Wars and Rumors of War, 2026. Part 5. Trump's forever war. King Donald's War, Part 1.

    

You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.

Matthew, Chapter 24.

We shall not enter into any of the abstruse definitions of War used by publicists. We shall keep to the element of the thing itself, to a duel. War is nothing but a duel on an extensive scale. If we would conceive as a unit the countless number of duels which make up a War, we shall do so best by supposing to ourselves two wrestlers. Each strives by physical force to compel the other to submit to his will: each endeavours to throw his adversary, and thus render him incapable of further resistance.

Carl von Clausewitz

The irony is that Trump could make a plausible case that this war is allowable under the Authorization to Use Military Force George W. Bush received in 2001. But symbolically that would mean Trump is continuing Bush’s “forever war.”

Regardless, Republicans aren’t just under a legal clock to get this thing over with, but a political one, too. Polling shows Americans, including many Republicans, have no thirst for a long conflict, which makes sense given that they were not asked to prepare for this war. Hence, the insistence that this war will be short and tidy.

The problem is that Iran knows this. That’s why they don’t have to win, they just have to ride out the bombings until the public or Trump loses patience with this very real war.

Jonah Goldberg, Republicans aren’t willing to call war in Iran what it is.

But they were very strongly involved and all of the people that died through the roadside bombs died and are right now walking around with no legs, no arms. A face that’s been so badly damaged.

Donald Trump, alleged commander in chief.

Unless otherwise noted, every item in this updated thread is on Mad King Donny's war on Iran.  Or not a war if you ask Sycophant Mike Johnson, Toady of the House.

March 12, 2026

New Hampshire National Guard’s 157th Air Refueling Wing in connection with the war with Iran.

Up to 17 ships have been hit by the Iranians in the Gulf of Hormuz.

Iran hit refinery targets in Oman.

The first week of Trump's war cost the $11.3 B.

$11.3B and they can still hit ships.

The US is releasing 172M bbls of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Oil opened today at $90.75.

And, not only is the war nowhere near ending, Iran is dictating terms to the United States and Israel, those being acknowledging Iran's "legitimate rights" are acknowledged, compensation for damages and strong international guarantees to prevent future attacks.

Iran would not have made those if it was anywhere near "surrendering" in any form.  Indeed, the last item strongly suggests that they've coordinated with China and Russia who would probably back that demand.  If the US accepts any variant of this, we're surrendering, but given that the war is a unilateral action by demented Donald Trump, and that the GOP will start panicking soon about this still going on in November, of which there's an excellent chance it will be, and prices are going to skyrocket enormously, and that his mind wonders, there's a pretty good chance he'll do it and declare victory, which nobody except the most deluded MAGA will believe.

This has gotten next to no press and right now, the concept of the U.S. surrendering to Iran seems absurd, but Donald Trump surrendered to the Taliban in the Afghan War and is simply not a very intelligent man.  As casualties mount and inflation ramps up, he'll look like a failure, which of course, he largely is.  Because of that, he'll grow anxious.  I don't put it past him at all to agree to some version of this, if not this.

Cont:  

Iran's Supreme Leader issued a statement vowing to avenge those killed in the first strikes and to keep hitting other states.

So, the war isn't over.  It's not close to over, and we have no idea how to win it.

March 13, 2026

Two acts of terrorism occurred yesterday.

A major Jewish synagogue was attacked by a U.S. citizen of Lebanese origin whose brother was killed last week in an Israeli raid there.

Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, a former Virginia Army National Guardsman attacked a ROTC class at Old Dominion. He joined ISIL after his discharge from the Guard and had been previously convicted of plotting a terrorist attack.  The class instructor was killed before the ROTC cadets killed Jolloh.

These attacks are fairly clearly "lone wolf" type attacks, not sleeper cell attacks.  The probable result will be howling complaints by MAGA that every Muslim in the US needs to be deported.

I will note that the Muslim population in the country is really winning the stupid prize for playing the stupid game. They rallied to some degree to Trump as they were upset about Biden's support of Israel.  Well, now Gaza, which was the source of all of that, has been utterly flattened, Israel is waging war in Lebanon, and the US is in Iran.  This is one of those items like Wyoming conservatives and their support of the "health care" amendment to the Wyoming Constitution wondering if maybe they have the blood of aborted fetuses on their hands (they do). Muslims who supported Trump are partiallyr responsible for this.

Trump threatened the Iranian leadership yesterday, calling them in "deranged scumbags". That's real adult.

A KC135 went down over Iraq, killing the crew of four.

Figures in the administration are quietly backing away from claiming the war will result in regime change.  If it doesn't, it will have achieved utterly nothing, but then, we don't really know what the war is supposed to be about in the first place.

March 14, 2026

Is JD Vance Rooting for the Iran War to Fail?

Whatever Vance is or is not rooting for, the price of oil, now at $97/bbl, is definitely going to go up as the US hit a major Iranian petroleum loading facility yesterday, a purely economic target.  Going after Iranian petroleum infrastructure means the price rise will last for years, to at least some extent.

Indeed, riffing off of this, the satirical "The Onion" has Trump getting the Greenpeace award for making oil too expensive to use.  There's some truth to that.  Electric vehicles are starting to look pretty good as the world's petroleum supply gets systematically destroyed.

Indeed, somewhat related to that, we have this:

The Oil Tankers Trump Seized Are Costing the U.S. Millions of Dollars

Although President Trump said seizing tankers would be a financial boon, the cost of maintaining just one aging ship has already reached $47 million.

We not only aren't making money from seizing tankers, we're spending far more on them than the contents of the oil they contained.

This really should have been obvious, but it does not appear that there's anyone in the administration who understands the petroleum industry whatsoever.  

Indeed, frankly, while Trump may be a businessman, the administration is amazingly dim on economics itself.  This probably shouldn't be a surprise as Trump is merely a real estate developer operating on inherited wealth.  M'eh.  

None of Trumps economic plans are working out.  We're losing jobs, businesses are not moving to the US like he claims, and we're about to get hit by inflation in a ramped up fashion.  Folks who bizarrely feel that Trump is some sort of super genius should read this:

Those folks should read this:

I Was Born Wealthy, And Know Rich People Don’t Work Harder Than You I never saw exceptional “hard work” or “intelligence” among the members of the class I was born into.

The gravity of the current situation can hardly be overemphasized.  Trump doesn't know what he's doing.  As far as anyone can tell, this war was launched as he thought it would be easy.  It's not turning out to be at all.  There's no plan on how to end the war and we don't really have solid war aims.  Pete Hegseth and his company have a radical Calvinist view of what they'd like to do with US power.  Marco Rubio is probably chomping at the bits, in his too big shoes, hoping to invade Cuba.  We're nowhere near the end of any of this, including what will be endless price rises to fuel a war most Americans did not want and do not want now.

Cont:

As if any more evidence was needed that Trump had utterly no idea whatsoever about what he was doing, we have this:

Last week Trump rudely dismissed a vague suggestion from the UK that it might send ships to the region as we didn't need the help of Allies when we'd already won the war.

Today, Trump is begging for the help of allies.

March 14, 2026, cont.

Edgar Paxon's depiction of the Battle of the Little Big Horn.  More thought appears to have gone into the deployment of the 7th Cavalry in this July 1876 event than went into "what if the Iranian regime doesn't collapse when we attack" this month.

An editorial note.

When we started tracking Wars and Rumors of War as a series, the United States was not in a full blown war.  Indeed, back in 2020, when the series started, the U.S. wasn't really in any major conflicts at all.  That first entry is here:

Wars and Rumors of Wars

The first mention of the U.S. in the context of a war in that thread was in an entry on a prospective war with China over Taiwan, something that remains very much a possibility.

Now, the U.S. was to some degree at war, but in a minor way. We still had troops in Afghanistan although Trump had sealed the fate of that war by surrendering to the Taliban.  And a U.S. military mission remained in Iraq and Syria, as they still do.  Still, these missions did not meet the definition of war by any reasonable standard. The tread didn't really anticipate tracking anything major, let alone a major war involving the United States.

That first changed with Putin's invasion of Ukraine, bringing about the Russo Ukrainian War.  That ongoing conflict remains a very serious one, one which a serious President would be aiding Ukraine to help bring about a Ukrainian victory.  

We don't have a serious President.

We have King Donald, an octogenarian with dementia who admires Putin.

And now we have our own major war.

Given that, the time has come to sperate out the two big wars, Czar Vlad's war on Ukraine, and King Donald's war on Iran, into separate training threads.  We should have done that when we started this entry, rather than try a Part 5 to the Wars and Rumors of War series for 2026.  However.  Every single entry here is on Kind Donald's War, so we'll run with this and make it a joint entry until something on the world stage gives us an entry for Part 6 that doesn't involve Iran, or Ukraine.  The Russo Ukrainian War will also have a separate thread.

This also gives me a little more room to freely comment on both ongoing wars.  I'll just note now that King Donald's War will stand as a monument to hubris for the ages.  No plan to win it, not plan to get out, the Iranians were supposed to just quit.

Incredible.

Czar Vlad's war has a different set of lessons, one being that the Russian Army has always sucked.  The Japanese defeated it in the Russo Japanese War, the Germans in World War One and darned near in World War Two.  They never got over their own propaganda about winning the Second World War are now bogged down, and losing.

To paraphrase an older judge I heard the other day, well, if things look bad, at least we have a front row seat to the Apocalypse after all these years. 

cont:

The U.S. has instructed Americans to leave Iraq after a second attack on the embassy there.

The Administration seems to have been caught flat footed all the way around.  It didn't warn anyone, and it didn't bother to get the support of the American people.  It seems to have thought things would be over by now.

Domestically, it seems pretty clear J. D. Vance let it leak that he wasn't in favor of the war.  As the Heather Cox Richardson item below notes, this administrations leaks pretty severely anyway.  But this is pretty remarkable.

Vance was ‘skeptical’ voice in White House on Iran strikes

White House officials revealed that the vice president made his opposition known in the leadup.

There's a fair amount of "this wasn't my idea" going on right now, and no wonder.  A week into the war, there's no end in sight and, frankly, Iranian predications of oil hitting $200/bbl don't seem that far fetched.  Terrorism is ramping up.  Things aren't looking good.

March 16, 2026

King Donny was in fit mode over the weekend, threatening NATO if they don't help with the Straits of Hormuz and begging China for help.

Nobody is promising to send ships. Why would they?  The US even asking is proof that this was wasn't thought out.  What China would probably like to see if the US commit to keeping the straits open and tie up the U.S. Navy.

Iran rejected opening up a dialog with the United States and hit an oil target in the UAE.

Iran's Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei is reportedly in Russia where he received surgery.

March 17, 2026

Headline from the NYT.

Joe Kent, a Top U.S. Counterterrorism Official, Resigns Over the Iran War

Mr. Kent is the first Trump administration official to quit in opposition to the conflict. He said pressure from Israel had pushed the president into war against Iran.

And with that, we'll close this edition.

March 19, 2025

Israel his Iranian gas fields yesterday.

The price of oil leaped up to $118/bbl yesterday as a result, but is now down to $96.59.

It's increasingly obvious that Trump has no idea whatsoever how to bring the war to a conclusion.  I've seen one commentary from a respected journal now nothing that Iran will dictate the terms on how the war will end, which we already noted.  This is going to get worse, followed by a humiliation for the United States.

The Administration appears set to go to Congress and ask for $200B to prosecute the war.  I've now seen, for the first time, a suggestion that its time to reprise the protests of the late stage of the Vietnam War and have a protest march on Washington.

cont:

The price of natural gas in Europe has jumped 35% due to gas fields being hit by both sides.

The US is reportedly considering deploying troops to the north shore of the Straits of Hormuz as the US war effort can't get the straits out of the line of fire.

And as we cannot get this to update, on to the next installement.

Last edition:

Wars and Rumors of War, 2026. Part 4. Sumer and Elam.

Labels: 2020s, 2026, 2500 BC, Afghanistan, Carl von Clausewitz, Cuba, Hezbollah, J. D. Vance, law, Lebanon, Marco Rubio, MIddle East, Pakistan, Protestant, religion, Sumer and Elam, United States and Israel v. Iran, Wars and rumors of wars

A theory very close to the one I've advanced here.

Will Don be saying, et tu, J.D.?

From the always excellent Uncle Mike's blog:

Vance the Bully's Flunky

I still think my theory is more likely, but its interesting that I'm not the only one who is traveling this line of thought.

Uncle Mike, as he makes clear, believes that the plan is to wait until next year at which time the illegitimate occupant of the Oval Office, billionaire insurrectionist Donald Trump, will be impeached and removed from office, there by installing Vance as President.  It's an interesting theory.

The problem with it, I think, is that it requires the cooperation of a fair number of Republican Senators to go along with it.  I don't think they have the guts.  Senators like Wyoming's John Barrasso have proven so spineless that he's being examined by the Washington D.C. zoo for a place in the invertebrate display.  To be fair, they fear their voters, and in some areas, like Wyoming, the MAGA delusion is so deep that a lot of its adherents will carry it to the gave where they'll have to ask questions about why they supported an illegal war launched by an immoral serial polygamist while the environment went to pot. Barrasso will be right there with them, saying "they made me do it so I could keep my job".

Anyhow, I don't think enough Republican Senators will go along, unless the Senate GOP starts to hemorrhage pretty severely this November, in which case their save their job instincts will start to kick in.

My theory, which I've held here for a long time, is a bit more sinister.  

I've thought since before the election that the plan was to let Trump slip into increasingly worse dementia and then remove him just before the November election via the 25th Amendment.  That's nearly win/win for Vance.  It might cause a huge sigh of relief amongst independents who are refugee Republicans and the two or three Republicans who aren't MAGA, saving some of the election.  It also might give cover to candidates like Chuck Gray whose platform is that they love Trump so much, they want to be his adoring handmaiden.   If he's gone, they can go to the cabinet, pull out the bottle of Old Crow, put on the Boomtown Rats single I Never Loved Eva Braun, and start acting like sentient mammals.

If it doesn't save the election, Vance can still be President for two years and start pulling the "I'm not responsible for this particular stupid Don idea" while also blaming the Democrats for everything else.  Shoot, as the war against Iran will still be going on by then, he can declare victory and declare himself a hero, even if we haven't won by then, and we won't have.

Anyway you look at it, getting into office before Trump's term ends is Vance's only hope.  People don't like him.  The stench of Trump will attach too much for him to win on his own merits, and those merits, if you want to call them that, are not MAGA, they're NatCon.

The problem at this point is that while allowing Trump to get wackier and wackier serves their interests, we get deeper into bat shit crazy weird territory every day.  As it is, we're at war now, it would seem, as Bibi thought this was his chance and Bibi, Putin, and rich people, some of whom are in the Epstein files, are the only people Trump listens to.  We are in an area in which there are, now, hardly any limits, thanks to the Supreme Court.  If Bibi tells Donny nuking Tehran is okay, there's no guarantee an addled Trump wouldn't do it, although we can still hope that there's backchannel conversations in the DoD about how far they let this go before they just start saying no.

Presumably, if Donny comes in and says, "hey guys, I'm going to put the ball room here and it will be fun to have a march through a triumphal arch after I nuke Tehran, let's do that today so we can fight North Korean next week and put on a cabaret in Havanna!" the cabinet will still say no, but again, the problem is that the people in this administration, with a hand of exceptions, might actually be too far gone themselves.  Markwayne Mullin?  For goodness sake, he needs to be sent back to 6th grade and be reminded you don't wear your hat indoors, not given a job with the administration.  Steve Miller?  Yikes.  

Well, smoke and mirrors and backrooms.  Marco probably is angling for the Presidency himself and doesn't want to be too tarred with Trump feces.  There are probably others still.

By June or July we'll know if I was right.

A good clue I might be is that since the war with Iran started, Vance is hard to find.

Wars and Rumors of War, 2026. Part 4. Sumer and Elam.

 

You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.

Matthew, Chapter 24.

You have to make sure you know why you are going to war and then use decisive force to end it as soon as possible.

Colin Powell, 

March 3, 2026

United States and Israel v. Iran

The war continues on, obviously, with the Administration struggling to explain what its about, why now, and why it can omit Congress from its constitutional duty.

It's expanded into a regional war, so far all aircraft and missiles.  Included in the exchanges are those between Hezbollah and Israel in Lebanon.

It's become perfunctory to note that the Iranian government is horrible, which it is.  It murders and rapes its own citizens in the name of an extreme variant of Shi'a Islam.  But, there are a lot of horrible governments in the world.  North Korea and Russia's are two such examples, Afghanistan's is another, and Trump of  course cut a deal with them allowing them to return to power.

The Iranians were going to have a nuclear weapon, it has been claimed, soon, with soon being a bit of a moving target.  A nuclear armed Iran would be frightening and that's the best argument for this offensive war, which would make it a preemptive defensive war. Even that argument, however, seems very poorly developed.

Marco Rubio gave the justification that, if another nation (Israel) attacked Iran, they'd attack us back, and that was an imminent threat.  He claimed Iran was going to be attacked.

That basically would amount to handing the power to declare war for the United States over to Israel.

It just seems that, in reality, an aged demented Trump looking for some sort of legacy was talked into it by the Neoconservatives and Apocalyptic Evangelist in his circle of influencers, with perhaps, probably, Israel itself playing a role in that.  Of all those goals, the Neocon one would be the least disturbing, which is not to say that it would not be disturbing.  

One disturbing thing about that is that NPR, in its Politics podcast, ventured the opinion, not put this way, that Trump is basically drunk on power and will keep toppling governments as long as he's successful in doing so. If that's the case, we can predict that Cuba will be next as its a pet project of Marco Rubio.

The US has lost some aircraft to friendly fire, which in the age of cell phone video, makes for interesting video.

Kuwaiti speaks to shot down U.S. pilot.

 

There's footage of this F-15 being shot down over Kuwait, which was a friendly fire incident.

I actually didn't know the F-15 was still in use by the US, but this very late model has only been in service since 2021.

An interesting thing on this video, other than its a female pilot (she was lucky, as she nearly went down in the sea) is that the video shows the airplane to be an F-15, which means the Air Force, and not just the Navy, is flying some of these missions.

The U.S. death toll is up to five.

Afghanistan v. Pakistan

Hardly noticed in all the general war exploding in the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan are fighting.

Cont:

United States and Israel v. Iran

Reports have revealed that at more than 30 military installations, U.S. commanders told troops the war on Iran is a Christian war in support of its being launched.  One NCO reported that their commander told them today that the U.S. war is to bring about Armageddon and the return of Jesus Christ.

I know that this was going to occur, and at least one Evangelical pastor in the U.S. has said essentially the same thing.  This, I'd note, how Mike Huckabee sees the world.

So now we're at least partially in an American Evangelical Christian holy war against Shia Islam.  It'll be a shock to Evangelicals, but they're a tiny percentage of the globe's Christians, and the percentage of them that hold such Millennialist views is even smaller.  This is going to hurt us all, however. 

It's also being reported that J.D. Vance encouraged Trump to go "all in", for lack of a better word.  I'm not sure of his thinking, but he might be approaching this with a Clausewitzian view of how to wage the war, although that will require ground troops in the end.  From a military prospective, that argument has merit to it. What it lacks here is legality.

March 4, 2026

United States and Israel v. Iran

A Republican official attempted to justify the war on Iran with the figure that 700 Americans had been killed by Iran in the past 47 years.

Over 800 Iranians have now been killed by the US and Israel in the past five days.

The Republican-Evangelical Armageddon Death Pact to Kill the Earth and Bring Back Jesus

Cont:

The US sank an Iranian frigate off of Sri Lanka yesterday.  The attacking ship was a submarine.

Sinking enemy ships in wartime is legitimate. . . but this isn't a declared war.

United States in Ecuador

And we're now fighting somebody, just designated "terrorists", in Ecuador.

March 4, 2026, cont.

United States and Israel v. Iran

A Turkish missile was shot down over NATO ally Turkey and the Iranians launched a drone strike on an RAF base on Cyprus.

Without it apparently being obvious, both sides of this war are now lead or heavily influenced by competing apocalyptic visions.  The US, by the theologically thin and ignorant New Apostolic Reformation Puritans and the Iranians by the Shia theocrats.  Both want the wider war that they envision.

March 5, 2026

United States and Israel v. Iran

The Senate did vote on a war powers resolution that would have limited King Donny's ability to wage war.  It failed.

This is being somewhat hailed as a King Donny victory, but it isn't.  Actually, no matter how you regard the war, the fact that the vote occurred is a good thing as it somewhat, albeit very imperfectly, legitimizes the war.  There has been some sort of vote, in other words, although less than that which is required.

The vote was largely on party lines.

Name ▼	State		Party	Vote
Angela Alsobrooks	Maryland		D	yes
Tammy Baldwin	Wisconsin		D	yes
Jim Banks	Indiana		R	no
John Barrasso	Wyoming		R	no
Michael Bennet	Colorado		D	yes
Marsha Blackburn	Tennessee		R	no
Richard Blumenthal	Connecticut		D	yes
Lisa Blunt Rochester	Delaware		D	yes
Cory Booker	New Jersey		D	yes
John Boozman	Arkansas		R	no
Katie Britt	Alabama		R	no
Ted Budd	North Carolina		R	no
Maria Cantwell	Washington		D	yes
Shelley Capito	West Virginia		R	no
Bill Cassidy	Louisiana		R	no
Susan Collins	Maine		R	no
Christopher Coons	Delaware		D	yes
John Cornyn	Texas		R	no
Catherine Cortez Masto	Nevada		D	yes
Tom Cotton	Arkansas		R	no
Kevin Cramer	North Dakota		R	no
Michael Crapo	Idaho		R	no
Ted Cruz	Texas		R	no
John Curtis	Utah		R	no
Steve Daines	Montana		R	no
Tammy Duckworth	Illinois		D	yes
Richard Durbin	Illinois		D	yes
Joni Ernst	Iowa		R	no
John Fetterman	Pennsylvania		D	no
Deb Fischer	Nebraska		R	no
Ruben Gallego	Arizona		D	yes
Kirsten Gillibrand	New York		D	yes
Lindsey Graham	South Carolina		R	no
Charles Grassley	Iowa		R	no
Bill Hagerty	Tennessee		R	no
Margaret Hassan	New Hampshire		D	yes
Joshua Hawley	Missouri		R	no
Martin Heinrich	New Mexico		D	yes
John Hickenlooper	Colorado		D	yes
Mazie Hirono	Hawaii		D	yes
John Hoeven	North Dakota		R	no
Jon Husted	Ohio		R	no
Cindy Hyde-Smith	Mississippi		R	no
Ron Johnson	Wisconsin		R	no
Jim Justice	West Virginia		R	no
Timothy Kaine	Virginia		D	yes
Mark Kelly	Arizona		D	yes
John Kennedy	Louisiana		R	no
Andy Kim	New Jersey		D	yes
Angus King	Maine		I	yes
Amy Klobuchar	Minnesota		D	yes
James Lankford	Oklahoma		R	no
Mike Lee	Utah		R	no
Ben Luján	New Mexico		D	yes
Cynthia Lummis	Wyoming		R	no
Edward Markey	Massachusetts		D	yes
Roger Marshall	Kansas		R	no
Mitch McConnell	Kentucky		R	no
Dave McCormick	Pennsylvania		R	no
Jeff Merkley	Oregon		D	yes
Ashley Moody	Florida		R	no
Jerry Moran	Kansas		R	no
Bernie Moreno	Ohio		R	no
Markwayne Mullin	Oklahoma		R	no
Lisa Murkowski	Alaska		R	no
Christopher Murphy	Connecticut		D	yes
Patty Murray	Washington		D	yes
Jon Ossoff	Georgia		D	yes
Alejandro Padilla	California		D	yes
Rand Paul	Kentucky		R	yes
Gary Peters	Michigan		D	yes
John Reed	Rhode Island		D	yes
Pete Ricketts	Nebraska		R	no
James Risch	Idaho		R	no
Jacky Rosen	Nevada		D	yes
Mike Rounds	South Dakota		R	no
Bernard Sanders	Vermont		I	yes
Brian Schatz	Hawaii		D	yes
Adam Schiff	California		D	yes
Eric Schmitt	Missouri		R	no
Charles Schumer	New York		D	yes
Rick Scott	Florida		R	no
Tim Scott	South Carolina		R	no
Jeanne Shaheen	New Hampshire		D	yes
Tim Sheehy	Montana		R	no
Elissa Slotkin	Michigan		D	yes
Tina Smith	Minnesota		D	yes
Dan Sullivan	Alaska		R	no
John Thune	South Dakota		R	no
Thom Tillis	North Carolina		R	no
Tommy Tuberville	Alabama		R	no
Chris Van Hollen	Maryland		D	yes
Mark Warner	Virginia		D	yes
Raphael Warnock	Georgia		D	yes
Elizabeth Warren	Massachusetts		D	yes
Peter Welch	Vermont		D	yes
Sheldon Whitehouse	Rhode Island		D	yes
Roger Wicker	Mississippi		R	no
Ron Wyden	Oregon		D	yes
Todd Young	Indiana		R	no

Now the Republican Party owns this war.  

The Administration is already in violation of the War Powers Act as it didn't give proper notice for the war.  It would appear that under the act it's ability to wage war legally will expire in about 90 days.  Trump appears to be just dumb enough to believe that everything will certainly be okay in that period of time, which is far from guaranteed.

European wags are calling the war, which some idiot named Operation Epic Fury, Operation Epstein Fury.

cont:

The United States and a Gulf state are now seeking to purchase drone interceptors from Ukraine.

Rather ironic, really.

Trump has called on the Kurds in Iran to revolt.

That's a really problematic call to arms. The U.S. has a history of doing this with the Kurds and then not fully supporting them when the rise up.  Right now, there's a rump Kurdish state in Syria, and a Kurdish population in Iraq, that would like to form a bonafide state.  If the Kurds achieved a measure of autonomy in Iran, it'd be hard not to grant them full statehood.

That's fine, in my view, but it won't be fine in Turkey's view, which creates all sorts of problems.

cont:

The House also rejected a War Powers resolution to halt the war against Iran.  The vote was 212 to 219.

While this will go back in sixty days or so, this effectively amounts to Congressional authorization, although again, imperfectly.

Two Republicans voted to halt the war.  Four Democrats voted in favor of it.

March 6, 2026

United States and Israel v. Iran

It's increasingly clear that the U.S. is responsible for the strike on a school that killed over 100 young girls.  Apparently the structure was once used by the Iranian military, but has not been for some time.

Meanwhile:

The pastors told Trump that the love of money was the root of all evil and that he needs to repent for his deeply immoral life. . . oh wait, that didn't happen.

God will not be mocked

Galatians 6:7.

Sen. John Barrasso, who is mostly seen now days standing behind John Thune with a serious look on his face, dutifully spouted the "we've been at war for 47 years" line in the last couple of days, as if anyone cares what his opinion is on anything.  Everyone knows that if Trump came out later this week and said that we're killing school girls as we hate pistachios, Barrasso would repeat that.

Time asked King Donny about whether Americans should be worried about attacks in the U.S..  His reply:

I guess…We plan for it. But yeah, you know, we expect some things. Like I said, some people will die. When you go to war, some people will die.

Frankly, if Americans die, unless their names is Trump, Trump doesn't appear to care.  But why would anyone think he would care?

On this, Iran had decades to insert sleeper cells into the U.S., and they don't have to be staffed by Iranian nationals.   That doesn't mean, however that they did. Some nations that we assumed had done that in the past, like Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany, didn't.

It's always been assumed, and probably correctly, that the Soviet Union did.

Iran?  If they didn't, I can't imagine why they did not, but they may not have.

What is sure right now is that they haven't struck.  That doesn't mean they won't.  Using sleeper agents is usually reserved for what basically amounts to total war, and its risky.  Right now, all Iran really has to do is hang on until August or so, by which time if it hasn't surrendered, disgusted Americans will use the war against the GOP for being Trump toadies.  That appears likely to happen anyhow.  Use of agents might serve to simply make Americans mad, which could change that.

Strikes against economic targets, however, are another matter.  There's not an oil refinery in the US that a terrorist can't damage somehow and that would not only be potentially hugely disrupting, but it would require the domestic deployment of troops and drive up the price of oil like crazy.  It might also not so much anger, as opposed to scare, Americans.

What average Americans have to worry about is rogue individuals.  In a country in which its so easy to acquire arms, we're very open to attacks like that which happened recently in Austin, or in Australia.  The Trump regime would react to that by cutting into the 2nd Amendment.

Will that occur? Well it already has.  But even at that, it didn't happen during the Vietnam War, which might be the most comparable to what we're enduring right now.

Which doesn't mean that we shouldn't be worried.

But don't worry too much.  Donny, who lamented how many young men were being killed in the Russo Ukrainian War at one time, isn't concerned.  If you die, well, that's just one of those things.

The Washington Post reports that Russia is providing Iran targeting information.  

Cont:

King Donny has demanded an "unconditional surrender" by Iran, thereby completely removing any incentive the Islamic Republic has to enter into any sort of arrangement with the US whatsoever.

Generally, demand for unconditional surrenders are monumentally stupid and rarely work.  Such a demand in part caused the Third Reich and Imperial Japan to fight beyond the  point at which political forces in both countries would have ended those wars, and they (if we consider them to be two different wars) beyond the point at which they otherwise would have. Even at that, Japan's surrender actually turned out to have conditions imposed by Japan.

An unconditional surrender here would completely turn Iran's fate, and that of its Islamic regime, over to the United States.  Why wouldn't they just fight on?  This likely serves to strengthen the unpopular government.

It also puts the US military in a situation in which a ground invasion of Iran is practically mandatory.  Staging that will be difficult as the US is unlikely to gain the cooperation of Iraq or Turkey in that, and of course thanks to Donny's brilliant first term diplomacy, Afghanistan as a staging area it not an option.  Therefore it would appear a large scale maritime landing would be required.

Cont:

Well, the admiration is already trying to walk that back:

When he as commander in chief determines that Iran no longer poses a threat to the US and the goals of Operation Epic Fury have been fully realized, then Iran will essentially be in a place of unconditional.

Leavitt.

March 8, 2026

United States and Israel v. Iran

No end in sight.

Kurdish sources have apparently indicated that the US asked for them to take action against Iran, but they don't trust Trump so they declined.

United States v. Cuba

The administration is giving every indication that it intends to take unauthorized military action against Cuba next.

March 9, 2026

United States and Israel v. Iran

Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the killed Supreme Leader, is the new Supreme Leader. So the attacks did not effect regime change whatsoever, so far.

The United States lifted a sanction on Indian oil allowing that country to receive it, in light of rising prices, thereby giving Russian an economic benefit in the war.

March 10, 2026

United States and Israel v. Iran

At least commentator holds Iran's new Supreme Leader is more extreme than his father.

Cont:

I had a very good call with President Putin. We talked about Ukraine which is the never ending fight…It was a positive call on that subject 

We obviously talked about the Middle East. He wants to be helpful…We had a very good talk, and he wants to be very constructive.

Trump.

At this point, even if you are the MAGAist MAGA of the MAGA, to not believe that the relationship between Donald Trump and Putin isn't weird, it's a willful decision.  The Russians are giving Iran intelligence against us and our reaction is to lift sanctions on their oil.

And Putin wants to be helpful.  Yeah, right.

Cont: 

Nobody seems to notice, but acts of terrorism against the U.S. have spread into New York and Canada.

March 11, 2026

United States and Israel v. Iran

Headline from the Casper Star Tribune:

US, IRAN DIG IN 

Which in Iran's case at least, was obviously going to occur.  Our President didn't realize that, as he's an idiot.

If He Only Had a Brain — Scarecrow Trump Says Tanker Operators Lack Guts

Sen. Roger Marshall on high gas prices: "Freedom is not free. Americans are gonna have to make some sacrifices."

Quite a statement in support of a war Americans didn't want launched by an oligarch who doesn't even drive.

Related threads:

In the event of conscription (and Trumpite insiders say the demented octogenarian is considering it) conscript ICE first, and then deploy them.

Last edition:

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 121st Edition and Wars and Rumors of War, 2026. Part 3. The War against Iran Edition and other Military Topics.