The Dictatorship
The fundamental flaw in Trump’s ‘major combat operations’ against Iran
Now we’ve done it. The United States, under the leadership of President Donald Trump, has launched “major combat operations” in Irancould be sending us right back into the quagmire of regime change in the Middle East. Simply because he wants to and he can.
Unlike the “Coalition of the Willing,” which put ground troops into Iraq, or the NATO coalition that invaded Afghanistan after 9/11 — instances for which U.S. leaders built campaigns to get the buy-in of allies and the public — Trump has unilaterally and erratically led the U.S. into conflict. The “concept of a plan” and being “locked and loaded” — both phrases Trump has used to describe his policies — is not a strategy for toppling the regime or keeping the U.S. from being mired in foreign wars.
The “concept of a plan” and being “locked and loaded” — both phrases Trump has used to describe his policies — is not a strategy for toppling the regime or keeping the U.S. from being mired in foreign wars.
We’ve been waiting for weeks to see if Trump’s threat of strikes would become real. In January, Trump suggested he would act in support of Iranian protesters, who, despite these threats from the U.S. president, are still being jailed and killed by the Iranian regime. More recently, Trump said that targeted strikes would gain concessions from Iran in nuclear negotiations. But at no point has the American public heard their commander in chief explain why now, and to what end?
Forcing change in Iran is not a one-strike-and-done endeavor. Look no further than this past June, when the U.S. launched dramatic strikes on Iran’s Fordow nuclear facilityan act that did not end Iran’s ability to enrich uranium. While Trump said Iran’s program was obliteratedinternational inspectors have not been allowed into the country to verify such claims.
The people of Iran have certainly wanted change. Two significant protest movements have erupted in Iran in recent years: the 2022 national uprising of women across generations demanding basic freedom and the more recent protests against corruption and economic hardship. In both instances, thousands of people demanded change from a regime that remains intransigent and violent toward its own people. None of this is new or unexpected.
In some corners, Trump’s bluster has reignited a long-standing belief that the U.S. military can be a force for good in the world. The idea of a noble U.S. military intervening to save women or to free a community is not new: Women’s groups were part of the drumbeat toward U.S. strikes in Afghanistan.
On Saturday, Trump announced on Truth Social that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei had been killed in the strikes, an announcement later confirmed by Iranian state media. But the idea of “regime change” led by the U.S. military has two potent, cautionary tales for this generation of Americans: ISIS grew out of the devastation of the Iraq war and after 20 years, Afghanistan returned to Taliban brutality. And that was when the U.S. had massive support of allies and the American public.
Political solutions, negotiated by diplomats of multiple parties, is how global policy solutions have advanced in recent years. The U.N. climate change negotiations brought together more than 130 countries to reduce carbon emissions. The original Iran nuclear deal brought together European countries and Russia in a system that constrained and verified Iran’s nuclear ambitions. But Trump does not like diplomatic solutions, at least not those developed by other presidents, and has removed the United States from a variety of international agreements.
And the Trump administration was back at the negotiating table only briefly — weighed down by past broken agreements and failed military interventions. Negotiators prefer to be in the position of holding an “or else” card in their back pocket, which is the looming threat of a capable military. In Iran, though, the U.S. alone does not have the obvious military advantage; even American war hawks concede that Iran runs a very capable militaryas well as a network of terrorist assets that threatens U.S. bases and civilians across the Middle East, and has the ability to cause economic and digital havoc. So U.S. strikes necessitate coordinating with Israel and other allies, automatically making this a regional conflict.
The idea of “regime change” led by the U.S. military has two potent, cautionary tales for this generation of Americans: the failure to establish safety in Iraq and the return of Afghanistan to Taliban brutality.
Although tempers seemed to cool a few weeks agowhen negotiations toward a new nuclear deal restarted in earnest, the progress did not meet Trump’s preferred pace. Iran’s foreign minister blamed the U.S. negotiating teamsaying on Feb. 20 that the U.S. “has not asked for zero enrichment.” With the basic contours of a diplomatic discussion still under debate, strikes of this magnitude make compromise impossible. No one who gets attacked with missiles turns to negotiation as the next step; they usually want to save face and hit back hard. This means Trump’s military intervention has likely disrupted any hope of talks moving forward and instead gives Iran the excuse it’s long wanted to attack U.S. military bases and its allies, Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Which brings us to the continued challenge of Trump’s approach to Iran: While the regime in Tehran has patience, strategic coordination and zero tolerance for dissent, Trump has been impulsive and inconsistent, and has yet to settle on a long-term goal. The most immediate outcome of this strike could be to rally the Iranian people around their flag, while upping America’s economic uncertainty and moral isolation across the board.
Nayyera Haq is a global affairs journalist.
FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — Eight protesters accused by the Justice Department of having ties to antifawere sentenced Tuesday to decades in federal prison over a shooting outside a Texas immigration detention center that wounded a police officer. Prosecutors have called the shooting an act of terrorism.
One of the defendants, a former U.S. Marine Corps reservist convicted of opening fire during the July 4 demonstration outside the Prairieland Detention Center near Dallas, was sentenced to 100 years in prison, the maximum punishment.
The lengthy sentences were condemned by family members and supporters in a news conference outside the federal courthouse in Fort Worth. Hope Song, whose son Benjamin Songreceived the heftiest sentence, disputed prosecutors’ claims that her son shot the officer and said he didn’t intend to hurt anyone.
U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor, one of two judges overseeing the proceedings, said what happened wasn’t a protest but “an assault on democracy.”
“The need to deter this type of conduct is high,” O’Connor said.
The seven other protesters received prison terms ranging from 30 to 70 years.
Prosecutors said the eight are members of antifa, a decentralized anti-fascist organization and a targetof the Trump administration. Antifa is not a single organization but rather an umbrella term for far-left militant groups that confront or resist neo-Nazis and white supremacists at demonstrations.
President Donald Trump last fall signed an executive order designating antifa a domestic terrorist organization, even though there is no domestic equivalent to the State Department’s list of foreign terror organizations.
The defendants deny any affiliation with antifa and maintain they attended the demonstration in support of detained immigrants.
Prosecutor Frank Gatto urged the judge to impose stiff penalties.
“People with that kind of extremist beliefs need extra time in prison,” Gatto said. “They believe violence is justified.”
Phillip Hayes, Song’s attorney, said outside the courthouse that he takes issue with the idea that the protesters are extremists.
“This is a bunch of kids and young adults who really have a really big heart and really wanted their voice to be heard,” Hayes said. “It was never intended that anybody get hurt. It was never intended that any shots would be fired.”
Prosecutors said in court that Song had yelled “get to the rifles” and opened fire, striking a police officer who had just pulled up to the center.
Hayes argued that Song’s shots were “suppressive fire” and that a ricochet bullet hit the officer after he arrived on the scene and “aggressively” pulled out his firearm. He said his client will appeal the 100-year sentence.
“Song, aside from this day, has had an impeccable life. A former Marine. A good student,” Hayes said. “He had a lot of good qualities that were just ignored. The judge went ahead and gave as much as he could.”
Other defendants and their family members pleaded for leniency in court.
Autumn Hill said the gathering “seemed more like a party to me than anything else” and that she and others who participated “didn’t expect or want any violence or destruction of property to occur.”
Amber Lowrey told the judge that her sister, Savanna Batten, is a compassionate person with dreams of opening a bakery. She said Batten’s activism started with animal rights and evolved into anti-war and human rights advocacy.
“She’s the best person I know,” Lowrey said.
Hill and Batten both received 50-year sentences.
Other defendants previously pleaded guilty to providing material support to terrorists rather than take their case to trial.
Critics warn the case could have a wide-reaching impact on protests given that organizations operating within the U.S. are supposed to be protected by First Amendment free-speech rights.
Last week, federal prosecutors charged 15 peoplewith impeding the Trump administration’s immigration crackdownin Minnesota. They claimed the demonstrators were members of antifa who conspired against the federal government to block arrests and deportations by setting up blockades around government buildings and throwing chunks of ice at federal vehicles, among other actions.
The Dictatorship
Tulsi Gabbard and Senate GOP face difficult new questions over influence of her ‘guru’
About a month into Donald Trump’s second term, Senate Republicans weighed whether to confirm one of the president’s worst nominees. Indeed, the list of reasons to reject Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination for director of national intelligence was not short.
The former congresswoman lacked the requisite experience in intelligence matters. She had an indefensible habit of echoing Russian propaganda. She struggled to explain her record of defending Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime. Senators heard from former national security officials who issued unsubtle warnings about elevating Gabbard to an important and influential position.
But in case that weren’t quite enough, let’s also not overlook the fact that Gabbard was a member of a secretive Hare Krishna offshoot religious sect that is considered by many of its former members to be an abusive cult.
Gabbard, who wrapped up her tenure as DNI last week, has long insisted that any suggestion that she was somehow enthralled to or controlled by this sect or its leader, whom she has referred to as her “guru,” is just bigotry against her faith.
But it’s against this backdrop that The Washington Post obtained hundreds of secret memos prepared for Gabbard during her congressional tenure, which were put together by members of the alleged cult and which included thousands of pages of specific directives to her on policy and politics.
After careful analysis of thousands of these documents, which have not been independently verified by MS NOW, the Post determined that they likely came from Gabbard’s secretive guru, a man named Chris Butler.
The memos, starting in 2013, when the Hawaiian first arrived on Capitol Hill, reflect a dynamic in which Gabbard didn’t just take direction from the materials, but essentially took dictation from the alleged cult leader: Memos told Gabbard what she should do as a member of Congress, and she often did exactly that, sometimes word for word.
The Post’s Jon Swaine spent months trying to get Gabbard to respond to questions, but to no avail. Her spokeswoman reportedly encouraged Swaine to drop the story, saying, “I cannot imagine WaPo’s readers would be interested in yet another uncredible, bigoted attack on the DNI’s faith.”
On May 20, Swaine nevertheless alerted the DNI and top members of her staff to the fact that the Post was prepared to publish his reporting anyway on her association with Butler.
On May 22, Fox News reported that Gabbard was leaving the administration, ostensibly because of a health issue involving her husband.
This week, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer spoke on the Senate floor and commented on the reporting:
There are reports that Tulsi Gabbard was receiving instructions from a so-called guru and repeating them word for word. That ought to concern all of us if it’s true. No one knows who this guru really is, what his connections are, and where the instructions came from. … We need answers.
The New York Democrat’s comments made sense, though it’s worth considering who, exactly, “we need answers” from.
It stands to reason, for example, that Gabbard has some explaining to do, but I’m also interested in the answers from those who elevated her to an influential intelligence office in the first place.
In February 2025, confronted with an avalanche of reasons to reject Gabbard’s nomination, 52 Senate Republicans — every GOP member except Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell — shrugged off every red flag and voted to confirm her as the nation’s DNI, including so-called “moderates” such as Maine’s Susan Collins and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski.
The question for these 52 senators seems obvious: Do you regret that confirmation vote and now recognize it as a mistake? Or do you still think it was a good idea to put Gabbard in this influential intelligence position?
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
In the lead-up to the Iran war, President Donald Trump dismissed the possibility that Tehran would close the Strait of Hormuz despite warnings from his top military adviser, authors of a new book told MS NOW’s Lawrence O’Donnell on Monday.
In their first televised interview about “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump,” New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan said Trump also disregarded warnings from Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, about the potential effects on American weaponry and about casualties.
The initial closure of the strait, a narrow passageway through which a fifth of the world’s oil passes, led to a spike in gas and oil prices. According to Swan, Trump thought Iran would have limited time to take action because the war would be over quickly — a claim he has made repeatedly during the nearly four-month-long war.
“He felt that this regime was a paper tiger, that this was going to be a fast war,” Swan said on “The Last Word.” “He just said he felt that that was going to be the case, that they were going to collapse very quickly.”
“It’s a form of magical thinking, actually, is what it all boils down to,” he added.
The revelation is just one of several in the book — which is based on more than 1,000 interviews — that illustrate how Trump repeatedly bases geopolitical decisions on his own whims rather than experts’ assessments.
Another example of such thinking was when Trump floated a plan to expel 2 million Palestinians from Gaza so he could turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East.” Haberman and Swan wrote in the book that one senior aide characterized the idea as “legitimately nutso … but very on-brand.”
Haberman also spoke about “how scared” people were inside the White House ahead of last year’s so-called Liberation Daywhen Trump unveiled sweeping global tariffs. (The Supreme Court struck down those tariffs in February.)
“They were scared at how close the bond markets came to just completely melting down seven days later, which was finally what got him [Trump] off of it, but again, it was the willingness to just go straight to the brink” that was jarring, Haberman said.
Despite such fear among Trump’s staff, Haberman added, the White House makes up “a group of people who genuinely want to see him succeed.”
Julianne McShane is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW who also covers the politics of abortion and reproductive rights. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at jmcshane.19 or follow her on X or Bluesky.
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