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US and Israel launch strikes on Iran, as Trump says ‘massive’ campaign underway

US and Israel launch strikes on Iran, as Trump says ‘massive’ campaign underway

lavp

Comments (751)

  • epolanski
    The president of peace btw.I'm baffled at the lack of calls to boycott the Fifa world cup in US.And at the double standards applied to Russians and Israelis in their wars of aggression.I guess Israel can play the "October 7th" card at least which was an insane horror.
  • sega_sai
    The take home message from this is that the only way for any country to be secure is to have nuclear weapons.
  • papaver-somnamb
    I recall someone (name escapes me at the moment) defining WW3 as ignition in 5 flashpoints between belligerent groupings: - Eastern Africa esp. Sudan, which we all nearly universally ignore - Israel Iran - Russia and a neighbor which we know today is Ukraine - Pakistan Afghanistan India - China Taiwan Plus PlusAttributes that distinguish WW3 from previous world wars were IIRC: Contained conflagration, short targeted exchanges, probability of contamination low, material possibility of nuclear escalation. Case in point: North Korea developed nukes without being invaded, and now that they have nukes, other countries are watching and seeing that NK won't be invaded. What lesson do those other countries draw? And what of a world in which many potential belligerents hold nukes? Hiroshima weeps.I'd like to add an important attribute here: The revolution will be live-streamed, more-or-less. And essentially none of us will know the truth, even the reasons. I predict this fact will not distress many people, such is the state of humanity.So to the 7 or so decades of stability we and our ancestors enjoyed, here's looking at you, going down me. But Brettonwoods serves the present the least of any time since its creation. Case in point, w.r.t. eastern Africa, the geopolitical bounds of those ~4 countries seems likely meld to a degree. If we are indeed heading into WW3, I expect the world map to be redrawn afterwards, and the only lessons learned is how to win better in future.And if we are, while disgruntled old geriatrics go at each others throats via their youthful proxies, I greatly prefer the nukes rust in peace.Reminds me of Blaise Pascal's quote: 'All human evil comes from a single cause, man's inability to sit still in a room.' Aspiration, you gotta take care man, it just might kill ya.
  • 0x600613
    2 countries with the best war technologies on earth must work together to have a war with embargod-country-for-decades. And those 2 counties are founder of Board of Peace.
  • niemandhier
    Previous conflicts between the involved parties were intense but also defined by constrain on both sides.Israel did not mass bomb civilians, and Iranian agents did not commit sabotage against infrastructure on US soil.I hope this pattern persists.A hand full of determined Ukrainians managed to blow up North Stream, some people plunged part of Berlin into darkness for 2 weeks.Power and data cables as well as pipelines are as vulnerable in the US, as they are here. Maybe even more so.A regime that truly feared for its existence, might decide to escalate, since there is nothing to loose.
  • yodsanklai
    Nothing like a war to boost your popularity just before the elections
  • adverbly
    Well hopefully this is short, minimally lethal, and leads to regime change for all those involved.
  • alex_low
    I'm surprised this has not been mentioned, for context:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Iran_massacres
  • jeffhollon
    Peace and profit.
  • r721
    Feb 25:>White House officials believe ‘the politics are a lot better’ if Israel strikes Iran first>As the administration mulls military action in Iran, officials argue it’d be best if Israel makes the first move.https://www.politico.com/news/2026/02/25/white-house-politic...
  • kibae
    There seems to be an uptick around 1am on Polymarket.https://polymarket.com/event/us-strikes-iran-by
  • apexalpha
    While I have no love for the Iranian regime I fear this will end up like the 'liberation' of Iraq: A massive power vacuum in an unstable Islamic regime.What even is the plan here if the air assault fails? Boots on the ground? In Iran?
  • riffraff
    well, they were one week away from a nuke, as usual.
  • coffinbirth
    At this point, no country in the world will ever again 'make a deal' with the US, because while pretending to negotiate with you they try to ram a knife into your back.
  • ourguile
  • athrowaway3z
    I have to wonder how much of this is driven by Israel accounting for the risk of less favorable US relationship in the future.Pre-emptive violence; not even justified with a narrative of escalating threat.Bleak for anybody who knows their history.
  • anon
    undefined
  • Aliabid94
    Gotta derail any peace talks!
  • anon
    undefined
  • hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
    Nothing to do with nuclear weapons. They are trying to surround and isolate Turkey as the only other military heavyweight of the middle east.Israel and the US have already shown their cards in Syria. It is not peace they are after, it is regional domination.
  • anon
    undefined
  • upmind
    How did the US justify this?
  • Simon_ORourke
    Are all our foreign policy decisions now made in Tel Aviv to suit Israel?
  • lawgimenez
    USA can't stop engaging in wars no? Now food prices are gonna go up because gas prices will go up. Or all prices will go up.
  • throwaw12
    This war shows Hamas was resistance group and Israel was actual oppressor and terrorist.Israel attacked IranIsrael attacked LebanonIsrael oppressed and kidnapped PalestiniansWorld is getting destroyed by couple hundred Israeli and US maniacs, by the way, all of whom are connected via Epstein
  • marcyb5st
    I find the nuclear motivation an excuse. I mean, enrichment plants or not, if Iran wants a few nukes I am pretty sure that Russia would part with some enriched material and smuggle it pretty easily to Iran.My theory is that Israel has dirt (Epstein files maybe) on Trump and holds him by the balls. The second idea is that this is an obfuscation campaign to have the public opinion forget about Epstein, the state of the real economy, the falling approval rates, or all of the above.
  • makingstuffs
    I really do not even want to understand the mental gymnastics which one has to undertake to justify the actions of the US and Israel in recent years.Nor do I even know how to begin to grasp the enablement displayed by Europe as a whole. People constantly cite China’s “human rights abuses” (which seem to pale in comparison to all this) and rightly so, but continue to enable this blood thirsty and power hungry tag team to indulge in flagrant abuses of international law and general morality.This is a sad day for level headed and empathetic humans across the globe. At which point do we accept that WW3 began quite a while ago? Because it sure as shit did.Edit: fully expect this to be downvoted to oblivion but it’s my truth.
  • carlosbaraza
    What are that pizza place google statistics?
  • karim79
    I can't help but think that all this shit is because Netanyahu really wants to put off more court hearings on his lame ass corruption charges. I really can't wait for him and his cronies (in Israel, and the West) to be brought to justice.Without having to wait for the history books to do their thing.
  • YZF
  • ivraatiems
    I was discussing this with a friend today. It just feels like there's no point to these actions.Not in the sense of "I don't ideologically agree with our decision to do this," but in the sense of, "I do not see how this accomplishes any ideological or practical goal."What are they trying for? Regime change in Iran? No more Iranian nuclear program? There barely was one before. Keeping Israel safe? It's been an open secret for years that Iran is not a real threat to Israel, because any action it took against Israel would be existential for Iran and its leadership.A US president who vocally and repeatedly promised he would not start new conflicts keeps starting them, and there's not even a reason. It's infuriating. I have my partisan opinions, but that should not be a partisan statement! It's just disturbing!
  • maxglute
    Interesting times intensifies. It's only February.
  • notenlish
    This is why we can't have nice things.
  • swingboy
    A mere 8 months ago, Trump and his cronies were saying that Iran’s nuclear program was “totally obliterated” every chance they got.
  • nomilk
    Are there any accurate sources on how many Iranian citizens the Iran regime has killed in the past couple of months? (some sources suggest tens of thousands, but I wonder if it could be a 'WMDs' situation [lie to get support for a war]).Trump said in the State of the Union [0]:> in just over the past couple of months with the protests they've killed at least 32000 protestorsAnd just moments ago Trump says 'tens of thousands' [1]Is this confirmed or conjecture?[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4l-iErpskb8&t=1h21m20s[1] https://x.com/realDonaldTrump/status/2027651077865157033
  • manyaoman
    I take this as a confirmation that more "nuclear bomb material" i.e. unpublished Epstein files still exist.
  • komali2
    Ever since the ICE stuff I've been desperate to find a way to not pay my taxes - even if it means donating 2, 3x, hell 4x my tax bill to somewhere else. Obviously it's basically impossible to do this (especially if your income is all self employment income) outside of just spending every penny you earn on something that could be viably considered a business expense. So I'm wondering if I should just straight up stop working until I can relinquish my USA citizenship.Spend down my savings and assets till I have almost nothing to exit tax, exit, and then start working again.I don't want to fund the bombing of strangers I have no quarrel with.
  • bdangubic
    we sure dodged a bullet in 2024 elections and elected the right people to stop all these senseless wars that were one of the cornerstones of the election campaign
  • optimalsolver
    My previous comment:The most salient lesson of the post-Cold War era: Get nukes or die trying.A nation's relationship to other states, up to and especially including superpowers, is completely different once it's in the nuclear club. Pakistan can host bin Laden for years and still enjoy US military funding. North Korea can literally fire missiles over South Korea and Japan and get a strongly-worded letter of condemnation, along with a generous increase in foreign aid. We can know, for a fact, that the 2003 Iraq War coalition didn't actually believe their own WMD propaganda. If they thought that Saddam could vaporize the invasion force in a final act of defiance, he'd still be in power today. Putin knows perfectly well that NATO isn't going to invade Russia, so he can strip every last soldier from the Baltic borders and throw them into the Ukrainian meat grinder.Aside from deterring attack, it also discourages powerful outside actors from fomenting revolutions. The worry becomes who gets the nukes if the central government falls.Iran's assumption seems to have been that by permanently remaining n steps away from having nukes (n varying according to the current political and diplomatic climate), you get all the benefits of being a nuclear-armed state without the blowback of going straight for them. But no, you need to have the actual weapons in your arsenal, ready to use at a moment's notice.My advice for rulers, especially ones on the outs with major geopolitical powers: Pour one out for Gaddafi, then hire a few hundred Chinese scientists and engineers and get nuked up ASAP.
  • drcongo
    Bored of Peace
  • gethly
    Iran FTW
  • csomar
    Crypto going down while Gold going up (on XAUt) suggests the market thinks this war is not going to go necessarily to the US/Israel advantage.
  • dodgerdan
    3 days ago this was in the news:> "Epstein files: DOJ withheld documents about claim Trump sexually abused minor"https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/24/epstein-trump-doj-garcia.htm...Will it even make a single newspaper or talk show this weekend?
  • bettercallsalad
    What an utter betrayal of no war by DJT. This is the final straw. Era of Trump is dead, we are back to neoconservative era. I guess Adelsons are too hard to say no to.
  • Devasta
    Iran is a lesson to all: as soon as Israel or the US take a disliking to you you have to rush for nuclear weapons.Iran has been the grown up in the room for well over a decade at this stage and it didn't matter one bit. You cannot appease Israel or the US because that don't want to be appeased, they want to bomb Iran into a lawless wasteland. They could have switched to a secular liberal democracy and it'd make no difference.
  • shevy-java
    It kind of reveals Trump as a big liar. Not that this is a surprise, but even in his own self-image he can no longer try to shift the blame to others. Now he committed to war until regime change occurs.
  • mdni007
    Why does HN continue to delete all comments against this?
  • blks
    So another war of aggression by Israel.
  • fortran77
    The headline says "US and Israel". Why are you all focusing on Israel?
  • m00dy
    This is the beginning of 3rd world war.
  • arunabha
    Ben Franklin was asked what kind of govt would the newly formed United States have. He was sadly right when he replied 'A republic, if you can keep it'One of the (many) pretexts for the war, at least from Trump seems to be that Iran 'interfered' in US elections. From the Washington post'President Donald Trump shared an article about Iran seeking to interfere in U.S. elections on his Truth Social account a couple of hours after U.S. strikes began in Iran early Saturday.“Iran tried to interfere in 2020, 2024 elections to stop Trump, and now faces renewed war with United States,” the post read, with a link to a piece from Just the News, a conservative website from which Trump frequently shares articles. Shortly after, the president posted another article from the site, albeit unrelated to Iran; it was about the Fulton County, Georgia, prosecutor Fani T. Willis.'Does the US even have a functioning Congress left? Who will even believe such a preposterous lie? Even the most die hard MAGA supporter will find it hard to believe this fabrication.It's like Trump doesn't feel the need to even maintain the fig leaf of a causus belli. He must truly feel that he is now the king of the United States to be so emboldened.
  • HNisCIS
    Currently an absolute shit load of C17s landing in Germany after leaving the PG region. I guess we know which country finally caved and let the US use them for whatever fresh conquest this is.
  • Sam6late
    They have chosen the weekend not to disturb the stock markets. They may pull that off when they get inside support as the corruption of the regime has made it unpopular with business class and the middle class. Trump may achieve another 'Venezuela' short war.
  • throwawa1
  • shihab
    Another mid east war entirely on Israel’s behalf, another war Americans will pay tax for, die for- just so Israel can keep grabbing few parcels of lands from Palestine.
  • carabiner
    Remember when we bombed Iran at Fordow? It happened less than a year ago. Iran sent some perfunctory retaliation, and everyone forgot the whole affair. Same with this. Nothing ever happens.
  • kome
    shameful for the west, and a tragedy. leave iran alone. defending the mullahs wasn't exactly on my bingo card, but here we are...please, can somebody in the US or Israel have an "are we the baddies" epiphany?
  • throwaway637372
    US president can be democrat or republican, republicans can control the Senate or the House, or the democrats can control the Senate or the House - regardless of who is in power, Israel's interests by US are always met. US can wreck havoc on close relations and ties with Europe, Canada, etc. - but relation to Israel never changes. You can oblivious to all this, but the truth is: Israel de facto controls the US.
  • ardit33
    This was doesn't benefit the US whatsoever. I am getting tired of our taxes going to another useless war, like the Iraq one, that only benefits a foreign entity, aka Israel.Iran could have been contained and Obama was right on his approach. We don't know the details of the strikes, but I hope it doesn't go into a full blown war, but this will be another Iraq like disaster, and american people are getting tired of doing the bidding of Isreal, a country that is already mirred into doing a genocide. This war is already unpopular in pools. Iran's regime is terrible to its people, but this has the potential to be another disaster where countless of people could die.
  • anon
    undefined
  • drivebyhooting
    Please, can the administration do something useful for America instead of… whatever this is?Can we follow the age old adage WWJD?What would (Xi) Jinping do?
  • johnbarron
    At this moment, dont know what looks more terrifying. This war the US just got itself into, or the contents of the unreleased Epstein files...
  • api
    What a gift to the deeply unpopular Iranian regime. Nothing galvanizes support for whatever-you-have more than an external threat.Think about it. If someone actually bombed or invaded the continental US you'd have woke libs cheering for Donald Trump.The Iranian regime may fall, but it'll be like Iraq. We'll get something like ISIS out of it, or worse, and the place will be a complete basketcase of civil war for 25+ years. Or we'll be there for 25 years in another "forever war." Bravo.
  • rurban
    The headlines in Europe are that Israel is carrying out preventive strikes, the USA is helping.And that's certainly the deathbed of any hopes to a mullah regime change. They will come out stronger than before.
  • humanlity
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  • ParonoidAndroid
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  • aaron695
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  • stevenjgarner
  • belter
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  • RiverStone
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  • Matl
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  • anonnon
    Can any Iran simps explain why the regime couldn't just agree to zero enrichment and cease its weekly ritual of organized mobs chanting:> DEATH TO AMERICAin the streets like blood-thirsty lunatics, something for which there was no equivalent in the US even after 9/11 (mobs chanting "Death to Muslims/Islam"), let alone doing so with governmental encouragement as happens in Iran?Do they not realize how many Americans aren't pro-Israel and aren't invested enough in the Middle East and its politics, proxy wars, and human rights abuses to want the US to support Israel in military action against Iran, except for their nuclear ambitions, and regularly professed eternal hatred for our country?
  • epsters
    Trump launching bunker-busters on his midterm chances. Which depending on how bad it goes, potentially means impeachment and prison. Whatever it is the Israelis have on him, it must be good.Works out great for Netanyahu though as is customary. He can be PM for a while longer and stave off his own impending trial and imprisonment. If this goes well for Israel, he might even get that pardon that Trump campaigned for tirelessly.
  • seydor
    Thankfully the stock market is closed
  • ReptileMan
    Seems that they are behaving intelligently - pummeling the IRGC. If the IRGC fails the public will probably have a bit of small talk with the regime officials and functionaries while the regular army and police will probably look vague amused from the sides.
  • TheAlchemist
    Regardless of how it ends, and it can go both ways, we're witnessing history here. This feels like a much bigger development than Russia-Ukraine. Iran is a major partner for Russia and China, mostly for military technology and oil. Hope it's not a start of WW3.
  • 2001zhaozhao
    I can't shake the thought that Claude is quite possibly helping to conduct these attacks.Maybe it's a good thing that Anthropic will no longer be associated with the US government's attacks in another six months.
  • pseingatl
    There are always unanticipated consequences in war. Argentina never thought in a million years that an attack on the practically undefended Falklands would result in the loss of the General Belgrano.
  • krembo
    Even if you don't support US & IL standing in the frontlines against the terror regime, at least pray for the freedom of the people of Iran, 90m people held hostages by the regime. If you are pro-peace, do not be hypocrite, some wars are needed to defeat evil.
  • windowliker
    This is war... huh... wow!
  • dastuer
    As Iranians, we have collectively been waiting for this day.We want this mafia regime be gone as soon as possible so that we can be free.
  • thomassmith65
    Good on the US and Israel. The protesters risked their lives last month, partly because of the promise that help would arrive.As long as the bombs land primarily on regime targets, this is the right thing to do.I am cautiously hopeful. If there aren't widespread civilian casualties, and if enough of the Iranian army and police join the protesters, Iran will finally be free.