Associated Press
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 28, 2026
My Comment:
I am not very surprised that a conflict broke out with Iran. After all, you don't send two carrier strike groups and about 1/3rd of your fighter jets to the Middle East just for fun. The military build up by the United States was one of the largest since the Iraq War and it was going to be used if diplomacy failed.
And it did. The Iranians just wouldn't budge. Even though the smart thing would have been to make a deal with President Trump, they absolutely would not move on nuclear enrichment, let alone other issues, like funding the Houthis and Hezbollah. I said previously that the rational thing would be to simply give up their nuclear ambitions, but for whatever reason, they could not. And now they are paying the price.
It is unclear how much damage these strikes have done but the general perception is that the strikes were extremely effective. It is very likely that much of Iran's leadership is dead. And that may include Iran's president and Ayatollah Khamenei, with Israel saying they got him as of this writing, though who knows if that is accurate.
Iran simply did not have the air defenses left to actually try and stop these strikes. They lost most of their defenses during the war with Israel last year and they did not have a chance to build them back up. And indeed, it seems like they focused on building offensive weapons, like ballistic missiles and drones, instead of shoring up their air defenses. They are absolutely paying the price now, they simply cannot contest anything the United States or Israel are doing right now. The United States has total air superiority.
Iran also made the baffling move to target US bases in the region and this has angered almost all of their neighbors. Indeed, the strikes that targeted, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Iraq, the UAE, Bahrain, Jordan and even Syria, will likely result in many of those countries either offering clandestine or open support, or even joining the conflict themselves. Indeed, I would be surprised if the Saudis, and the other non-Oman, non-Iraq gulf states don't join the war, and even Syria, under the new regime, will probably cooperate with the new coalition, though direct aid is unlikely.
I generally think this war will be a success. Iran was already in dire straits due to losing the last war, along with runaway inflation, a water and food crisis and one of the largest protests the government has ever seen. Iran also does not have any real allies and their proxies in Iraq, Syria, Palestine and Yemen have been degraded, with only the Houthis in Yemen having real combat power.
The only thing that could possibly save the regime, what is left of it anyways, is if a popular uprising doesn't occur. Given that they just killed 3,000 to 30,000 people during the last riots, there is always a chance that the Iranian people won't want to "risk it". After all, this is strictly an air campaign and the best the Iranian people can hope for is that the US will launch airstrikes to support them. Is that likely? It's way too early to tell.
So is any of this justified? It depends. I personally think that the "Iran is six weeks away from getting a bomb" is nonsense and has always been nonsense. I don't believe their program has ever been peaceful, but I also don't think they had anywhere near time enough to actually get close to building a bomb.
But that doesn't mean we didn't have a valid casus belli. Indeed, it's a fairly justified war. Iran pretty much violated the cease fire of the 2025 Israel-Iran war regardless, so that alone could justify military action. Not to mention the fact that they killed thousands of their own people this year when they protested the regime.
The most compelling case, and the one on the most defensible legal ground? It's the fact that Iran has killed thousands of American soldiers and civilians since the inception of the regime. In Iraq alone they were directly responsible through their proxies in killing at least 1000 US troops. Not to mention the post Iraq War attacks on US troops in Syria and Iraq. And, of course, several major terror attacks, including the Khobar Towers attack in 1996 and the Bruit attack in 1984. The Iranian regime has a ton of blood on their hands and an unacceptable amount of it is American...
It is probably worth noting here that this is not the first conflict that broke out this week. The war between Afghanistan and Pakistan broke out again, with both sides attacking each other and a lot of folks getting killed on both sides. That war should be a very different conflict, given that it involves ground troops, but I would be remiss if I didn't at least mention that things are getting spicy there as well. Indeed, I think that one is the more serious war and it's utterly rotten timing that all the diplomatic energy is going to be going to the Iran conflict.
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