“US Israel Iran War”

WASHINGTON — President Trump publicly called Monday for Iran’s leaders to be prosecuted for “war crimes against humanity” after trashing the Islamic Republic as a “failed nation.”

“Iran is officially a Failed Nation. IT IS DEAD!” the president proclaimed on Truth Social. “They have no Navy, they have no Air Force, they have no currency, they are not paying their soldiers or police, Inflation is at 300%, and their leadership is in total disarray and incapable of properly representing the country.”
“The only thing they have is FAKE NEWS from the USA, a willingness to kill their protesters (now over 100,000 people dead. They must be tried for war crimes against humanity!), and a good line of ‘BULLS—.’”

US forces have struck two Iranian launchers on Iran’s Larak island, a US official said, marking the first known American strikes on Iran since late July.

“Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) forces were observed preparing to launch rockets with sea mines into Strait of Hormuz,” the BBC’s US partner CBS News quoted US Central Command (Centcom) spokesman Cdr Tim Hawkins as saying.

The IRGC said Sunday’s attack killed and wounded several people, and vowed “response and punishment”. It later said it had launched an attack on US military targets in Jordan, according to Iranian state media.

For anyone who has ever harbored doubts—and for those who still do—that Iran’s regime stands against humanity, peace, and the basic norms of civilization, the latest remarks from hard-line Iranian cleric Mohammad Bagher Kharrazi — secretary-general of Iran’s proxy, Hezbollah, and closely tied to the current Supreme Leader — should be impossible to ignore. “The only way to save the country… is building an atomic bomb and firing it,” Kharrazi recently declared, “no other way is left for us…. We should create a tsunami whose waves hit the American coasts”.

“If Iran mined the Strait of Hormuz, how come we haven’t seen any ships sunk or damaged by mines?”

Good question. The answer seems to be less that ships veered away from mines and more that Tehran was largely bluffing with the mine threat, but the details — once again — veer straight into absurdity.

Iran’s Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei has all but vanished from public view, fuelling fevered speculation in Tehran that the Islamic Republic is concealing the truth about who is really running the country.

Mojtaba was named Iran’s new supreme leader on March 8, a week after joint US-Israeli airstrikes killed his father Ali Khamenei on February 28.

He was inside the compound in Tehran when it was struck. Sources close to Mojtaba’s inner circle later told Reuters that the blast left his face disfigured and caused a serious injury to one or both of his legs.

The US has unveiled an expansion of sanctions that it says will cut off Iran’s economic lifeline but stopped short of the most punishing measures, instead putting the world on notice to cease doing business with the Islamic republic.

Treasury secretary Scott Bessent ⁠warned other countries would need to sever ⁠business ties with Iran or risk being ​forced out of the dollar-based financial system. He previously urged cooperation from China – the biggest buyer of Iranian oil for several years – although the US blockade of Iran’s ports, renewed in mid-July, has already cut much of the Iranian oil flows to China.

Iranian state-affiliated TV Channel 3 has released a video threatening US President Donald Trump’s son, Barron Trump, detailing specific surveillance against him and offering a $10 million reward for his death, Iran International reported on Monday.

Sorry no English version yet.

Iran has officially put a $10 MILLION bounty on Barron Trump!

How do you think President Trump will react to THIS?! pic.twitter.com/5Vky8f7vIq

— Conservative Brief (@ConservBrief) August 24, 2026

h/t Patti Jo

Scott Bessent has said the US is “entering the endgame” in its war with Iran.

The US treasury secretary said the Trump administration would unleash “the greatest financial offensive” against Tehran before unveiling a new economic pressure campaign.

The treasury secretary is expected to announce the new measures at a press conference at 2pm EDT (7pm BST) on Monday.

Iran has threatened to strike American businesses if Donald Trump launches his “economic D-Day” campaign to force Tehran to accept a deal to end the war.

Mohsen Rezai, the head of Iran’s national security council, also warned allies of the US that they would be considered enemies, and their interests harmed, if they joined the US president’s financial warfare.

Mr Trump said on Wednesday that Iran would face “economic warfare and isolation on an unprecedented scale”.

Iran has stymied the United States for the moment, even though, by almost any conventional measure, it should be decisively defeated. The American people grudgingly believed their president when he said the conflict would be over quickly. Unfortunately, the enemy got their vote.

Let there be no mistake: Iran has not achieved any victory, much less a military one. It has suffered hundreds of billions in damage and a decimated pool of former leaders. Yet, like a punch-drunk fighter, it still stands. Don’t confuse defiance for victory, though.

Psychologist Dr Nezhat Farnoody sits in her well-appointed office in Irvine, an upscale, modern city about an hour and a half south of Los Angeles. She and her daughter, Nelly (who is also a psychologist), spend much of their time listening to Southern California’s Persian elite, a community caught between a country that welcomed and nurtured them and their mother country, Iran, with which the US is waging an on-again, off-again war.

Iran appears to be losing its grip on the Strait of Hormuz while traffic through the critical waterway has exploded by nearly 400% over the last two weeks — as ships increasingly use a US-backed corridor to cross.

Nearly 200 ships navigated the strait last week, up from 150 the previous week and just 40 two weeks earlier, according to data from the UK Maritime Trade Operations Center.

The surge brings total traffic along the passage route to about 20% of pre-war levels, through which roughly 20% of the world’s seaborne oil flowed in peacetime.

War, Clausewitz , is the continuation of politics by violent means. But violence is only one tool in a nation’s war arsenal. Other tools include economics, cyber warfare, diplomacy, information warfare (what used to be called propaganda, psychological warfare, and disinformation), espionage, counterintelligence, and subversion. Americans are an impatient people, but impatience in war can lead to the loss of political and popular support — which is essential for democracies to achieve victory.

The main focus in confronting Iran’s regime and its sponsorship of terrorism has shifted toward economic sanctions and a naval blockade of Iranian ports. This pressure, driving oil exports to multi-year lows and squeezing the regime’s primary source of hard currency, constrains the resources available for ballistic missiles, proxies, and internal repression. Yet it is a dangerous delusion to believe that sanctions and blockade by themselves will change the regime’s fundamentalist and Islamist ideology or force a fundamental shift in its behavior.

The Iranian regime’s only objective is to stay in power beyond the Trump Administration.