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Pentagon Plans to Withhold Report on US Massacre of Iranian Kids Until After Midterms
One policy analyst wrote sardonically that the administration doesn't "want to remind voters before the midterms of the mass killing of schoolchildren on the first day of Trump's glorious war."
Oct 15, 2026
The Pentagon is reportedly planning to withhold until after the midterm elections the completed findings of its investigation into a devastating US strike on an elementary school in southern Iran, which killed more than 150 people—including 120 children—on the first day of President Donald Trump's illegal and deeply unpopular war.
Bloomberg reported on Thursday that "top Pentagon officials have expressed their intention to hold off on releasing an internal report into the attack" on Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School in Minab until after next month's midterms "at the earliest." The internal assessment is believed to have been effectively complete for months, and preliminary findings reported in early March determined that American forces hit the school with a Tomahawk missile due to "outdated" targeting information.
According to Bloomberg, Pentagon investigators "discovered that flawed intelligence, outdated imagery, and an overreliance on AI contributed to the attack," which is regarded as one of the US military's worst atrocities against civilians in decades. Trump brushed off the massacre in remarks to reporters in June, saying: "Mistakes are made. War is nasty."
Ryan Costello, policy director at the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), said in a statement that "the refusal to come clean about the attack on Minab is not just a shameful exercise to dodge accountability for a horrific war crime; it is actively risking these errors being repeated again."
"As the administration has dodged accountability on Minab and [a deadly strike on a sports hall hours later], it has engaged in further attacks that may be war crimes, including the bombing of a civilian home on Qeshm Island that killed a family and the bombing of a wedding party in Kuhestak that killed five, including two children," said Costello. "Ensuring these tragedies don’t repeat starts with accountability on Minab.”
International policy analyst Brian Finucane wrote sardonically that the Pentagon doesn't "want to remind voters before the midterms of the mass killing of schoolchildren on the first day of Trump's glorious war."
Bloomberg's reporting came as CNN published a story detailing internal US "strike plans" that include possibly dropping the so-called "mother of all bombs" on Iranian energy infrastructure.
The GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb (MOAB) is the largest nonnuclear bomb in the US arsenal. In 2017, Trump became the first US president to deploy the weapon, authorizing the military to drop it on Afghanistan.
Sina Toossi, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, warned that using the bomb against Iran would risk "triggering another major escalatory spiral, potentially including Iranian attacks on critical regional energy infrastructure, with consequences for global markets and the US economy."
"This only reinforces the fundamental problem: Trump has no viable military solution to the Iran conflict," Toossi wrote. "Is he looking for one spectacular strike to project strength and declare victory? Or is he prepared to plunge the US into an even deeper, potentially endless war that could devastate the rest of his presidency, legacy, and the economy?"
Costello of NIAC said that "the Trump administration’s threats to commit war crimes in Iran cannot be normalized."
"President Trump acts on many of his threats, necessitating more urgent action to bring this illegal war of choice to a definitive end," he added.
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70+ House Democrats Demand Pentagon Answer for Iran Wedding Massacre
The September 1 strike, which killed five women and children and wounded more than 70 other Iranians, is but one of several civilian massacres during Trump's illegal war of choice.
Oct 14, 2026
More than 70 House Democrats on Tuesday sought answers and accountability from the Pentagon regarding a likely US strike on a September wedding gathering in southern Iran that killed five civilians—all women and children—and wounded over 70 others.
In a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Reps. Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.), Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.), and Jason Crow (D-Colo.) led 74 lawmakers in demanding an explanation for the September 1 bombing in Kuhestak and details of what the Trump administration is doing to protect Iranian civilians.
“We demand urgent answers regarding the United States’ role in this strike, why the strike proceeded given the clear risk of significant civilian harm, and what steps the [US Department of Defense] is taking to prevent further civilian casualties in Iran,” the lawmakers wrote.
The strike occurred at approximately 9:30 pm local time while preparations were underway for the wedding of the daughter of a local fisher.
According to witnesses interviewed by The Associated Press, around 150 women and children were gathered at the Mallahi family compound. The celebration was following a regional tradition in which women and men gather separately. The bride and groom had not yet arrived, and the main celebration had not begun. A bomb struck the room where dinner would have been served.
Four initial fatalities—two women and two children—were identified by Iranian authorities and human rights groups: 50-year-old Zarkhatoun Taheri, 43-year-old Kolsoum Malahi Najandnia, 16-year-old Mohammad Mallahi, and 4-year-old Amir Mohammad Karimi. A fifth victim, 22-year-old woman Asiyeh Molainejad, died in a hospital on September 3.
Weapons experts concluded the blast was likely caused by a direct hit from a US munition. The Pentagon has not publicly accepted responsibility for the strike, which remains under investigation.
"This incident is regrettably among the latest in a string of civilian casualty incidents arising from the US-led war in Iran," the lawmakers wrote in their letter. "This includes a strike at the Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School in Minab, Iran, on the first day of the war that killed a reported 175 civilians, including 120 children."
The United Nations' Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran said it found “reasonable grounds" to believe that the Minab school strike constituted a war crime.
"While it has been reported that a preliminary investigation by the department found that the US military was responsible for the strike, over six months later the department has still not publicly acknowledged responsibility for the strike nor released the findings of its investigation," the lawmakers' letter notes.
"Similarly, reporting and independent analysis indicate that US forces were responsible for a strike at a youth sports hall in Lamerd, Iran, that killed 21 civilians, including 7 children, on February 28. While the department has denied responsibility, analysis by weapons experts found that the damage pattern is consistent with that of an American Precision Strike Missile," the lawmakers continued, referring to Lockheed Martin's next-generation surface-to-surface ballistic missile.
Hegseth, who advocates “maximum lethality” for US forces, has expressed disdain for what he called “stupid rules of engagement” designed to minimize civilian harm. He has overseen the dismantling of efforts meant to mitigate wartime harm to civilians—hundreds of thousands of whom have been killed in US-led wars during this century, according to experts.
“Maximum lethality," combined with AI-powered systems allowing for exponentially faster and more numerous target selection, has raised concerns that have been underscored by actions including US-backed Israeli massacres in Gaza and Lebanon, and US airstrikes in Iran, where tens of thousands of people have been killed or wounded during more than seven months of President Donald Trump's illegal war of choice, according to Iranian government figures.
The Washington, DC-based National Iranian American Council (NIAC) welcomed the lawmakers’ intervention, arguing that Iranian civilians must not be treated as expendable casualties of war.
“The lives of Iranian civilians cannot be treated as an acceptable cost of war,” NIAC president Jamal Abdi said in a statement. “These are families, children, and entire communities whose lives have been irreversibly altered by a military campaign that Congress never authorized."
“Credible allegations of unlawful attacks on civilians demand independent investigations, full public disclosure of the findings, and accountability for any violations of international humanitarian law,” Abdi added. “The Trump administration cannot be permitted to wage an unauthorized war in defiance of US and international law while evading responsibility for its devastating human consequences.”
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US Backs Major Saudi-Led Offensive as Yemen Slides Back Toward All-Out War
The US is providing military advisers and helping the Saudis choose targets in a war that has already displaced nearly 150,000 people and put much of the country on the brink of acute food insecurity.
Oct 04, 2026
Yemen is spiraling back toward full-scale war after its Saudi-backed government launched a major offensive on Sunday to retake territory captured by the Iran-backed group Ansar Allah, also known as the Houthis.
President Rashad al-Alimi said the armed forces would seek to retake all Houthi-controlled territory, which is home to about 70% of Yemen's population, including the capital Sanaa. He said the offensive would continue “until the country is liberated from the grip of the terrorist militia."
Houthi officials said Saudi forces have launched 50 air and missile attacks in the last 12 hours. As al-Alimi announced the new offensive, the Houthis responded by launching ballistic missiles and drones at Saudi Aramco oil facilities, including one near Riyadh that was engulfed in flames.
Last month, the Houthis captured major strategic areas along the Red Sea coast, giving them unprecedented leverage over one of the world's busiest shipping routes and adding to the economic stranglehold Iran is asserting by restricting travel through the Strait of Hormuz in response to US-Israeli attacks.
Earlier this month, it was reported that President Donald Trump had rebuffed Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's request for the US to launch airstrikes against the Houthis.
However, US officials told Axios on Friday that the military is providing Saudi Arabia with "everything short of direct combat, mainly intelligence and targeting data."
While the Saudis conduct a new campaign of airstrikes, Yemen's government could reportedly mobilize as many as 100,000 troops, one of the largest military buildups since the 2022 truce that halted the nation's brutal eight-year civil war.
That war, in which the US also provided extensive military support to a merciless Saudi air campaign, is estimated by the United Nations Development Program to have caused about 377,000 excess deaths by the end of 2021: 154,000 from the fighting itself and 223,000 from indirect effects such as hunger, disease, and the collapse of healthcare and basic infrastructure. An estimated 259,000 of those deaths were of children under 5.
Even before Sunday's escalation, renewed fighting was already fueling a major displacement and hunger crisis. More than 149,000 people have been driven from their homes, according to the International Organization for Migration. Meanwhile, the World Food Program says fighting has disrupted food delivery routes, placing 18.3 million Yemenis at risk of acute food insecurity.
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As Iran War Drags On, Trump Plans to Send Third Aircraft Carrier and Thousands More Troops to Middle East
"Either they'll do something very proper and smart, or they won't be around very long," Trump said of Iran's government.
Oct 01, 2026
The Pentagon is preparing to dramatically expand the American military presence in the Middle East as President Donald Trump weighs renewed attacks on Iran, with thousands of additional troops and a third aircraft carrier being readied for deployment, even as the conflict he has repeatedly declared "over" or "won" threatens to erupt into a new and potentially broader phase.
The Washington Post reported Thursday that the Pentagon is preparing options that could put as many as three US aircraft carriers and their accompanying warships in the Middle East.
According to The Associated Press, around 9,000 additional sailors and Marines are being dispatched aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group and the USS Makin Island amphibious readiness group. The buildup could push the number of US personnel in the region above 20,000 by late October.
The Roosevelt is being sent to relieve the USS George Washington, while a third carrier, the USS George HW Bush, is also already in the region.
The new deployment plans come as diplomacy between Washington and Tehran remains stalled, and as Trump has repeatedly threatened to resume large-scale military action—including the total annihilation of the nation of over 90 million people—after the November midterm elections.
"Either they'll do something very proper and smart, or they won't be around very long," Trump said of the Iranian government Thursday in Denton, Texas. "Frankly, I hate to see that, but they won't be around very long."
Iran, meanwhile, has reportedly begun preparing for a more expansive retaliation should the United States launch another major attack in the illegal US-Israeli war of choice against the Middle East nation.
Hamidreza Azizi, a senior Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group, told Reuters Thursday that the Iranian government seems "determined not to respond symbolically to a symbolic move and instead to escalate in the hope of reestablishing deterrence."
Republican National Committee Co-Chair Lara Trump—the president's daughter-in-law—warned during a Wednesday interview with British journalist Harry Cole that the increasingly protracted Iran War could not only tarnish Trump's legacy, but could also cost Republicans next month's midterm elections.
"Well, it's possible," Trump—who campaigned as the "peace president" on a promise of no new wars—said of the midterm risks Thursday on his way to Texas, before adding that “it should help because Iran will not have a nuclear weapon."
The intelligence consensus of every US administration since former President George W. Bush—including during both of Trump's terms—has been that Iran has not been trying to develop nuclear weapons.
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'By Annihilating Iran, We've Created Peace': Trump's Genocidal Rhetoric Takes Orwellian Turn in Time Interview
Trump also said that the war has continued into its seventh month, “only because I wanted to go further.”
Oct 01, 2026
For President Donald Trump, war is peace.
That’s what he suggested during an interview published Thursday by Time magazine when asked by a reporter about his threat to “annihilate” Iran during last week’s United Nations General Assembly.
Over the last seven months, Trump has on numerous occasions threatened apocalyptic destruction of Iran, most infamously in April when he said that if it did not submit to a peace agreement he found favorable, its "whole civilization" would "die."
Trump's threat to annihilate a nation of 90 million people drew worldwide condemnation from human rights groups, lawmakers, and other nations, some of whom described the rhetoric as "genocidal."
Time senior political correspondent Eric Cortellessa and editor-in-chief Sam Jacobs asked Trump about these threats and how they comported with his self-description as a peacemaker.
"You've made versions of that threat before. You've also called yourself the president of peace," they said. "How can the president of peace be calling for the annihilation of an entire people?"
Trump replied: "Because by annihilating Iran, we've created peace in the world. With Iran, I don't think you could ever have peace."
The reporters asked Trump to clarify: "Are you talking specifically about the government, the Islamic Republic regime? What about the innocent people?"
He did not give a clear answer, instead accusing the Iranian government of having "killed 75,000 people in the last number of months," referring to its crackdown on anti-government demonstrations.
Iran has claimed that 3,117 people were killed during the protest wave. But while independent investigations have suggested this is an undercount, the figures they have confirmed are far lower than what Trump suggests.
The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), for instance, documented a total of 7,007 confirmed deaths, mostly of protesters, between December 2025 and February 2026, and says another 11,744 possible deaths remain under review. Other unverified reports suggest that perhaps as many as 30,000 people were killed.
While seeking to justify continued war with Iran—now into its seventh month—Trump has continued to inflate the number of people supposedly killed well beyond even the highest reported figures. In July, he claimed 52,000 people had been killed, but provided no evidence. He again provided no evidence for the 75,000 figure other than to say it was "documented."
After launching the war at the end of February, Trump initially claimed it would last about six to eight weeks. The reporters asked why the war was now entering its seventh month.
"Only because I wanted to go further," Trump acknowledged.
"I took them out," he said, possibly referring to Iranian nuclear sites, or to Iran's senior leadership, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who was killed during the initial wave of US-Israeli attacks. "I could have stopped then, but I wanted to go further."
Trump went on to portray Iran as essentially destroyed, claiming its economy, navy, and air force were “gone” and putting inflation at “300%”—assertions that substantially overstated the damage inflicted on the country.
Iran has suffered enormous military and economic damage, but it has continued to launch ballistic missile attacks and threaten further retaliation. Meanwhile, official Iranian data puts September inflation at roughly 90% year over year, a far cry from 300%.
“When I said I was going to be there for a short period of time, I was, and then I decided I wanted to go further than that because I didn’t want to have them come back in some different form," the president said.
US President Donald Trump addresses the 81st United Nations General Assembly at UN Headquarters in New York on September 22, 2026. (Photo by Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images)
Trump's threats also come as the US midterm elections loom just over a month away. High gas prices and inflation caused by the war have fueled backlash among American voters, leading to Trump's lowest-ever approval ratings and predictions of an electoral bloodbath for Republicans down the ballot in November.
Last week, Trump rejected a Qatari-mediated ceasefire proposal from Iran that would have involved the US ending its military blockade of Iran in exchange for Iran lifting its restrictions on travel through the Strait of Hormuz. It would also have meant returning to nuclear negotiations for the first time since Trump backed out of the memorandum of understanding agreed upon in June.
With the war deeply unpopular among the American public, Trump has scaled back the tempo of his attacks on Iran in recent months. Reporters asked Trump whether he planned to ramp up the bombing once the elections were over.
He said it was “possible,” adding, “I can’t tell you that because look, you know, you’re asking, 'Where are you going to bomb?'”
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Only 'Negotiated Solution' Can Get US Out of 'Deadlock,' Iranian Diplomat Says After Trump Rejects Deal
"They want to make a deal where they open the strait immediately because they're losing so badly," the US president claimed. "We're winning tremendously."
Sep 27, 2026
As US President Donald Trump publicly rejected Iran's proposal for a ceasefire and reopening the Strait of Hormuz this weekend, the Iranian foreign minister reiterated that "there is no alternative to a negotiated solution."
"There's always hope for diplomacy," though the Trump-led United States has been an untrustworthy negotiator, Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi said during a Sunday appearance on NBC News' "Meet the Press."
"We are fully prepared for the war to be resumed... We stand firm in the face of any new aggression, even [if] it comes to a doomsday war,” the foreign minister added. "At the same time, we stand ready for diplomacy. It is up to President Trump to choose."
Iran's latest offer was "essentially the same bargain" as the June deal, "but with a very different sequence," Sina Toossi, a senior fellow at the US-based Center for International Policy, explained to CNN. Under the Iranian proposal, he said, "the US takes concrete steps first, and only then does Iran ease its pressure over Hormuz."
Araghchi and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian had pushed for the proposal this week while visiting the United Nations General Assembly in New York City—where Pezeshkian said in his UNGA speech that "we have been the victims of terrorism" and highlighted the civilians killed since the United States and Israel began bombing Iran at the end of February.
Trump—who launched the illegal war despite his own intelligence agencies concluding that Iran wasn't pursuing a nuclear weapon—used his UNGA address to threaten to "annihilate" Iran. Then, The Wall Street Journal reported late Friday that he "has rejected Iran's proposal for a seven-day ceasefire and has told aides he expects to resume bombing Iran after the November midterms."
The US president on Saturday confirmed to journalists that "I'm rejecting their deal," adding: "They want to make a deal where they open the strait immediately because they're losing so badly... We're winning tremendously. We have total control of the Hormuz Strait... They want to make a deal, and I think that's fine; I like making a deal, too. But that deal would not be acceptable."
Despite Trump's rejection, "US official claimed 'positive and constructive' discussions are still ongoing between the US and Iran through the mediators, including on nuclear issues," Axios reported Saturday. Aided by Qatar, Trump envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner "held a new round of indirect negotiations" with the Iranian foreign minister on the sidelines of the UNGA.
In a lengthy Persian statement shared on Telegram this weekend, Araghchi said that "we have seen the first reaction from the US president, but nothing has been conveyed to us from the mediators yet. Of course, the US president has also said many contradictory things, which unfortunately we hear a lot from him. We are waiting for the definitive opinions to be conveyed to us by the mediators, and we will make a decision based on that."
"In any case, our conditions are clear; any progress toward the opening of the Strait of Hormuz is contingent upon the fulfillment of these conditions, and we will not shrink from them," he continued. "Only a negotiated solution can get them out of this deadlock."
Such a solution must be "based on honor and justice that secures the rights of the Iranian people and fulfills their legitimate demands," he argued. The diplomat added that "the people of Iran have demonstrated their strength across military, diplomatic, and economic spheres, as well as in confronting sanctions."
Reporting on Araghchi's remarks, Reuters noted:
The commander-in-chief of Iran's army, Amir Hatam, said the war was at a critical and decisive stage, adding that Tehran would not accept a situation in which it was unable to trade while foreign powers used the region's strategic waterways.
"If Iran cannot trade, if Iran cannot live, no one will be able to trade or live," he said, in comments reported by state media.
It's not just the Iranians pushing for an end to the Iran War; the US public is also frustrated by its economic impacts, with prices soaring, particularly for diesel and gasoline. With the midterm elections less than six weeks away, and the president's Republican Party trying to at least hold on to its narrow majorities in Congress, Trump's approval rating has hit a record low.
After the president rejected Iran's proposal on Saturday, National Iranian American Council (NIAC) Action policy director Ryan Costello responded by calling out his various moves regarding Iran, including exiting former President Barack Obama's nuclear deal with the country during the first Trump administration.
"Art of the deal," Costello wrote on social media. "Attack Obama for negotiating a successful deal. Tear up the deal, say you'll get a better one. Start a war instead, blowing up the economy. Strike a deal to end the war, stick to it for a fortnight. Refuse to go back to the deal heading into the midterms."
NIAC Action filed a federal lawsuit on Thursday, arguing that Trump's war on Iran, which lacks congressional authorization, is unconstitutional. The group's president, Jamal Abdi, declared that "no president should have the power to take this country into an indefinite war by himself."
"Congress never authorized this war," he stressed. "Yet Iranian families are being bombed, American service members have been killed, and communities on both sides are being forced to bear the consequences. This lawsuit asks a fundamental question: Can one person decide, on his own, to keep an entire nation at war?"
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In Defiant UN Speech, Iranian President Says US and Israel Are the Real Terrorists
Masoud Pezeshkian delivered his address after the president of the United States—which one progressive commentator called "the world's biggest terrorist"—again threatened to "annihilate" Iran.
Sep 23, 2026
Iran's president used his address to the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday to turn Washington's decades-old assertion that his country is the world's leading terrorist state on its head by accusing the US—which has killed and wounded tens of thousands of Iranians during President Donald Trump's illegal war of choice—of terrorism against Iranians.
“The United States president described us as terrorists,” Masoud Pezeshkian told world leaders gathered in New York, referring to President Donald Trump’s speech there the previous day. “We have been the victims of terrorism.”
Pezeshkian held up photographs of some of the 120 children massacred when the US bombed the Shajareh Tayyebeh Primary School in Minab during the opening hours of the US-Israeli war in February, an attack that killed over 150 people in total and was called a likely war crime by UN experts last week.
"You see these children?” he said. “These children perished under bombs with weapons used by the United States and Israel. They were innocent.”
“Those who are terrorists, and train and protect terrorists, describe us as such," the president continued. "We have only defended ourselves. We are not terrorists."
As Pezeshkian continued, the US representative attending the session got up and walked out. This, a day after Trump again threatened to "annihilate" the entire country of Iran—comments interpreted by many observers to mean nuclear war.
"Our innocent people have been the targets of cowardly attacks and aggression imposed upon our country," the Iranian president said. "America and Israel attacked us equipped with the latest technology and weapons systems, and our people stood steadfast. Yes, they did hit us, but we did not bend the knee. We did not bow our head."
"They came into surrounding territories... and targeted our universities, our healthcare centers, our schools, our hospitals, our infrastructure, all of it against international law," Pezeshkian continued.
He also noted that Israel "targets any neighborhood in any city in any province" and "commits assassinations like a true terrorist."
The Iranian president stressed that "for the past two centuries, Iran has not attacked any country," even as Washington helped overthrow Iran's reformist government in the 1950s, restoring a brutal monarchy and, later, supported actual US-designated terrorists who had carried out deadly attacks against not only Iranians but also US officials. The US also shot down an Iranian commercial airliner—an attack deemed an accident, for which then-President George HW Bush refused to apologize.
Pezeshkian also said that Israel is "committing genocide" in Gaza, where officials say that more than 250,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded; 2 million have been forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened; and the majority of the strip destroyed since October 2023.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to address the UN General Assembly on Thursday, despite an International Criminal Court arrest warrant for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza.
The United States and Iran have designated all or parts of each other's armed forces as terrorist organizations. Both countries have long histories of supporting militant groups which often act as proxies.
The US and Israel—often alone or nearly so on the world stage—deny all the allegations against them. Trump and senior members of his administration even initially claimed that Iran bombed the Minab school, even as the evidence of US culpability grew too damning to deny.
The back-and-forth allegations of terrorism highlight a larger question raised by Pezeshkian’s speech: Who gets to define terrorism when the world's most powerful military is involved? Do the more technologically sophisticated arsenals of the US and Israel—which include 2,000-pound bombs and artificial intelligence systems capable of selecting targets far faster than any human—legitimize their users' violence, even if they're killing more people than their enemy, and exponentially so?
Under 18 US Code § 2331(5), terrorism is defined as "acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any state appearing to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, influence the policy of government by intimidation or coercion, or affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping."
By that definition, say many critics of US policy and practice, the United States is a terrorist state. And not just any terrorist, progressive political commentator Kyle Kulinski contended in a new essay published by Current Affairs, but rather "the world's biggest terrorist."
Kulinski's piece addressed the controversy surrounding leftist streamer Hasan Piker, who argued that the United States has caused extraordinary amounts of terror around the world under successive presidents regardless of party, and should be judged by the same standards Washington applies to organizations such as al-Qaeda, many of whose fighters had received US funding and arms to fight the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s before they turned on their erstwhile benefactors in response to Washington's own militant imperialism.
Kulinski pointed to the Minab school strike, the US bombing of a wedding in Iran, its support for Israel during the Gaza genocide, the illegal attacks on boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean—which UN experts this week said could amount to crimes against humanity—and the abduction of President Nicolás Maduro during January's invasion of Venezuela, which is one of 10 countries attacked during the two terms of Trump, who campaigned for reelection as the "peace president."
"And do you think it began with Trump? Bad news for you. The architect of the Great Society, the great Democrat [former President]Lyndon Johnson, was napalming little Vietnamese girls long before Trump was blowing up Iranian elementary schools," Kulinski wrote.
Johnson's Democratic predecessor, John F. Kennedy, "began a massive terror campaign against Cuba, designed specifically to hurt civilians in order to bring political change—textbook terrorism."
Subsequently, he continued, then-President Barack Obama "was bombing hospitals and weddings long before Trump. He talked about how good he was at killing people, including a teenage American citizen he took out with a drone, and he helped Saudi Arabia commit war crimes in Yemen."
Recently, Kulinski wrote, former President Joe Biden "was sending constant weapons to Israel during the deadliest parts of Israel’s genocide."
"The record of US-supported terrorism is long," he said. "We helped the Indonesian government massacre half a million communists. We helped the Contras terrorize Nicaragua. We even helped Saddam Hussein use chemical weapons on Iran."
Kulinski noted that former President George W. Bush, "possibly the worst terrorist of our age, caused maybe half a million deaths in Iraq with his totally illegal war. He made Osama bin Laden look like an amateur. And now he has a new book of paintings coming out. They’re portraits of political prisoners. I’m guessing it probably won’t include all the people he tortured for years in Guantánamo."
"The truth needs to matter," Kulinski concluded. "In defamation cases, truth is always a defense. The US is the biggest, baddest bully on the block. We do not care about international law, human rights, the Constitution, or justice. How are we supposed to change anything for the better if we can’t acknowledge the most obvious things in the world?"
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'Do I Drive Them Into Hell?' Trump Again Threatens to 'Annihilate' Iran in Genocidal UN Speech
"Trump doesn’t know how to end the war he started with Iran," said one critic. "He’s so desperate that he’s threatening war crimes in front of the entire United Nations."
Sep 22, 2026
In a rambling, lie-laden speech Tuesday to world leaders gathered at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, US President Donald Trump again threatened to "annihilate" Iran if its leaders don't agree to a deal to end the illegal war of choice he started nearly seven months ago in the Middle Eastern country.
"I have a big decision to make," Trump said. "Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before, maybe one of the greatest in the Middle East or even the world? Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again?"
"Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations?" the president continued. "But I believe we'll make a deal right after the election because it doesn't make sense for them not to. They're waiting to see how I do in the midterm election. What they don't realize is that I'm not running. I did that already and won in a landslide."
President Trump says Iran deal will be made after the midterm elections, and says he has decision between a deal with Iran or destroying them: "Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again?" pic.twitter.com/Y5K6v4B326
— CSPAN (@cspan) September 22, 2026
Trump has repeatedly threatened to destroy Iran—a country of over 90 million people—since his first term. However, his latest menacing remarks raised eyebrows for their brazeness on the world stage.
"It’s one thing to make genocidal threats against a nation on social media. It’s another thing to do it from the podium of the UN," University of Colorado Law School associate professor Maryam Jamshidi said on X. "That's what Donald Trump just did. He used his speech at the UN to threaten Iran with annihilation."
While Jamshidi urged UN Secretary-General António Guterres and member states to condemn Trump's threat, independent journalist Taylor Noakes said of Trump that "what’s particularly sad about this (aside from the fact he’ll likely never be prosecuted for war crimes) is how so many leaders of other liberal democracies have stood by and done nothing while the Americans make a mockery of the UN as an instrument for global order."
The Democratic veterans group VoteVets accused Trump of "casually contemplating war crimes in front of the entire UN [General] Assembly," calling his threat "deranged and dangerous."
Bonus for whoever wrote this chyron
[image or embed]
— Brandy Zadrozny (@brandyzadrozny.bsky.social) September 22, 2026 at 7:54 AM
Journalist Mehdi Hasan said: "For shame. The president of the United States goes to the United Nations and threatens genocide against a UN member state in front of the world. This is where we’re at."
Matt Duss, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy and a former adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), called Trump's comments "dangerously unhinged."
"Such rhetoric is not merely reckless, it is a criminal threat of genocide against an entire nation," he added. "US lawmakers and US partners around the world should condemn Trump’s remarks and take all due steps to bring an end to the war on Iran.”
Trump didn't just openly mull committing war crimes, he groundlessly boasted in his speech that the US "has carried out dozens of strikes on cartel drug boats, destroying 97% of the drugs coming into the ocean and sea."
Citing data from US Southern Command and Trump administration officials, The New York Times says that at least 234 people have been killed in a minimum of 70 strikes on boats allegedly smuggling drugs in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean. The administration has provided no solid evidence to support its trafficking allegations. Regional leaders and relatives of victims contend that at least some people killed in the strikes were fishers with no narcotrafficking ties. Legal experts assert that the attacks violate international law regardless of whether or not the targeted vessels were engaged in drug trafficking.
Trump's speech was laced with demonstrably false or unfounded statements, including an accusation that the Iranian government killed 72,000 people this year, that his invasion of Venezuela and abduction of President Nicolás Maduro left the US with "more than 60% of the oil in the world," that his administration "ended the war in Gaza," and that he settled eight wars.
"Donald Trump’s maniacal rant before the UN General Assembly today, complete with ridiculous braggadocio, narcissistic puffery, an almost unbroken line of absurd, demonstrable lies, open criminality, and deranged, murderous threats, should awaken even the most cowardly and complicit among world leaders that their attempts at appeasement of Trump and the tyrannical axis that he leads can only result in further aggression, economic terrorism, murder, and genocide," said Craig Mokhiber, a former senior UN official who resigned in protest of what he described as the world body's failure to stop Israel's genocidal war on Gaza.
"The world must unite to counter the threat and to defend peace, human rights, and the rule of law," he added, "which are, after all, declared purposes of the UN."
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'Do I Blow the Entire Nation Up?': Trump Says He's in 'Deciding Mode' on Iran War
A senior Iranian official said that “our conditions are an end to the war on all fronts, the release of our frozen funds, and an end to the naval blockade."
Sep 20, 2026
Three days after saying that he's weighing whether or not to “annihilate” Iran in a bid to end his increasingly unpopular and protracted war against the Middle Eastern nation, US President Donald Trump on Sunday again said that he is deciding if he should destroy the entire country of over 90 million people.
Fox News chief foreign correspondent Trey Yingst reported he "just spoke with President Trump about the situation with Iran" and that the US leader said he's "in a deciding mode and that very big things are going to be happening in the not-so-distant future."
Trump said he is considering three strategies for ending the 204-day war: "wiping Iran out, letting them rot economically, or making a deal."
"My question is, if and when do I blow the entire nation up, they better behave," Trump added, according to Yingst.
Fox correspondent: "The president said the US is in constant communication with the Houthis, and that they've agreed not to fight the United States. But the big headline here is the president said he's in a deciding mode as it relates to Iran, adding that the Iranians better… pic.twitter.com/nCTMRlEvWY
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 20, 2026
On Saturday, Mohsen Rezaei, the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, told Al Jazeera that Tehran has conveyed its conditions for ending the war to Qatari mediators and is "awaiting President Trump's response."
“Our conditions are an end to the war on all fronts, the release of our frozen funds, and an end to the naval blockade,” Rezaei added. “It is in Washington’s interest to accept these conditions. Trump’s threats will not achieve any results. We are prepared for a decisive war.”
Iran's military responded to Trump's latest threat by warning US allies Sunday that they will be considered "complicit" if American strikes resume, vowing "painful attacks" in retaliation.
Trump—who has been threatening to destroy Iran since at least 2019—is facing pressure on multiple fronts to end his highly unpopular and illegal war of choice, in which at least 23 US troops have died and tens of thousands of Iranians have been killed or wounded.
Americans are feeling the pain of higher consumer prices, especially for gasoline and diesel fuel, for a war that many say is making the country less safe. Six in 10 US voters queried in a new Fox News poll said Trump was wrong to wage war on Iran, while 7 in 10 respondents believe that his administration has no clear strategy for ending the conflict.
Republican lawmakers are also increasingly expressing dissatisfaction with the war and distancing themselves from the conflict ahead of November's midterm elections, with some going as far as helping to pass a war powers resolution directing Trump to withdraw US forces from hostilities with Iran, and one—outgoing Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky—supporting the impeachment of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
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Exploiting Tragedy to Promote War, Hegseth Falsely Claims That Iran 'Cheered on 9/11'
"What haunts me," said one anti-war activist, "is how little accountability there has been for those who lied us into war—and how those same lies are now recycled to justify the attack on Iran."
Sep 11, 2026
Twenty-five years later, Republican politicians are still using 9/11 to justify war in the Middle East. And they're still lying shamelessly.
During remarks outside the Pentagon on Friday commemorating the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attack, President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth portrayed their deeply unpopular war in Iran as part of the lineage of the global War on Terror, which was marked by a pair of lengthy military engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan that cost well over $2 trillion and millions of lives.
Trump declared that he was prosecuting his new war with Iran to fulfill the "sacred oath" sworn in the names of the nearly 3,000 people whose lives were lost that day, that "we will never, ever forget."
Hegseth seems to have forgotten quite a lot. Attempting to draw a link between the ideology of the al-Qaeda hijackers who committed the attack and the current Iranian government, the defense secretary said, "Our warriors have fought an Islamic theocracy that has wished us death for nearly half a century, that cheered on 9/11."
However, the claim that Iran "cheered on 9/11" is at odds with the historical record of how the nation's government and people reacted.
On September 19, 2001, The Washington Post reported that:
Despite two decades of official hostility, the people and government of Iran have offered vivid messages of sympathy and condemnations of terrorism in the aftermath of last week's attacks on New York and Washington...
Hard-line conservative Iranians and moderate reformers, top government and religious officials, Friday prayer leaders, and citizens on the street have uniformly denounced the plane hijackings and suicide crashes of September 11. Some, including President Mohammad Khatami, have offered to join an international campaign against terrorism under certain circumstances, including United Nations sponsorship.
On the day of the attacks in 2001, Khatami issued a swift condemnation over Iranian state TV of what he called "the terrorist operations of hijacking and attacking public places in American cities, which have resulted in the death of a large number of defenseless American people."
Khatami later decried the attacks as “the ugliest form of terrorism ever seen." According to later congressional testimony by a State Department official, he also asked to visit ground zero to light a candle out of respect for the victims, a request that was denied by the administration of then-US President George W. Bush.
Days after the attacks, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei—who was killed this past February during the opening salvo of the joint US-Israeli war against Iran—agreed at the time that “mass murder of human beings is condemned," though he also suggested that "expansionist" US foreign policy had played a role in provoking the attacks.
The US-funded Radio Free Europe reported that, far from celebrating in the streets, around 2,000 Iranians had gathered in Tehran for a candlelight vigil a week after the attacks, at which participants "chanted against terrorism and expressed their sympathy with America." Days earlier, the Post reported that about 50,000 spectators at a World Cup qualifying match in Tehran observed a minute of silence in recognition of the attacks.
Iran's support for the US following the attack also went beyond words. While still describing Iran as the world's leading "state sponsor of terrorism," a May 2002 State Department report emphasized Iran's cooperation with US operations against al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
This included offering search-and-rescue assistance for downed US air crews, diplomatic cooperation at the 2001 Bonn Conference to build Afghanistan's post-Taliban government, and promising border controls to prevent fleeing Taliban and al-Qaeda members from escaping.
Though Trump promised at the outset that it would last only a matter of weeks, his war with Iran has now lumbered into its sixth month with no sign of stopping. It has spilled out into a wider Middle Eastern conflict that has taken the lives of about 8,000 people, displaced millions, and wreaked financial chaos.
The war has included US attacks on civilians that have had a similar resonance with Iranians that 9/11 has for Americans, most infamously the bombing of an elementary school that killed at least 150 people, most of them children.
According to one economist's recent estimate, the war has conservatively cost the average American household about $1,200 over six months, combining the direct cost to taxpayers with the knock-on effects of spiking oil prices and broader inflation.
Though around two-thirds of Americans say they oppose the war and Congress has ordered Trump to bring it to an end, recent reports indicate that the administration is considering expanding it following this November's midterm elections.
Trump described the war as a grim necessity on Friday, in part to honor those who perished on September 11, 25 years earlier.
“That’s why we fight today," Trump said. "We don’t have a choice. There can only be victory. We fight hard. We fight to win.”
Medea Benjamin, the co-founder of the anti-war group CodePink, reflected earlier this week on how the tragedy is still being used to this day to justify endless wars overseas.
"What haunts me today is not only the devastation of the invasion, but how little accountability there has been for those who lied us into war—and how those same lies are now recycled to justify the attack on Iran," Benjamin said. "The War on Terror did not end."
"The same impunity that has shielded the architects of the global War on Terror," she added, "now emboldens the war criminals behind the genocide in Gaza and the Minab school massacre in Iran."
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