Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has boasted of his efforts to convince the US to launch a war against Iran, crediting his frequent appearances on US television networks and his “intimate knowledge” of US leaders.
Netanyahu made the comments Sunday night on Israel’s Channel 14, and a clip of his appearance was posted on X by the account Clash Report, which Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi later shared.
The Israeli leader said that he had been against Iran for “nearly 40 years” and that it took him a long time to get the Israeli security establishment and the US on board.
“It took a long time to bring the US in,” he said, according to Channel 14. “I was able to do this because I had close to a thousand hours on American television, influence in the United States, and intimate knowledge of all its leaders – both those who support us and those who do not.”
The New York Timesreported in April that 17 days before the US and Israel launched the war on February 28, Netanyahu presented President Trump with an intelligence briefing at the White House and made a “hard sell” for the war. The report said that Netanyahu had been “pressing for months” for the US to agree to a major attack on the Islamic Republic.
Sources told the Times that during the briefing, Netanyahu made a series of predictions about the potential war that proved to be wrong, including the idea that Iran was ripe for regime change, that its ballistic missile program could be destroyed within weeks, that it would be too weak to close the Strait of Hormuz, and that Iran’s missile strikes on US interests in regional countries would be minimal.
Responding to Netanyahu’s comments about his influence on the US, Aragchi said that the Israeli leader was openly bragging about how he “suckered” the US into the war.
“In Hebrew, Netanyahu openly crows that he suckered the US Administration into a war on Iran on behalf of Israel. Netanyahu explicitly laughs about how he ‘influenced’ America through 1,000 hours of airtime on US networks,” the Iranian diplomat wrote on X. “In English, he praises POTUS’ leadership. Serpent.”
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent speaks to members of the media outside the White House in Washington, Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026. [AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin]
The Trump administration on Monday launched what Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called an “economic D-Day” against Iran—a campaign of secondary sanctions aimed at every country, bank and company that trades with Tehran, above all China, which took roughly nine-tenths of Iran’s oil exports before the US blockade choked them off.
Six months of US and Israeli bombardment, which killed at least 3,468 people in Iran by June 10, has not brought down the government in Tehran, and most shipping still avoids the Strait of Hormuz. The administration is now carrying the war into the world economy, on a course that leads to confrontation with China.
The campaign Bessent announced at a Washington press conference Monday adds shipping, gold, digital assets, aviation and technology to the sectors covered by US secondary sanctions, which already reach Iran’s oil and banks.
Among the nearly 60 companies, people and ships sanctioned Monday are trading and logistics firms in China and Hong Kong and entities in Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, Malaysia, Switzerland, Britain, France, Greece, Syria, Ukraine and the Marshall Islands, according to Al Jazeera’s tally of the Treasury list.
“Every country has a defined timeline to shut down activities we have identified,” Bessent said, without naming them. China, India, Turkey, Iraq and the UAE are the most exposed, experts told CNN.
Asked by reporters whether Chinese banks would be hit, Bessent replied that “no one is above the reach of US sanctions” and said to expect “a major announcement of a financial institution being sanctioned by the end of this week.”
Bessent followed on CNBC on Thursday, calling the campaign “a one-two punch” of blockade and sanctions and saying that Washington was telling other governments, “You’re either with us or against us.” He added, “Keep in mind that the Chinese get 50 percent… of their energy from inside the Gulf.”
Three days before the announcement, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, in a lead editorial printed Saturday, made clear that the central target is China. “After six months of war with Iran, President Trump has a credibility problem,” it wrote. “No President has yet climbed the Iran sanctions ladder with China, moving from the isolated ‘teapot’ refineries that buy Iran’s oil to the Chinese state-owned enterprises that support them. Nor has any President given Dubai an ultimatum to shut down Iran’s illicit financial network and meant it.”
The editorial’s final paragraph warned that “Iran may lash out militarily in response, targeting Gulf energy again, and the US will have to be ready with a firm response.”
The Washington Post’s editorial board wrote Monday evening that delivering Bessent’s “zero-leakage approach… will require picking a big fight with China, the largest buyer of Iranian oil.” The editorial noted that US sanctions so far have fallen on “independent refiners and intermediaries rather than major Chinese banks or state-owned companies.”
The Post continued: “The Trump team cannot help but describe its recalibrated approach in martial terms… But D-Day evokes a military campaign with a clear objective: the enemy’s unconditional surrender. Economic pressure rarely works that way… That’s why containment is not really about regime change. Its immediate goal is to make an already battered Iran weaker so that it’s less capable of threatening its neighbors and developing nuclear weapons.”
This is a testament to the deepening political crisis triggered by the failure of US imperialism to achieve its strategic objectives in its war against Iran.
The war was conceived as a means of seizing the chokepoint of the world’s oil supply and gaining a decisive advantage over China. Instead, the United States confronts a political debacle, and it is China’s position that has been strengthened.
The sanctions campaign is an attempt to recoup by economic force what could not be won by bombing, and it aims that force at Beijing. Washington has paused the bombing since late July but has not renounced it; Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Monday that “by no means are we foreclosing using kinetic strikes anywhere in the Strait of Hormuz or around Iran.”
The war the sanctions are meant to salvage began on February 28, when Washington and Tel Aviv started the bombing. A cease-fire in April and a June 17 memorandum with Tehran lifted the blockade and let Iran export oil until Washington broke the arrangement in early July by sending ships through a route in the strait to which Iran had not agreed. When Iran fired on the ships the US struck back, and on July 8 Trump declared the cease-fire over. The blockade was reimposed. On August 17, the day the memorandum expired, Trump said of Oman, with which Iran is negotiating a shipping corridor, “If Oman gets in the way, we’ll bomb the shit out of them.”
To “sever every economic lifeline” of Iran, as Bessent put it, means to sanction the Chinese refineries, shipping companies and banks that buy and move its oil, and behind them the Chinese state. Behind the refineries stands the largest manufacturing economy in the world, whose trade in raw materials and finished goods a “zero-leakage” sanctions regime would have to police.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said at a briefing Tuesday that “China will do everything necessary to firmly safeguard its rights and interests.” Asked by Bloomberg whether China would change course, he said its cooperation with Iran “should not be disrupted.” Beijing, the Financial Times reported Tuesday, has told Washington that any broad extension of the sanctions to Chinese companies will bring retaliation.
Asked on Monday why the sanctions were not being imposed at once, Bessent replied: “Well, we are giving everyone the opportunity to remedy bad behavior. Why would I want to blow up the global financial system?”
Bessent’s statements are an admission of the provocative character of US actions. Desperate to shore up its geopolitical position, it is taking a series of increasingly reckless and desperate steps, whose impact is to widen the global scope of the war.
The Financial Times wrote in an editorial Tuesday that the operation “seemed more like a series of warning shots fired from far offshore,” and concluded that it “amounts to another risky gamble on a road that, for both sides, ultimately has to lead back to the negotiating table.”
However, the sequence Washington has followed does not lead to a negotiating table. It leads to a widening global conflagration, centrally targeting Russia and China.
Recent reports indicate a serious mutiny situation aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. Seven U.S. Navy personnel have possibly been killed and several others injured in a violent clash among the crew, highlighting growing unrest and morale issues during an extended deployment.
Worried families vented their anxieties about loved ones onboard the Lincoln at an emotional town hall meeting with navy leaders in San Diego last Thursday, Stars and Stripes reported. One spouse among the 200 or so family members said that her husband had texted her that day saying “he hopes he doesn’t wake up tomorrow”.
A woman at the meeting told acting navy secretary, Hung Cao that the navy had “broken trust between us and the leadership”, the paper reported. The Navy Times gave details of thwarted suicide attempts onboard the aircraft carrier during the current deployment. Annabelle Loma told the outlet that her husband had tried to jump overboard after his spell at sea kept being extended. “He’s scared. He thinks he’ll get a dishonorable discharge, and just because he was burnt out his 13-year career is ruined, just like that,” she said.
Bonnie York, whose stepson is aboard the Lincoln, told MS NOW she had been told a doctor or therapist on the ship warned the crew needed to reach port before people started “losing their minds.” She voted for Trump—and partly because he promised not to start any new wars. She no longer believes the country is safer for it. “You’ve essentially stranded them out there,” she said of the crew.
Seven US Navy personnel have reportedly been killed and several others wounded in a violent clash aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, as growing unrest among the carrier’s crew has exposed mounting pressure inside the US military amid a prolonged deployment.
The incident erupted after an adviser to US Central Command (CENTCOM) chief Brad Cooper boarded the carrier to address mounting complaints from crew members following protests by their families over the ship’s prolonged deployment, according to Tasnim News Agency, citing an informed military source. The adviser was reportedly met with boos and had water bottles thrown at him while addressing a gathering of personnel. The confrontation subsequently escalated into a fight among crew members involving knives and other bladed weapons, leaving seven personnel dead and several others wounded, according to the source.
Pistol Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, dismissed the accounts as “more fake news”.
Deployment Context
The USS Abraham Lincoln has been deployed for over 260 days, which is a modern-era record for a U.S. aircraft carrier. This prolonged deployment has led to significant stress and mental health challenges among the crew
Conditions and Morale
Reports from military families describe poor living conditions, including food shortages and inadequate facilities, contributing to the deteriorating morale.
Response and Claims
In addition to internal conflicts, there are external tensions, with Iran claiming to have attacked the carrier, although U.S. officials have denied these allegations.
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Someone had to organize the catering; that’s the detail that got me.
From the start of Israel’s assault on Gaza, Arab states have issued a steady stream of condemnation – labeling it genocide, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing – even as they’ve been secretly deepening their military ties with the very state carrying it out. The secrecy, however, hasn’t protected them.
That was the conclusion of a leak obtained by the Washington Post and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists – published in October 2025, months before the United States and Israel’s own war on Iran began: five CENTCOM PowerPoint presentations documenting an entity called the “Regional Security Construct” – a secretive network, operating since 2022, tying Israel to six Arab states: Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE, with Kuwait and Oman standing by as “potential partners.” Every one of these governments has at some point in the last three years stood up and condemned the genocide in Gaza. Every one of them has also helped keep Israel’s military machine running. It’s a staggering betrayal.
Now look at what those same states were getting up to in private. In May 2024, high-level Arab and Israeli military officials met to coordinate – at Al Udeid Air Base, the US facility located inside Qatar. Traveling the usual way – the airport at Doha, passport and diplomatic controls – would leave a paper trail, hence the Israelis bypassed formalities and instead flew directly onto the base.
The internal planning document for the meeting contained a section with the heading “MUST NOT DO”, and strictly forbade photographs and any media contact. Beneath the itinerary, a note reminded staff they should observe culinary restrictions for both Muslim and Jewish delegates: “No pork / crustaceans.” Someone still had to sort the catering for this shadowy military alliance. Mirrors, Cocteau said, are the doors through which Death comes and goes. In this case, it was the catering memo.
As Palestinians in Gaza were being bombed, the men whose governments claimed to speak for Palestine were coordinating regional air defenses with Israeli military officials down the hall – discussing radar coverage against Iran over lunch, while the genocide continued next door. By 2024, CENTCOM had linked most of the seven partners – the six Arab governments plus Israel – into a joint radar and air-defense picture focused on Iranian missiles and drones.
A detail in the slides that catches the eye: a 2025 meeting at which a Saudi representative and a US intelligence official jointly delivered an “intelligence overview” – Syria, the Houthis in Yemen, Islamic State – one of the two briefers from a kingdom with no formal diplomatic relations with Israel.
All of this elaborate scheming failed spectacularly when Doha was struck on 9 September 2025 in a sneak assassination job on Hamas officials. The complex air-defense system the Arab-Israeli network had just spent three years building amounted to nothing. The American radar was pointing in the wrong direction, since the attack didn’t come from Iran – but from Israel. Qatar’s separate air defense systems missed it too. The Trump administration reportedly leaned on Netanyahu, who apologized three weeks later.
The network’s failure wasn’t limited to Doha. On 28 February 2026, the day the US and Israel opened their war of aggression on Iran by killing its Supreme Leader, Iran’s retaliation went for the network’s jugular – ballistic missiles and drones struck the US Fifth Fleet’s headquarters in Bahrain, while simultaneous strikes smashed a THAAD missile-defense radar at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan and a phased-array radar in Qatar, with widespread damage reported across the UAE, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Following a brief pause, hostilities resumed in early July, and on 23 July Iran’s military said it had destroyed a second radar and a Patriot system at another US base near Azraq, in Jordan. Every partner state named in the CENTCOM documents except Egypt has now had its radar coverage hit, disabled, or claimed destroyed.
On 29 July, Iran returned to Muwaffaq Salti – the same US/Jordanian base it struck earlier in February – launching ballistic missiles in what CENTCOM had the cheek to call a “surprise attack.” CENTCOM did not clarify whether it came before or after the US and Saudi Arabia struck Iran-backed militias in Iraq that same morning. Trump’s response was characteristically restrained: “We are going to beat the f**king sh*t out of them.”
Fresh strikes were hinted at for the first weekend in August but did not materialize – according to reports that came to light during the pause, Washington’s munitions stockpiles, both defensive and offensive, have been significantly depleted since the start of its war on Iran in February. The secret network that these Arab states built in collaboration with Israel and the US to guard the Gulf is in ruins. The global hegemon that built it with them is running low on ammunition.
The system is crumbling under the threat it was built to stop.
So why the secrecy? Emile Hokayem of the International Institute for Strategic Studies identified the answer: it allowed everyone involved to sidestep the bitter pill of the political argument. Working covertly with Israel’s generals is more palatable than being seen as direct collaborators. But, he said, the network masks how profoundly these states distrust each other and Israel – a distrust the Qatar strike exposed. “A key member of the American effort has attacked another,” he said, “with America seen as complacent, complicit, or blind.”
Mainstream media coverage has largely framed this as merely embarrassing – hypocritical Arab leaders caught out, business as usual. Except that is not what the documents are about, and it lets the governments involved off far too lightly. The same regimes that normalized ties with Israel have essentially reduced the Palestinian cause to lip service – and the CENTCOM documents show exactly how far that abandonment extends, as The Electronic Intifada has argued. This goes way beyond leaders occasionally crossing paths with their Israeli counterparts on the sidelines of a conference. Built by the United States, this three-year-old network has its own dedicated bureaucracy – a cyber center, an encrypted messaging network, information-operations planners, even special dietary instructions and a “MUST NOT DO” slide – all of it built to hide an alliance that Israel’s genocide in Gaza had already made politically toxic.
The Palestinians are not an incidental factor; they are the reason for all the secrecy. The Gaza genocide is built into this, with each government named in these documents consciously choosing to sustain it.
Richard Edain is a teacher and writer based in the UK and Vietnam. His long-form historical journalism appears on Substack as the Ulysses Files and has been published on Antiwar.com. Contact: edainrichard@gmail.com.
When Graham, who served in the Air Force, unexpectedly died last month, critics remembered the South Carolina Republican as someone who “never met a war he didn’t want to send your kids to,” as well as “a bloodthirsty bastard who cheered the killing of Muslims and sold his soul to the fascists.”
On Monday, Hegseth—who deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq—fondly recalled meeting with Graham while part of the group Vets for Freedom. Joined at the base by the senator’s replacement, his sister Darline Graham, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who is from South Carolina, the Pentagon chief declared that “it falls to us to complete the work that Lindsey Graham began and advocated for for decades.”
“As we gather here today, the War Department is seeking a historic, generational investment of $1.5 trillion for America’s warriors, and Lindsey himself said to me, in his office, ‘This is the best military budget I’ve seen since I’ve been in Congress,’” Hegseth claimed, using President Donald Trump’s preferred name for the Department of Defense.
“This department pays tribute to Lindsey Graham in the naming of this base, but there could be no greater tribute than for Congress to give and invest in our warriors for the full $1.5 trillion,” he added.
The GOP narrowly controls both chambers of Congress, but as Politico reported just hours before the event, “Hegseth hasn’t persuaded Republicans to steamroll Democrats and advance the record-breaking plan, despite regularly trekking to the Hill in recent weeks and hobnobbing with lawmakers. Instead, an increasingly vocal group of GOP lawmakers argue the administration hasn’t explained why Republicans should burn valuable political capital in pursuit of Trump’s vision—especially with the midterms just months away.”
“Several top Republicans are skeptical about the Trump administration’s two-track approach to clinching $1.5 trillion. This relies on the GOP using the partisan reconciliation process—which allows the majority to bypass Democrats entirely—to provide $350 billion, the bulk of the increase,” the outlet detailed. The Republican majority “has—mostly—had Hegseth’s back” since the battle to confirm him, despite widely condemned bombings of boats allegedly trafficking drugs on the high seas and the ongoing war on Iran.
Hegseth on Monday shared some supposed details from his last meeting with Graham, who chaired the Senate Budget Committee.
“Mr. Secretary, what do you need for a reconciliation?” Graham said, according to Hegseth. “I said: ‘Well, in total, sir, we’re going to need $350 billion for our military. That’s what we believe gets us to $1.5 trillion—$115 [billion] in the base budget, $350 [billion] in reconciliation, and we’ll be ready.’”
“He looked at me and said, ‘How’s $355 [billion] sound to you?’ He wanted to give even more than $350 [billion],” Hegseth continued. “I saw firsthand as a young first lieutenant, as a captain in a combat zone, and as a secretary, the unwavering commitment of Lindsey Graham.”
Hegseth’s recounting of their meeting isn’t the first time Graham’s pro-war ideology has been highlighted since he died. As Common Dreams reported late last month, footage filmed for a documentary that was in the works shows the then-senator joyfully reacting to Trump’s Iran War. He said: “I almost cried. I mean, like, how long have we been pushing this?”
Responding to the release of that footage, Brian Finucane, senior adviser to the US Program at the International Crisis Group, said that “the warmonger got his wish and the result has been a catastrophe.”
A banner depicting US President Donald Trump and bearing messages was displayed in front of the Zolfaghar and Zolghadr ballistic missiles exhibited at Azadi Square in Tehran, Iran’s capital, on August 2, 2026.
(Photo by Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu via Getty Images)
As it becomes clear that there is “no escalatory military path out of this war,” Iran is demanding an even steeper toll for Trump to pull out.
President Donald Trump is now quietly conceding that he’s willing to walk away from his Iran war without meeting all of his demands if they agree to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. But Iran won’t let him back out of the quagmire without a steep price.
Iran is in the process of negotiating a limited reopening of the critical waterway with Oman. But Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said on Saturday that “until America corrects its behavior, the Strait of Hormuz will not open.”
He outlined a list of demands on Saturday, even harsher than those Trump walked away from when he abandoned the “memorandum of understanding” negotiated in June.
Zolghadr said the US must permanently end its war and naval blockade against Iran, and withdraw military forces from the region. He also said the US must fully compensate Iran for damages from the war, lift sanctions, and unfreeze assets abroad.
This demand for an end to US “aggression” applies not just to Iran, but to its allies in the region: Zolghadr also demanded an end to Israel’s attacks on Palestinians and a withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon, as well as an end to US and Israeli attacks against the Houthis in Yemen.
The Trump administration, which is not known to be in direct talks with Iran, has not yet responded to the demands. Trump told Axios on Sunday that “We are low-keying it” and “only semi-negotiating with Iran,” claiming that it was “in very bad shape” economically.
It’s clear, however, that the Iranians believe they have enough of an upper hand to make Trump grovel, especially as news emerges that the US has burned through nearly all its available stocks of long-range precision weapons, making the war increasingly costly, though the administration has denied this.
Domestic concerns are also weighing on Trump. Over the past month, as the war heated up again, average gas prices in the US have shot back up above $4 a gallon, a major liability for Republicans heading into a midterm election cycle in which many voters say the cost of living is a top concern.
Approval of Trump among Americans has fallen to a new all-time low of 34% according to a YouGov poll late last month. And just 28% of Americans say they approve of his handling of the war, according to an Associated Press/NORC poll.
As the Wall Street Journal reported, Trump has privately signaled a willingness to declare victory if Iran opens the strait, even without getting any sort of nuclear agreement, which was purportedly the reason he launched the war in the first place.
Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch, said Trump was “showing his desperation for a deal before it is completed, so Iran predictably demand[ed] major new concessions,” adding that it was a “masterclass in how not to negotiate.”
“As time passes, Tehran appears increasingly confident that the pressure is shifting onto Washington,” said the Israeli national security analyst Danny Citrinowicz. “Iranian leaders seem to believe that the United States is now more eager than Iran to bring the confrontation in the Strait of Hormuz to an end, and, crucially, that Washington has few attractive military options for changing that equation.”
Trita Parsi, the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told CNN, “At this point, it is absolutely clear that there is no escalatory military path out of this war.”
“It’s been tried in several different variations, and it has not ended up particularly well,” Parsi said. “In fact, the US’s position has been weakened, in my view, by additional military action. And as a result, I think there needs to be a full dedication to the diplomatic pathway.”
He added that for the Iranians, “the promise and the credibility of sanctions relief will carry far more weight than threats of further bombings.”
The strategy is being overseen by Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s policy chief, who has long called for the US to prepare to fight a “limited nuclear war”
The Pentagon is reportedly drafting a new nuclear strategy that’s expected to emphasize the use of tactical nuclear weapons to give the president more “options” in a potential nuclear conflict.
The strategy, first reported by NBC News, is being drafted by the Pentagon’s policy chief, Elbridge Colby, who has for more than a decade called for the US to develop additional capabilities to fight a “limited nuclear war.”
The idea would be to shift the US nuclear strategy away from the focus on using strategic nuclear weapons to wipe out an adversary’s nuclear capabilities and focus more on the possibility of using smaller, tactical nuclear weapons in a “regional” conflict.
Elbridge Colby, undersecretary of defense for policy, during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in Washington, DC, on March 3, 2026. (Photo by Craig Hudson/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect)
“If you actually want extended deterrence to be credible, you have to provide the nation’s political leadership with nuclear capabilities that common sense indicates you could actually use,” a source told NBC. “Otherwise you’re reducing our leadership’s options to extreme choices that the adversary won’t find credible.”
While the potential strategy would be carried out in the name of deterrence and preventing war, arms control advocates have strongly warned against the idea of developing more tactical nuclear weapons to prepare for a potential limited nuclear conflict over concerns that it would make nuclear war much more likely and that any nuclear exchange would likely lead to a global catastrophe.
“Without a firm rejection of the option to use nuclear weapons first in a conflict, by building and fielding more tactical nuclear weapons the administration is signaling its intention to use them against enemy forces and industrial infrastructure in a conflict,” the Arms Control Association said in response to the NBC report.
The ACA said that it “strongly opposes the administration’s decision to build more tactical nuclear weapons to supplement the options that exist” and pointed to the fact that the US already has at least two types of tactical nuclear weapons, including B61-12 gravity bombs, which are deployed in Europe, and the W76-2 low-yield warhead for the Trident II submarine-launched ballistic missile.
The ACA said the US Navy is also “acquiring a new nuclear-capable sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM-N) that may be available at the end of the decade for possible use in conflict with China.”
Breaking Defensereported that Colby announced on August 5 that the Pentagon was reviewing the US nuclear posture and repeatedly emphasized the term “options” in a speech he delivered that has not been made public.
Colby has been one of the leading voices in Washington’s policy circles advocating for the US to prepare for limited nuclear war. In a 2015 paper for the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) titled “A Nuclear Strategy and Posture for 2030,” Colby said the US “should make a special effort to develop the platforms and weapons, doctrine, planning capacity, and other capabilities needed to fight a limited nuclear war more effectively than plausible adversaries.”
He said that the ideal US nuclear force is “one that is not only highly survivable and able to issue a devastating blow against any adversary under any scenario but that is also capable of conducting effective limited nuclear operations in a controlled fashion while maintaining the ability to escalate to full-scale war if necessary.”
Colby made a similar argument in a 2018 piece written in Foreign Affairs titled “If You Want Peace, Prepare for Nuclear War,” published just a few months after he left the first Trump administration, where he led the development of the 2018 National Defense Strategy.
“Washington’s task is clear. It must demonstrate to Moscow and Beijing that any attempt to use force against US friends and allies would likely fail and would certainly result in costs and risks well out of proportion to whatever they might gain,” Colby wrote. “This requires conventional military power, but it also means having the right strategy and weapons to fight a limited nuclear war and come out on top.”
Donald Trump, far right, and Pete Hegseth, second from right, attend the dignified transfer of four U.S. service members recently killed in the Middle East, on July 22, 2026, at Dover Air Force Base, Del. Photo: Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP
The Pentagon is using a new method of tallying the number of U.S. soldiers killed and wounded in the Iran war that a U.S. government official said was “designed to obscure the count.”
Since the start of the conflict, the Department of War has posted the official count of casualties on the website of the Defense Casualty Analysis System, or DCAS, which tracks “deceased, wounded, ill or injured” service members for Congress and the president. This official total of dead and wounded personnel, as documented over months of reporting by The Intercept, has been a gross undercount, stemming from what that same official previously called a “casualty cover-up.”
But after a series of Iranian strikes on U.S. facilities in the Middle East in July, the Pentagon last week rolled out a new approach. Casualties since July 7 are now counted separately on a new webpage with a generic designation: “Overseas Operations.”
Two hundred and seventy-three U.S. troops were killed or wounded since July 7, according to the Monday total on the new Overseas Operations page.
When combined with the existing DCAS page for the Iran war, the official count stands at 704, an 83 percent increase in casualties since April 8, the day the first ceasefire deal was struck between the Trump administration and Iran. When counting known casualties overlooked by the DCAS page, the total exceeds 900 personnel.
For months, the Pentagon has failed to comment on DCAS anomalies reported by The Intercept nor the reason for the change in the way it now counts casualties, which was first reported by the New York Times. Last week, the Pentagon told the newspaper that “since Operation Epic Fury has concluded, the department classifies casualties as overseas operations in the CENTCOM area of responsibility.” Central Command oversees U.S. military operations in the Middle East.
“This is certainly designed to conceal the count of the wounded,” the official said, while noting that “incompetence” has also caused confusion in the casualty count.
The change comes after a July 20 rant by Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell who claimed reports of a Pentagon effort to withhold news of dozens of U.S. casualties were “baseless and malicious” and a U.S. official’s disclosure to The Intercept that same day that recent attacks on U.S. bases by Iran had wounded “far more” personnel than the Pentagon had acknowledged.
The casualty spike resulted from Iranian attacks on at least nine U.S. outposts across the Middle East since July 9, according to a second U.S. official who spoke to The Intercept on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with the press.
Iran’s military managed to overwhelm U.S. air defense systems using a mix of attack drones and advanced ballistic missiles, despite months of claims by President Donald Trump and self-styled War Secretary Pete Hegseth that Iran’s military was annihilated.
Last month, the tally of wounded personnel fluctuated by the day in the wake of increased Iranian attacks. On July 21, the casualty count on DCAS for Operation Epic Fury, the military’s official designation for the Iran war, stood at 500. Now, it has shrunk to 431.
For months, The Intercept found anomalies with the counts offered on the DCAS website. On April 21, for example, the number of wounded-in-action troops declined by 15 without public acknowledgment by the War Department. Despite repeated questions for months, the Pentagon has not commented on the disparities in its casualty count.
Prior reporting by The Intercept also found DCAS is missing hundreds of dead and wounded personnel from Epic Fury. The Pentagon list of the names of the dead is still missing Maj. Sorffly Davius, a signals and communication officer with the New York Army National Guard who was assigned to the headquarters of the 42nd Infantry Division and reportedly died of sudden illness while on duty in Camp Buehring, Kuwait, on March 6. Davius’s death was widely acknowledged even as it was excluded from the the official count: Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., spoke about him during a memorial service that month, and Gen. Dan Caine, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recognized Davius while “honoring our fallen.”
While DCAS provides a running tally of “non-hostile” deaths — meaning those who died from accidents or by illness — it doesn’t include “non-hostile” injuries. The DCAS figures for Epic Fury show that 65 Navy personnel were wounded in action. Missing, however, are the more than 200 sailors treated for smoke inhalation or lacerations due to a March 12 fire that raged aboard the USS Gerald R. Ford. The aircraft carrier had been conducting round-the-clock flight operations to, Caine said, “project combat power” in the Middle East.
Recent reporting by the War Horse, using Pentagon records obtained via the Freedom of Information Act, found more than 400 casualties were recorded between February 28 and April 8. Seventy occurred on March 18 alone, but this huge single-day toll was never reported by the Pentagon.
The records provide more granular detail than DCAS, revealing that at least 17 troops sustained life-threatening injuries. They show that U.S. troops suffered shrapnel wounds, broken bones, smoke inhalation, and other injuries. The most common injury recorded, however, was head trauma — which affected at least 170 troops, according to the data.
President Donald Trump has long dismissed brain injuries as “headaches” and “not serious.”
The U.S. government continues to demonstrate its knack for pursuing remarkably foolish foreign policies that have terrible consequences.
Many thought that President Trump was going to rectify this problem, at least somewhat. After all, he promised to shut down the Ukraine War as soon as he moved into the White House, if not before he did! Moreover, he said no more forever wars, no more wars in pursuit of regime change.
But Trump has failed. Not only did he fail to end the fighting in Ukraine, but he has also twice gone to war against Iran – the 12-Day War in June 2025 and the disastrous war that he and Benjamin Netanyahu started on February 28, 2026, which could be the greatest strategic blunder In U.S. history. Furthermore, he kidnapped Venezuela’s president and, by his own account, is running that country as if it is an American colony, not a sovereign state. And like his predecessor in the White House, President Joe Biden, he is complicit in Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its endless pogroms in the West Bank.
How did we end up in this dreadful situation? And how can we rectify it?
There is no guaranteed way to avoid foreign policy errors. But one way to minimize the chance of getting into serious trouble is to debate the issues of the day openly, so that critics of conventional wisdom or particular government policies can have their say. Media institutions are hugely important in fostering this kind of debate, which is why freedom of the press is protected in the United States. It allows critics to make their views known to large numbers of people and it provides legitimacy. Critics of existing policy are not always right, but sometimes they speak truth to power and help us avoid or correct big mistakes.
As almost every reader of Antiwar.com knows, the mainstream media in the United States have become much less willing to provide dissenters with a platform since the Cold War ended. Mainstream media outlets often seem to speak with one voice on the big foreign policy issues of the day and that voice usually backs U.S. government policy. This situation is not healthy, and it helps explains why America’s standing in the world has declined in recent decades.
Antiwar.com plays an enormously important role in filling this dangerous void in our public discourse. It provides an indispensable platform for critics to challenge the reigning views of the foreign policy establishment. This is essential for increasing the likelihood that the United States will pursue wiser policies. For this reason, I urge readers to generously support Antiwar.com. In these troubled times, a flourishing Antiwar.com is very much in the U.S. national interest.
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John J. Mearsheimer, PhD, is an American professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. More recently Mearsheimer has attracted attention for co-authoring and publishing the article The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, which was subsequently published as a book.
Israeli forces killed at least 26 people in Gaza over the weekend, striking apartment blocks, tent camps and the medicine warehouses of a hospital, in the territory’s deadliest days in weeks. The killings came as US President Donald Trump threatened Iran with “decapitation” after a week of American strikes across the regio
Israel killed at least seven people on Saturday and destroyed two of the four medicine warehouses of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, Al Jazeera reported. Gaza Health Ministry Director-General Munir al-Bursh said the destruction “turns medicine and illness itself into a tool of war.”
Palestinians try to extinguish a burning car after an Israeli military strike in Gaza City, Sunday, Aug. 2, 2026. [AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi]
The Associated Press reported that the Israeli military killed at least 17 more people, children among them, from Saturday night through Sunday, according to local hospitals. Al Jazeera counted 19 dead Sunday and put the weekend toll at 26. Among the dead were Abdullah Abu al-Teif, 33, his pregnant wife Abeer Anan, 29, and their five-year-old son Azzam, killed at the Al-Sousi Tower in western Gaza City. The Israeli military said the strikes had targeted militant operatives.
The bloodshed unfolded behind an official propaganda barrage of peace. On Thursday Trump announced a “HISTORIC agreement for the COMPLETE DISARMAMENT of Hamas”; on Saturday he claimed the “perimeters of a deal” to reopen the Strait of Hormuz had been agreed. As he spoke, Israeli bombs fell on Gaza City, Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis, and US bombers massed for what Trump said Sunday “would have been the biggest attack since World War II.”
Israel has attacked Gaza on 270 of the 297 days since the ceasefire took effect on October 10, 2025, an Al Jazeera analysis reported as of Monday. Gaza’s Health Ministry counts at least 1,250 Palestinians killed since the truce began; five Israeli soldiers have died in the same period, per the Associated Press.
The “ceasefires” are merely the framework for the permanent annexation of Gaza and the expansion of the war. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Sunday that the Israeli-held zone had reached 60 to 70 percent of Gaza, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesman Doron Spielman told the AP: “Disarming means physically giving up the weapons. Nothing less.”
The AP reported that Israel’s demands, according to a person with knowledge of the deal, include the freedom to keep conducting military operations in Gaza. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir wrote in the Telegram on July 31 that “assassinations in Gaza must continue.”
The Israeli army is meanwhile in the second week of a “wide-scale military operation” Netanyahu ordered across the West Bank after settlers from the Havat Gilad outpost attacked the village of Tal on July 24. Four Palestinians of the Ramadan family and two Israelis died.
The army deployed 26 battalions and raided towns from Jenin to Hebron, Al Jazeera reported on July 28; Army Radio counted 30 settler attacks the following weekend, including two mosques set on fire and a family home in Urif that more than 150 settlers set alight—an infant survived because her grandfather pulled her from her crib.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on July 24 that Palestinian villages should “look like the refugee camps in Nablus and Tulkarem.” According to UN figures, 1,122 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since October 2023, at least 246 of them children.
The assault on Gaza comes as Trump threatens to destroy the Iranian government. “Iranian Leadership is unbelievably duplicitous!” he wrote Monday on Truth Social. In the Oval Office later that day he said, “This is the last chance for them to sign a good document,” adding that he wanted to give “every last chance before decapitation.”
The threats followed a week of American bombardment. After Trump said July 27 that US strikes were paused for mediation, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard fired ballistic missiles on July 28 at a base housing US troops in Jordan, and the next day the US military announced a “heavy wave of strikes” on dozens of sites across Iran—command centers, missile and drone facilities and coastal defense sites.
Iranian state media reported that a missile struck a house on Qeshm Island, killing Qeisar Jafari, a taxi driver, his wife Zahra and their two-year-old son Sina. The same day, US and Saudi warplanes struck militia sites across seven Iraqi provinces; the Popular Mobilization Forces said 20 of its fighters were killed, and two Iraqi militia officials told the AP that six Iranian advisers died.
CBS News reported Friday that the US and Israel were preparing a bombing campaign against Iranian power plants and refineries. In a Truth Social post late Saturday, Trump announced he had canceled the attack, writing that “Iran, and other Middle Eastern Countries” had asked him to hold off.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth wrote Sunday on X: “The @DeptofWar was ready to go—and remains ready—at levels not seen since World War 2. Locked and loaded.”
These realities render all the talk of “ceasefire” by Trump and Netanyahu moot: There is an ongoing regional war throughout the Middle East, in which people are being killed every day.
Houthi missiles and drones have struck Saudi tankers and Aramco facilities since the group declared an embargo on Saudi shipping July 20; a drone set two gas vessels ablaze at Egypt’s port of Damietta July 29. Kuwait said Saturday it destroyed hostile drones over its territory and blamed Iran; Israel killed Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon Saturday and shelled southern Syria on July 30.
Trump’s claims of peace negotiations met a flat denial from Tehran. “We are not negotiating with the United States at this time,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said Monday; Iran says its only talks are with Oman, over a temporary shipping corridor through the Strait of Hormuz.
No ceasefire is in effect with Iran—the June memorandum collapsed in early July, and TheGuardian wrote Monday that the weekend reversal was thought to be Trump’s 12th cancellation of threatened strikes.
On CBS’s Face the Nation Sunday, Democratic Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona attacked the war as mismanaged: “Here’s a guy who got us into this without a strategic goal, without a plan, without a timeline.” His remedy was to win it: “put some people in here that know how to do this, how to talk to the Iranians.” He did not call for an end to the war and said nothing about Gaza.
At a Senate hearing on July 21, Democratic Senator Gary Peters of Michigan demanded that the administration win the war, telling Hegseth: “You don’t have a long-term plan to actually win this war. Win the war.”
The war is deeply unpopular: 64 percent of Americans told an AP-NORC poll published July 30 that it has not been worth fighting, and 60 percent told Quinnipiac July 29 they oppose US military action against Iran. But in Washington, the argument is over how the war should be fought, not how to end it.
Peace and Justice Post 
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