At least five U.S. diplomatic missions have recently been targeted in Iranian retaliatory strikes across the Middle East. With no definitive time frame on the end of the war, embassies are now being targeted beyond the region as well. The latest apparent incident occurred in Toronto, where unknown assailants fired shots at the U.S. consulate early Tuesday — an act the prime minister has condemned as intimidation.
I bet half the regime lives in Canada.
Sometimes the obvious is so obvious that people forget to state it. So let me observe one small footnote among recent obvious things.
Earlier this month, Donald Trump killed the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and most of the senior leadership of the Islamic Revolutionary government in Iran.
American strategic policy under President Trump has been so imaginative and so professionally executed by the U.S. Armed Forces that the punditocracy, none too blessed with piercing insight the best of times, has generally failed to recognize the proportions of its success. In the 13 months of this second Trump administration, a technique has been devised that has demonstrated it can almost immunize the United States against the depredations of its enemies, who have been subsidizing terrorism and guerrilla warfare to harass and enervate America.
The Iranian elementary school building where scores of children were killed as the U.S. and Israel began their massive aerial campaign was on a U.S. target list and may have been mistaken for a military site, multiple people familiar with the strike told The Washington Post.
The deadly attack occurred in the first few hours of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran — just as parents were hurrying to the two-story schoolhouse to take their kids home to safety — and killed at least 175 people, many of them children, according to Iranian state media.
It is still not clear why the building was hit, but one person familiar with the school strike said the building had been identified as a factory and had been an approved strike target. A second person familiar said there was an arms depot target located in the same area and did not know if the United States hit the school by mistake, or if U.S. officials had the wrong intelligence and thought the building was the arms depot.
🚨🇺🇸🇮🇷 BREAKING:
Multiple media outlets are confirming what Iran's been saying: A U.S. Tomahawk missile hit the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls' elementary school in Minab.
Death toll: 165-180, mostly children aged 7-12.
Israel doesn't possess Tomahawk missiles. Only the… https://t.co/6TXhmROkUn pic.twitter.com/EawEZhOnAL
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) March 8, 2026
Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, released his first statement Thursday — after reports circulated that he was in a coma and had his leg amputated after being severely injured in the US-Israeli strikes that killed his father.
The message was read out on Iranian state TV by an anchor as an image of Khameni was displayed.
Two foreign oil tankers carrying Iraqi fuel oil were attacked in the Persian Gulf off the coast of Basra, within Iraq’s territorial waters, causing both vessels to catch fire.
Twenty-five crew members aboard the ships have been evacuated, Iraqi authorities reported. pic.twitter.com/vh1l6rAjf2
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) March 11, 2026
It’s double or quits for the civilised world, for the cause of human flourishing, freedom and democracy. Either Donald Trump holds his nerve, crushes the Iranian regime, rides out the oil shock and reopens the Strait of Hormuz, or he and America are finished, exposed as unserious, fickle and incapable of forward planning, a superpower manquée felled by drone-wielding barbarians.
The challenge is Trump’s character, his willingness to accept short-term economic and electoral pain, not America or Israel’s exceptional military capacities. Does the US president, a hawk on Iran for 47 years, have it in him to finish the job, going down in history as the saviour of civilisation from nuclear Islamism, or is he merely the unidimensional man child his critics believe him to be?
🚨 IRANIAN REGIME PROPAGANDA
New video released by the Iranian regime appears aimed at saber-rattling and spreading fear.
But while Tehran pushes propaganda, its military capabilities are being steadily degraded, as the United States and Israel continue to increase pressure… pic.twitter.com/x8lAMqsGlA
— Mossad Commentary (@MOSSADil) March 10, 2026
The US president’s allies fear he may pull out of the region and leave people to face the aftermath. How will the new ayatollah fare?
When George W Bush prematurely announced an end to the Iraq war in 2003, he was wearing a pilot’s uniform and strutting aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln under banners announcing “mission accomplished”.
It was a less grandiose affair when President Trump declared victory over Iran in his first press conference since launching the joint US-Israeli attacks on February 28. In a ballroom at his golf resort in Florida, he spoke conversationally, but to similar effect.
Update from CENTCOM Commander on Operation Epic Fury: pic.twitter.com/5KQDv0Cfxs
— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) March 11, 2026
The Shi’ite branch of Islam, which has flourished as the official religion of the Islamic Republic of Iran under the various ayatollahs for the last half century, believes in the return of the so-called Twelfth Imam, who is descended from Mohammed’s son-in-law Ali ibn Abni Talib. Talib was the fourth caliph assassinated in 661 in a succession war, after which the split between Sunnis and Shi’ites eventually became permanent. According to the traditions of Twelver Shi’ism, the twelfth of these Imams, a boy of five years old, disappeared under mysterious and disputed circumstances in the year 874 – but remained alive. Though communicating with the world through various agents, he entered the state of “occultation” in 941, promising to return when the time would be propitious.
Though the regime’s capabilities to conduct mayhem seem diminished, its efforts persist.
In Tehran back in the spring of 1992, I interviewed Ali Akbar Mohtashami, the hardline cleric who cofounded Hezbollah in Lebanon and helped carry out the devastating suicide car-bomb attacks in Beirut that killed 241 U.S. Marines in 1983. I recalled his pride in Iran’s attacks and his vow to continue them until Israel was destroyed, its Jews “sent back to the countries they came from,” and Iran had built its own nuclear bombs. As long as Israel existed and there were revolutionaries in Tehran, he told me, there would be “no Americans in Iran and no peace with America.”
Though Mohtashami died of Covid-19 in 2021, I will never forget his determination, and that of other senior Iranians I interviewed on my trips to Iran, to destroy Israel and humiliate America.
DUBAI — The International Energy Agency on Wednesday announced that it would carry out its largest-ever release of oil reserves — 400 million barrels — in a bid to control spiking energy prices caused by the United States-Israel war against Iran, which shows no signs of slowing as it ends its 12th day.
The plan, aimed at stabilizing oil prices that have soared since the United States and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, came as Iranian leaders declared they were widening their assault on countries in the Persian Gulf, aiming to raise the economic price of the U.S.-Israeli military campaign to oust the government in Tehran.
Three brothers have been arrested in Norway linked to an explosion outside the US embassy in the capital, Oslo, on Sunday.
The authorities believe the blast was caused by an improvised device that was placed at the building’s entrance. It caused minor damage and no injuries were reported.
The brothers, all in their 20s, are Norwegian citizens with links to Iraq, Norway’s police attorney Christian Hatlo told a press conference on Wednesday.
The government has approved a request from the police to ban the Al Quds Day march in London on Sunday to prevent “serious public disorder” given the conflict in the Middle East, the home secretary has said.
The Metropolitan Police asked for the ban saying it was concerned about the high number of protesters and counter-protesters, adding the march organisers were “supportive of the Iranian regime” .
The Islamic Human Rights Commission, who organise the annual march, insist it is a peaceful, pro-Palestinian event. It says a static protest will take place instead.
I bet they march anyway.
Meanwhile in Ontario … Al Quds Day Bad! But we’re too weak to cancel it.
Please see my statement regarding Saturday’s Al Quds Day rally. @UJAFederation @CIJAinfo @bnaibrithcanada @CanadianFSWC @IsraelinToronto pic.twitter.com/xtG2MGC4l3
— Michael Kerzner (@TeamKerzner) March 11, 2026
Donald Trump intensified his war against Iran on Tuesday, dropping bunker-busting bombs on the regime’s underground missile facilities.
Just 24 hours earlier, the US president had declared the war was “very complete” and that Iran’s military had been effectively wiped out.
However, on Tuesday, Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, said fresh strikes against Tehran would be the “most intense” since the conflict began on Feb 28.
BREAKING: The IRAN STRATEGY is WORKING — and Tehran knows it 🚨🇺🇸
Iran tried a war of attrition. FAILED.
Tried to split our Arab allies. FAILED.
Tried to spike oil and shake the markets. FAILED.Oil is STABLE. The Strait is OPEN. And America is still holding cards they… pic.twitter.com/UCGsxoURKg
— Jesse Watters (@JesseBWatters) March 11, 2026
Iran spent years and billions of dollars building its answer to the aircraft carrier problem. It was called IRIS Shahid Bagheri. CENTCOM destroyed it on day one.
The Shahid Bagheri was not a warship in the conventional sense. It was a concept. Iran looked at the US carrier… pic.twitter.com/I2zLLBBExE
— Shanaka Anslem Perera ⚡ (@shanaka86) March 6, 2026
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth promised Tuesday that the Iran war “is not 2003” and will not look like another nation-building, regime-change war like in Iraq.
Giving an update ten days into the war, Hegseth was joined by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine at the Pentagon.
Nation building became synonymous with graft.
In the first 24 hours of Operation Epic Fury, the US military struck more than 1,000 targets in Iran with the help of artificial intelligence.
Given the rate of 42 suggested targets per hour, experts have asked whether machines are now in charge on the battlefield because the human brain cannot keep up.
They have raised the possibility that artificial intelligence may have misidentified the primary school in Minab on the first day of the war. Growing evidence suggests that the US fired what appears to have been Tomahawk cruise missiles at the site, killing 110 children and dozens of others.
Jury is still out on the school missile strike.
🚨Breaking question for everyone watching the Iran conflict closely…
Did Iran just hit its own school and then try to blame the United States?
Analysts reviewing the Minab strike video say the explosion pattern and munition profile do not match a Tomahawk cruise missile.… pic.twitter.com/WVTrL3SW7O
— A Gene Robinson (@AlBuffalo2nite) March 10, 2026
US military ‘completely destroys’ 16 Iranian mine-laying ships in Strait of Hormuz after Trump threatened Iran would be hit ‘at level never seen before’ if they place mines in the passage
American forces have destroyed 16 Iranian minelaying vessels close to a major sea passage used to export oil.
The White House had earlier warned Iran will be hit ‘at a level never seen before’ if they place mines on the Strait of Hormuz amid concerns the regime could target the key oil waterway.
🚨 BREAKING: President Trump just announced: In the last few hours, U.S. forces have HIT and COMPLETELY DESTROYED 10 inactive Iranian mine-laying boats/ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
WITH MANY MORE TO FOLLOW! pic.twitter.com/T6yCqJqeZ8
— Alec Lace (@AlecLace) March 10, 2026
