Iran unleashed a barrage of drone and missile strikes against civilian and military targets across nine countries on Saturday, killing at least six people and sending residents and military personnel scrambling for shelter from the Middle East to the Persian Gulf. The strikes targeted locations in the UAE, Bahrain, Israel, Syria, Iraq, Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia in what Tehran framed as retaliation for Operation Epic Fury.
Among the targets: a US Navy base in Bahrain, Dubai International Airport, Prince Sultan Air Base outside Riyadh, and residential neighborhoods in Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi. The scope was enormous. The damage was real. And the message from Tehran was unmistakable.
This wave of violence followed Operation Epic Fury, a US and Israeli daylight attack that struck at the heart of the Iranian regime, including the death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and other key regime figures. What Iran launched Saturday was not the strike of a confident power projecting strength. It was the spasm of a decapitated regime scattering fire in every direction, hitting allies and bystanders as much as adversaries.
Consider the target list. Iran didn't just strike at Israel or American military assets. It fired on Kuwait, the UAE, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. Several of these are Muslim-majority nations. Some have spent years trying to maintain diplomatic back channels with Tehran. None of that mattered when the mullahs needed to project fury; they no longer had the leadership to sustain, as New York Post reports.
At Dubai International Airport, a late Saturday strike was intercepted, but falling debris injured four people and killed one. Smoke filled a terminal. Passengers captured the chaos on video, with one clip capturing screams of "Oh my God" as travelers fled. Near the five-star Fairmont the Palm in Dubai, apparent debris from another intercepted attack set a large fire. It remains unclear if anyone was hurt there.
In Abu Dhabi, a worker was killed in a residential area, a strike the UAE's Ministry of Defense confirmed on X. The UAE military said it intercepted three waves of ballistic missiles from Tehran, and the government's response was blunt.
"Reserves the right to respond."
That is the UAE choosing its words carefully while keeping every option open.
One nighttime barrage appeared to land direct hits in Tel Aviv, where at least 125 missiles were fired, with 35 piercing Israeli airspace. One woman was killed. At least 20 people were hurt. In the Syrian town of Sweida, four people were killed. In Kuwait, the Ministry of Defense announced it had successfully intercepted "several ballistic missiles" launched at Ali Al-Salem Air Base, with military personnel and residents warned of the incoming attack.
An Iranian missile was also launched at the US Navy base in Bahrain on February 28, 2026. The impact on the headquarters of the US Fifth Fleet was not immediately clear, though a related headline referenced three US service members killed and five seriously wounded.
President Trump warned of possible casualties from Iranian attacks but reassured that proper protocols were in place to minimize American deaths. His statement framed the broader mission in terms that the American public deserves to hear from a commander in chief:
"My administration has taken every possible step to minimize the risk to US personnel in the region."
"But we're doing this not for now, we're doing this for the future and it is a noble mission."
That is the posture of a president who understands that the elimination of the Iranian regime's top leadership will be measured not by Saturday's retaliatory fireworks but by what the region looks like six months from now. Operation Epic Fury removed the head. The body is thrashing. That was always going to be the ugly part.
People fled to nearly a dozen countries. Kuwait, the UAE, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia fended off Iranian strikes throughout the day. The geographic breadth of the attack is itself an indictment of the regime. Iran didn't hit military targets with precision. It sprayed missiles across an entire region, killing civilians in airports and apartment buildings and Syrian towns that had nothing to do with Operation Epic Fury.
For years, the foreign policy establishment warned that confronting Iran would destabilize the Middle East. What Saturday demonstrated is that Iran was always the source of that instability. A regime willing to fire on nine countries, including nations it ostensibly maintained diplomatic relations with, was never a partner for peace. It was a threat waiting for a reason.
The interceptors worked in most cases. The Gulf states' defense systems, built in large part through American partnerships, absorbed the blow. Kuwait intercepted. The UAE intercepted. Israel intercepted most of what came its way. The infrastructure America spent decades building in the region did exactly what it was designed to do.
The question now is whether what remains of Iran's command structure can sustain this level of aggression or whether Saturday was the high-water mark of a dying regime's capacity. The Gulf states are watching. Israel is watching. And every one of them is doing the math on what Iran looks like without Khamenei, without its key figures, and without the illusion of untouchability that kept its neighbors deferential for decades.
The UAE's four-word statement said everything. Saudi Arabia hosted incoming fire at a base 40 miles from Riyadh. Kuwait took missiles at an air base housing coalition forces. These governments now have domestic justification for responses they may have previously hesitated to pursue.
Saturday was ugly. People died in airports and living rooms and ancient Syrian towns. But the regime that ordered those strikes no longer has the leadership that built it, the supreme leader who sustained it, or the aura of invincibility that protected it. Iran fired in nine directions at once. That is not a strength. That is the last act of a collapsing power trying to burn everything on its way down.
The Department of War is moving U.S. military assets toward Iran and putting options in front of President Donald Trump, according to press secretary Kingsley Wilson, who said the goal is to make clear that America “means business” as negotiations with Iran intensify.
Wilson told The Daily Caller that the Department of War’s role is to prepare, not posture. The message to Tehran, she suggested, is that diplomacy is on the table, but it is not the only tool in the box.
Speaking “at the White House’s media row” following the president’s State of the Union address, Wilson framed the military buildup as readiness built for a commander in chief who sets the direction, then expects the bureaucracy to execute. The Daily Caller shares.
Wilson put it plainly:
"At the Department of War, our job is to plan. We have contingency plans for every operation and every scenario. If the president says go, we need to be ready to go whatever option he chooses. So we are presenting options to the president,"
That is how serious governments operate. They do not outsource national security to vibes. They do not confuse speeches with strategy. They plan, they position, and they ensure the president has credible choices in real time.
Wilson emphasized that Trump’s instincts run toward peace and diplomacy, but she also made the Department of War’s mission clear: prepare for whatever comes next, including the possibility that Iran refuses to deal.
"This is a president who seeks peace and who always pursues diplomacy first, but it is our job to make sure that we’re prepared should he choose a different course of action, and we have to have the assets in place to do it,"
The sequence matters. Diplomacy is not “forever talks.” It is talks backed by consequences. In the real world, the credibility of your diplomacy depends on whether your adversary thinks you can and will act.
The White House is “trying to make a nuclear deal with Iran,” and it is not pretending that America is out of options if Iran declines to commit.
In a comment to Reuters, the White House warned that if no deal is made, it “will have to do something very tough like last time,” a reference to “the June strikes on the country’s nuclear facilities.”
That is not inflammatory language. It is an attempt to restore a basic reality that too many foreign regimes and too many American elites forgot: U.S. warnings are supposed to mean something.
Wilson argued that Iran’s leadership, and the Iranian people, are not guessing about what American power can look like when it is actually used. She said the administration is moving aircraft and other assets so the message lands before a shot is fired.
"We’ve got a lot of assets over there, a lot of aircraft over there, and we’re going to make sure that the Iranian people know we mean business, and the regime and the mullahs there particularly, know we mean business. They remember midnight hammer and the success of that operation. They also, like the rest of the world and our enemies, watched the Maduro raid,"
The specifics of “midnight hammer” and “the Maduro raid” are not spelled out in the provided material, but Wilson’s intent is unmistakable. She is invoking recognizable demonstrations of U.S. capability to shape Iran’s decision-making now.
Deterrence is not a slogan. It is a reputation that has to be maintained. When it fades, adversaries test you. When it is restored, they start looking for exits.
The center of gravity in this story is Trump’s red line. The material states that during his Tuesday State of the Union address, Trump “drew a red line on negotiations with Iran” and said Iran must commit to not building a nuclear weapon.
Wilson echoed that and urged Iran to choose the deal while it can:
"They see what the United States military, and only the United States military is capable of doing so, it would be very wise for them to make a deal with this president. And I would also add that the president has been clear, whether on the campaign trail or throughout his entire presidency, that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. That is a red line, and we at the Department of War are in full support of that initiative,"
This is what serious leadership looks like. A line is drawn, publicly, and the apparatus of the state is aligned behind it.
America can debate tactics. It should. But a nuclear Iran is not the kind of problem you solve with clever messaging or another round of bureaucratic process. You prevent it, or you live with the consequences.
Wilson’s comments also land as an indictment of a broader habit in Washington: to treat hard problems as permanent, and to treat American strength as something embarrassing that must be apologized for before it is deployed.
Here, the posture is different. The Department of War says it is moving assets. The White House says Iran must commit. And the administration is signaling that if diplomacy fails, decisions will not be deferred indefinitely.
That does not guarantee an outcome. It does restore leverage.
And in a world where adversaries watch for hesitation, leverage is the difference between peace through strength and chaos through wishful thinking.
The regime in Tehran is being handed a choice, and the clock is not going to stop for another round of talking points.
President Trump took to Truth Social on Monday to torch a string of media reports suggesting that Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine harbors reservations about military action against Iran, calling the coverage "100 percent incorrect" and insisting that Caine knows "one thing, how to WIN."
The pushback came after outlets including Axios, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post published stories characterizing Caine as cautious, even reluctant, about the prospect of a major operation against Tehran. Trump wasn't having it.
"Numerous stories from the Fake News Media have been circulating stating that General Daniel Caine, sometimes referred to as Razin, is against us going to War with Iran. The story does not attribute this vast wealth of knowledge to anyone, and is 100 percent incorrect."
The same day, the State Department announced that all nonemergency personnel and family members of staffers should be evacuated from the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon, according to The Hill. The diplomatic and military pieces are moving in tandem.
The pattern here is almost too predictable. Anonymous sources feed sympathetic reporters a narrative designed to suggest internal dissent within the administration. The stories frame a military leader as the reluctant adult in the room, quietly pushing back against a reckless commander-in-chief. The goal is never to inform the public. It's to constrain the president's options by manufacturing the perception of chaos before a single decision has been made.
Axios reported that Caine has been "more cautious in talks about planning against Iran" and views "a potential major operation against Iran as inviting a higher risk for U.S. casualties." The Wall Street Journal placed similar warnings in meetings at the Pentagon and the National Security Council. The Washington Post added that a major operation could face hurdles due to "a low stockpile of munitions."
None of the reports, notably, quoted Caine as being against military action. There is a significant difference between a military commander presenting risks, which is literally his job, and a military commander opposing his president's policy. The press collapsed that distinction because the collapsed version makes for a better headline.
A source familiar with the matter told The Hill on Monday that Caine has presented Trump and other top national security officials in recent days a range of strike options the U.S. military could execute against Iran. That detail sits awkwardly next to the narrative of a general pumping the brakes.
The president left no ambiguity about who holds the pen on this decision. He praised Caine's credentials, calling him the architect of the U.S. bombing of Iran's three premier nuclear sites last June, an operation known as Midnight Hammer. He pointed to Caine's role in the early January raid in Venezuela, where U.S. personnel captured Nicolás Maduro. This is not a president worried about his general's resolve.
"General Caine, like all of us, would like not to see War but, if a decision is made on going against Iran at a Military level, it is his opinion that it will be something easily won."
"He has not spoken of not doing Iran, or even the fake limited strikes that I have been reading about, he only knows one thing, how to WIN and, if he is told to do so, he will be leading the pack."
Trump also made clear that diplomacy remains the preferred lane. Special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, are slated to meet with Iranian officials for another round of nuclear talks in Geneva, Switzerland. On Friday, the president said he was considering limited strikes against Iran if those negotiations over the country's nuclear program fail.
That sequencing matters. Diplomacy first, credible force behind it. This is not saber-rattling for its own sake.
"I am the one that makes the decision, I would rather have a Deal than not but, if we don't make a Deal, it will be a very bad day for that Country and, very sadly, its people, because they are great and wonderful, and something like this should never have happened to them."
Diplomatic engagement without military credibility is just talking. Every serious negotiation in history has been shaped by what happens if the talking stops. Iran's regime understands this calculus better than most. They watched Midnight Hammer level three nuclear sites. They watched the Venezuela operation succeed. The question Tehran faces isn't whether the United States can act. It's whether this president will.
The media's insistence on framing military readiness as internal conflict serves one audience: Tehran's negotiators. Every story suggesting American hesitation is a story that weakens the diplomatic hand. Whether that's the intent or merely the effect, the result is the same.
Trump acknowledged the human weight of what's at stake, calling the Iranian people "great and wonderful" and lamenting that "something like this should never have happened to them." That distinction, between a regime that has brought its country to the brink and the population suffering under it, is one the press rarely bothers to draw.
The embassy evacuation in Lebanon, the Geneva talks, and the strike options on the table. These are the actions of an administration that has prepared for every outcome and prefers the one that doesn't involve fire. But preparation is not hesitation, and presenting options is not dissent.
The media needed a story about a president at war with his own general. What they got was a president and a general reading from the same page, with the press writing fiction in the margins.
King Charles was warned six years ago that Prince Andrew's business entanglements were damaging the Royal Family, according to a whistleblower email now at the center of a widening scandal that has already landed the ex-Duke of York in police custody.
The Mail on Sunday revealed that in August 2019, a whistleblower sent an email to Charles, then Prince of Wales, through the royal lawyers Farrer & Co. The message was blunt: David Rowland, the controversial millionaire financier orbiting Andrew for years, had "abused the Royal Family's name."
Andrew was arrested on Thursday on suspicion of misconduct in public office. He was released under investigation eleven hours later. The charge carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, though he has not been formally charged.
The question now reverberating through British politics is simple: what did the Palace do with that warning, and why did it take a police arrest to force the issue?
As reported by the Daily Mail, the August 2019 email did not mince words. Addressed to Charles through Farrer & Co, it laid out what the whistleblower described as a pattern of financial entanglement between Andrew and David Rowland that put the monarchy's reputation at risk.
"HRH the Duke of York's actions suggest that his Royal Highness considers his relationship with David Rowland more important than that of his family."
A second email, sent directly to David Rowland, copied in Charles's private secretary Clive Alderton and the late Queen's solicitor Mark Bridges at Farrer & Co. That message was even more direct:
"The evidence provided unequivocally proves that you have abused the Royal Family's name."
The whistleblower alleged that Rowland "paid HRH The Duke of York to procure a Luxembourg Banking Licence" for his private bank, Banque Havilland. That bank had its licence withdrawn in 2024 by the European Central Bank, a decision it is currently appealing.
So by 2019, the Palace had a documented warning. Andrew's name was already radioactive thanks to the now infamous photograph of him with 17-year-old Virginia Giuffre and his links to convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. And yet the wheels of accountability barely turned.
The financial relationship between Andrew and the Rowland family stretches back decades. Messages seen by the Mail on Sunday appear to show that Andrew allowed Jonathan Rowland, David's son, to effectively join in with his official duties as a taxpayer-funded trade envoy between 2001 and 2011.
The details are striking:
Andrew once told Epstein that Rowland was his "trusted money man." Let that sink in. A member of the Royal Family, serving as a taxpayer-funded trade envoy, allegedly blended his official diplomatic duties with the private financial interests of a man he vouched for to a convicted paedophile.
Jonathan Rowland, responding to the revelations, dismissed the allegations. He said the emails were "stolen" and had been "extensively reported" previously, adding: "You can't procure a banking licence, that's an idiotic suggestion." He claimed "no recollection" of other matters and offered "no idea" when pressed further.
On Saturday, MPs called for police to study the evidence acquired by the Mail on Sunday. The responses crossed party lines, which tells you how politically toxic Andrew has become.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp did not hold back:
"These explosive new MoS findings are shocking, but not surprising. The police should investigate them at once. Andrew has acted disgracefully and deserves nothing less than to face justice over his deals, something which has been denied to Epstein's victims for too long. No one is above the law."
Shadow Foreign Secretary Priti Patel struck a similar tone, noting that "each day new revelations appear and they are all horrific" and calling for urgent police investigations.
Reform UK's Treasury spokesman Robert Jenrick was equally forceful:
"The police must investigate the latest revelation urgently. No stone must be left unturned to establish the truth. Andrew has done his best to wreck Britain's reputation on the world stage through his association with Epstein."
There are now growing calls for the Government to introduce legislation to remove Andrew from the line of succession. He remains eighth in line to the throne. Defence minister Luke Pollard said stripping him of his right to succession was the "right thing to do."
The Metropolitan Police has started the process of identifying and contacting former and serving officers who may have worked closely with Andrew in a protection capacity. The force asked those officers to consider carefully whether anything they saw or heard during their period of service might be relevant to ongoing reviews.
"They have been asked to consider carefully whether anything they saw or heard during that period of service may be relevant to our ongoing reviews and to share any information that could assist us."
The Met refused to confirm how many current and former staff members were involved. A British ambassador reportedly warned the Government more than two decades ago about Andrew's associations. A British diplomat in Moscow also raised concerns. The warnings piled up. The action did not.
Buckingham Palace's response to the whistleblower revelations was characteristic. A Palace source said that "given the ongoing police investigation into Andrew, it would not be possible to give any comment on the whistleblower's email." The source added that "any relevant material in the possession of the MoS should be shared with the appropriate authorities."
That is a remarkable posture for an institution that received a direct, documented warning in 2019 about one of its own members allegedly selling access and blending royal duties with private financial schemes.
Gloria Allred, a lawyer who has represented 27 Epstein victims, urged the King and the Prince and Princess of Wales to give statements to police. Speaking to the BBC, she laid out the stakes plainly:
"King Charles and all the members really of the Royal Family have said that they support the victims. The best way is for them to also do interviews with the police if they are requested to do so. Or they could volunteer to do so. I would respectfully request that they speak out about what Andrew may have ever told them about his role with Jeffrey Epstein."
The Andrew saga is not just a story about one reckless royal. It is a case study in how institutions prioritize self-preservation over accountability. The warning signs were everywhere. A whistleblower put them in writing. Diplomats raised alarms. The financial entanglements were not subtle. A man paying off your £1.5 million loan while you carry the title of trade envoy is not a grey area.
For years, the British establishment treated Andrew's behavior as an embarrassment to be managed rather than a potential crime to be investigated. The same instinct that kept Epstein's network intact across multiple countries, the instinct to look away because the names involved are too important, operated in plain sight within the monarchy itself.
Now that an arrest has been made, every institution that received a warning and filed it away will face a reckoning. The emails exist. The timeline is clear. The question is no longer what Andrew did. It is who knew, when they knew it, and why they chose silence.
Sen. John Fetterman went on "Jesse Watters Primetime" Thursday and did something vanishingly rare for a Democrat: he called out one of his own party's most prominent members for her hostility toward Israel.
The target was Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who used the Munich Security Conference stage to accuse the United States of enabling "genocide" in Gaza and to demand that American military aid to Israel be conditioned on human rights benchmarks.
Fetterman was not impressed.
"I think that the most troubling thing for her views is she is just, you know, anti-Israel. I mean, and those views and, you know, so clueless — to sit in Germany and accuse Israel of genocide while you're sitting in Germany — and how ignorant that is."
That line does not need a footnote. The congresswoman stood in the country that perpetrated the actual Holocaust and deployed the word "genocide" against the Jewish state defending itself after the worst massacre of Jews since that very Holocaust. The irony writes itself, as Fox News reports.
Ocasio-Cortez used her appearance at the Feb. 13, 2026, Munich Security Conference to push for conditioning U.S. aid to Israel under the Leahy Laws, legislation introduced in 1997 by former Sen. Patrick Leahy that prohibits the Department of Defense and State Department from funding foreign security force units when there is credible information that a unit has committed a "gross violation of human rights."
In her remarks, the congresswoman framed this as a simple matter of legal compliance:
"And, so, I believe that enforcement of our own laws through the Leahy laws — which requires conditioning aid in any circumstance when you see gross human rights violations — is appropriate."
She went further, claiming that unconditional U.S. support for Israel "enabled a genocide in Gaza" and that "thousands of women and children dead" resulted from a failure to enforce conditions on aid.
This is, of course, a familiar playbook. Wrap a radical position in the language of procedural concern. Don't say you want to abandon America's most important Middle Eastern ally. Say you just want to "enforce our own laws." The framing is designed to make the extraordinary sound routine.
But no amount of legal window dressing changes what Ocasio-Cortez is actually arguing: that Israel's military response to the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks constitutes genocide, and that the United States bears moral responsibility for it. That is not a legal argument. It is a political one, and a deeply dishonest one at that.
Fetterman did not stop at criticizing AOC personally. He described her "specifically anti-Israel" stance as representative of a "serious rot" within a subset of the Democratic Party. That phrase carries weight coming from a sitting Democratic senator who has, on other issues, remained firmly in his party's mainstream.
What makes Fetterman's criticism notable is not just that he's willing to say it on Fox News. It's that almost no one else in his caucus will say it anywhere. The Democratic Party's progressive wing has spent the last two years steadily normalizing the "genocide" label for Israel's war against Hamas, a terrorist organization that initiated the conflict by slaughtering civilians. The moderates who know better mostly keep quiet, calculating that silence is cheaper than confrontation.
Fetterman, to his credit, has refused that bargain. He has been one of the only Democrats willing to support Israel publicly and consistently since Oct. 7. His willingness to appear on conservative media and say plainly what many of his colleagues only whisper in private is, at minimum, honest.
That does not make him a conservative. When asked about California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Fetterman acknowledged their disagreements but emphasized the "big tent" nature of the Democratic Party:
"I don't agree with him with some of his, you know, views in certain things. California is a lot different than Pennsylvania, but you know, technically we are just Democrats, and now that's why, you know, the Democratic Party has to be a big tent thing and that's why we can disagree on some things."
A big tent is one thing. But a tent that accommodates both Fetterman's position and AOC's "genocide" rhetoric is not big. It's incoherent.
Beyond her Israel remarks, Ocasio-Cortez's Munich appearance also drew mockery for comments about Taiwan and Venezuela, though the specifics of those flubs circulated more widely on social media than in formal reporting. The congresswoman did not respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
Silence is a choice. When your remarks at a major international security conference spark what the source material describes as "outrage and intense backlash from military and Middle East experts," a serious legislator would clarify or defend. Ocasio-Cortez did neither.
This is the pattern with the progressive left's foreign policy wing. They deploy maximalist moral language on the global stage, accuse allies of the most serious crime in international law, and then treat the predictable blowback as proof that the establishment is afraid of their truth-telling. It is a closed loop. Criticism becomes validation. Backlash becomes branding.
Words matter in international affairs, and "genocide" is not a rhetorical flourish. It is a specific legal designation with specific consequences. Throwing it at Israel while standing in Germany is not bold. It is reckless.
It equates a democratic nation's military campaign against a designated terrorist organization with the systematic extermination of a people. It gives rhetorical ammunition to every bad-faith actor on the global stage who wants to isolate Israel. And it tells Hamas and its sponsors that their strategy of embedding among civilians works, because Western politicians will eventually blame Israel for the carnage that strategy creates.
Ocasio-Cortez frames her position as compassion for the dead. But compassion that cannot distinguish between the arsonist and the fire department is not compassion. It is confusion, elevated to moral certainty.
Fetterman saw it for what it was. Whether enough of his party agrees with him to matter remains the open question. Based on the silence from the rest of the Democratic caucus, the answer is not encouraging.
The rot Fetterman described is not hiding. It flew to Munich and spoke into a microphone.
Two U.S. officials told Reuters that potential military strikes on Iran could target specific individuals and even pursue regime change, options that have emerged in the planning stage if ordered by President Donald Trump. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity and did not say which individuals could be targeted.
The report landed the same day Trump said Friday that he is "considering" a limited military strike on Iran to pressure its leaders into a deal over its nuclear program. The president made the remarks at the White House, where the calculus on Tehran appears to be shifting from diplomacy-first to something with considerably sharper teeth.
This is not abstract saber-rattling. The USS Gerald R. Ford is heading to the Middle East. The U.S. is building up its military presence in the region. And the president has put a clock on the negotiations.
On Thursday, Trump suggested the window for a breakthrough is closing fast, putting the timeline at "10, 15 days, pretty much maximum." He followed that with a statement that left little room for misinterpretation:
"We're either going to get a deal, or it's going to be unfortunate for them."
Last week, when asked directly whether he wanted regime change in Iran, Trump did not equivocate:
"Well it seems like that would be the best thing that could happen."
That is about as explicit as a sitting president gets without issuing a formal directive. The foreign policy establishment will spend the next two weeks debating whether he "really means it." Tehran would be wise to assume he does, as Fox News reports.
Anyone questioning whether this president would actually authorize a strike targeting a specific individual need only consult recent history. In 2020, the Pentagon said Trump ordered the U.S. military strike that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' elite Quds Force, in Iraq.
That operation sent a message that no one in Iran's military hierarchy was beyond reach. The regime understood it then. The fact that targeted strikes on individuals are once again part of the planning conversation suggests the administration wants Tehran to remember it now.
The Soleimani strike was met with the usual chorus of hand-wringing from the foreign policy credentialed class, predictions of World War III, and dire warnings about "escalation." What actually followed was a period of relative Iranian restraint. Strength, it turns out, has a clarifying effect on regimes that mistake American patience for weakness.
A Middle Eastern source with knowledge of the negotiations told Fox News Digital this week that limitations on Iran's short-range missile program are "a firm red line set by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei." The same source provided context on Iran's positions regarding uranium enrichment flexibility and internal views on the talks.
Iran's "firm red lines" are worth examining in context. This is a regime that:
Red lines drawn by a regime with diminishing leverage are not red lines. They are opening bids dressed up as ultimatums. Khamenei can declare whatever he wants sacred and untouchable. The question is what he is willing to concede when the alternative is not a sternly worded letter from the UN, but American military power positioned within striking distance.
What makes this moment distinct is the architecture around it. The administration is not choosing between diplomacy and force. It is using the credible threat of force to make diplomacy possible. These are not competing strategies. One enables the other.
For years, the prevailing wisdom in Washington held that threatening military action against Iran was "counterproductive" because it would "harden" the regime's position. This theory was tested exhaustively during the Obama era and the early Biden years, producing the original Iran nuclear deal, which Iran promptly exploited, and then its effective collapse. Endless diplomatic patience bought nothing but centrifuges spinning faster.
The current approach inverts that logic. You do not enter a negotiation by telegraphing that you will accept any outcome. You enter it by making the cost of no deal unmistakable. The carrier group, the planning for targeted strikes, the public statements about regime change: these are not threats for the sake of threats. They are the architecture of leverage.
Fox News Digital has reached out to the White House and the Department of War for comment. As of the report, no response was included.
The next 10 to 15 days will reveal whether Tehran's negotiators are empowered to make real concessions or whether they are simply running out the clock, hoping American resolve fades the way it has before. The difference this time is that the man setting the deadline has already demonstrated, in 2020, that he does not bluff.
Iran's leaders have a choice. They can negotiate seriously, or they can test whether the options that "emerged in the planning stage" stay on paper. History suggests they should choose carefully.
President Trump told Iran's leaders they "better negotiate a fair deal" during a White House briefing this afternoon, as the United States military surges combat power into the Middle East at a pace not seen since the opening days of major conflicts.
The Daily Mail reported that an additional 50 fighter jets, including F-35s, F-22s, and F-16s, have been deployed to the region in just the past 24 hours. Over 150 U.S. cargo flights have transported weapons and ammunition into the theater. A second aircraft carrier strike group, the USS Gerald R. Ford, is expected to reach the eastern Mediterranean within days.
This is not posturing for the cameras. This is a force structure moving into position.
Earlier this morning, Trump told governors at a working breakfast in the State Dining Room that he is "considering" a limited military strike on Iran. Defence officials have reportedly briefed the president that the U.S. will be ready to begin a war by Saturday.
When a reporter at the packed briefing room asked Trump what his message was to the Iranian people, the president drew a sharp distinction between the regime and the population it governs.
"The people in Iran are a lot different than their leaders, and it is a very sad situation. 32,000 people were killed in a short period of time."
Trump also referenced his previous intervention against Iran's campaign of executions, claiming the regime had planned to hang 837 Iranians by crane.
"I said if you hang even one person… and they gave up the hanging. I feel very badly for the people of Iran they have lived like hell."
That framing matters. Trump isn't building a case against the Iranian people. He's building a case against the regime itself, and doing so by cataloguing its brutality toward its own citizens. The 86-year-old Ali Khamenei presides over a government that kills protesters, hangs dissidents, and runs joint military exercises with the Russian Navy while claiming it's all about "maritime security."
When the president of the United States says he can "destroy a country," that's not bluster from a man who has now deployed two aircraft carriers, a dozen warships, and hundreds of fighter jets to the region.
The military buildup runs parallel to a diplomatic track that appears to be sputtering. Trump's designated negotiators, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, met this week in Geneva with Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. The talks lasted three hours. Both sides claimed they "made progress," which in diplomatic language often means neither side moved.
Araghchi reportedly said on Morning Joe that Witkoff and Kushner did not ask Iran for zero uranium enrichment during the discussions.
If true, that signals the administration is taking a staged approach rather than demanding maximum concessions upfront, a negotiating posture that keeps the door open while the military buildup applies the real pressure.
Trump himself had previously considered military action as early as January, following the killing of thousands of protesters inside Iran. Anti-government protests erupted in Tehran around that same period. The regime's response was predictable: violence.
Sources described the ongoing situation as "existential for the regime," and it isn't hard to see why. When a government's primary tool of domestic governance is the execution crane, every challenge becomes a survival question.
The scale of the deployment deserves its own accounting:
The United States military has reportedly drawn up advanced plans for a potential strike on Iran, including options to target specific individuals and actively pursue regime change in Tehran.
The White House is drawing up detailed military plans involving the use of both Diego Garcia and RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire, though the UK has not yet granted permission for use of those sites, according to a report in The Times.
Last week, reports indicated the Pentagon is actively gearing up for a sustained, weeks-long military blitz. Sources warned this could have a "dramatic influence on the entire region."
Israel, which coordinates with the U.S. on Middle Eastern security, has over 200 combat aircraft at its disposal, including F-35s, F-16s, and F-15s. Combined with American assets now in theater, the concentration of air power aimed at Iran is staggering.
There is a school of foreign policy thought, popular on the left and in European capitals, that says escalation provokes conflict.
The competing theory, demonstrated repeatedly in the real world, is that overwhelming force is the only thing that brings regimes like Iran to the table in good faith. You don't negotiate from a position of weakness with a theocracy that hangs its own citizens from cranes.
Trump told the briefing room that Iran is "not allowed to charge them a little fee," a reference to the broader economic and geopolitical leverage Tehran attempts to wield through its nuclear program and regional proxy networks. The implication is clear: the era of paying Iran to behave is over.
The Supreme Court's decision to strike down his sweeping worldwide tax earlier in the day added a domestic frustration to a presidency already operating on multiple fronts simultaneously. But foreign policy is where executive power is least constrained by judicial interference, and the Iran portfolio reflects a commander-in-chief using every tool available to him.
A State Department insider told the Daily Mail that Trump is weighing advice from his cabinet and mulling options on military action. The president, the insider indicated, would provide the "green light" for actions in Iran.
Iran's leadership faces a straightforward calculation. Negotiate seriously and abandon the nuclear ambitions that have destabilized the Middle East for two decades. Or watch the largest concentration of American military power since last year's 12-day conflict continue to build on every horizon.
The carrier groups aren't coming home empty-handed. Either they come home with a deal, or they don't come home soon.
Iranian and Russian naval forces conducted joint exercises Thursday in the Gulf of Oman and Indian Ocean, staging what they dubbed "Maritime Security Belt 2026" as President Trump contemplates airstrikes against Iran and American warships tighten their presence across the region.
The drills involved units from the Iranian Navy, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and Russian Navy special units, employing both air and surface craft. Two days earlier, the IRGC, a designated terrorist organization, temporarily shut down the Strait of Hormuz for live-fire drills involving ship- and shore-launched missiles.
Iran also issued warnings to airline pilots operating in the southern part of the country that rockets would be launched during the exercises. None of this is routine, no matter what Tehran claims.
As reported by Breitbart, the Kremlin insisted the drills were "planned exercises and agreed upon in advance," a familiar line from a government that has perfected the art of pre-scheduling provocations. Video published by the Russian military showed the corvette Stoiky arriving at the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas, presumably before joining the exercises.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov offered the kind of diplomatic language Moscow deploys when it wants to appear above the fray while actively stoking it:
"We are currently witnessing an unprecedented escalation of tensions in the region, but we still expect that political and diplomatic tools will prevail."
He followed that with a call for "restraint and prudence" directed at "our Iranian friends and all parties in the region." The word "friends" is doing considerable work in that sentence. Russia is not a neutral observer counseling calm. It is a participant sailing warships into contested waters alongside a regime that just closed one of the world's most critical shipping lanes to practice firing missiles.
Iranian Navy commander Rear Adm. Shahram Irani dispensed with any pretense of the exercises being defensive or routine. He complained publicly about "threats, noise, propaganda, and the presence of extra-regional fleets in West Asia," then escalated:
"If the extra-regional fleet feels it has come with power, it should know that the Iranian people will confront them with greater power. The faith of the people and missiles are the Islamic Republic of Iran's deterrent weapons against the enemy."
Iranian state media described the drills as "routine" and said they included "the liberation of a hijacked ship," aerial reconnaissance, surface operations, and "the capture of simulated pirates." The gap between "routine anti-piracy exercise" and "we will confront you with missiles and faith" tells you everything about where Tehran's head is.
Iranian spokesman Capt. Hassan Maqsoudlou confirmed that participating units included "special operations units" from both the Iranian Navy and IRGC naval forces, and spoke of strengthening relations between the two countries' navies. China was reportedly supposed to participate, but little information was made publicly available about the presence of any Chinese ships. Whether Beijing quietly pulled back or simply kept its involvement out of the press is an open question worth watching.
The joint drills unfold against a backdrop of significant American force projection. The USS Abraham Lincoln and its battle group are currently within striking distance of Iran. The USS Gerald R. Ford, America's largest and most advanced warship, is headed for the Strait of Gibraltar and could be in position as soon as this weekend. Some 50 additional American combat aircraft have been moved into position this week.
If those figures hold, Iran could be facing one of the largest U.S. aerial deployments since the Cold War.
That is the context in which Tehran chose to close the Strait of Hormuz for missile drills and then stage joint exercises with Russia. These are not the moves of a regime confident in its diplomatic position. They are the moves of a government that sees the board clearly and is scrambling to project strength it may not possess.
There is a pattern with regimes under pressure. They hold military parades. They fire rockets into open water. They invite a fellow pariah state to sail alongside them for the cameras. The spectacle is the point, because the spectacle is all they have.
Russia gets to remind Washington that it has relationships in the region. Iran gets to claim it isn't isolated. Both governments get footage for state television. But none of it changes the correlation of forces. Two carrier strike groups, dozens of advanced combat aircraft, and the full logistical weight of the American military do not become less formidable because a Russian corvette docked at Bandar Abbas.
Tehran's strategy appears to be deterrence through rhetoric and symbolism: missiles and faith, as Rear Adm. Irani put it. That formulation tells you what's missing from the list. Modern air defense systems. A navy capable of contesting blue water. Allies are willing to fight rather than issue press releases about restraint.
Russia will call for calm. Iran will fire rockets at imaginary pirates. And American carrier groups will continue closing the distance. The Gulf of Oman is getting crowded, and only one side chose to be there from a position of strength.
Federal prosecutors investigating the alleged weaponization of intelligence against President Donald Trump have sent a formal request to the U.S. Senate for evidence tied to former CIA Director John Brennan. The request, described as secret and rare, seeks documents, transcripts, and testimony related to Brennan's statements about efforts to link Trump's 2016 campaign to Russian collusion.
The written request was sent last Friday by the team of U.S. Attorney Jason A. Reding Quiñones, who operates out of Miami and was assigned by Attorney General Pam Bondi to review evidence for possible crimes and conspiracy. Overtures between his team and the Senate began over the last month, and negotiations are now underway for the transfer of evidence, including a possible visit by prosecutors to Washington.
Meanwhile, a federal grand jury in Fort Pierce, Florida, has already begun collecting evidence.
Just the News reports that the core of the case against Brennan centers on what he told Congress versus what the record actually shows. In 2017, Brennan testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee that the now-discredited Steele Dossier played no role in the Intelligence Community Assessment on Russian interference in the 2016 election. His words were unequivocal:
"[The dossier] was not used in any way as far as the judgments in the ICA were concerned."
He also told senators that top CIA officials were "very concerned about polluting the ICA with this material." The picture he painted was clear: the CIA resisted the dossier, and the dossier stayed out of the assessment.
That picture has since collapsed under the weight of declassified documents.
A declassified House Intelligence Committee report found the opposite of what Brennan claimed:
"[C]ontradicting public claims by the DCIA that the dossier 'was not in any way' incorporated into the ICA, the dossier was referenced in the ICA main body text, and further detailed in a two-page CIA annex."
That same report revealed that two senior CIA officers, one from Russia operations and the other from Russia analysis, argued directly with Brennan that the dossier should be excluded because it failed to meet basic tradecraft standards. Brennan overruled them. When one officer raised concerns, Brennan reportedly responded: "Yes, but doesn't it ring true?"
Analytical soundness, apparently, was optional if the narrative fit.
The story of how the Steele Dossier ended up inside a presidential intelligence assessment is a case study in institutional corruption dressed up as an interagency process.
In December 2016, then-FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Director Andrew McCabe pushed to include the dossier, compiled by former MI6 agent Christopher Steele, who had been hired by opposition research firm Fusion GPS. Fusion GPS, in turn, was being paid by Clinton campaign lawyer Marc Elias. The dossier was, from its inception, a political product. It was later used by the FBI to obtain FISA warrants against a Trump campaign official.
Comey testified before the Senate in June 2017 about his role in getting the material included:
"I insisted that we bring it to the party, and I was agnostic as to whether it was footnoted in the document itself, put as an annex. I have some recollection of talking to John Brennan maybe at some point saying: I don't really care, but I think it is relevant and so ought to be part of the consideration."
Brennan's own written position, as cited in a CIA review memo, stated that he believed "the information warrants inclusion in the report." This directly contradicts his testimony that the CIA opposed its inclusion.
On December 29, 2016, the CIA's own Deputy Director for Analysis emailed Brennan warning that including the dossier in any form risked "the credibility of the entire paper." Brennan proceeded anyway.
The result: the dossier was referenced as the fourth supporting bullet for the ICA's judgment that Putin "aspired" to help Trump win. A CIA review later concluded that this placement:
"[I]mplicitly elevated unsubstantiated claims to the status of credible supporting evidence, compromising the analytical integrity of the judgment."
That same review found Brennan "showed a preference for narrative consistency over analytical soundness." In plain English: he wanted a story, not the truth.
Adding another layer of institutional failure, the Senate Intelligence Committee itself issued reports in 2020 that appeared to provide cover for Brennan's claims. The committee's April 2020 report stated it "found that the information provided by Christopher Steele to the FBI was not used in the body of the ICA or to support any of its analytic judgments." Its August 2020 fifth volume echoed that the "dossier material was not used in the ICA and did not contribute to its findings."
These findings have since been contradicted by declassified documents showing the dossier was, in fact, referenced in the ICA's main body text and detailed in a two-page annex. A host of top Democrats, including former President Barack Obama and Senate Democrats, attempted to point to the 2020 Senate report to push back against evidence declassified by DNI Tulsi Gabbard.
The committee's own records are now the subject of the prosecution's request. That irony needs no commentary.
The scope of this investigation extends well beyond a single instance of alleged false testimony. FBI Director Kash Patel drafted a memo last year recommending that the full chain of actions against Trump and his allies, stretching from the Crossfire Hurricane probe through Special Counsel Jack Smith's now-dismissed indictments, be viewed as "an ongoing criminal conspiracy to deprive American citizens of their civil rights." That legal framework would allow prosecutors to charge crimes outside the standard five-year statute of limitations as overt acts of a continuing conspiracy.
This matters because Brennan's last known testimony contacts with the Senate occurred on June 23, 2017, and May 16, 2018, both well outside a standalone five-year window. His May 2023 testimony before the House Judiciary Committee falls within range, but the conspiracy framework opens a much broader field.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan said last October that Brennan made "numerous willfully and intentionally false statements of material fact," contradicted by the record established by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the CIA itself. The committee formally referred Brennan for prosecution last year.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe followed with his own criminal referral to the FBI after conducting a "lessons-learned" review of the ICA. DNI Gabbard sent declassified evidence to the Justice Department in July, describing the matter as a "treasonous conspiracy" involving top intelligence officials during the Obama administration who allegedly politicized intelligence related to Russia and the 2016 election.
For years, the phrase "walls closing in" was a punchline, the breathless prediction of cable news anchors who were certain that Trump, not the people who surveilled his campaign, would face legal consequences. The irony is that the phrase may finally apply to the right target.
Brennan, now a senior national security and intelligence analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, did not respond to a request for comment sent through his lawyer. His post-government career as a cable news commentator has been spent reinforcing the very narrative his own agency's analysts warned him was analytically unsound.
The declassified House report put the matter bluntly:
"[B]y devoting nearly two pages of ICA text to summarizing the dossier in a high-profile assessment intended for the President and President-elect, the ICA misrepresented both the significance and credibility of the dossier reports."
An intelligence assessment written at the direction of a sitting president, based partly on opposition research funded by the opposing candidate's campaign, was used to justify surveillance of American citizens and to cast a cloud over an incoming administration. The people who built that cloud are now the ones under investigation.
The grand jury in Fort Pierce is collecting evidence. The Senate is negotiating the transfer of documents spanning nearly a decade. And John Brennan, the man who told Congress the dossier wasn't part of the assessment while his own written communications show he pushed to put it there, sits in silence.
The record speaks loudly enough.
Two aircraft carriers, a dozen warships, hundreds of fighter jets, and more than 150 military cargo flights' worth of weapons and ammunition now crowd the Middle East, forming the largest American force projection in the region in years. And in the past 24 hours alone, 50 additional fighter jets, including F-35s, F-22s, and F-16s, headed to join them.
The buildup runs parallel to a diplomatic track that, by most accounts, is running out of road. On Tuesday, Trump advisers Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff sat across from Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in Geneva for three hours. Both sides said the talks "made progress." U.S. officials followed up with a clear message: Iran has two weeks to come back with a detailed proposal.
Vice President Vance, speaking to Fox News, offered the most revealing assessment of where things stand:
"In other ways it was very clear that the president has set some red lines that the Iranians are not yet willing to actually acknowledge and work through."
That's diplomatic language for a gap that may not close. Vance made clear that while President Trump wants a deal, he could determine that diplomacy has "reached its natural end."
The administration's approach is a textbook example of negotiating from strength. You don't park two carrier strike groups in someone's backyard because you're optimistic about their willingness to cooperate. You do it because optimism without leverage is just wishful thinking.
This is the two-track model: talk and prepare simultaneously. The military buildup isn't a contradiction of the diplomatic effort. It's the engine behind it. Iran's theocratic leadership has spent decades stalling, exploiting European naivety, and running out the clock on American administrations too squeamish to call the bluff. The current posture says the bluff-calling window is open.
One unnamed Trump adviser put it bluntly to Axios:
"The boss is getting fed up. Some people around him warn him against going to war with Iran, but I think there is 90% chance we see kinetic action in the next few weeks."
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) indicated that strikes could still be weeks away, suggesting the two-week diplomatic window is real but finite.
This isn't hypothetical territory. The administration has already demonstrated its willingness to act. Last June 19, the White House set a two-week window for Trump to decide between further talks or strikes. Three days later, he launched Operation Midnight Hammer, a campaign targeting Iran's underground nuclear facilities. That operation accompanied a 12-day Israeli-led war that the U.S. eventually joined.
The pattern is clear: deadlines mean something. When this administration draws a line, it follows through. The early January near-strike, prompted by the Iranian regime's killing of thousands of its own protesters, showed that the threshold for action extends beyond the nuclear question. And last month's pinpoint operation in Venezuela demonstrated that the willingness to project force isn't confined to one theater.
For years, the foreign policy establishment treated Iran's nuclear ambitions as a problem to be managed rather than solved. The Obama-era JCPOA essentially paid Tehran to slow down temporarily while leaving the fundamental architecture of its weapons program intact. That era of managed decline is over.
Two Israeli officials have indicated that Israel is preparing for war within days and is pushing for a maximalist scenario: one targeting not just Iran's nuclear and missile programs but the regime itself.
This is where the strategic picture gets consequential. Israel's posture isn't freelancing. It's the natural result of living next door to a regime that funds proxies sworn to your annihilation while racing toward nuclear weapons. The coordination between Washington and Jerusalem during Operation Midnight Hammer last June showed these aren't parallel efforts. They're converging ones.
The instinct in Washington, particularly on the left and among the permanent foreign policy class, is always to treat military preparation as escalation. That framing conveniently ignores the decades of Iranian escalation that created the current crisis: the proxy wars, the enrichment violations, the assassination plots on American soil, the arming of militias across Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen.
Deploying carriers is not starting a war. It's communicating, in the only language the regime in Tehran has ever respected, that the alternative to a deal is not another decade of negotiation. Its consequences.
With three years remaining in the Trump presidency, the administration has both the time horizon and the credibility to make this calculation. Iran knows the diplomatic window is genuine. It also knows, after Operation Midnight Hammer, that the military option is not a talking point.
The next two weeks will determine which track prevails. Tehran has a proposal to deliver and a decision to make. The armada in the Gulf is there to help clarify the choice.