Donald Trump started the war early Saturday morning, Feb. 28, urged on by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as U.S. and Israeli forces shelled military and civilian sites in Iran, without bothering to get approval from Congress. Trump claims he was justified in attacking Iraq because “Iran has waged a 47-year war against the United States,” and he said he expects this war to be relatively short, expecting unconditional surrender.
Trump apparently believes that “war” dates back to Nov. 4, 1979, when Iranian students seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took American hostages after President Jimmy Carter allowed the deposed Shah of Iran to enter the U.S. for medical treatment. The hostages were released on Jan. 20, 1981, after Ronald Reagan was inaugurated. The U.S. and Iran had a hostile relationship until President Barack Obama in 2015 reached an agreement with Iran under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) aiming to ensure a peaceful nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. Iran restricted its uranium enrichment capabilities, reduced its stockpile of enriched uranium, and allowed for international monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency. But Trump withdrew the U.S. from the agreement in 2018 and put sanctions back in place, resulting in Iranian stopping compliance. Trump further undermined any confidence in U.S. good intentions in January 2020 when he ordered the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, commander of Iran’s Quds Force, when Soleimani was traveling to meet Iraq’s prime minister.
In his second term, Trump in June 2025 ordered U.S. bombers to drop 30,000-pound bombs on two key underground uranium enrichment plants, which Trump said obliterated Iran’s nuclear program that Israel viewed as an existential threat. A Pentagon spokesman said the bombing likely set back the program two years. But in the new year Trump has been itching to engage in full-scale war and regime change — the very sort of “forever war” he promised he would not do.
In waging these wars, U.S. Secretary of “War” Pete Hegseth said the U.S. will not abide by “stupid rules of engagement,” and he boasted of raining down “death and destruction from the sky all day long.”
According to the Human Rights Activists News Agency, part of a US-based human rights monitor for Iran, at least 1,168 civilians were killed in the first week of U.S.-Israeli attacks. The Iranian government on the seventh day of the war put the death toll at 1,332 people.
The war started Feb. 28 with a series of Israeli airstrikes that targeted Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, supreme leader of Iran, and other high-ranking Iranian officials.around Tehran. In addition to Khamenei, who was 86 and ailing, the strikes also killed Khamenei’s wife, daughter, son-in-law, three of his grandchildren, and his daughter-in-law.
Trump said he expected to have a role in selecting the new leader of Iran, and he discounted Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba, a 56-year-old cleric whom Trump dismissed March 5 as “a lightweight.” Trump added, “I have to be involved in the appointment, like with Delcy [Rodriguez] in Venezuela.” Three days later, the “lightweight” was appointed without Trump’s input. Axios reported “Mojtaba is expected to be more hardline than his father, and his ascent means the Iranian regime may get more repressive.”
Daoud Kuttab of Al Jazeera on March 2 noted it is highly unlikely that Khamenei’s successor would be as open to negotiations as his father was. Statements by Omani interlocutors during talks in Muscat and Geneva pointed to major concessions on the nuclear issue that Khamenei was prepared to make. It is unlikely that his replacement would have the political space to follow suit.
In the first week of the year, more than 3,643 civilian sites were damaged in attacks attributed to the U.S. and Israel, according to the Iranian Red Crescent Society—including 3,090 homes, 528 commercial centers, 13 medical facilities and nine Red Crescent centers.
At least 192 children were killed across the Middle East in the first week of the war. Most of them were girls ages 7-12 who were killed on the first morning of the attack when a girls’ elementary school in the southern Iranian town of Minab was shelled.
At least 175 people were reported killed in the attack, which unnamed officials have said was “likely” carried out by the United States, according to Reuters. HuffPost reported that Pentagon officials briefed Congress that the US “was most likely responsible.” U.S. and Israeli officials claimed Iranian military were responsible for the attack.
Eyewitnesses and relatives of victims told Middle East Eye that the attack was a “double-tap” strike, in which survivors and first responders appeared to be targeted following the initial bombing. An Al Jazeera investigation has concluded that the attack was likely “deliberate.” Human Rights Watch said the bombing of the school should be investigated as a possible war crime.
Hegseth said during a March 4 press conference the Pentagon was investigating the matter, but offered no further indication of concern.
That same day, the unarmed Iranian warship IRIS Dina was torpedoed by a U.S. submarine in the Indian Ocean returning from a multinational naval training exercise hosted by the Indian government.
The U.S. submarine left the area without seeking survivors, but Sri Lanka’s navy recovered 87 bodies and rescued 32 survivors from the IRIS Dena, with 10 Iranian sailors unaccounted for..
Iran’s Foreign Minister framed the sinking as an attack on a vessel that had been under Indian diplomatic protection.
The Pentagon offered a different view. Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, described the strike at a March 4 briefing as a demonstration of unmatched American military capability.
“To hunt, find and kill an out-of-area deployer is something that only the United States can do at this type of scale,” Caine said.
U.S. officials have maintained throughout Operation Epic Fury that Iranian naval vessels operating in international waters remain valid military targets, regardless of recent port calls.
The war has been a boon for the U.S. oil industry.
Oil prices surpassed $100 a barrel March 9, as Middle East nations announced production cuts in the wake of chaos and destruction of oil facilities in Iran, which has closed the Strait of Hormuz, through which much of the oil to the West must pass.
In the U.S., where oil production facilities remained intact, the average price of a gallon of regular gasoline rose to $3.539 on March 10, up 61.8 cents from a month earlier, according to AAA motor club. Diesel was selling for $4.78 a gallon, up $1.121 over a month. And it’s all profits for U.S. oil companies.
In a post on social media on March 8, Trump criticized the mounting concerns and cast the price hikes as temporary.
“Short term oil prices, which will drop rapidly when the destruction of the Iran nuclear threat is over, is a very small price to pay for U.S.A., and World, Safety and Peace,” Trump wrote, noting, “ONLY FOOLS WOULD THINK DIFFERENTLY!”
You may judge Trump through his enablers in Congress at the midterm elections in November. If Trump allows it. — JMC
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