The U.S. Department of Defense is accelerating development of a next-generation missile defense architecture referred to as “Golden Dome.” It is framed in national defense strategy as a layered homeland shield designed to counter emerging threats, including hypersonic weapons.
Modern missile defense is not just about ground interceptors. It requires:
Hypersonic propulsion systems
Advanced thermal shielding
Rapid manufacturing capacity
Space-based tracking and sensor networks
Scalable industrial production
This is not theoretical. Federal strategy and procurement planning show an expansion of missile tracking systems and accelerated contractor engagement across the defense sector.
When the Pentagon scales a program like this, the supply chain scales with it.
Missile production is not a single building. It is a network of chemical processing, propulsion casting, electronics assembly, static testing, and heavy logistics. When one node expands, infrastructure expands with it. This when the supply chain externalizes costs to communities.
What’s Happening Locally
Project Ranger is an “advanced manufacturing” project.
It is contractually defined as a:
“hypersonic systems test and manufacturing facility.”
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At the same time, the City and County approved public funding specifically to expand Paseo del Volcán to benefit this Project.
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The agreements also acknowledge that audit and inspection provisions are subject to Department of Defense and national security constraints.
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Those are not abstract references. They place this facility squarely within the national defense ecosystem.
Public road expansion + hypersonics manufacturing + DoD-related oversight constraints is not a coincidence. It is infrastructure alignment.
Why That Matters
Defense corridors do not appear overnight. They form through a predictable sequence:
A federal defense initiative accelerates.
Contractors expand production capacity.
Local governments subsidize access roads, land, and utilities.
Environmental and cumulative impact questions lag behind infrastructure commitments.
That sequence is visible here.
When public funds expand a major corridor to serve a hypersonics manufacturing site, that is not simply “economic development.” It is regional integration into a national defense supply chain.
The Public Interest Questions.
We want transparency, scope, and full disclosure.
A hypersonic test and manufacturing facility
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enabled by publicly funded road expansion
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raises foreseeable impacts that must be openly evaluated:
Industrial water demand
Hazardous materials transport
Air emissions and plume modeling
Outbound waste streams
Long-term infrastructure maintenance costs
Cumulative regional build-out effects
If the project is positioned within a rapidly expanding missile defense program, then induced growth and scaling pressures are foreseeable.
Treating the road expansion as separate from the facility ignores the integrated purpose described in the agreements.
Bottom Line
The documents do not describe a small standalone factory.
They describe a hypersonics test and manufacturing facility….
Project Ranger is part of a larger defense build-out, whether local officials frame it that way or not. When national missile defense accelerates, local communities become supply-chain territory. Rio Rancho deserves a full accounting of what that means…………………………..
When national missile-defense acceleration intersects with local public subsidies, the burden does not fall on billionaires or defense contractors. It falls on residents:
Water withdrawals and contamination risk
Air emissions and particulate exposure
Hazardous materials transport through residential corridors
After a strike on a girls’ elementary school in Minab, Iran, killed at least 175 people, nearly all young schoolchildren, online reports spread disinformation about the attack, including claims that the Iranian government itself had bombed the school. Journalist Nilo Tabrizy describes how outside reporters have been able to verify the attack despite Iran’s internet blackout and says attempts are still being made to confirm whether the strike is attributable to the U.S. or to Israel.
Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour that airs on over 1,500 TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Watch our livestream at democracynow.org Mondays to Fridays 8-9 a.m. ET.
The Rutherford Institute, John & Nisha Whitehead, March 04, 2026
“From the least to the greatest, all are greedy for gain; prophets and priests alike, all practice deceit. They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. ‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace.”—Jeremiah 6:13–14
“This is insane. Regime change will result in a bloody civil war… Resist this!”—Charlie Kirk (2025)
The military-industrial complex and the American police state have joined forces.
War abroad and war at home are no longer separate enterprises. They have fused.
Each time that boundary is breached, the Constitution recedes a little further.
This is one of those moments.
In a complete about-face from his claims to being a peace president, Donald Trump has authorized yet another preemptive strike—this time against Iran—without a declaration of war from Congress, without meaningful public debate, and without constitutional clarity.
The gravity of that decision cannot be overstated.
That spectacle tells you everything you need to know.
That is how we arrived at Operation Epic Fury.
With its Orwellian proclamations of “peace through strength,” Operation Epic Fury is less strategy than spectacle—an egotistical, muscle-flexing distraction by the Trump administration and an overarching attempt to normalize the use of unilateral force by the executive branch without congressional input or authorization.
This was never about peace. It was always about power.
And the Constitution is clear about how this is supposed to work, even if the White House is not.
Despite the word games over its war games—the administration insists its actions in Iran do not constitute a war—members of Trump’s Cabinet use the word “war” freely until congressional authorization is mentioned.
And when the administration is asked to explain themselves, the answer is not constitutional deference but open defiance.
Clearly, they have lost sight of who they answer to—and who funds their war chests: we the taxpayers.
Pete Hegseth—the self-righteous blowhard who brags about lethal weapons and has rebranded the Defense Department as the Department of War—dismissed public accountability outright, expressing in no uncertain terms that it’s none of our business: “Why in the world would we tell you, you, the enemy, anybody what we will or will not do in pursuit of an objective. We fight to win. We fight to achieve the objectives the President of the United States has laid out and we will do so unapologetically.”
The Constitution is the “why.”
The American people have a right to debate war before it begins. We have a right to know how our tax dollars are spent. We have a right to insist our representatives authorize the use of force. We have a right to know why our sons and daughters are sent into harm’s way. We have a right to refuse to have our tax dollars used to kill other people’s daughters and sons.
……………As Cato Institute’s Katherine Thompson explains, “War…costs American blood and treasure. The Founders placed the power to initiate it in Congress precisely to ensure those costs are confronted and debated before the country walks into battle.”
War fuels defense contracts, reconstruction deals and intelligence budgets. It sustains a vast military-industrial apparatus whose profits depend on instability.
Nothing about Operation Epic Fury puts America first. It pushes us toward a fiscal cliff.
Within days, the costs were staggering: $300 million for three F-15E jets downed by “friendly” fire. $630 million to transport troops, ships and aircraft to the region in advance of the attacks. More than 50,000 troops deployed to the region. $13 million a day just for two aircraft carriers stationed nearby. $43.8 million for 1,250 Kamikaze drones. $2 million each for Tomahawk missiles. $12.8 million each for anti-ballistic missile interceptors.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. This unprovoked attack on Iran is turning the Middle East into a war zone, in turn laying the groundwork for Trump to act on the fantasies he has long entertained about cancelling the mid-term elections.
………………………………………………………………………….War is not peace. Preemptive war is not strength. And an imperial presidency—no matter how loudly it wraps itself in flags—is not constitutional government.
The Founders understood that the gravest threat to liberty would not come from foreign enemies alone, but from the concentration of power in the hands of one man who believed himself indispensable.
A president who can send bombs abroad without consent can silence opposition at home without hesitation.
A government that governs by the rule of emergency eventually ceases to govern by the rule of law.
And a nation that trades liberty for spectacle will wake up to find that it has neither.
…………………………………………………………………….As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the question is no longer whether America can police the globe. The question is whether our Republic can survive the weight of the Empire it has become.
We are at the point where we must choose: the spectacle of permanent war, or the survival of the American experiment in freedom.
In Iran, under ongoing US-Israeli attacks, a mass funeral took place today for 168 Iranian schoolgirls aged 7-12, killed by an Israeli airstrike on February 28.
The strike hit the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ primary school in Minab, southern Iran, in broad daylight, when the children were at school. Fourteen teachers were also killed in the bombing. The bombing occurred as part of US-Israeli attacks sadistically dubbed ‘Operation Epic Fury’, attacks which have to date targeted schools, hospitals, residential areas and other civilian infrastructure.
It was a scene all too familiar to Palestinians: grief-stricken parents collapsing sobbing at the site of their daughters’ murders, clutching bloodstained backpacks, pulling out schoolbooks and personal items of their slain daughters. Children’s desks covered in debris from the bombing. A child’s shoe in the rubble. Death where life had flourished.
None of this is being conveyed by Western legacy media – only ghoulish gloating over the US-Israeli bombardment of Iran and the murder of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, and his young granddaughter and children.
On March 2, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi posted a photo of the graves being dug on X, noting, “These are graves being dug for more than 160 innocent young girls who were killed in the US-Israeli bombing of a primary school. Their bodies were torn to shreds. This is how “rescue” promised by Mr. Trump looks in reality. From Gaza to Minab, innocents murdered in cold blood.”
At the time of this writing, 69 of the murdered girls remain unidentified.
International media reaction: Silence
If the bombed school had been in Israel or Ukraine, news of it would have been plastered on front pages of Western media for days, with widespread demands for retaliation, or at least for justice and accountability. Back in 2016, Western media alleged Syria or Russian planes had injured Aleppo boy Omran Daqneesh. His photo went viral, for weeks, even years. A CNN news anchor fake-sobbed for the boy.
In 2017, in his Aleppo home, his father told me their home was not hit in an airstrike, but rather terrorists shelled it and used the boy in a cynical, and effective, photo op.
Footage shared on Telegram and on X clearly show horrific scenes of some of the young girls torn apart in the US-Israeli bombing of their school. But just like the untold thousands of Palestinian children killed by Israel, as well as the half a million Iraqi children killed by US sanctions, these Iranian children’s lives don’t merit Western media outrage. Instead, they produce cynical reports that not only lack any semblance of empathy, but suggest that Iran is either lying about or is to blame for the murders.
Take the BBC’s report, which describes the massacre as a “reported” strike on a school, which “Iran has blamed the US and Israel” for. Casting doubt is standard for legacy media whitewashing the US and Israel’s crimes. The US is “looking into reports.” Israel is “not aware.” Just one of those mysterious unknown strikes.
The BBC then overtly blamed the Iranian government as untrustworthy, writing, “Deep mistrust of the Iranian regime, however, makes official reports difficult for many to accept, and some Iranians directly blamed the regime for the attack.”………………………………………….
Most Western media cite The US military’s Central Command (Centcom) as saying it was “looking into reports of the incident,” and the Israeli army as saying it was “not aware of any IDF operations in the area.”Ah yes, the guilty shall investigate themselves. Right.
Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL, 5 Mar 26
President Trump bet his entire criminal attack on Iran as a quick 3 day operation which would force Iran’s capitulation. Kill its leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the 90 million Iranians would rise up against their government and make peace with new master America.
It has backfired spectacularly. The vast majority of Iranians have rallied around the Islamic government. When Trump demanded Iran surrender, the remaining government publicly told Trump, ‘Go to hell.’ Instead, they have launched thousands of missiles and drone explosives on US instillations thruout the region. American deaths and injuries are occurring. They are successfully bombing America’s criminal war partner Israel, the real mastermind of this self-destructive war. Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz which will quickly destabilize the world economy over oil pricing. Iran’s attacks on US resources in the Gulf States will possibly destabilize the entire region.
Trump, realizing he’s both failed and trapped, is becoming increasingly more detached from reality. The US is already running low munitions to fight a long war, but Trump claims we have enough to fight multiple wars “forever”. But he quickly contradicted himself by claiming any shortages are due to negligence of his predecessor he only refers to as “Sleepy Joe”. This from a debilitated president falling asleep at public events. He’s cut off all trade with Spain because they refuse to help Trump wage his criminal war. Trump hints at boots on the ground in Iran, setting congressional critics’ hair on fire.
Why doesn’t Iran fold against the largest military in the world and its criminal war partner Israel? Simple. After trying to negotiate peace with these two brutal, vicious countries for decades, Iran realizes both represent an existential threat to their existence. Facing obliteration, proud Iran has decided to go down fighting, taking America and Israel with them.
Knowing it was coming, Iran has been preparing years for all out war. It has tens of thousands of missiles and drones scattered and well-hidden to prevent US, Israeli destruction. The US, Israeli hunters are now becoming the hunted. US embassies in the region, some already under attack, are telling their staffers they cannot help evacuate them.
Trump has nearly 3 years left in office. His failed 3 day quickie war to destroy Iran as an Israeli hegemonic rival may turn his last 3 years into an unrelenting personal catastrophe. Alas, it may also be a catastrophe for Israel, America, the Middle East, possibly the entire world.
It’s only Day Five of the war, but surely the epic stupidity of Australia so cravenly backing the US-Israeli invasion of Iran is evident by now. Michael West reports.
We are led by fools and sycophants. The illegal, unprovoked invasion of Iran is not just garden-variety stupidity. This is stupidity on a grandiose, stratospheric scale.
The Israeli propaganda narrative that Iranians would sprinkle rose petals at the feet of their invaders has not come to pass. It has already been demolished in fact.
Instead of bringing freedom and democracy – ‘regime change’ – we have brought chaos, possibly a world war, and definitely the destruction of the Middle East. The world economy is being hit hard as we write; oil prices spiralling, energy prices about to soar, and the inexorable spectre of inflation and recession.
“And it didn’t have to happen.“
This was a war of choice. Even without the “Epstein Coalition” – as the Iranian media so aptly dubs their invaders – murdering 168 Iranian school girls on day one, ‘peace through strength’ was never going to happen.
Quite the contrary. The illegal and unprovoked invasion of Iran has hardened the resolve of Iranians, who are massing in their hundreds of thousands across the country to mourn their dead and chant Death to America, to back their regime.
Where was the advice?
The Epstein Coalition killed the Ayatollah, who was actually against nuclear power; he was a moderate. Did Albo and Penny Wong not seek advice from Foreign Affairs that attacking Iran was folly, that the anti-regime protestors were a minority, that the pre-invasion protests were a Mossad and CIA psyop, that Iran might attack US proxy states in the region, that invasion would be a Brobigdadgian mistake?
Or did they ignore the advice in favour of a Washington regime compromised by the Epstein pedophile scandal?
And now, we see the feeble, hypocritical whining by Israel and its supporters about Iran attacking the Gulf states. Is that our only moral defence? Decades of supporting these regimes: Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates – US proxy states all – regimes now unravelling, the oil price is soaring, inflation and recession are beckoning globally.
Images are emerging from Bahrain of locals cheering on the Iranian missiles. Were DFAT and our politicians unaware of popular angst in the Gulf states against American imperialism?
And what did they expect Iran to do in the face of this existential threat? Not blow up American bases and infrastructure while the US attacked them; after the US betrayed them at the very negotiating table when they were offering significant concessions on nuclear enrichment, all to avoid war? This war.
Australia, the US flunkies
Yet here was Australia, Saturday night, first out of the blocks worldwide to throw its support behind Donald Trump and his preposterous “Operation Epic Fury”, a probable pedophile being blackmailed and led around by the genocidal Benjamin Netanyahu like a pony at the fairground show.
“Operation Epstein Fury”, it was fast labelled. The soaring, craven stupidity is hard to grasp. Both major parties backing it. Albo first, then Angus Taylor rushing to tow the Donald’s line. Then, Pauline Hanson, too, who even congratulated and praised Netanyahu. We are led by fools and sycophants.
The flawed defence of atrocity
To address the empty rhetoric of the pro-war lobby, criticism of this war does not equate to support for the regime in Iran. Defenders of the US-Israel atrocity are busy with their swarms of social media bots peddling the argument that “you are an Islamist terror supporter” if you criticise the invasion.
This is the 2026 version of “You are a Hamas supporter” if you argue against genocide in Gaza.
The cold facts of this debacle are that regime change does not work, that Iran did not want this war, that Iran appears to be exceptionally well prepared – even winning the war – that the Epstein Coalition, which Australia supports, is daily backing war crimes: blowing up hospitals, schools and civilian infrastructure.
“This is a war which has already been lost.“
The obvious reality is that regime change wars are a demonstrable failure. Vietnam. Iraq. Afghanistan. Iraq – a million dead, irretrievable regional stability. In Afghanistan, 20 years, trillions of dollars spent, four US presidents, six Australian PMs – all to replace the Taliban with the Taliban.
And here we are, the world’s busybodies, doing it again.
Who would ever negotiate with the US in good faith again, or Israel for that matter? Iran did not want this war. Iran has not attacked another country in 300 years.
The US lured them to the negotiating table, then, without warning, murdered their leadership. This echoes last year’s 12-day war, where Israel and the US lured them in on the premise of good faith talks, then murdered them and now play the victim.
What did they expect Iran to do in the face of this existential threat?
The record speaks for itself. The US is the biggest invader of other countries in history. Israel has, last year alone, attacked Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, Jordan, Palestine, Qatar, Tunisia, Malta, and Greece.
Six illegal attacks of sovereign nations, as well as three illegal attacks in international waters equals 9 all up. In one year. And now they are invading Lebanon again, seizing more territory as their puppets, America, fight their campaign against Iran.
Albo, what are you doing?
We know who the war mongers are. We are the war mongers. Yet, in his bizarre statement of support, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was the fastest out of the blocks of all the allies on the weekend, issuing a false statement.
The claim, echoed by the usual warmongers of the Lib-Lab establishment, is that Iran is guilty of attacks on Australian soil, referencing alleged attacks on a deli in Bondi.
We know who the war mongers are. We are the war mongers. Yet, in his bizarre statement of support, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was the fastest out of the blocks of all the allies on the weekend, issuing a false statement.
The claim, echoed by the usual warmongers of the Lib-Lab establishment, is that Iran is guilty of attacks on Australian soil, referencing alleged attacks on a deli in Bondi.
Then there is the age-old claim that Iran is about to produce nuclear weapons. The US and Israel’s nuclear risk claims have been so roundly discredited it’s a joke.
Benjamin Netanyahu has been trying to instigate a war against Iran for 30 years – claiming Iran is days away, weeks away, months away from nuclear missiles.
And they were at the negotiating table again when the Epstein forces murdered them.
The propaganda
We are now seeing mainstream media decry the ‘illegal attacks’ on Israel and the Gulf states. Yet the ‘victim card’ is tapped out. Around the world, outside the legacy media propaganda, there is little sympathy for Israel having razed Gaza and slaughtered between 72,000 and 700,000 Palestinians while stealing more land in the West Bank daily.
It will continue. The media and political classes have failed so majestically that they can only try to salvage their authority with more propaganda.
The deplorable coverage of the murdered schoolgirls in Iran is a case in point. The “40 beheaded babies” and the “mass rapes” of Hamas filled the headlines in the West on October 8, 2023. Yet real murders – 170 murdered schoolgirls – have hardly rated a mention. Yes, a mention perhaps, but a side story, buried, no headlines of outrage.
Can’t handle the truth?
Is the truth too hard to handle? Is it not evident to everybody except the most brainwashed advocate of the Epstein lobby that Israel – the government, the state – is the problem here?
Netanyahu has won his ambition to drag America into a war against Iran, and if you follow the money, while world stock markets teeter, the stock market in Tel Aviv is surging, replete with weapons companies as it is.
Meanwhile, the ASX is tanking, ergo our savings. Oil prices are surging, ergo higher energy prices and inflation. The Houthis, Iran’s allies, are shooting again in the Red Sea while, on the other side of the Arabian peninsula, Iran has blocked the Straits of Hormuz, choking off a large chunk of the world’s oil supply.
Higher prices in India and China will mean higher prices for imports and inflation around the world.
The lessons of history have not been learnt; in fact, they have been discarded in spectacular fashion.
“While they kick 17 million Americans off their healthcare, Republicans want to spend billions on Trump’s reckless war of choice,” said the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “Hell no.”
The Pentagon is reportedly planning to ask Congress to approve a supplemental funding package of around $50 billion to help finance the Trump administration’s unauthorized war on Iran, which has already cost billions of dollars and many lives.
Progressives were quick to reject the idea of providing the bloated, fraud-ridden Pentagon with additional funds to sustain a war that lawmakers did not approve and that is broadly unpopular with the American public.
“While they kick 17 million Americans off their healthcare, Republicans want to spend billions on Trump’s reckless war of choice,” said Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “Hell no.”
Reutersreported Tuesday that “Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg has been leading Pentagon work in recent days on a supplemental budget request of around $50 billion that could be released as soon as Friday.”
“The new money would pay for replacing the weapons used in recent conflicts including those in the Middle East,” the outlet added. “The figure is preliminary and could change.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), the most vocal cheerleader of the war in Congress, told reporters Tuesday that he believes “there will be a supplemental” funding request from the Pentagon.
“We’ll have to approve that,” said Graham.
“If this war continues at the same pace, Americans could see their government burn through tens of billions of dollars, funds that would amount to the cost of Medicaid for millions in the United States.”
The push for a supplemental funding package is the latest indication that the assault on Iran—launched with no clear justification, objective, or timeline and in violation of domestic and international law—could drag on indefinitely, even as Trump administration officials deny that the president who ran on avoiding wars has embroiled the nation in another disastrous quagmire in the Middle East.
Dylan Williams, vice president for government affairs at the Center for International Policy, wrote Tuesday that Congress should approve “not one damn penny” for Trump’s war on Iran.
The Center for American Progress (CAP) estimated Tuesday that the Iran war has likely already cost US taxpayers more than $5 billion.
“At more than $5 billion and counting, the costs of Operation Epic Fury—in only its first few days of operations—could cover Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits for more than 2 million Americans for a year,” noted CAP’s Allison McManus. “If this war continues at the same pace, Americans could see their government burn through tens of billions of dollars, funds that would amount to the cost of Medicaid for millions in the United States.”
Israel is dictating foreign policy, with Trump’s throat-clearing, unwavering support for Israel attacking the country despite the American population not supporting this misadventure.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio acknowledged this week that the United States anticipated Israeli military action against Iran and believed it would trigger retaliatory strikes on American forces — a scenario that ultimately led Washington to join the offensive.
Speaking to reporters at the Capitol, Rubio said U.S. officials “knew that there was going to be an Israeli action” and expected it would “precipitate an attack against American forces.” He added that failing to strike first would have meant “higher casualties.”
This shows how Israel is dictating foreign policy, with Trump’s throat-clearing, unwavering support for Israel attacking the country despite the American population not supporting this misadventure.
Couldn’t Trump have been more like Biden and Harris, who scolded Bibi and yet allowed the genocide to take place in the first place?
Remember Biden’s delusion in claiming he had “done more for the Palestinian community than anybody.”
That assertion stands in sharp contrast to accounts from within his own administration. Maryam Hassanein, a former Interior Department political appointee who resigned, directly rejected that narrative.
“I think his legacy is the opposite,” Hassanein said. “He’s the president who’s done the most harm to Palestinians.”
To go off on a long tangent about the great foreign policy and immigration failures of the Biden White House would be too much to recount here. However, they were only revealing what is now clear as day: the Democratic Party is complicit in the empire. The question now is not whether that is true, but how to confront and change it.
What this demonstrates is something that has long been known: Israel is the United States’ ride-or-die friend. But at this point, it has become a Thelma & Louise moment — driving off a cliff and taking the whole world with them.
The remarks suggest the Trump administration viewed participation in the war as a preemptive necessity rather than an independent strategic choice. Critics argue the statement instead underscores Washington’s unwillingness to restrain Israel — even when U.S. forces would be drawn into direct conflict.
Netanyahu’s Long-Pursued Campaign
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu openly described the operation as the culmination of decades of advocacy for confronting Iran militarily. He said the strikes were carried out with “the assistance of the United States” and framed the campaign as something he had sought to achieve for 40 years.
The comments reinforced concerns among some analysts that Israel’s strategy effectively shaped U.S. decision-making.
Could Washington Have Prevented the Escalation?
Brian Finucane, a former State Department lawyer now with the International Crisis Group, argued that the U.S. maintains substantial leverage over Israel due to its military and financial support. According to data from Brown University’s Costs of War Project, the U.S. has provided over $21 billion in military aid to Israel since October 2023 and more than $300 billion in total assistance since Israel’s founding.
Finucane suggested that if Washington had strongly opposed Israeli strikes, it may have been able to delay or deter them. Whether Iran would have refrained from retaliatory action is a separate question, he noted.
Mounting Casualties and Political Fallout
The joint U.S.–Israeli campaign has resulted in significant casualties. Iranian authorities report hundreds killed, including civilians. U.S. Central Command confirmed American service members have also died in the fighting.
Meanwhile, members of Congress — including senior Democrats on foreign affairs and armed services committees — have requested clarification from the administration regarding the legal justification for the operation, its objectives, and what would constitute mission success.
The war marks the second major U.S.–Israeli confrontation with Iran in less than a year, deepening instability across the region and intensifying debate in Washington over executive war powers.
A Question of Agency
Rubio’s framing raises a deeper question: was the United States genuinely compelled by strategic necessity — or simply unwilling to restrain an ally intent on escalating the conflict? The truth is that Washington’s worldview has become increasingly unmoored from any sense of proportionality or restraint. This same person in Rubio has defended coilionelism.
The U.S. provides Israel with extensive military assistance and diplomatic cover, making it difficult to claim neutrality in moments of crisis. There was no imminent threat of an attack, and Iran did not possess a nuclear weapon — a point underscored by Tulsi Gabbard, but whats she know, shes just the Director of National Intelligence. The fact remains that a far smaller nation is effectively pulling the last global superpower into a widening regional confrontation — one that carries risks far beyond the immediate battlefield.
How this ends is anyones guess most likely not well but don’t worry you can still gamble on and profit from it.
The narrative that Israel was ready to act alone has holes in it, considering Israel has relied on US air defenses to intercept Iranian missiles in previous conflicts, and POLITICO reported a few days before the war started that Trump officials thought it might be better for the “politics” if Israel attacked on its own at first, provoking Iranian attacks on US assets to justify US intervention.
The president made the comments in response to a question about Rubio saying the US launched the war because Israel planned to attack
Adding to the mixed messaging coming from the Trump administration regarding the war with Iran, President Trump suggested on Tuesday that he may have “forced Israel’s hand” when the conflict started.
The president was responding to a question about Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who said on Monday that one reason why the US launched the war on Saturday was that Israel was planning to attack and that the US assessed Iran could respond with attacks. on US bases.
Senior Trump officials said the same thing during classified briefings with members of Congress on Monday, which was confirmed by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and other lawmakers. “Because Israel was determined to act with or without the US, our commander in chief and the administration and the officials [in the Cabinet] had a very difficult decision to make. They had to evaluate the threats to the US, to our troops, to our installations, to our assets in the region in beyond,” Johnson said.
In what can only be called a worst case scenario, the burgeoning nuclear arms race has officially broken its bounds and will now include the world’s fourth largest nuclear superpower, France. (Counting only nuclear weapons actively deployed, France ranks third, behind the US and Russia, as less than 5% of China’s nuclear stockpile is actually deployed.)
Without offering precise numbers, French President Emmanuel Macron announced on Monday that France would increase its nuclear stockpile, currently estimated to include 290 nuclear warheads.
Macron also announced plans to build a second nuclear-powered aircraft carrier that would, like the currently deployed Charles de Gaulle, be capable of launching nuclear armed Rafale fighter jets.
In addition, Macron announced that some nuclear-capable Rafale jets might be temporarily deployed to allied European countries, naming Britain, Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, Sweden, and Denmark. This move expands France’s “nuclear umbrella” and places intermediate range missiles closer to Russia; it also positions France to replace US nuclear-armed aircraft currently deployed in three of those countries (Germany, Belgium, and The Netherlands) in the case of US withdrawal from NATO.
France, like the US, Russia, China, and Great Britain, is a signatory to the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons. That Treaty requires nuclear-armed states to pursue “in good faith” a cessation of the arms race and complete nuclear disarmament “at an early date.” Since the signing of that Treaty more than fifty years ago, the US and Russia have intermittently engaged in negotiations leading to reductions in stockpile size, but both have also maintained nuclear arsenals with more than 3,500 warheads and show no signs of attempting a full disarmament campaign.
That reality, along with the consistent refusal of the nuclear powers to provide required reports to the United Nations about efforts to comply with NPT obligations, led non-nuclear nations to adopt the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in 2017. The TPNW entered into force in January 2021 and now has the support of a majority of global states.
The United States government has been dismissive of the TPNW, denouncing it when it was being negotiated in 2017 and ignoring it since then. The government’s attempt to pretend the Treaty does not exist has been abetted by US mainstream media that resolutely refuses to mention the TPNW even in articles exploring the current status of the nuclear threat that include hand-wringing about the failure of arms control efforts.
That same mainstream media has, in recent months, begun to speak of the new global nuclear arms race—something OREPA has been warning about for more than a decade. Fifteen years ago, we pointed out that US investment in “modernization” of its nuclear capabilities, including building new bomb plants like the Uranium Processing Factility in Oak Ridge, was pushing the world toward a new nuclear arms race.
Unfortunately, our prescience has since been validated. Today, as mainstream media used words like “verge” and “brink” to talk about the nuclear arms race, some media with deeper knowledge describe the situation more accurately. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, for instance, has stated that we are in a full-blown global nuclear arms race.
Until Macron’s announcement, that global nuclear arms race was considered to be between the US, Russia, and China. But as the illusion of the old “rules-based” world order collapses, nuclear weapons are once again being deployed as viable threats and, potentially, the beginning of the end for planet Earth.
Macron’s Monday speech did follow one long-standing rule of the nuclear establishment—never mention the human cost of nuclear weapons. Any conversation that includes the damage done to human beings, men, women, children, families, by nuclear weapons production, testing, use, and threat of use; or that mentions the trillions of dollars being spend on these weapons of mass destruction while hundreds of millions of people go hungry and lack health care and shelter; or that accounts for massive environmental damage at mines, processing, production, and testing sites around the world; or that warns of the effects of nuclear winter in the event of a nuclear exchange—would undermine if not erase arguments that nuclear weapons have a role in providing security in any rational, human sense.
As victims of nuclear weapons, the hibakusha, survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, winners of the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize, courageously share their witness, telling the story of the worst day of their lives, the unimaginable horror of the devastation, death, and destruction wrought by bombs that, by today’s standards, are tiny. Their conclusion is the only one that makes sense—nuclear weapons must never be used again, and the only way to guarantee that is to abolish them altogether.
There exists today a path to nuclear disarmament, and it is not the path laid out by Emmanual Macron. It is the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, the only hope we have of avoiding a nuclear holocaust. As then-director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, Beatrice Fihn, said in accepting the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize: “There are only two possible outcomes to the story of nuclear weapons. Either we do away with them, or they will do away with us.”
Iran’s sprawling nuclear facility at Natanz was struck during U.S. and Israeli military operations against the Islamic Republic, Iran’s ambassador to the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Monday.
Again they attacked Iran’s peaceful, safeguarded nuclear facilities yesterday,” Reza Najafi told reporters at a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s 35-nation board of governors. Asked by Reuters which facilities were hit, he replied: “Natanz.”
Beyond Nuclear strongly condemns the attacks against Iran by two nuclear-armed countries, the United States and Israel, when a diplomatic solution to Iran’s nuclear program was already within reach.
“These renewed attacks on Iran come at a time when negotiations were already underway to secure a new nuclear verification agreement with Iran,” said Linda Pentz Gunter, the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear. “This illegal attack by the US and Israel is dangerous and provocative and risks leading to a wider war, potentially involving the use of nuclear weapons. Such an outcome would be catastrophic not only for the region but for the world.”
Iran is a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that allows for the development of a civil but not military nuclear program and has consistently denied it has any plans to develop nuclear weapons.
Prior to the attacks by the US and Israel against Iran’s nuclear facilities last June (pictured), the International Atomic Energy had said there was no evidence to suggest Iran was making nuclear weapons.
The premise for the attacks appears to be President Trump’s personal dissatisfaction with current negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. But in 2018, President Trump destroyed a perfectly workable nuclear agreement with Iran known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, that subjected Iran to verification and inspections to be sure it did not develop nuclear weapons.
Uranium enriched to 5% U-235 is considered for civil use. Above 90% is viewed as weapons grade. Currently, Iran is believed to be enriching uranium to 60% or possibly 80%, considered “weapons usable” but not suitable for the production of nuclear missiles.
“Instead of continuing with the diplomatic efforts already underway to negotiate a new nuclear agreement with Iran, the Trump administration has chosen the reckless and unnecessary path of military aggression, a decision that will cost countless innocent lives and billions of US tax dollars,” Pentz Gunter said.
Although also a signatory to the NPT, the US has failed to abide by Article VI of the treaty, which calls for nuclear armed nations to reduce and eventually eliminate their arsenals. The US is instead “modernizing” its nuclear weapons — code for expansion and enhancement — at a cost of $946 billion over the next ten years.
Israel has refused to admit that it has nuclear weapons, but is estimated to possess at least 80 warheads and potentially as many as 200.
French nuclear-armed jets could be stationed in Britain and other allied European countries after Emmanuel Macron unveiled a dramatic expansion of France’s deterrence doctrine…
The French president also used the symbolic setting of Île Longue, the country’s Atlantic nuclear fortress in Brittany, to announce the first increase in its nuclear warhead stockpile since the 1990s.
French president Emmanuel Macron has said France would increase the number of nuclear warheads and allow for temporary deployment of its nuclear-armed aircraft to allied countries for exercises as part of its new nuclear strategy seeking to “Europeanise” its deterrence programme (15:29, 15:50).
In a major speech at the nuclear submarines Navy base of Île Longue, Macron said Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Sweden, the Netherlands, Poland, and the United Kingdom are expected to be involved in the programme, with London and Berlin playing particularly important roles (15:47, 16:00).
Several EU leaders confirmed their plans to engage with France on the details of the programme (16:44, 16:51, 17:04).
The president repeated his warnings that Europe needed to urgently step up its defence posture to respond to new, emerging threats and disintegration of rules on the use of nuclear weapons
And so it begins. This time it isn’t ‘kayfabe’ and ‘negotiated strikes and counter-strikes’. The ‘peace president’, when announcing joint US-Israeli strikes against Iran on 28 February, said it would just take a few days, and gloated that he ‘took out the regime’ by targeting top Iranian leadership, including Ayatollah Khamenei. But Iran’s swift and massive response – bombing 11 countries housing US and Israeli military bases and installations, including a British base in Cyprus, EU territory – now has Trump saying the war will ‘last for weeks’…
What did they think was going to happen, that Iranians would ‘rise up and take power from their oppressors’? The Americans appear to have truly believed their own propaganda. In reality, Iranians are defiantly rallying in support of their country, and government, while Muslims across the region are preparing to potentially join the fray and do as Iran has always sought: remove all American military forces from the Persian Gulf, if not the Middle East as a whole.
It’s too early for predicting such an end-game, but in the meantime, it appears that, in the absence of Iranian popular support for US and Israeli ‘regime intervention’, the strategy could switch to attacking the people of Iran and the country’s infrastructure, ‘punishment’ for not ‘capitulating’.
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