VATICAN CITY — In the days after President Donald Trump unleashed a military attack on Iran, the Catholic Church was quickly on a war-footing — against the war.
America’s rational for preemptive strikes, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state warned, risked setting “the whole world … ablaze.”
Cardinal Robert McElroy, the church’s top authority in Washington, called the war neither “morally legitimate” nor “just.”
This is not an overnight development that just happened in the past two weeks, after the Trump administration and Israel launched attacks on Iran.
Reports were emerging in January that even while Iranian citizens fed an uprising that led to the murder of roughly 40,000 of them at the hands of the Iranian regime, members of the regime have been quietly relocating to Canada.
h/t PA Cat
Donald Trump has said the US military has bombed a small island off the coast of Iran – home to a major oil terminal that is considered the country’s economic lifeline.
The US president said Kharg Island’s military facilities were “totally obliterated” but that it had held off targeting its oil infrastructure.
Trump, however, warned that he would reconsider the decision not to target oil facilities on the island should Iran or others “do anything to interfere” with the safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz – one of the world’s most important shipping channels, located south of Iran’s coast.
🚨🇺🇸🇮🇷 Kharg Island sits just 15 miles off Iran’s coast, comfortably inside the range of Iranian missiles, drones, and coastal artillery.
So if the U.S. ever tried to land Marines there they’d be storming a beach while the mainland shoots at them the entire time.
Kharg handles… https://t.co/HreA4DtBBu pic.twitter.com/VK9WtCmIfK
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) March 14, 2026
Barbara Boyd gives her take on the Kharg Island action last night
President Trump is following the pattern/plan used in Venezuela
from Promethian Updates pic.twitter.com/8WaaSacVwg
— Dangerous Thoughts (@DangerousThinkg) March 14, 2026
Overnight on Wednesday, around 100 Basij soldiers were killed across Tehran by dozens to hundreds of suicide drones in a covert operation some are comparing to Israel’s previous pager operation against Hezbollah in Lebanon. The drones hit Basij bases, motorcycles, and vehicles, targeting IRGC, Basij, and special forces checkpoints.
Iraq also experienced a heavy night of strikes against pro-Iranian militias.
At the same time, the regime in Iran continues its efforts at self-preservation through sustained attrition from within Iran and on other fronts.
🚨 NEW: Israel appears to be opening a new phase of the war—suicide drones striking IRGC & Basij checkpoints across Tehran.
Street-level regime control posts are being taken out, potentially weakening the regime’s grip and giving Iranians space to take to the streets.
Stay… pic.twitter.com/TbnR1SEJkI
— Mossad Commentary (@MOSSADil) March 11, 2026
In a scene straight out of a dystopian nightmare, self-styled “Sharia patrols” on horseback charged through Manchester’s streets on March 4, 2026, chasing down peaceful demonstrators celebrating the end of Iran’s brutal Islamic Republic regime.
More: The true story of the ‘horsemen of the Ayatollah’ who rode to defend pro-Iranian supporters in Manchester – sparking claims of a ‘sharia police patrol’
They were Pro-Ayatollah out to protect Mullah Regime acolytes.
h/t Blackgriffin
New polling suggests the public is anxious about escalation and prefers neutrality and de-escalation, placing pressure on the Carney government to tread carefully as the conflict unfolds
The war in Iran broke into the news cycle quickly and dramatically two weeks ago today. Within hours it was dominating international headlines, raising fears of wider conflict across the Middle East, and prompting urgent debate among Western allies about how they should respond.
Canada was not immune to that debate.
More US Marines and warships are expected to be deployed to the Middle East, two officials confirmed to CBS News, the BBC’s US partner.
The officials said the reinforcements were to come from an amphibious ready group and its Marine expeditionary unit, with one official adding that the group would be led by the Japan-based USS Tripoli, an amphibious assault ship.
The unit headed by the USS Tripoli typically consists of around 5,000 sailors and Marines distributed across several warships.
Reminder that Canadian troops were attacked by the Islamic Regime and they didn’t bother reporting it. https://t.co/3wXSBVzh1w
— The Mossad: Satirical and Awesome (@TheMossadIL) March 13, 2026
The Palestinian armed group Hamas has called on Iran to stop its attacks on Gulf states, in a rare appeal to its key ally.
In a statement, the Tehran-backed group urged its “brothers in Iran to avoid targeting neighbouring countries”, saying all regional nations should co-operate “to preserve the bonds of brotherhood”.
At the same time, Hamas, which runs Gaza, affirmed Tehran’s right to defend itself against attacks by the US and Israel, which are continuing to strike Iran.
h/t Mauser
The possibility of a quick resolution to the conflict is looking less likely for the president, but every way out will come at a cost
President Trump has already declared the war on Iran won. But this week he also said that it was still necessary to “finish the job”.
“We don’t want to leave early, do we?” he said. “We don’t want to go back every two years.”
Trump sometimes speaks as a president but often he speaks as a commentator on his own decisions.
B-2 stealth bombers takeoff to conduct a mission during Operation Epic Fury, delivering long-range fire to not only eliminate the threat from the Iranian regime today, but also eliminate their ability to rebuild in the future. pic.twitter.com/ebyUYNnOLo
— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) March 13, 2026
The Iranian regime has been the number one threat to peace and stability in the Middle East for years. U.S. forces continue to take decisive steps to neutralize Iran’s power projection capabilities. pic.twitter.com/JOT7rRGH7L
— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) March 13, 2026
It’s been nearly two weeks since the Trump administration launched a war against Iran, and President Trump is beginning to signal that he wants to wind it down. On Monday, he said “we’re way ahead of schedule,” and that the war would be over “very soon.” On Wednesday during a speech in Kentucky, Trump off-handedly declared “we’ve won,” and said it was all over “in the first hour.”
It’s understandable that Trump would be eyeing a quick end to the war, given spiking oil prices, growing public opposition to the war, and criticism from his MAGA base. But at this point it’s looking less and less like the president will simply be able to declare victory and walk away, however politically desirable that might be.
Ten questions help us discern whether the present war on Iran will be an iteration of previous Middle East conflicts or the start of something much worse
Four years ago, when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, I recall being asked if it was the beginning of the World War III. Today, two weeks into the latest war on Iran, the same question comes up. It is not foolish to ask.
Unlike World War I, which began in 1914 when all the European empires more or less simultaneously activated their war plans, World War II was in truth a series of regional conflicts that did not converge into a unitary global conflict until the end of 1941. We have seen war break out in eastern Europe in 2022 and then in the Middle East in 2023.
The most recent US-Israeli onslaught on Iran may look to future historians like a staging post to a global conflagration. I stress “may”. Because they may also write about Gulf War III. The better ones may see that this can be understood only in the context of Cold War II. But World War III?
Mojtaba Khamenei was reportedly wounded twice in two separate attacks
France 24 reported that Iran’s new Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, was first wounded during the February 28 attack that killed his father, Ali Khamenei, and then wounded again when the hospital… pic.twitter.com/NW9Imm9BAc
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) March 13, 2026
BREAKING: The Revolutionary Guards headquarters in the Rabat Karim area, near Tehran was destroyed by US-Israeli strikes. pic.twitter.com/eT7tRQOZrQ
— World Source News (@Worldsource24) March 13, 2026
Until last year, for some 46 years, Iran enjoyed a North Korea-like reputation in the heart of the Middle East: always unpredictable, reckless, dangerous, inevitably to be nuclear, self-destructive, and nihilistic.
All that said, was it really ever all that formidable?
Today at a Quds Day march in Tehran, regime supporters pretended to hammer the “final nail in the coffin” of the US and Israel.
Reality: The Iranian Terror Regime is being decimated by the US and Israel. pic.twitter.com/lXvPq255Fo
— Israel War Room (@IsraelWarRoom) March 13, 2026
One of the reasons regime change is so risky is that the downside risk very often dominates upside potential. As we know from the Anna Karenina Principle, named from Leo Tolstoy’s novel, to get something right, all key factors must be present, while failure can occur by simply lacking just one. “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” goes the famous quote. The chances of casting Scrabble tiles on a board and, through chance, forming an actual word are much lower than the odds of getting gibberish.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Friday morning that Iran’s new supreme leader is “wounded and likely disfigured,” confirming reports that Mojtaba Khamenei was injured early on in the U.S. war against Iran.
“Iran’s leadership is in no better shape, desperate and hiding. They’ve gone underground, cowering. That’s what rats do. We know the new so-called not-so supreme leader is wounded and likely disfigured,” Hegseth told reporters during a press briefing at the Pentagon.
The propaganda accounts have moved from promoting Scottish nationalism to misleading war content, including destroyed US bases and Netanyahu’s ‘death’
A network of Iranian-controlled accounts on social media claiming to be British or Irish has been posting pro-Tehran propaganda and fake AI-generated news, experts have found.
A total of 34 accounts on X, Instagram and Bluesky with fake personas purporting to be based in London, Glasgow and Dublin are actually controlled from Iran.
The network is part of a wider disinformation campaign being waged by Tehran across social networks using AI tools to spread fake news. It was uncovered by researchers at Clemson University’s Media Forensic Hub.
