Trump Isolated as His Illegal and Unprovoked “War” on Iran Backfires
2.3.26
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On day three of Donald Trump’s cataclysmically stupid decision to indulge Benjamin Netanyahu in his malignant 40-year dream of destroying Iran, it’s starting to look as though it will backfire on him spectacularly.
Today, it’s been reported that Pentagon officials told Congressional staff yesterday that “Iran was not planning to strike US forces or bases in the Middle East unless Israel attacked Iran first”, undercutting Trump’s fatuous claims, as “Operation Epic Fury” was launched, that the US’s attacks on Iran, in conjunction with Israel, were aimed at “eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime.”
It was already screamingly apparent that Trump’s claims of legitimacy were tenuous, because he had, typically, refused to seek approval from Congress, even though only Congress can approve US military action, and had also failed to seek approval from the UN Security Council.
Emboldened by Congressional indulgence of his numerous illegal military interventions to date — kidnapping Venezuela’s President Maduro and his wife, for example, relentlessly bombing small boats in the Caribbean and elsewhere, and imposing a deadly blockade on Cuba — he is now dangerously exposed after illegally targeting and murdering the Iranian leader, Ayatollah Khameini, and numerous other senior Iranian officials, while blithely ignoring the scale of Iran’s ability to retaliate — not only against Israel, but also against US military vessels and US bases throughout the Middle East.
Amidst the sickening carnage in Iran, including an ever-growing death toll from an attack on a girls’ elementary school, a handful of US casualties have already been reported, although it doesn’t seem too far-fetched to infer that the true number of US deaths is being suppressed.
Fears in the Pentagon that the conflict “could spiral out of control”
Just as devastating as the Pentagon’s revolt against Trump’s supposed justification for the start of “major combat operations” is the revelation, by Pentagon officials who spoke to the Washington Post, that the mood within the US’s military headquarters is “intense and paranoid”, with fears that the conflict “could spiral out of control.”
Of particular concern is the fact that the US has an inadequate stockpile of air defense weapons that are urgently needed to protect its military vessels and its bases across the Middle East, against Iranian missiles and drones.
Last week, before the military operation began, Trump’s senior military adviser, Gen. Dan Caine, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “warned the White House that munitions shortfalls and a lack of broad military support from other US allies would add considerable risk to any operation in Iran and to the US personnel put in harm’s way.”
As the Post described it, “The US has a vast amount of firepower in the region, including nine destroyers capable of shooting down missiles. But videos circulating online show that one of the other major threats US troops face is from Iran’s fleet of Shahed drones, which fly slow and low, and are not optimal targets for US air defenses.”
Disturbingly, Donald Trump doesn’t seem to care. Having claimed, in the pre-recorded video message that he posted on social media to announce the start of the attacks on Iran, that “the lives of courageous American heroes may be lost and we may have casualties”, he doubled down on his lack of concern for dead US soldiers in another video message last night, conceding that there will probably be more deaths, but “that’s just the way it is.”
Gulf states realize that their alliances with the US don’t offer protection, but make them a target
As opposition within the US mounts, Trump also faces another insurgency, from the leaders of the Gulf states under attack from Iran, who have discovered that their long-standing alliances with the US, in which they were offered protection in exchange for allowing the US to establish military bases on their soil, have turned out, when tested, to be nothing but a mirage.
As a Saudi official told Al Jazeera yesterday, “America has abandoned us, and focused its defense systems on protecting Israel, leaving the Gulf states that host its military bases at the mercy of Iranian missiles and drones.”
Further unease has been exposed in the UAE, where, although the Defense Ministry announced that it had “intercepted 132 of 137 Iranian ballistic missiles and 195 of 209 drones” launched at its territory — a 96% success rate — that other 4% exposed it to devastation that was simply not supposed to happen.
As the analyst Shanaka Anslem Perera explained on X, “The grand bargain of the Gulf has operated on a simple formula for decades. Host American military bases. Receive a security umbrella. Prosper under the perception of invulnerability. Build the tallest buildings, the busiest airports, the most expensive hotels, on the understanding that the American presence deters anyone from attacking you. That bargain just failed in real time on the most expensive real estate on earth.”
He added, “Iran did not fire 137 ballistic missiles at the UAE because it has a dispute with the UAE. It fired them because the UAE hosts Al Dhafra Air Base, where the US Air Force’s 380th Expeditionary Wing operates reconnaissance, refueling, and combat support aircraft. Because the THAAD missile defense system deployed on Emirati soil exists to protect American force projection, not Emirati shopping malls. Because when the United States launched ‘Operation Epic Fury’ from bases scattered across the Gulf, every host nation became a co-belligerent whether it consented or not.”
Writing of the 4% of Iranian attacks that succeeded, Perera proceeded to explain, “Fourteen drones landed within the country. Debris fell across Saadiyat Island, Khalifa City, Bani Yas, and Mohamed bin Zayed City. A Pakistani worker died in Abu Dhabi. Fires broke out at Jebel Ali Port and on the facade of the Burj Al Arab. The world’s busiest international airport shut down. When your economic model depends on absolute safety, 96 percent is not enough.”
Is this the US’s first pedophile blackmail war?
Back in the US, meanwhile, anyone with any sense is wondering if the only reason Trump agreed to Israel’s demands to fulfil Netanyahu’s long-cherished dream of seeking to destroy Iran is because this is the US’s first pedophile blackmail war, undertaken primarily because Israel has evidence of Trump’s monstrous crimes against underage girls, as hinted at, but not publicly exposed in the Justice Department’s recent Congress-ordered release of millions of pages from the Epstein Files.
Is it really a far-fetched explanation?
* * * * *
Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer (of a photo-journalism project, ‘The State of London’, which ran from 2012 to 2023), film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose music is available via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (see the ongoing photo campaign here) and the successful We Stand With Shaker campaign of 2014-15, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo”, which you can watch on YouTube here.
In 2017, Andy became very involved in housing issues. He is the narrator of the documentary film, ‘Concrete Soldiers UK’, about the destruction of council estates, and the inspiring resistance of residents, he wrote a song ‘Grenfell’, in the aftermath of the entirely preventable fire in June 2017 that killed over 70 people, and, in 2018, he was part of the occupation of the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford, to try to prevent its destruction — and that of 16 structurally sound council flats next door — by Lewisham Council and Peabody.
Since 2019, Andy has become increasingly involved in environmental activism, recognizing that climate change poses an unprecedented threat to life on earth, and that the window for change — requiring a severe reduction in the emission of all greenhouse gases, and the dismantling of our suicidal global capitalist system — is rapidly shrinking, as tipping points are reached that are occurring much quicker than even pessimistic climate scientists expected. You can read his articles about the climate crisis here. He has also, since, October 2023, been sickened and appalled by Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and you can read his detailed coverage here.
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21 Responses
Andy Worthington says...
When I posted this on Facebook, I wrote:
On day three of Donald Trump’s cataclysmically stupid decision to indulge Benjamin Netanyahu in his malignant 40-year dream of destroying Iran, I explain how, in some key respects, it’s starting to look as though it will backfire on him spectacularly.
Firstly, Pentagon officials have stated that “Iran was not planning to strike US forces or bases in the Middle East unless Israel attacked Iran first”, undermining Trump’s claim that the joint US-Israeli attacks on Iran were aimed at “eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime”, and leaving him particularly vulnerable because he neither sought nor received approval for his unprovoked attacks from either Congress or the UN Security Council.
Secondly, US allies throughout the Gulf have, as I describe it, “discovered that their long-standing alliances with the US, in which they were offered protection in exchange for allowing the US to establish military bases on their soil, have turned out, when tested, to be nothing but a mirage.”
As a Saudi official told Al Jazeera yesterday, “America has abandoned us, and focused its defense systems on protecting Israel, leaving the Gulf states that host its military bases at the mercy of Iranian missiles and drones.”
In addition, in the UAE, although 96% of Iranian missiles and drones were shot down, that other 4% have wreaked havoc. As the analyst Shanaka Anslem Perera explained, “The grand bargain of the Gulf has operated on a simple formula for decades. Host American military bases. Receive a security umbrella. Prosper under the perception of invulnerability. Build the tallest buildings, the busiest airports, the most expensive hotels, on the understanding that the American presence deters anyone from attacking you. That bargain just failed in real time on the most expensive real estate on earth.”
And, thirdly, Trump’s indifference to US casualties, which he announced when the military operation began, and reiterated last night in a video message in which he breezily dismissed further US military deaths as “that’s just the way it is”, will not reassure the majority of US voters who are opposed to the attacks that Trump has any fundamental interest whatsoever in the lives of US military personnel.
As the fallout from the US’s selfishness continues to test the strength of long-held alliances in the Gulf, perhaps the most burning question concerns the reasons for Trump’s support of Netanyahu’s long-cherished dream. Can it really be that this is the US’s first pedophile blackmail war, undertaken because Israel has evidence of Trump’s sexual crimes that were deliberately hidden in the recent release of millions of pages from the Epstein Files?
As I ask, “Is it really a far-fetched explanation?”
...on March 2nd, 2026 at 3:45 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Joy Harvey wrote:
Great article, thanks Andy.
...on March 2nd, 2026 at 4:32 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks so much, Joy. Great to hear from you.
...on March 2nd, 2026 at 4:32 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Howard Rotman wrote:
The United States / Israel military’s criminal bombing of a girls’ elementary school Saturday morning on 2/28/2026 in southern Iran’s city of Minab resulted in the massacre of 165 students and serious injuries to 96 more.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10215195900888088&set=p.10215195900888088&type=3
...on March 2nd, 2026 at 4:33 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Good to hear from you, Howard, and yes, could there be a more grotesque example of how this “war” isn’t anything more than a replication of the tactics used by Israel in Gaza?
...on March 2nd, 2026 at 4:33 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Nigel Paul wrote:
Good article!
Shared.
...on March 2nd, 2026 at 4:34 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks, Nigel. Good to hear from you.
...on March 2nd, 2026 at 4:34 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Grotesque destruction in Tehran, as the US and Israel randomly destroy civilian targets. How is this meant to encourage the people to rise up and effect regime change? It’s just the genocidal Gaza playbook revisited. https://x.com/tparsi/status/2028491108804682023
...on March 2nd, 2026 at 4:49 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Kären Ahern wrote:
Of course, it is not farfetched when Israel recruited, trained and funded Epstein, just for a moment like this where they could use blackmail to get the U.S. to fight their psychotic, colonizer wars.
I saw a video of what was stated as an Iran hit to an important weapons site in Israel. Giant white cloud that turned bright yellow, like phosphorous looking compound? Have you seen this? If you have any info. on that, I would love it.
I can’t be online digging today, I have to dig in the soil. I am just hoping Gaza doesn’t get radioactive blowback, besides the borders and aid being blockaded and bombing worsening … while it goes unreported. Take care.
...on March 3rd, 2026 at 9:56 am
Andy Worthington says...
Good to hear from you, Kären, and thanks for your thoughts on the blackmail possibility – or probability.
I haven’t seen the video you mention, but it’s noticeable, of course, that coverage of the damage caused to Israel by Iranian attacks has been fairly muted, as it was last June, with what reporting there is focusing on sympathy for Israeli civilians sheltering in bunkers, and no mention of how the people of Gaza haven’t had any such luxury as they’ve been torn apart over the last 29 months – or how non-Israeli Jews aren’t allowed into Israel’s shelters.
Hoping your digging gave you some respite from the relentless horrors right now.
...on March 3rd, 2026 at 9:57 am
Andy Worthington says...
Tony Gosling wrote:
No talk of blackmail, please…
The FBI also interviewed a woman known as “Jane” who testified under oath. Jane claims she was ‘introduced to Trump by Epstein at Mar-a-Lago’ when she was 14 years old.
MS NOW discovered her interview is missing from the Justice Department’s website.
https://www.ms.now/all-in/missing-epstein-files-trump-spark-concerns-cover-up-new-allegations
...on March 3rd, 2026 at 9:57 am
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks, Tony. Yes, of course we mustn’t mention those missing files, and the FBI interviews with this woman, speaking about what Trump and Epstein did to her when she was 13 or 14 years old.
...on March 3rd, 2026 at 9:58 am
Andy Worthington says...
Richard Greve wrote:
It’s a very possible if not probable escalation.
...on March 3rd, 2026 at 9:58 am
Andy Worthington says...
And all, it seems, Richard, without very much at all that resembles coherent war planning. Yes, they’ve decapitated Iran’s leadership, but it’s idiotic to think that making a martyr of Khameini wouldn’t strengthen the regime, and it’s just as idiotic to think that the Iranians who oppose the regime – and are somehow immune to the revival of national solidarity that happens when a country is attacked – would even be able rise up without colossal support.
...on March 3rd, 2026 at 9:59 am
Andy Worthington says...
MJ Tallon wrote:
Anyone who believed the US backs up its promises to its allies hasn’t been paying attention for a good few decades. If you’re lucky, they won’t decide they need to outright invade you.
...on March 3rd, 2026 at 9:59 am
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks, MJ. Good to hear from you. While everything you say is true, it’s significant how rattled the Gulf states are, because, not only has their oil and gas been the basis for friendly relations with the US for decades: they have also in general been trying to make sure that US leaders feel sufficiently pampered by them that they don’t wander off into dangerously uncharted territory like Trump has just done.
Israel’s the key to it all. They’re the ones who don’t even care what damage they cause to the global economy, for example, as they have moved inexorably, it seems to me, to a place where they’re fairly openly declaring their contempt for the continued existence of any country that they perceive poses a threat to them, which now not only includes Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, parts of Syria, Yemen and the whole of Iran, but also the UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states – almost the entire Muslim world in the Levant and the Middle East.
...on March 3rd, 2026 at 9:59 am
Andy Worthington says...
Yesterday, the New York Times published an in-depth article, “How Trump Decided to Go to War”, establishing a timeline beginning with Netanyahu’s visit to the White House in January, in which the following passage struck me as significant. It involves Trump’s response to Tucker Carlson’s entreaties not to go to war, made during a visit by Carlson to the White House: “The president said he understood the risks of an attack, but he conveyed to Mr. Carlson that he had no choice but to join a strike that Israel would launch.”
Why did he convey the message that “he had no choice”?
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/02/us/politics/trump-war-iran-israel.html
...on March 3rd, 2026 at 10:06 am
Andy Worthington says...
Yesterday, Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State, fatally undermined Trump’s claim that the US’s attack on Iran was aimed at “eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime” — which was meant to provide cover for the illegality of its actions under international law — by revealing that, actually, the “imminent threat” of an attack by Iran was only in response to planned attacks by Israel, and that the US decided to preempt retaliatory attacks on US bases and assets in response to Israel’s attacks by joining in with the initial aggression.
In other words, as Iran’s foreign minister explained, Rubio admitted that the US “entered a war of choice on behalf of Israel.”
Rubio made the revelation on Capitol Hill, as he briefed a small group of Congressional leaders on the joint US-Israeli offensive. This is what he said:
“There absolutely was an imminent threat. And the imminent threat was that we knew that if Iran was attacked — and we believed they would be attacked — that they would immediately come after us, and we were not going to sit there and absorb a blow before we responded.”
It will be interesting to see how, in future, cynical lawyers try and spin this explanation as justification for the US slavishly partnering with Netanyahu in the launch of a completely illegal military onslaught on a country that, it is clear, didn’t pose any kind of “imminent threat” to the US.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/pERRy2Ij7Zc
...on March 3rd, 2026 at 10:39 am
Andy Worthington says...
Jane Bruce-Munro wrote:
I have no doubt that Trump desperately wanted this war to distract national news away from his name being on thousands of pages in the Epstein files. Last week reports began to emerge about several pages missing from the files that relate to an incident in 1983 where Trump raped and physically abused a 13-year old girl who eventually decided to press charges but then retracted her statements after her father’s life was threatened.
Trump is a psychopath happily using mass death and destruction to avoid responsibility for his crimes. He and everyone around him are corrupt, pathological liars and grifters who say and do anything to hold onto power. They imagine they’ll never be held responsible for all the harm they’ve done to individuals, our whole country, and the rest of the world.
...on March 3rd, 2026 at 12:57 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Thanks for your thoughts, Jane. Good to hear from you. Many people are flagging up those missing pages from the Epstein Files, although it’s clear that this march to war began before those revelations. I can only wonder what Netanyahu and Trump talked about during their three-hour meeting at the White House on February 11, during Netanyahu’s sixth visit. That was 12 days after the massive Epstein Files release, and I can only wonder if it was then that Netanyahu exerted some sort of pressure on Trump.
...on March 3rd, 2026 at 12:58 pm
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