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'The Military-Industrial Complex Is Winning': While Bombing Iran, Trump Says Weapons Contractors to Boost Production
The president and Lockheed Martin said that the expansion began months ago, but his comments followed a White House meeting held amid a US-Israeli assault on Iran and mounting threats against Cuba.
Mar 06, 2026
After meeting with several chief executives at the White House on Friday—while also bombing Iran with Israel and threatening Cuba—US President Donald Trump said that top military contractors "have agreed to quadruple Production of the 'Exquisite Class' Weaponry in that we want to reach, as rapidly as possible, the highest levels of quantity."
Trump said on his Truth Social platform that he met with the CEOs of BAE Systems, Boeing, Honeywell Aerospace, L3Harris Missile Solutions, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and RTX—formerly Raytheon.
"Expansion began three months prior to the meeting, and Plants and Production of many of these Weapons are already underway," he wrote, adding that another meeting is scheduled in two months.
In the lead-up to Friday, Reuters noted that the meeting "underscores the urgency felt in Washington to shore up weapons stocks after the Iran operation drew heavily on munitions. Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 and Israel began military operations in Gaza, the US has drawn down billions of dollars' worth of weapons stockpiles, including artillery systems, ammunition, and anti-tank missiles. The conflict in Iran has consumed longer-range missiles than those furnished to Kyiv."
The news agency also reported that "Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg has been leading Pentagon work in recent days on a supplemental budget request of around $50 billion" that "would pay for replacing the weapons used in recent conflicts," including the assault on Iran that has involved "Tomahawk cruise missiles, F-35 stealth fighters, and low-cost one-way attack."
Critics of Trump's deadly foreign policy have argued that the estimated $1 billion-per-day cost of his war on Iran could provide food and healthcare assistance to tens of millions of Americans, and have urged voters to call their members of Congress and pressure them to reject any further funding for the US-Israeli attack.
As Breaking Defense highlighted Friday:
It was not immediately clear whether the meeting... resulted in any new agreements to boost production beyond those previously announced by the Pentagon since the beginning of the year.
Those agreements include a multiyear deal to triple PAC-3 production and quadruple THAAD interceptor production with Lockheed. It also included separate multiyear deals with RTX to boost production for the Tomahawk, AMRAAM air-to-air missile, Standard Missile-3 IIA and IB, and Standard Missile-6, with production for certain of those munitions set to double or quadruple, RTX said at the time.
Those deals, announced as "framework agreements," have yet to translate into definitized contracts.
Some companies confirmed their participation in the Friday meeting but offered limited details beyond that.
Northrop Grumman said in a statement that "we support the president's focus on speed and investment to deliver military capabilities. With our industry-leading levels of investment and decades of proven performance, we continue to grow production capacity and deliver mission-ready technologies for the nation's warfighters."
Using Trump's preferred name for the Pentagon, an RTX spokesperson said the company "is proud to support the administration's goals of defending the US and its allies at this critical moment and committed to accelerating the production of five key munitions in accordance with the historic frameworks reached with the War Department last month."
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also joined the meeting, according to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. After Hegseth shared Trump's Truth Social post on the platform X, Lockheed Martin replied, saying that it began working with the Pentagon chief and Feinberg "months ago," and the company has "agreed to quadruple critical munitions production."
The company's post quickly drew criticism. Drop Site News' Ryan Grim quipped: "Lockheed selflessly and patriotically agrees to quadruple its production. What would we do without our military-industrial complex?"
In comments about the meeting this week, Trump and Leavitt have insisted that the Unites States is already equipped with what it needs for "Operation Epic Fury" in Iran, which has already killed 1,332 people, including key political leaders, according to the Iranian government.
The president said in his Truth Social post that "we have a virtually unlimited supply of Medium and Upper Medium Grade Munitions, which we are using, as an example, in Iran, and recently used in Venezuela."
Trump sent troops into Venezuela in early January to abduct President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, who have pleaded not guilty to narco-terrorism charges in US court. The South American nation's government is now led by Maduro's former deputy, Delcy Rodríguez, who has agreed to let the Trump administration control the country's nationalized oil industry.
The White House has ramped up a decadeslong economic embargo against Cuba in recent months by cutting off its supply of Venezuelan oil. This week, while waging a war on Iran widely condemned as illegal and blatantly motivated by regime change, Trump has told multiple journalists that the island nation is also going to "fall."
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Jayapal Rips 'Cruel and Failing' US Policy After Trump Says 'Cuba Is Gonna Fall'
Trump's threats against Cuba are "just a plain attempt to open up Cuban markets to his billionaire buddies," warned the Washington Democrat.
Mar 06, 2026
As the Trump administration celebrates its broadly unpopular war on Iran—one in which an estimated 1,332 people have been killed in the country, including nearly 200 children at a girls' school—US Rep. Pramila Jayapal noted that President Donald Trump is still imposing a blockade on Cuba and denounced his stated plan to take over the island.
"The US maximum pressure campaign on Cuba is a cruel and failing policy that has caused incredible harm to the Cuban people," said Jayapal (D-Wash.).
Trump's oil blockade on Cuba in recent weeks and his threats to push out its communist government are "just a plain attempt to open up Cuban markets to his billionaire buddies," said Jayapal.
Trump announced last week that US companies would be permitted to sell small amounts of oil to Cuba if they circumvent the government and that Venezuelan fuel could be sold to private businesses in the communist country.
That decision came after weeks of a worsening fuel crisis on the island, triggered by Trump's push to take control of Venezuelan oil and his threat to hit any country that provided oil to Cuba with tariffs. In January, he issued an executive order accusing the country of supporting terrorism and posing a security threat to the US.
The blockade has left cities struggling to provide sanitation services and pushed Cuba's healthcare system to the brink of collapse, according to the country's health minister. Officials blamed the US this week for a blackout that plunged millions of people into darkness for 16 hours.
On Friday, as Trump's Iran war sent US oil prices soaring and the attack on girls' school was found by numerous investigations to have "likely" been carried out by the US, the president attempted to change the subject to his plans for Cuba, telling CNN, "Cuba is gonna fall too."
He told the outlet that Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has long advocated for regime change in Cuba, would turn his attention to pushing out the country's government after the war in Iran—which the president and his officials have estimated could take anywhere from four weeks to six months.
"Your next one is going to be, we want to do that special Cuba,” Trump told CNN. “[Rubio]’s waiting. But he says, ‘Let’s get this one finished first.’ We could do them all at the same time, but bad things happen. If you watch countries over the years, you do them all too fast, bad things happen. We’re not going to let anything bad happen to this country.”
The president made similar comments to Politico on Thursday, saying the US is "talking to Cuba" and that his decision to cut off the island's crucial Venezuelan oil supply is pressuring the government.
"Well, it’s because of my intervention, intervention that is happening,” Trump said. “Obviously, otherwise they wouldn’t have this problem."
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) also warned this week that "Cuba's next."
Jayapal said Friday that Trump's takeover of Venezuela, after which administration officials admitted the White House was after the country's oil supply and claimed the administration has the right to take over any country if doing so serves US interests, "is a clear example that Trump doesn't care about democracy or civil society."
Trump's threats against Cuba, she said, are "just a plain attempt to open up Cuban markets to his billionaire buddies."
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US-Israeli Bombs Strike 'The Fourth School in 6 Days' in Iran: Report
"There are straight lines between what Israel has attempted to do… in Gaza, to completely decimate and collapse the systems that existed there, to what we are seeing in Iran," said one expert.
Mar 06, 2026
US and Israeli missiles have hit a school in Iran for the fourth time in six days, according to videos shared on social media by a spokesperson for the Iranian Foreign Ministry on Friday.
Spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei said that the Shahid Hamedani School, an elementary school in Niloufar Square, Tehran, had been "targeted by the American/Israeli aggressors."
He posted a video showing the school filled with dozens of young students prior to the attack, followed by scenes of the school in ruins, with several empty classrooms filled with rubble.
Baquaei said it showed "how the United States administration is helping the people of Iran." He did not include any information about the number of casualties or the circumstances of the attack.
According to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), at least 192 children have been killed across the Middle East since the US and Israel launched a regime change war this past Saturday.
Most of them were girls ages 7-12 who were killed on Saturday during an attack at a girls' school in the southern Iranian town of Minab.
At least 175 people were reported to have been killed in the attack, which unnamed officials have said was "likely" carried out by the United States, according to Reuters. HuffPost reported that Pentagon officials have briefed Congress that the US "was most likely responsible."
Eyewitnesses and relatives of the victims have told Middle East Eye that the attack was a "double-tap" strike in which survivors and first responders were targeted following the initial bombing. An Al Jazeera investigation has concluded that the attack was likely "deliberate."
Iranian media have also published CCTV video of a separate strike on the same day, in which a missile landed next to a boys' school in Qazvin, resulting in scenes of terrified students and teachers running for their lives.
On Thursday, two other schools in the town of Parand, southwest of Tehran, were hit by missiles fired by the US and Israel, according to Iranian state media. The Fars News Agency shared photos of a classroom filled with debris. So far, no casualties from the attack have been reported.
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has said that as it wages its war in Iran, the US is not abiding by "stupid rules of engagement," and has boasted of raining down “death and destruction from the sky all day long."
According to data analyzed by the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), part of a US-based human rights monitor for Iran, at least 1,168 civilians have been killed by US-Israeli attacks since Saturday. The Iranian government on Friday put the death toll at 1,332 people.
More than 3,643 civilian sites have been damaged in attacks attributed to the US and Israel, according to figures released by the Iranian Red Crescent Society—among them have been 3,090 homes, 528 commercial centres, 13 medical facilities and nine Red Crescent centres.
Amjad Iraqi, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, told Al Jazeera that these routine attacks on civilian infrastructure increasingly resemble those carried out by Israel during its more than two-years of genocide in Gaza.
“There are straight lines between what Israel has attempted to do… in Gaza, to completely decimate and collapse the systems that existed there," Iraqi said, "to what we are seeing in Iran, on a much more massive and dangerous scale, to bring down the Islamic Republic and to cause as much devastation as possible.”
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Demanding Peace Talks, UN Chief Warns Iran War 'Could Spiral Beyond Anyone's Control'
"It is time to stop the fighting and get to serious diplomatic negotiations," said António Guterres. "The stakes could not be higher."
Mar 06, 2026
After nearly a week of bloodshed in President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's war on Iran—which critics argued violates not only the US Constitution but also the United Nations Charter—UN Secretary-General António Guterres on Friday demanded a return to negotiations.
Trump and Netanyahu launched "Operation Epic Fury" just a day after Badr Albusaidi, the foreign minister of Oman and mediator of recent nuclear talks between the United States and Iran, said on a prominent US news program that "we have already achieved quite a substantial progress" and "the peace deal is within our reach."
The Iranian government said Thursday that at least 1,230 people had been killed in Iran. The US-Israeli assault continued on Friday, as Guterres declared that "all the unlawful attacks in the Middle East and beyond are causing tremendous suffering and harm to civilians throughout the region—and pose a grave a risk to the global economy, particularly to the most vulnerable people."
"The situation could spiral beyond anyone's control," Guterres said. "It is time to stop the fighting and get to serious diplomatic negotiations. The stakes could not be higher."
The UN chief's statement came amid reporting from Drop Site News that "US-Israeli missiles have hit an elementary school in Tehran—the fourth school in six days." The first strike, for which no government has taken responsibility but analyses suggest the United States is to blame, killed around 175 people, mostly children, at a girls' school in Minab on Saturday. Then, on Thursday, two boys’ schools southwest of Tehran were bombed.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk also called for all parties "to give peace a chance," highlighting in a Friday statement that the war "has been spreading like wildfire" and caused significant damage in not only Iran and Israel, but "at least a dozen other countries, mostly in the Gulf, with risks of major economic and environmental ramifications across the world."
"The world urgently needs to see steps to contain and extinguish this blaze—but instead we are only seeing more inflammatory, bellicose rhetoric, more bombings, more destruction, killings, and escalation, that fuels it further," he continued. "Confusion has also been sown around international law—and some have openly derided the fundamental values of our common humanity."
While Türk directed his plea for deescalation at the warring governments, he also urged other states "to call clearly on those involved to pull back," arguing that "cool heads must prevail if we are to prevent further terror and devastation for civilians."
"Given the magnitude of this crisis," he said, "I call on heads of state and government around the world unequivocally to commit to defending international human rights law, international humanitarian law, and the UN Charter itself—we cannot afford for more powder kegs to ignite."
"Lebanon is becoming a key flashpoint," Türk noted. "I am extremely concerned and worried about the latest developments following Hezbollah's attacks on Israel and Israel's heavy counterstrikes, as well as its extensive displacement orders that have already forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes. I call for an immediate cessation of hostilities."
More than half a million people have fled their homes in southern Lebanon, and the death toll there this week is estimated to be over 130 people, as Common Dreams reported earlier Friday. Türk has denounced Israel's "blanket, massive displacement orders" in the country that are impacting hundreds and thousands of Lebanese.
As one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, the US has veto power in that body. Considering those circumstances, the group Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) this week urged the UN General Assembly to formally declare Trump and Netanyahu's assault on Iran a "war of aggression" in violation of the charter.
"No legal framework, international or domestic, can justify this US-Israeli war of aggression against Iran," DAWN executive director Omar Shakir said in a statement. "This war is patently illegal, and it must be stopped."
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