C nuclear plant.
CIVIL LIBERTIES. Conscientious objector and human rights defender Yurii Sheliazhenko detained.
ECONOMICS. ‘Worst case scenario’: Wall St craters, oil surges as nuclear sites hit. Does SMR Stand for Spending Money Recklessly? Ontario’s nuclear push risks another costly policy failure. A Great British Nuke-Off in Wales?
EDUCATION. Taxpayers to cough up  £65.6 million for nuclear “industry-informed” education in British universities. Deader than a doornail –UK’s new nuclear.
ENERGY. Energy fallout from Iran war signals a global wake-up call for renewable energy.
ENVIRONMENT. Nuclear Power: The Real Effects 14m (Gordon Edwards 2026).
ETHICS and RELIGION. Sure, killing kids is fine, just don’t put American boots on the ground! ‘We Won’t Die for Israel’: Military Members Seek a Way Out as U.S. War Expands.Pentagon Whistleblower Criticizes “Bloodthirst” of Iran War, Says Hegseth Is Enabling War Crimes – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQOYVX8fWiw Secretive tech mogul Peter Thiel brings his Antichrist lectures to the Vatican’s doorstep | DW News
EVENTS. Tell the Ukrainian Government to Drop Prosecution of Peace Activist Yurii Sheliazhenko
HEALTH. ‘Robust and consistent’ signal: Cancer mortality rates higher near nuclear power plants.
LEGAL. Iranian man freed pending further inquiries after UK nuclear submarine base arrest.

MEDIA. NEW FILM – ORWELL: 2+2=5. Orwell, Trump and the persistence of fascism: ‘He was giving us a warning’ – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tKAaEqoJq0

Fox News’ united front in support of Trump’s Iran war may be breaking down.

Israel’s primary role in Iran war scrubbed from mainstream media.

Pete Hegseth’s War on Journalists (and Iran Too).

Russia summons Israeli envoy over missile strike on journalists in Lebanon- Zakharova: “Cannot be called accidental”.

New Film: Earth’s Greatest Enemy

PERSONAL STORIES. The Warmongers Will Never Admit They Were Wrong And Will Never Learn From Their Mistakes.

POLITICS. Sizewell C Inquiry. The Deafening Abdication of Four Ex-Presidents on Trump. Republican Lawmakers Led By Nancy Mace Begin To Break With Trump On Iran War: ‘We Were Misled’. US Congress near totally complicit in Trump’s criminal Iran war.
POLITICS INTERNATIONAL and DIPLOMACY. Macron slams ‘unacceptable’ Israeli attacks on Lebanon. Iran’s Retaliation Reignites Discontent With US Military Bases in Middle East.
SAFETY. Nuclear Deregulation – DOGE Goes Nuclear: How Trump Invited Silicon Valley Into America’s Nuclear Power Regulator. IAEA Database: About 55% of Nuclear and Other Radioactive Material Thefts Since 1993 Occurred During Transport Nuclear plant told to improve after ‘near misses
SECRETS and LIES.Trump White House plagiarized Iran war manifesto from Israel-aligned think tank.Israel’s Mossad promised it could ignite regime change in Iran, says report.Tremors in MAGA: Joe Kent, the Iran War and the Antisemitism Smear.A MAN and woman have been arrested after attempting to enter Faslane naval base.
SPINBUSTER. On lost Iran war Trump mimicking Hitler’s delusion at end of WWII.
TECHNOLOGY. Inside the Dirty, Dystopian World of AI Data Centers. Next-gen nuclear has a chicken-and-egg problem. UK bets big on homegrown fusion and quantum — can it lead the world? The Depletion of Judgment Capital.

WASTES.

Decommissioning. ‘Significant milestone for nuclear sector’ as Hunterston B relicensed for decommissioning. Nuclear decommissioning in the UK.

A Sunken Nuclear Submarine Is Leaking Radiation Into the Ocean. How Worried Should We Be?

Fife Council approve Babcock plan for nuclear waste storage building.

This Infamous Radioactive ‘Tomb’ Is Leaking, And Experts Are Worried.

Drone video from inside a Fukushima reactor shows a hole in pressure vessel, likely fuel debris.

Third and final shipment of vitrified waste from the UK to Germany.

WAR and CONFLICT .

WEAPONS and WEAPONS SALES. Israel wants to destroy Iran’s nuclear program- But should it have nuclear weapons itself?

Switzerland Just Exposed Project Ranger’s Weakness. Switzerland Blocks Arms Sales to U.S. Over Iran War.

UK’s Astute nuclear submarine timeline is very unlikely to be met.

A Remotely-Piloted Weapon That Targets Civilians in War Zones.

March 31, 2026 Posted by | Weekly Newsletter | Leave a comment

On lost Iran war Trump mimicking Hitler at end of WWII

Walt Zlotow  West Suburban Peace Coalition  Glen Ellyn IL 26 Mar 26

Listening to President Trump on his Iran war achievements brought to mind the ravings of Hitler hunkered down in his Berlin bunker as the Soviets closed in. He demanded his generals move imaginary armies to crush the invaders to stave off defeat and achieve victory.

Trump lost his war on Iran in the first week when the 90 million Iranians did not overthrow their Islamic government in capitation to the US, Israeli attackers. Dropping thousands of bombs on them had the opposite effect…they coalesced around their leaders to support a ferocious counteroffensive. US bases in the region are being decimated along with Israel from an endless supply of missiles and drones stockpiled for years in preparation for inevitable criminal war from America and Israel.

Trump declared on war day 25 Tuesday “We’ve won this. This war has been won.” He also said Iranian leaders have given him “a very significant prize related to the Strait of Hormuz.” Speculation is that Iran’s ‘prize’ was simply letting one Iraqi oil tanker pass thru the closed Strait of Hormuz. But that rumor Trump trumpeted has not been confirmed and likely never occurred. A third bizarre Trump statement is that Iran called him to negotiate the war’s end…presumably on Trump’s terms.

One has to go back 81 years to Hitler’s Berlin bunker ravings to hear such delusional statements from a world leader trying to imagine away his loss in a war only an unhinged leader would have started.

Where is the 25th Amendment when we desperately need it?

March 31, 2026 Posted by | spinbuster | Leave a comment

‘We Won’t Die for Israel’: Military Members Seek a Way Out as U.S. War Expands

 March 25, 2026, https://scheerpost.com/2026/03/25/we-wont-die-for-israel-military-members-seek-a-way-out-as-u-s-war-expands/

In recent interviews on Clearing the FOG, Margaret Flowers highlights a sharp rise in military personnel seeking conscientious objector status, speaking with Mike Prysner of the Center on Conscience and War and revisiting an earlier conversation with James Branum of the Military Law Task Force on legal alternatives available to active-duty troops. The interviews point to growing concern inside the ranks as the Trump administration deepens confrontation with Iran and expands military deployments across the region.

As the Trump administration deepens U.S. military involvement in the expanding war around Iran—with troop deployments growing, Marine Expeditionary Units moving toward the region, and military families bracing for escalation—another story is unfolding inside the ranks: more service members are actively searching for ways not to participate.

In this episode Prysner who says requests for conscientious objector assistance have surged dramatically since the latest attacks began. According to Prysner, many of those reaching out are not motivated by fear for their own safety, but by refusal to be tied to another war they view as unlawful, catastrophic, and morally indefensible.

The conversation also revisits legal guidance from James Branum of the National Lawyers Guild’s Military Law Task Force, who outlines what active-duty troops can legally do when confronted with potentially unlawful orders, including the right to question commands, seek counsel, and in some cases refuse participation.

Taken together, the interviews reveal something often hidden beneath official war messaging: beneath patriotic rhetoric and televised escalation, dissent is growing within the military itself. For soldiers, sailors, Marines, and their families, the question is no longer abstract—whether this conflict expands further may determine whether conscience becomes a battlefield of its own.

At the center of the interviews is a striking reality rarely acknowledged in official coverage: the resistance is not hypothetical. Prysner says the Center on Conscience and War has seen a more than thousand-percent increase in military personnel seeking information about conscientious objector status since the war expanded, with inquiries coming from across branches and ranks—including combat units, intelligence personnel, officers, reservists and active-duty troops already positioned near the conflict zone. Many, he notes, describe the killing of civilians, bombed hospitals, and the prospect of participating in another open-ended regional war as the breaking point that forced them to confront what military service now demands of them. Branum adds that troops ordered into volatile deployments face serious legal and moral dilemmas, especially when commands intersect with actions many believe may violate both constitutional protections and international law. Together, the interviews expose a deep fracture beneath Washington’s war posture: while political leaders speak in the language of deterrence and force, growing numbers inside the military are quietly asking how far obedience can go before conscience refuses to follow.

What emerges from both conversations is a picture of an administration escalating militarily while confronting uncertainty not only abroad, but within the very institution expected to carry out its orders. As troop movements continue and naval assets expand across the region, Prysner warns that many service members are already discussing refusal, discharge options, and legal avenues long before receiving direct deployment orders—an early sign that this conflict may generate internal resistance faster than previous wars. Branum, meanwhile, underscores that military law still recognizes limits: orders are not automatically lawful simply because they are given, and service members retain rights even inside a rigid command structure. That tension—between command authority and personal conscience—has historically surfaced only after wars become prolonged disasters. In this case, it is appearing at the opening stage, suggesting that memories of Iraq War and War in Afghanistan remain close enough that many inside uniform no longer accept official justifications at face value.

If history offers any lesson, it is that wars begin to unravel politically when dissent crosses the line between civilian protest and internal refusal. The significance of what Prysner and Branum describe is not simply that individual troops are questioning orders, but that a wider moral fracture is becoming visible between official war policy and those expected to enforce it. From legal hotlines to conscientious objector filings, from families contacting advocacy groups to veterans publicly warning against another catastrophic escalation, the infrastructure of refusal is already taking shape before this conflict has fully matured. For the antiwar movement, that matters profoundly: public opposition gains force when it is echoed by those in uniform who understand firsthand what escalation means—not in speeches, but in bodies, cities, and generations marked by war. Whether that dissent remains scattered or grows into something larger may help determine whether another regional catastrophe proceeds unchecked or encounters resistance strong enough to alter its course.

March 31, 2026 Posted by | Religion and ethics | Leave a comment

‘Worst case scenario’: Wall St craters, oil surges as nuclear sites hit.

Wall St is imploding and oil is surging again as experts warn of a “worst case scenario” over frightening new strikes on nuclear facilities.

Ben Graham, March 28, 2026, https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/world-economy/worst-case-scenario-wall-st-craters-oil-surges-as-nuclear-sites-hit/news-story/c19242591d70011f0f733addaf27be51

Wall Street sunk to its lowest level since September 2025 as oil prices soared again overnight as investors mash the panic button amid strikes on Iranian nuclear sites.

The Nasdaq Composite slumped 2.2 per cent in New York, the S&P 500 fell by 1.67 per cent following on from heavy losses in recent weeks, while oil shot up 4.2 per cent to $112.57 a barrel.

The drop came after US President Donald Trump extended a deadline for Tehran to open the Strait of Hormuz or face the destruction of its energy grid, pushing it from Friday to April 6.

The 10-day extension was his second since last week’s threat to destroy the infrastructure if Tehran didn’t reopen the critical waterway, a chokepoint that’s become increasingly urgent with global energy and commodity shortages mounting.

But with Iran maintaining a hold on the strait and intense hostilities continuing, Mr Trump’s announcement failed to lift the mood on markets.

Nuclear sites struck

One of the key reasons for the latest sell-offs of global stocks is due to a concerning escalation in the war as Israel’s military says it struck a heavy water reactor and a uranium processing plant in Iran.

“A short while ago, the Israeli Air Force… struck the heavy water plant in Arak, central Iran,” the military said in a statement, describing the site as a “key plutonium production site for nuclear weapons”.

Iranian media had earlier reported that US-Israeli strikes hit the Khondab heavy water complex, saying they caused no casualties or radiation leak from the site.

March 31, 2026 Posted by | business and costs | Leave a comment

NEW FILM – Orwell, Trump and the persistence of fascism: ‘He was giving us a warning’

Raoul Peck, director of a new film about the author, tells Dorian Lynskey that the dystopia of Nineteen Eighty-Four was drawn from lived experience, not prophecy

Dorian Lynskey, The Nerve, Mar 28, 2026

Raoul Peck did not consider himself an expert on George Orwell until fellow documentary-maker Alex Gibney approached him with the opportunity to make a film approved by the Orwell estate, with full access to its vast archive. Working on Orwell: 2+2=5 transformed Peck’s sense of who Orwell was and how his work continues to illuminate our understanding of power and oppression 76 years after his death. 

He presents Orwell as an endlessly curious international figure – born (as Eric Blair) in India, a colonial policeman in Burma, an anti-fascist volunteer in Spain – who spent the last year or so of his life confined to hospital beds with tuberculosis while finishing his final novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four. Orwell’s piercing words, read by Damian Lewis, are illustrated by a startling array of images culled from movies, news reports, documentaries, cameraphone footage and even AI, spanning numerous countries over more than a century.

Peck identifies with the ambition Orwell expressed in his 1946 essay Why I Write: “What I have most wanted to do … is to make political writing into an art.” He is also an internationalist: born in Haiti in 1953, he was educated in Kinshasa, New York, Orléans and Berlin. He worked as a journalist, photographer and taxi driver while making his first short films in the early 1980s. He has since directed seven feature films, including biopics of Karl Marx and the Congolese politician Patrice Lumumba, and 10 documentaries. I Am Not Your Negro, his innovative 2016 study of his personal hero, James Baldwin, won a César and was nominated for an Oscar, while his 2021 HBO series about colonial genocide, Exterminate All the Brutes, earned him a Peabody. Between 1996 and 1997 he was Haiti’s minister of culture.

I made my own investigation of Orwell’s life and legacy in my 2019 book The Ministry of Truth: A Biography of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, so I spoke to Peck for an onstage Q&A after a screening of his film at the Curzon cinema in Bloomsbury earlier this week. This is an edited version of that conversation.

“………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. That’s the thing. People talk about him being prophetic but actually I think the message is that it’s the continuity. He’s not predicting things. He’s observing things that were happening in the 1930s and the 1940s. We’re still doing the same things, we have the same problems – they’re just new iterations.

Yes, it’s the same capitalist society. The rules are the same. The way for capitalists to continue are the same, from crisis to crisis. It’s always the same cycle and it’s becoming even more dangerous because it can explode the whole planet. Orwell was analysing his own society. That’s the mistake we make about Orwell, to think that it’s his imagination. No, he was writing about stuff that he went through. He has to deal with it: that craziness, the lies, the abuses. It’s a warning he’s giving to us. [The working title] of Nineteen Eighty-Four was The Last Man in Europe. That was a warning to his own people, to say, yes, we can have fascism in the UK. 

…………………….Don’t tell me that what I’m seeing is not what I’m seeing. That scene in The Crystal Spirit, talking to his son, where he says there will be people who try to make you believe that 2+2=5, and they are called governments, and they will torture you and they will kill you – I think the whole Orwell essence is in that dialogue.

……………………….Orwell: 2+2=5 is in cinemas now.

Dorian Lynskey is the Nerve’s theatre critic. He co-hosts the politics podcast Origin Story (and previously co-presented Remainiacs). His 2019 book The Ministry of Truth: A Biography of George Orwell’s 1984 was longlisted for both the Baillie Gifford and Orwell Prize. https://www.thenerve.news/p/raoul-peck-interview-film-orwell-2-2-5-dorian-lynskey?utm_source=www.thenerve.news&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=weekend-edition-stewart-lee-orwell-s-warnings-robyn&_bhlid=3ec476febb6669b3cd1441aa6da251aee0c07b0c

March 31, 2026 Posted by | media | Leave a comment

The Deafening Abdication of Four Ex-Presidents on Trump.

By Ralph Nader
March 27, 2026
What should the American people, especially the hundreds of millions of their voters, expect Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden to do against the vicious, serial law-violating, violent, corrupt, agency-dismantling Donald Trump and the crony Trumpsters who are wrecking our government and our economy?

These former Presidents should mobilize the citizenry from the grassroots to the Capitol and take on the unpopular Tyrant Trump. Having sworn to uphold the Constitution and “…take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” they should strongly uphold their patriotic duty to resist tyranny and save our Republic and our besieged democratic institutions, and stop the assault on our civil liberties and civil rights.

Our former presidents all get along with each other. They have the stature to: (1) get mass media; (2) raise immediately large amounts of funds for strong IMPEACH TRUMP citizen groups in every Congressional district to increase and expand the present majority of Americans wanting to FIRE TRUMP; (3) stay the course as Trump keeps worsening his criminal dictatorship and destruction of our democracy; and (4) highlight the many programs they initiated that Trump has illegally destroyed or is dismantling.
Instead, they are living luxurious lives and are largely AWOL from connecting with the existing but overwhelmed civic opposition to Trump. Bush is painting landscapes as Trump has destroyed his AIDS program in Africa, and the Bush wing of the Republican Party. Obama has campaigned for Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill as governors of Virginia and New Jersey, satirizing Trump in some of his speeches. His present passion, however, is the March Madness basketball championships. Clinton has left it up to Hillary, who wrote a guarded New York Times op-ed back on March 28, 2025, taking Trump to task for jeopardizing our national security and not “preparing for real fights with America’s adversaries.”
Then there is Joe Biden, who received then President-elect Trump and Melania on the morning of January 20, 2025, with the gracious “welcome home.” In return, Biden got that afternoon and every day since hundreds of foul epithets from Trump, scapegoating him for almost everything he could fabricate, including solar energy and wind power projects. Delaware Joe managed a few critical replies at a Democratic Party dinner in Nebraska on November 7, 2025. “Trump has taken a wrecking ball not only to the people’s house but to the Constitution, to the rule of law, to our very democracy.” Unfortunately, Biden has mostly been silent.
Credit these retired Presidents with knowing the historic dangers and existing damages of the TRUMP DUMP in Washington and around the country. They also know their supporters would be very receptive to their organized, persistent leadership from them to send Trump back to Mar-a-Lago. Why are they AWOL?
First, they fear Trump’s retaliation, upsetting their comfortable lives. Trump is now deep in the QUICKSAND of the Middle East. He is being pilloried by a million stickers at gas pumps picturing Trump pointing to the booming price per gallon and saying, “I did that.” He is openly declaring there should be no elections in November and continues to send or keep his stormtroopers in America’s cities. An expanding police state is not exactly a credible perch for effective profanity. Show a modest bit of moxie!
A second excuse is that they have done some of what Trump is doing:
*Bush’s mass murder in the illegal war on Iraq.*Clinton’s distracting raids abroad against innocents and his womanizing.
*Obama’s “signature strikes,” killing over three thousand mostly young men in places like Yemen.
*Biden’s illegal co-belligerence with Netanyahu’s genocide in Gaza, which has taken over 600,000 civilian lives.
True enough. But people live in the present and are most worried about what Dangerous Donald is doing NOW to their livelihoods, freedoms, health and safety, and the consequences in casualties and their tax dollars of another endless war.
Our former Presidents have no excuses. They simply lack a modicum of courage. Remember Aristotle declared, “Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.”
The current political climate demands the powerful emergence of the four previous presidents of our country. The federal district courts are ruling heavily against Trump’s “Injustice Department,” though Trump retains a slightly weakening claim on six Supreme Court Injustices. People of all backgrounds are marching and demonstrating in huge numbers. This weekend, the “No Kings” rallies (he’s already a dictator) anticipate 10 million people nationwide.

The business community, particularly small businesses, are feeling serious harm from Trump’s tariffs, wars, cancelled contracts, and inflationary policies. The labor unions have never been under such attack (notably the federal employees’ union members whose contracts he has torn up), and they are simmering with anger. The universities are also under His illegal, shakedown attacks.

What explains the mainstream media’s virtual ignoring of this ABDICATION by these ex-presidents? The reporters mostly despise Trump, who has slandered them (calling them “deranged and demented” for starters) and has extortionately sued news organizations and journalists for millions of dollars and coerced settlements.
The media have reported that some ex-agency officials under the former presidents have excoriated Trump, such as Samantha Power, for closing the major lifesaving Agency for International Development. The formidable Rohit Chopra, who directed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under Biden, is not reticent to verbally defend his nearly closed-down agency, which had saved consumers many billions of dollars.

However, they are not covering the abdication by BIG GUYS – our former Presidents. I have tried in vain to find out why by calling reporters and editors. Maybe you’ll have better luck. Try calling these numbers: The Washington Post: 202-334-6000; The New York Times: 800-698-4637; Associated Press: 212-621-1500; NPR: 202-513-2000; The Wall Street Journal: 212-416-2000.

March 31, 2026 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Republican Lawmakers Led By Nancy Mace Begin To Break With Trump On Iran War: ‘We Were Misled’

by Tyler Durden, Mar 27, 2026, https://www.zerohedge.com/political/republican-lawmakers-led-nancy-mace-begin-break-trump-iran-war-we-were-misled

Republican lawmakers are belatedly starting to wake up to the potential for the United States to once again get bogged down in yet another Middle East quagmire, but this time with a country double the size of Iraq (both in geography and population).

GOP Rep. Nancy Mace has led the charge this week, blasting any potential Trump admin move to put American boots on the ground, warning she will vehemently oppose new war funding if American troops are deployed in Iran. “I’ll be voting against the funding if we’re putting troops on the ground,” Mace told a reporter outside the Capitol earlier in the week. “I’m not going to fund that.”

The comments came after the Pentagon days prior unveiled a massive $200 billion supplemental request in order to fund the war, which was at first previewed by White House officials as lasting a mere ‘days’ or a few ‘weeks’ and not months (or years).

Mace soon followed her verbal comments with a Tuesday post on X pushing back against getting sucked into a ground war. “If a single boot of a single American soldier sets foot on Iranian soil, I will vote against this,” Mace wrote. “I will not vote to fund sending South Carolina’s sons and daughters to die in a ground war in Iran.”

War Secretary Pete Hegseth had framed the supplemental request as essential given it “takes money to kill the bad guys” – as he said, echoing a view that President Trump has been supportive of while claiming “we won”.

Axios is newly reporting on Thursday that Mace is not going to back down if another War Powers resolution is pushed before the House:

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) told Axios she will “most likely” vote for House Democrats’ resolution to constrain President Trump from waging war with Iran the next time it comes up for a vote.

Why it matters: The vote is symbolic — even if the measure passed both chambers, Trump could veto it — but Mace’s support puts the House one step closer to a major rebuke of the administration’s Middle East operations.

At the moment there’s some 7,000 US ground forces en route to the Middle East – including from the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division and the Marines, amid speculation Trump could be eyeing some kind of high risk Kharg Island operation, in order to force open the Strait of Hormuz.

This particular ‘final blow’ plan – which would be contingent on putting boots on the ground in a Kharg takeover – has really gotten Republicans’ attention. Daily Mail on Thursday reports that “Furious Republicans stormed out of a classified briefing on Iran on Wednesday amid fears the US is preparing to invade the country as Tehran refuses Donald Trump’s peace overtures.”

According to more details in the report:

Nancy Mace walked out early, venting that ‘we were misled,’ while pro-Trump committee chair Mike Rogers warned ‘we’re not getting answers’ as Pentagon chiefs briefed the House Armed Services Committee, sparking fireworks on Capitol Hill. 

Now, a Daily Mail source inside the room has revealed stark new details, including a new set of objectives which may suggest that America is moving toward boots on the ground as Iran continues to strangle the Strait of Hormuz. 

The lawmaker, speaking on condition of anonymity, said members were presented with three military objectives: Kharg Island, Iran’s crucial oil export hub; its nuclear material; and regime change. It marks a stark shift from the four goals the White House has publicly stated: destroying Iran’s missiles, navy, armed proxies, and nuclear capabilities.  

The lawmaker said that the White House must answer for its plans, particularly regarding Kharg Island and troops on the ground. The answers are ‘jaw-dropping’ and ‘will blow your brains out,’ the lawmaker said. 

Quagmire by midterms? Some MAGA influencers have increasingly said they are tired about hearing Israel-centric justifications for Trump’s newest war of choice.

GOP members are getting much more vocal alongside Democrats:

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers was uncharacteristically agitated after leaving the briefing, stating that he had few details about the direction the war is heading. 

‘We want to know more about what’s going on,’ Rogers, an Alabama Republican, said. ‘We’re just not getting enough answers.’ Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker of Mississippi felt the same after his own briefing. ‘I can see why he might have said that,’ Wicker told Politico of Rogers’ comments. 

A week ago Responsible Statecraft began documenting fissures among the generally war-supporting GOP, and it’s been more than just the expected Libertarian firebrands Rand Paul and Thomas Massie. For example, Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado has told reporters: “I am so tired of spending money elsewhere. I’m tired of the Industrial War Complex getting our hard-earned tax dollars. I’ve got folks in Colorado who can’t afford to live. We need America First policies right now.”

March 31, 2026 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment