Saturday, March 28
11:30 A.M. – 3:00 P.M.
Embarcadero Plaza
Market and Steuart Street
San Francisco, CA 94105
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Veterans For Peace Condemns
U.S. Attack on Iran
Military Members and Civilians:
Resist Illegal Wars!
Veterans For Peace condemns the U.S./Israeli attack on Iran in the strongest possible terms. We call on our members, friends, and allies to resist this dangerous and illegal war. We offer our support to members of the military who decide to refuse illegal orders and resist an illegal war.
A War Based on Lies
The Trump administration’s ever-changing rationales for going to war against Iran are lies. Iran posed no threat to the United States. This military operation is not a defensive war, but rather a war of choice by Israel and the U.S., a war of aggression, a war for regime change – very much like the disastrous U.S. wars that killed millions of people in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan – wars that many veterans remember with horror and regret.
Contrary to President Trump’s oft-repeated lie, Iran has repeatedly stated that it has no intention of acquiring nuclear weapons. Rather, the United States, the only country to attack another nation with nuclear weapons, has unilaterally abrogated multiple arms control treaties, and is investing Two Trillion Dollars in a new generation of nuclear weapons. It was the U.S., not Iran, that violated and withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal. Israel also has nuclear weapons – undeclared and uninspected. Two nuclear powers attacking Iran, claiming to stop it from pursuing a nuclear program, is the height of hypocrisy.
The aggression against Iran follows by less than two months the U.S. attack on Venezuela and the unlawful abduction of its president and wife. It comes amid the ongoing war threats and oil blockade of Cuba. This complete disregard and abuse of the process of negotiations only encourages nuclear proliferation around the world.
Illegal and Unconstitutional
The U.S. war on Iran is illegal in multiple ways. It is a violation of the UN Charter, a treaty which is the “supreme law of the land” under Article VI of the U.S. Constitution. Article 2(4) of the UN Charter states, “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”
The unilateral war of aggression against Iran is a blatant violation of the U.S. Constitution, which explicitly grants Congress the sole authority to declare war. This power was intentionally given to the legislative branch to prevent unilateral military action by a single executive.
These legal and constitutional issues may seem quaint to those of us who have seen them routinely violated by president after president with the complicity of a supine Congress. Nonetheless, they constitute both international and domestic law. They are the legal codification of a moral framework for international peace and cooperation. Peace-loving people must struggle to ensure that these laws are followed. We must hold our government officials accountable when they are not.
Refuse Illegal Orders – Resist Illegal Wars
Veterans For Peace reminds our sisters and brothers, children, and grandchildren in the U.S. military that an order to participate in an illegal war is, by extension, an illegal order. You have the right and even the duty to refuse illegal orders. Veterans For Peace and many others will stand with you when you do, and provide helpful information and resources. Whatever legal consequences you may endure pale compared to risking your life in an illegal war or living with Post Traumatic Stress and Moral Injury.
Veterans and civilians also have the right and the responsibility to resist the illegal actions of our government at home and abroad. This attack is a very critical moment in the history of the United States and the world. We must be in the streets protesting. We must be on our phones telling our representatives to Vote Yes on the Iran War Powers resolution. We must be on our keyboards, writing letters to the editors. Tell them to:
IMMEDIATELY HALT U.S. MILITARY ATTACKS ON IRAN!
· End U.S. Support for Israel and Genocide in Palestine!
· End Economic Warfare against Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba!
· End ICE and Authoritarian Repression in U.S. Cities!
· Abolish Nuclear Weapons and War!
PEACE AT HOME, PEACE ABROAD!
https://prod.cdn.everyaction.com/emails/van/EA/EA015/1/94223/Alqa3p0mdFGQOfwCaEOYO6dpWCJEn2qC1GPoEaid_7O_archive?emci=6196a802-9415-f111-a69a-000d3a57593f&emdi=d3c0d4a7-a515-f111-a69a-000d3a57593f&ceid=10474381
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Tell Congress: No War On Iran!
On Saturday, February 28th, the United States and Israel bombed Iran’s capital. Shortly after, President Donald Trump announced a planned prolonged war against Iran and stated that American servicemembers would likely be killed in the process. He addressed Iranians, telling them to stay inside because bombs would be dropping all over Iran, and called on them to overthrow their government. The self-proclaimed “peace president” has launched yet another endless war – risking millions of human lives. The entire world should be outraged.
Tell Congress we want PEACE with Iran, we don’t want the US bombing Iran, we don’t want a regime change war, and we want to lift the sanctions that are hurting everyday Iranians.
https://www.codepink.org/iranaction
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The Trump administration is escalating its attack on Cuba, cutting off the island’s access to oil in a deliberate attempt to induce famine and mass suffering. This is collective punishment, plain and simple.
In response, we’re releasing a public Call to Conscience, already signed by influential public figures, elected officials, artists, and organizations—including 22 members of the New York City Council, Kal Penn, Mark Ruffalo, Susan Sarandon, Alice Walker, 50501, Movement for Black Lives, The People’s Forum, IFCO Pastors for Peace, ANSWER Coalition, and many others—demanding an end to this brutal policy.
The letter is open for everyone to sign. Add your name today. Cutting off energy to an island nation is not policy—it is a tactic of starvation.
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Petition to Force Amazon to Cut ICE Contracts!
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-amazon-end-contracts-with-ice/?source=group-amazon-labor-union&referrer=group-amazon-labor-
Amazon Labor Union
Over 600,000 messages have already been sent directly to Amazon board members demanding one thing: Amazon must stop fueling deportations by ending its contracts with ICE and DHS.
ICE and DHS rely on the data infrastructure provided by Amazon Web Services. Their campaign against immigrants and those who stand with them depends on the logistical, financial, and political support of companies like Amazon.
But workers and communities have real power when we act collectively. That’s why we must expose Amazon’s role in the deportation machine. Help us reach 1 million messages and force Amazon to act by signing our petition with The Labor Force today:
Tell Amazon: End contracts with ICE!
On Cyber Monday 2025, Amazon workers rallied outside of Amazon’s NYC headquarters to demand that Amazon stop fueling mass deportations through Amazon Web Services’ contracts with ICE and DHS.
ICE cannot operate without corporate backing; its campaign against immigrants and those who stand with them depends on the logistical, financial, and political support of companies like Amazon. Mega-corporations may appear untouchable, but they are not. Anti-authoritarian movements have long understood that repression is sustained by a network of institutional enablers and when those enablers are disrupted, state violence weakens. Workers and communities have real power when they act collectively. That is why we must expose Amazon’s role in the deportation machine.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) rely on Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its most commonly used cloud platform. DHS and ICE cannot wage their attack on immigrants without the critical data infrastructure that Amazon Web Services provide, allowing the agencies to collect, analyze, and store the massive amounts of data they need to do their dirty work. Without the power of AWS, ICE would not be able to track and target people at its current scale.
ICE and DHS use Amazon Web Services to collect and store massive amounts of purchased data on immigrants and their friends and family–everything from biometric data, DMV data, cellphone records, and more. And through its contracts with Palantir, DHS is able to scour regional, local, state, and federal databases and analyze and store this data on AWS. All of this information is ultimately used to target immigrants and other members of our communities.
No corporation should profit from oppression and abuse. Yet Amazon is raking in tens of millions of dollars to fuel DHS and ICE, while grossly exploiting its own workers. Can you sign our petition today, demanding that Amazon stop fueling deportations by ending its contracts with DHS and ICE, now?
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-amazon-end-contracts-with-ice/?source=group-amazon-labor-union&referrer=group-amazon-labor-
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End Texas Torture of Revolutionary Elder Xinachtli
Organization Support Letter
Letter to demand the immediate medical treatment and release of Chicano political prisoner Xinachtli (Alvaro Hernandez #00255735)
To the Texas Department of Criminal Justice,
We, the undersigned organizations, write to urge immediate action to protect the life, health, and human rights of Xinachtli (legal name Alvaro Hernandez). Xinachtli is 73-year-old Chicano community organizer from Texas who has spent 23 years in solitary confinement and 30 years incarcerated as part of a 50-year sentence. His health is now in a critical and life-threatening state and requires prompt and comprehensive medical intervention.
Since his conviction in 1997, Xinachtli has spent decades in conditions that have caused significant physical and psychological harm. As an elder in worsening health, these conditions have effectively become a de facto death sentence.
Xinachtli’s current medical condition is severe. His physical, mental, and overall well-being have declined rapidly in recent weeks. He now requires both a wheelchair and a walker, has experienced multiple falls, and is suffering from rapid weight loss. He is currently housed in the McConnell Unit infirmary, where he is receiving only palliative measures and is being denied a medical diagnosis, access to his medical records, and adequate diagnostic testing or treatment.
A virtual clinical visit with licensed medical doctor Dr. Dona Kim Murphey underscores the severity of his condition. In her report of the visit, she wrote: "Given the history of recent neck/back trauma and recurrent urinary tract infections with numbness, weakness, and bowel and bladder incontinence, I am concerned about nerve root or spinal cord injury and/or abscesses that can lead to permanent sensorimotor dysfunction."
Despite his age and visible disabilities, he remains in solitary confinement under the Security Threat Group designation as a 73-year-old. During his time in the infirmary, prison staff threw away all of his belongings and “lost” his commissary card, leaving him completely without basic necessities. He is experiencing hunger, and the lack of consistent nutrition is worsening his medical condition. McConnell Unit staff have also consistently given him incorrect forms, including forms for medical records and medical visitation, creating further barriers to care and communication.
A family visit on November 29 confirmed the seriousness of his condition. Xinachtli, who was once able to walk on his own, can no longer stand without assistance. He struggled to breathe, has lost more than 30 pounds, relied heavily on his wheelchair, and was in severe pain throughout the visit.
In light of these conditions, we, the undersigned organizations, demand that TDCJ take immediate action to save Xinachtli’s life and comply with its legal and ethical obligations.
We urge the immediate implementation of the following actions:
Immediate re-instatement of his access to commissary to buy hygiene, food, and other critical items. Immediate transfer to the TDCJ hospital in Galveston for a full medical evaluation and treatment, including complete access to his medical records and full transparency regarding all procedures. Transfer to a geriatric and medical unit that is fully accessible under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Xinachtli requests placement at the Richard P LeBlanc Unit in Beaumont, Texas. Approval of Medical Recommended Intensive Supervision, the release program for individuals with serious medical conditions and disabilities, in recognition of the severity and progression of his current health issues. Failure to act will result in the continued and foreseeable deterioration of Xinachtli’s health, amounting to state-sanctioned death. We urge TDCJ to take swift and decisive action to meet these requests and to fulfill its responsibility to safeguard his life and well-being.
We stand united in calling for immediate and decisive action. Xinachtli’s life depends on it.
Signed, Xinachtli Freedom Campaign and supporting organizations
Endorsing Organizations:
Al-Awda Houston; All African People’s Revolutionary Party; Anakbayan Houston; Anti-Imperialist Solidarity; Artists for Black Lives' Equality; Black Alliance for Peace - Solidarity Network; Columbia University Students for a Democratic Society; Community Liberation Programs; Community Powered ATX; Contra Gentrificación; Diaspora Pa’lante Collective; Down South; DSA Emerge; Entre nos kc; Fighting Racism Workshops; Frontera Water Protectors; GC Harm Reductionists; JERICHO MOVEMENT; Jericho Movement Providence; Montrose Anarchist Collective; NYC Jericho Movement; OC Focus; Palestine Solidarity TX; Partisan Defense Committee; Partido Nacional de la Raza Unida; PDX Anti-Repression; Red Star Texas; Root Cause; San Francisco Solidarity Collective; Shine White Support Team; Sunrise Columbia; UC San Diego Faculty for Justice in Palestine; Viva Palestina, EPTX; Water Justice and Technology Studio; Workshops4Gaza.
Sign the endorsement letter for your organization here:
https://cryptpad.fr/form/#/2/form/view/MiR1f+iLiRBJC7gSTyfhyxJoLIDhThxRafPatxdbMWI/
IMPORTANT LINKS TO MATERIALS FOR XINACHTLI FREEDOM CAMPAIGN:
PHONE BLAST: Your community can sign up for a 15-minute-long call shift here: bit.ly/xphoneblast
FUNDRAISER: Here is the link to Jericho's fundraiser for Xinachtli: http://givebutter.com/jerichomovement
CASE HISTORY: Learn more about Xinachtli and his case through our website: https://freealvaro.net
CONTACT INFO:
Follow us on Instagram: @freexinachtlinow
Email us:
xinachtlifreedomcampaign@protonmail.com
COALITION FOLDER:
https://drive.proton.me/urls/SP3KTC1RK4#KARGiPQVYIvR
In the folder you will find: Two pictures of Xinachtli from 2024; The latest updated graphics for the phone blast; The original TRO emergency motion filing; Maria Salazar's declaration; Dr. Murphy's report from her Dec. 9 medical visit; Letter from Amnesty International declaring Xinachtli's situation a human rights violation; Free Xinachtli zine (which gives background on him and his case); and The most recent press release detailing who Xinachtli is as well as his medical situation.
Write to:
Alvaro Hernandez CID #00255735
TDCJ-W.G. McConnell Unit
PO Box 660400
Dallas, TX 75266-0400
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Self-portrait by Kevin Cooper
Funds for Kevin Cooper
Kevin was transferred out of San Quentin and is now at a healthcare facility in Stockton. He has received some long overdue healthcare. The art program is very different from the one at San Quentin but we are hopeful that Kevin can get back to painting soon.
For 41 years, an innocent man has been on death row in California.
Kevin Cooper was wrongfully convicted of the brutal 1983 murders of the Ryen family and houseguest. The case has a long history of police and prosecutorial misconduct, evidence tampering, and numerous constitutional violations including many incidences of the prosecution withholding evidence of innocence from the defense. You can learn more here .
In December 2018 Gov. Brown ordered limited DNA testing and in February 2019, Gov. Newsom ordered additional DNA testing. Meanwhile, Kevin remains on Death Row at San Quentin Prison.
The funds raised will be used to help Kevin purchase art supplies for his paintings . Additionally, being in prison is expensive, and this money would help Kevin pay for stamps, books, paper, toiletries, supplies, supplementary food, printing materials to educate the public about his case and/or video calls.
Please help ease the daily struggle of an innocent man on death row!
An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:
Kevin Cooper #C65304
Cell 107, Unit E1C
California Health Care Facility, Stockton (CHCF)
P.O. Box 213040
Stockton, CA 95213
www.freekevincooper.org
Call California Governor Newsom:
1-(916) 445-2841
Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish,
press 6 to speak with a representative and
wait for someone to answer
(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)
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Dr. Atler Still Needs Our Help!
Please sign the petition today!
https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
What you can do to support:
—Donate to help Tom Alter and his family with living and legal expenses: https://gofund.me/27c72f26d
—Sign and share this petition demanding Tom Alter be given his job back: https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
—Write to and call the President and Provost at Texas State University demanding that Tom Alter be given his job back:
President Kelly Damphousse: president@txstate.edu
President’s Office Phone: 512-245-2121
Provost Pranesh Aswath: xrk25@txstate.edu
Provost Office Phone: 512-245-2205
For more information about the reason for the firing of Dr. Tom Alter, read:
"Fired for Advocating Socialism: Professor Tom Alter Speaks Out"
Ashley Smith Interviews Dr. Tom Alter
—CounterPunch, September 24, 2025
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 Russia Confirms Jailing of Antiwar Leader Boris Kagarlitsky In a secret trial on June 5, 2024, the Russian Supreme Court’s Military Chamber confirmed a sentence of five years in a penal colony for left-wing sociologist and online journalist Boris Kagarlitsky. His crime? “Justifying terrorism” — a sham charge used to silence opponents of Putin’s war on Ukraine. The court disregarded a plea for freedom sent by thirty-seven international luminaries. Kagarlitsky, a leading Marxist thinker in Russia’s post-Soviet period, recently addressed socialists who won’t criticize Putin: “To my Western colleagues, who…call for an understanding of Putin and his regime, I would like to ask a very simple question. [Would] you want to live in a country where there is no free press or independent courts? In a country where the police have the right to break into your house without a warrant? …In a country which…broadcasts appeals on TV to destroy Paris, London, Warsaw, with a nuclear strike?” Thousands of antiwar critics have been forced to flee Russia or are behind bars, swept up in Putin’s vicious crackdown on dissidents. Opposition to the war is consistently highest among the poorest workers. Recently, RusNews journalists Roman Ivanov and Maria Ponomarenko were sentenced to seven, and six years respectively, for reporting the military’s brutal assault on Ukraine. A massive global solidarity campaign that garnered support from thousands was launched at Kagarlitsky’s arrest. Now, it has been revived. This internationalism will bolster the repressed Russian left and Ukrainian resistance to Putin’s imperialism. To sign the online petition at freeboris.info —Freedom Socialist Party, August 2024 https://socialism.com/fs-article/russia-jails-prominent-antiwar-leader-boris-kagarlitsky/#:~:text=In%20a%20secret%20trial%20on,of%20Putin's%20war%20on%20Ukraine. Petition in Support of Boris KagarlitskyWe, the undersigned, were deeply shocked to learn that on February 13 the leading Russian socialist intellectual and antiwar activist Dr. Boris Kagarlitsky (65) was sentenced to five years in prison. Dr. Kagarlitsky was arrested on the absurd charge of 'justifying terrorism' in July last year. After a global campaign reflecting his worldwide reputation as a writer and critic of capitalism and imperialism, his trial ended on December 12 with a guilty verdict and a fine of 609,000 roubles. The prosecution then appealed against the fine as 'unjust due to its excessive leniency' and claimed falsely that Dr. Kagarlitsky was unable to pay the fine and had failed to cooperate with the court. In fact, he had paid the fine in full and provided the court with everything it requested. On February 13 a military court of appeal sent him to prison for five years and banned him from running a website for two years after his release. The reversal of the original court decision is a deliberate insult to the many thousands of activists, academics, and artists around the world who respect Dr. Kagarlitsky and took part in the global campaign for his release. The section of Russian law used against Dr. Kagarlitsky effectively prohibits free expression. The decision to replace the fine with imprisonment was made under a completely trumped-up pretext. Undoubtedly, the court's action represents an attempt to silence criticism in the Russian Federation of the government's war in Ukraine, which is turning the country into a prison. The sham trial of Dr. Kagarlitsky is the latest in a wave of brutal repression against the left-wing movements in Russia. Organizations that have consistently criticized imperialism, Western and otherwise, are now under direct attack, many of them banned. Dozens of activists are already serving long terms simply because they disagree with the policies of the Russian government and have the courage to speak up. Many of them are tortured and subjected to life-threatening conditions in Russian penal colonies, deprived of basic medical care. Left-wing politicians are forced to flee Russia, facing criminal charges. International trade unions such as IndustriALL and the International Transport Federation are banned and any contact with them will result in long prison sentences. There is a clear reason for this crackdown on the Russian left. The heavy toll of the war gives rise to growing discontent among the mass of working people. The poor pay for this massacre with their lives and wellbeing, and opposition to war is consistently highest among the poorest. The left has the message and resolve to expose the connection between imperialist war and human suffering. Dr. Kagarlitsky has responded to the court's outrageous decision with calm and dignity: “We just need to live a little longer and survive this dark period for our country,” he said. Russia is nearing a period of radical change and upheaval, and freedom for Dr. Kagarlitsky and other activists is a condition for these changes to take a progressive course. We demand that Boris Kagarlitsky and all other antiwar prisoners be released immediately and unconditionally. We also call on the auth *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* |
Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!
FREE HIM NOW!
Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
Join the Fight for Mumia's Life
Since September, Mumia Abu-Jamal's health has been declining at a concerning rate. He has lost weight, is anemic, has high blood pressure and an extreme flair up of his psoriasis, and his hair has fallen out. In April 2021 Mumia underwent open heart surgery. Since then, he has been denied cardiac rehabilitation care including a healthy diet and exercise.
He still needs more complicated treatment from a retinal specialist for his right eye if his eyesight is to be saved:
Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical
Defense Fund
Mumia has instructed PrisonRadio to set up this fund. Gifts donated here are designated for the Mumia Abu-Jamal Medical and Legal Defense Fund. If you are writing a check or making a donation in another way, note this in the memo line.
Send to:
Mumia Medical and Legal Fund c/o Prison Radio
P.O. Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94103
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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression
https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/
Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests.
The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page.
Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.
Emergency Hotlines
If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities.
State and Local Hotlines
If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for:
Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312
San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org
Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963
National Hotline
If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:
National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811
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Articles
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1) A Tale of Two Seasons at Columbia, and Two Responses to Student Arrests
When Mahmoud Khalil was detained by immigration agents last year, the university’s response was restrained. It was different with Elmina Aghayeva this week.
By Troy Closson, Sharon Otterman and Luis Ferré-Sadurní, Feb. 28, 2026
“'This was a frightening and fast-moving situation and utterly unacceptable for our students and staff,' she said in a recorded address Thursday night, describing in detail how immigration officers had asked for entry into the building to search for a missing child. 'Let me be clear — misrepresenting identity and other facts to gain access to a residential building is a breach of protocol.'”
The message at Columbia University was clear this week after federal immigration agents again detained a student. Credit...CS Muncy for The New York Times
A graduate student at Columbia University had been detained by immigration enforcement agents in the lobby of his university-owned apartment building. Within 24 hours, the arrest — done without a warrant — became a national story and drew widespread outrage.
But Columbia’s reaction to the detention of the student, Mahmoud Khalil, was restrained.
“There have been reports of ICE around campus,” the university wrote in an unsigned public statement one day after Mr. Khalil’s arrest. “Columbia has and will continue to follow the law.”
Nearly one year later, the university landed on a far different approach after Elmina Aghayeva, a 29-year-old senior from Azerbaijan, was taken by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from her university-owned apartment on Thursday.
Before the morning was over, Columbia had sounded the alarm to the campus in an urgent letter. The university’s leaders began dialing up influential elected officials to raise concern. And its acting president, Claire Shipman, later denounced the behavior and conduct of federal agents.
“This was a frightening and fast-moving situation and utterly unacceptable for our students and staff,” she said in a recorded address Thursday night, describing in detail how immigration officers had asked for entry into the building to search for a missing child.
“Let me be clear — misrepresenting identity and other facts to gain access to a residential building is a breach of protocol.”
In the worlds of academia and law, some observers who have closely followed the university’s posture in recent years immediately noticed the shift.
“The response was quite different,” said Michael Thaddeus, a mathematics professor and vice president of the Columbia chapter of the American Association of University Professors.
“It’s not clear whether this reflects the difference in the public stands these students have taken, or a fundamental change in the university’s approach,” Professor Thaddeus said. “I hope it will prove to be the latter.”
In some ways, the contrasting responses provided a vivid illustration of just how much has shifted during the past 12 months, for Columbia, an Ivy League school, and the nation.
The conduct of immigration agents has fallen under scrutiny from New York to Minnesota, where the Trump administration mounted an aggressive operation and federal agents fatally shot two people during the recent protests.
“The context has changed,” Reinhold Martin, the president of Columbia’s chapter of the professors’ association, said. “We thank our friends in Minneapolis, who set an example for others to follow.”
At this time last year, elite universities were entering the cross hairs of the White House. One day before the detention of Mr. Khalil, a leader in a pro-Palestinian campus movement that drew both support and condemnation, the Trump administration had announced the cancellation of $400 million in federal grants to Columbia.
But the dispute was settled over the summer, with Columbia making a deal to receive its funding anew. This school year, the Morningside Heights campus has been comparatively quiet.
At the same time, the Trump administration’s recent immigration crackdown in several U.S. cities is provoking criticism from a broad cast of elected Democrats. Many rank-and-file voters, too, have registered their rage in large-scale protests.
A poll last month from The New York Times and Siena University found that a sizable majority now believes that ICE has gone too far.
To some, it all seemed to inform Columbia’s response to Ms. Aghayeva’s arrest, and to provide cover for the university if it chose to strike a different tone.
“Public opinion has certainly shifted against ICE and their warrantless arrests,” said Brad Hoylman-Sigal, a Democrat and the Manhattan borough president. “I think the university was on firmer ground to protect its student population.”
Columbia officials declined to discuss their strategy publicly.
The university has navigated life under a spotlight since protests erupted on campus after the Hamas-led incursion of Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the university’s president at the time, Nemat Shafik, testified before Congress about its response to campus antisemitism.
The cancellation of federal funding and the detention of Mr. Khalil, all within 48 hours last March, thrust the university back into the center of the story.
Katrina Armstrong, the university’s interim president when Mr. Khalil was detained, said in a letter at the time that she empathized with the distress the school community felt over the presence of ICE agents around campus.
But Dr. Armstrong did not name Mr. Khalil — or even mention the arrest — publicly.
The approach angered some faculty members and others, particularly as the Trump administration’s dragnet expanded to include other Columbia students, including Mohsen Mahdawi, an organizer of pro-Palestinian demonstrations who was arrested at a citizenship interview.
Some pointed to Tufts University’s backing of its graduate student, Rumeysa Ozturk, who was detained on the street, and asked why Columbia hadn’t more forcefully defended its students.
Columbia took a different tack this week when five plainclothes immigration agents demanded to be let inside Ms. Aghayeva’s apartment building on Thursday morning. The Department of Homeland Security said it had arrested Ms. Aghayeva because her student visa had been terminated in 2016 for her failure to attend classes.
University leaders told city officials that the agents had misrepresented themselves as police officers searching for a missing child in order to gain entry. The Department of Homeland Security disputed Columbia’s account, saying its officers had “verbally identified themselves and wore badges around their necks.”
Mr. Mahdawi, one of the students detained last year, said that the release of Ms. Aghayeva “is the right outcome, and Columbia’s response, legal support and public advocacy is exactly what a university should do.”
“When I and other students were detained by ICE for our support of Palestinian rights, Columbia did not respond that way,” he said.
Unlike those arrested last year, Ms. Aghayeva was not openly political. Her large social media presence, with more than 100,000 followers on Instagram, focuses on the stress of trying to be perfect and why it is important to make something of yourself.
After Mayor Zohran Mamdani asked President Trump on Thursday to intervene to secure the student’s release, Ms. Shipman referred to Ms. Aghayeva by name in her recorded address.
And she put it plainly: “The agents took our student.”
The contrast frustrated some of those close to Mr. Khalil, who had criticized the conduct of Columbia’s leadership after his arrest.
Baher Azmy, the legal director at the Center for Constitutional Rights, an advocacy and legal group, said that the university was far more responsive this week “than they were to the equally unlawful arrest of Mahmoud.”
“I think a lasting shame for the university for how they failed to intercede on his behalf or prevent his abduction when they knew it was possible,” Mr. Azmy, who is one of Mr. Khalil’s lawyers, said in a statement.
Some lawyers saw no major distinction between the legal cases of Ms. Aghayeva and some of the other detained Columbia students. “The only thing that I can see different is the politics of it,” Joshua Bardavid, an immigration lawyer in New York, said.
Still, Mr. Bardavid said that the swift release of Ms. Aghayeva offered a valuable lesson.
“When the university was willing to allow the government to have its way with their students, the government did,” he said. “When strong institutions and bodies are willing to fight, that can make the difference.”
For others, the takeaway from Thursday’s episode was different.
Aharon Dardik, a senior and an organizer with the Columbia Student Union, said Ms. Aghayeva’s arrest at her university housing showed Columbia remains unprepared to protect students from ICE.
He pointed to other incidents across the United States in recent months in which immigration agents were accused of using deception and intimidation to gain access to private spaces. Columbia, he said, had not trained its workers to be prepared for a similar scenario.
It has instituted a protocol since Ms. Aghayeva’s arrest.
“If you leave your doors unlocked, and every day on the news there’s talk about how there were more burglaries,” Mr. Dardik said, “you don’t get to say the burglar fooled you.”
Jonah E. Bromwich and Ana Ley contributed reporting.
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2) Judge Approves $345 Million Verdict Against Greenpeace in Pipeline Suit
Greenpeace has said the verdict could bankrupt it. The lawsuit was over the group’s role in protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline.
By Karen Zraick, Published Feb. 27, 2026, Updated Feb. 28, 2026
Protesters against the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota in 2016. Credit...John L. Mone/Associated Press
A North Dakota judge finalized a potentially fatal verdict against Greenpeace on Friday, affirming a $345 million jury award against the storied environmental group that Greenpeace has said may force it into bankruptcy in the United States.
The verdict was reached last year after a bruising trial brought by the pipeline company Energy Transfer over Greenpeace’s role in protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline, an 1,172-mile pipeline that carries oil from North Dakota to Illinois.
Energy Transfer claimed Greenpeace had played a major role in the protests a decade ago, forcing construction delays and costing the company money. Greenpeace has said that the lawsuit, which was argued last year in state court in Mandan, N.D., was baseless and designed to silence it, and that the verdict undermined free-speech rights in the United States.
“Speaking out against corporations that cause environmental harm should never be deemed unlawful,” said Marco Simons, interim general counsel at Greenpeace USA and Greenpeace Fund. “This is a setback, but the movement to defend people and the planet has always faced setbacks and resistance, and Energy Transfer will fail in its goal of silencing its critics.”
Greenpeace said it would seek a new trial and, if necessary, file an appeal to the North Dakota Supreme Court.
Energy Transfer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The judge in the case, James Gion, had previously cut the jury award nearly in half, from roughly $670 million to about $345 million, split among three different Greenpeace entities.
On Tuesday, Judge Gion noted in court filings that the Greenpeace groups — two based in the United States and one in the Netherlands — had asked him to overturn or at least further reduce the verdict, which was much larger than expected. But he said he did not find reason to do so.
Judge Gion wrote that the jury had heard evidence from both sides about the claims, which included defamation, conspiracy, trespass and interference with business operations. The lawyers for Energy Transfer had argued that Greenpeace played a key role in galvanizing the raucous protests, which drew tens of thousands of people to a remote area near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in 2016 and 2017.
Greenpeace countered that it had played only a supporting role in nonviolent protests led by Native American groups. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe maintains that the pipeline is a danger to its sole source of drinking water.
“The jury heard that evidence and made their decision,” Judge Gion wrote. He added that the jury “must have found the evidence presented by the plaintiffs to be more credible.”
Greenpeace has said the verdict was a threat to First Amendment rights. The group called the suit, first filed in federal court in 2017, a “strategic lawsuit against public participation,” or a SLAPP suit. That’s a term for complaints filed by powerful individuals or organizations aimed at shutting down critics by raising the risk of long, expensive court battles. Many states have anti-SLAPP laws that make it difficult to pursue such cases, though not North Dakota.
Martin Garbus, a veteran free-speech lawyer who was among a group of legal observers who attended the trial, said he feared the North Dakota case would eventually make its way to the Supreme Court, where he predicted Greenpeace would lose. The justices “will use the case to murder the First Amendment,” he said.
Many European countries also have anti-SLAPP statutes. That has allowed Greenpeace International (which is based in the Netherlands, and is one of the three Greenpeace organizations that are defendants in the case) to bring a countersuit against Energy Transfer in an Amsterdam court.
Greenpeace International has maintained that its only involvement in the pipeline protests was signing a letter to banks expressing its opposition, a document that was signed by hundreds of groups and that had been drafted by a Dutch organization. The Dutch case is expected to be an early test of a new European Union directive that sets out stringent goals for reining in SLAPP-style lawsuits.
Energy Transfer has asked the North Dakota Supreme Court to issue an injunction to block the Dutch suit. That’s an extraordinary request, as it would be a state-level court in the United States taking action to block a court case in another country, being conducted under that nation’s laws. The cases remain pending in both courts.
The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s fight to stop the pipeline, which has been operating since 2017, continues at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
In December, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers completed a long-awaited environmental review, a critical step for the pipeline to receive full permits, which may weaken the tribe’s arguments. Lawyers for the tribe said the report minimized spill risks and failed to honor treaty rights.
The Army Corps said in a statement that it had incorporated input from tribes, federal and state agencies and the public, and it declined to comment on the pending litigation. The report is expected to be finalized soon.
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3) What Are ICE Agents Allowed to Do on College Campuses?
Federal agents do not have any special privileges on campuses. To arrest a student at Columbia University this week, they used a tactic of questionable legality.
By Jonah E. Bromwich, Published Feb. 27, 2026, Updated Feb. 28, 2026
Barricades in front of the main entrance of Columbia University where protesters gathered on Thursday. Credit...CS Muncy for The New York Times
A Columbia University undergraduate this week was arrested by federal immigration agents who falsely told the superintendent of a university-owned apartment building that they were the police and that they were searching for a missing child.
The student, Ellie Aghayeva, was released after Mayor Zohran Mamdani met with President Trump and asked that her case be dismissed. But the episode has raised questions about whether the agents’ actions were legal and, more generally, what immigration agents are permitted to do on college campuses.
Federal agents do not have any special privileges on campuses. While certain parts of campuses are considered public property, many are considered private. Agents need federal judicial warrants to search private property, meaning a judge would have to be convinced that there was probable cause that a crime was being or had been committed. Illegal immigration, per se, is not a crime; it is a civil violation of the law.
The Homeland Security Department, asked for comment about its understanding of its role on campus, resent a statement from earlier about Ms. Aghayeva. It said that the United States was still seeking to deport her and that she had been released to wait for her hearing.
Here’s what you need to know about what happened:
What happened at Columbia University this week?
Shortly after 6 a.m. on Thursday, five federal immigration agents were let into a university-owned apartment building by the building’s superintendent. They gained entry by posing as police officers searching for a missing child. They had no warrant.
They entered Ms. Aghayeva’s apartment holding posters for the fictional missing child. Despite a public security officer’s protest that they had no warrant, they took her.
The university’s president, Claire Shipman, said that the episode was “utterly unacceptable.”
The Homeland Security Department said its officers “verbally identified themselves and wore badges around their necks.” It said it arrested Ms. Aghayeva because her “student visa was terminated in 2016 under the Obama administration for failing to attend classes.”
Do immigration agents need to identify themselves fully?
In 2005, the acting director of ICE, John Torres, issued a memo officially endorsing the use of ruses, including “adopting the guise of another agency.” When doing so, the memo said, immigration agents should contact the local agency in question. Agents have also posed as delivery people or used fake photos to suggest they are involved in a fictional investigation.
It is unclear whether the immigration agents on Thursday identified themselves as New York police officers or merely as “the police.” If they said they were New York officers, it would have required them to contact the N.Y.P.D., which a spokeswoman for the Police Department said they did not do.
But if they said they were the police, they would not have been required to seek permission.
Judges have not weighed in directly on whether such tactics are permissible, or what might cause them to run afoul of the constitution. In a Columbia Law Review article in 2022, Min Kam wrote that two U.S. appeals courts had adopted a rule in which the ruse would be a categorical violation of the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.
But that law is not binding in New York, and any challenge to the ruse would have to be evaluated again by a judge.
What are immigration agents permitted to do?
In the past, the law has been understood to be fairly straightforward. Agents would usually need to obtain federal judicial warrants to conduct arrests on private property. Exceptions can be made in what are known as “exigent circumstances” — a legal term that often means a warrantless arrest is necessary, either to prevent a suspect from fleeing or someone else from being harmed.
During the Trump administration, immigration agents have sought to circumvent that requirement in a number of ways.
In May 2025, Todd Lyons, the acting leader of ICE, drafted a memo telling agents that they could enter homes on the basis of an administrative warrant, according to a whistle-blower complaint released last month. Also last month, federal agents were told they had broader power to make warrantless arrests than previously understood.
The first policy is being challenged in court. In January, a group of Latino organizations in the Massachusetts area filed a lawsuit against the Homeland Security Department, writing that Mr. Lyons’s May memo “established an official policy that is unlawful and unconstitutional.”
The federal judiciary is increasingly looking askance at the Trump administration’s immigration practices more generally, with more and more judges accusing the government of willful violations of law.
“The Trump administration is acting as if the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment and the Fifth Amendment do not apply to non-U. S. citizens and that is just not true,” said Elora Mukherjee, an immigration lawyer who teaches at Columbia’s law school.
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4) The C.I.A. Helped Pinpoint a Gathering of Iranian Leaders. Then Israel Struck.
The killing of Iran’s supreme leader and other top Iranian officials came after close intelligence sharing between the United States and Israel, according to people familiar with the operation.
By Julian E. Barnes, Ronen Bergman, Eric Schmitt and Tyler Pager, March 1, 2026
A satellite image shows black smoke rising and heavy damage at the compound of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Credit...Airbus, via Reuters
Shortly before the United States and Israel were poised to launch an attack on Iran, the C.I.A. zeroed in on the location of perhaps the most important target: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s supreme leader.
The C.I.A. had been tracking Ayatollah Khamenei for months, gaining more confidence about his locations and his patterns, according to people familiar with the operation. Then the agency learned that a meeting of top Iranian officials would take place on Saturday morning at a leadership compound in the heart of Tehran. Most critically, the C.I.A. learned that the supreme leader would be at the site.
The United States and Israel decided to adjust the timing of their attack, in part to take advantage of the new intelligence, according to officials with knowledge of the decisions.
The information provided a window of opportunity for the two countries to achieve a critical and early victory: the elimination of top Iranian officials and the killing of Ayatollah Khamenei.
The remarkably swift removal of Iran’s supreme leader reflected the close coordination and intelligence sharing between the United States and Israel in the run-up to the attack, and the deep intelligence the countries had developed on Iranian leadership, especially in the wake of last year’s 12-day war. The operation also showed the failure of Iran’s leaders to take adequate precautions to avoid exposing themselves at a time where both Israel and the United States sent clear signals that they were preparing for war.
The C.I.A. passed its intelligence, which offered “high fidelity” on Ayatollah Khamenei’s position, to Israel, according to people briefed on the intelligence.
They and others who shared details about the operation spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence and military planning.
Israel, using U.S. intelligence and its own, would execute an operation it had been planning for months: the targeted killing of Iran’s senior leaders.
The United States and Israeli governments, which had originally planned to launch a strike at night under the cover of darkness, made the decision to adjust the timing to take advantage of the information about the gathering at the government compound in Tehran on Saturday morning.
The leaders were set to meet where the offices of the Iranian presidency, the supreme leader and Iran’s National Security Council are located.
Israel had determined that the gathering would include top Iranian defense officials, including Mohammad Pakpour, the commander in chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps; Aziz Nasirzadeh, the minister of defense; Adm. Ali Shamkhani, the head of the Military Council; Seyyed Majid Mousavi, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Aerospace Force; Mohammad Shirazi, the deputy intelligence minister; and others.
The operation began around 6 a.m. in Israel, as fighter jets took off from their bases. The strike required relatively few aircraft, but they were armed with long-range and highly accurate munitions.
Two hours and five minutes after the jets took off, at around 9:40 a.m. in Tehran, the long-range missiles struck the compound. At the time of the strike, senior Iranian national security officials were in one building at the compound. Ayatollah Khamenei was in another nearby building.
“This morning’s strike was carried out simultaneously at several locations in Tehran, in one of which senior figures of Iran’s political-security echelon had gathered,” an Israeli defense official wrote in a message reviewed by The New York Times.
The official said that despite Iranian preparations for war, Israel managed to achieve “tactical surprise” with its attack on the compound.
The White House and the C.I.A. declined to comment.
On Sunday, Iran’s state news agency, IRNA, confirmed the deaths of two high-level military leaders whom Israel said it had killed on Saturday: Admiral Shamkhani and General Pakpour.
People briefed on the operation described it as a product of good intelligence and months of preparations.
Last June, with planning underway to strike Iran’s nuclear targets, President Trump asserted that the United States knew where Ayatollah Khamenei was hiding and could have killed him.
That intelligence, a former U.S. official said, was based on the same network that the United States relied on Saturday.
But since then, the information the United States has been able to gather has only improved, according to the former official and others briefed on the intelligence. During that 12-day war, the United States learned even more about how the supreme leader and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps communicated and moved while under pressure, the former official said. The United States used that knowledge to hone its ability to track Ayatollah Khamenei and predict his movements.
The United States and Israel had also gathered specifics about the locations of key Iranian intelligence officers. In follow-on strikes after the attack on the leadership compound Saturday, locations where intelligence leaders were staying were hit, according to people familiar with the operation.
Iran’s top intelligence officer escaped, but the senior ranks of Iran’s intelligence agencies were decimated, according to people briefed on the operation.
Farnaz Fassihi and Ephrat Livni contributed reporting.
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5) Trump, the Self-Declared Peace President, Goes to War Seeking Regime Change
President Trump has become increasingly willing to assert American power overseas, a decade after propelling himself to the highest office by promising to focus on “America first.”
By Peter Baker, Published Feb. 28, 2026, Updated March 1, 2026
Peter Baker is the chief White House correspondent. He reported from inside Afghanistan and Iraq in the days the U.S. wars in those countries started.
When he first ran for president in 2016, Donald J. Trump disavowed the military adventurism of recent years, declaring that “regime change is a proven, absolute failure.” He promised to “stop racing to topple foreign regimes.”
When Mr. Trump ran for president in 2024, he boasted of starting “no new wars,” and asserted that if Kamala Harris won, “she would get us into a World War III guaranteed,” and send the “sons and daughters” of Americans “to go fight for a war in a country that you’ve never heard of.”
Barely a year later, Mr. Trump is racing to topple foreign regimes, and is sending American sons and daughters to wage another war in the Middle East. The self-declared “president of PEACE” has chosen to become the president of war after all, unleashing the full power of the U.S. military on Iran with the explicit goal of toppling its government.
What the Donald Trump of 2016 would think of the Donald Trump of 2026 will never be known. But they are starkly different figures when it comes to overseas intervention. A decade after propelling himself to the highest office by promising to focus on “America first,” Mr. Trump has become increasingly willing to assert power overseas. The bombardment of Iran on Saturday was the ninth time he had ordered the military into action in his second term, even as he has decapitated the government of Venezuela and threatened to overthrow Cuba’s dictator.
In his middle-of-the-night social media video announcing the opening of this new war, Mr. Trump laid out a bill of particulars against Iran going back nearly half a century, including its pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, its support for terrorist groups that attacked Americans and allies, the 1979 seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and the recent massacre of Iranian protesters. But he never explained why those aggressions required action now rather than earlier, or why his thinking evidently changed.
Nor did he reconcile his conflicting statements on the status of the Iranian threat. After joining Israel in attacking Iran last summer, he said that he had “obliterated” the country’s nuclear program. He repeated that claim in last Tuesday’s State of the Union address, and again in his early Saturday morning video. But he did not clarify why it was necessary to strike a program that had already been obliterated.
He did, however, go further than ever in making regime change the goal, calling on Iranians to overthrow their leaders. “When we are finished, take over your government,” Mr. Trump said. “It will be yours to take.” He repeated that in a social media post Saturday afternoon announcing that the strike had killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader — “one of the most evil people in History,” as the president put it.
But how Iranians should go about taking over was left unclear. Mr. Trump wrote that police and revolutionary guard forces should “peacefully merge with the Iranian Patriots, and work together as a unit to bring back the Country to the Greatness it deserves” — a remarkable notion suggesting that Iranian security officials would somehow team up with the same people they were gunning down in the streets just weeks ago.
“His stated goal here, regime change, is the very thing he ran against in 2016,” said Brandan P. Buck, a research fellow in foreign policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. “Previously, the president used airstrikes, raids and covert military power when he believed it could achieve discrete ends with good optics at little cost. This attack on Iran has broken that formula and constitutes a leap into the unknown.”
Mr. Trump’s critics quickly resurrected his past statements to accuse him of abandoning his own promises, circulating video clips of his campaign rallies and social media quotes assailing Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Kamala Harris as warmongers.
Mr. Trump, 2012: “Now that Obama’s poll numbers are in tailspin — watch for him to launch a strike in Libya or Iran. He is desperate.”
Mr. Trump, 2013: “Remember that I predicted a long time ago that President Obama will attack Iran because of his inability to negotiate properly — not skilled!”
Mr. Trump, 2016: “We’re going to stop the reckless and costly policy of regime change.”
Mr. Trump, election night 2024: “I’m not going to start wars. I’m going to stop wars.”
And there were plenty of quotes from advisers like Stephen Miller, now the deputy White House chief of staff (“Kamala = WWIII. Trump = Peace,” Nov. 1, 2024), and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth (“The War Department will not be distracted by democracy-building, interventionism, undefined wars, regime change,” Dec. 6, 2025).
Among those lashing out at Mr. Trump on Saturday were not just liberals but also prominent leaders of the Make America Great Again movement who complained that he had been captured by the neoconservatives he once spurned, criticism led by the right-wing podcast host Tucker Carlson and former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia.
“It’s always a lie and it’s always America Last,” Ms. Greene, who resigned her seat last month after breaking with Mr. Trump, wrote on social media. “But it feels like the worst betrayal this time because it comes from the very man and the admin who we all believed was different and said no more.”
Mr. Trump’s allies pushed back against that. Representative Marlin Stutzman, Republican of Indiana, argued that Mr. Trump’s attack on Iran would head off a worse threat down the road and pave the way for a new Middle East that would be friendlier to the United States. “To those who say, ‘Well, President Trump said he wasn’t going to take us into any wars,’ he’s keeping us out of wars in the long run,” he said on CNN.
Advocates of action against Iran maintained that Mr. Trump still had not gone far enough by failing to fully commit to changing the government in Tehran, but instead leaving it to the Iranian people. “Trump’s speech wasn’t a regime change speech — and I wish it had been,” said Mark Dubowitz, chief executive of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a group that has long pressed for tougher policy on Iran.
The only “durable solution,” he added, is not a military strike that sets the Iranian nuclear weapons program back by months or years, but the end of the regime. “But that’s not exactly what Trump prioritized tonight,” Mr. Dubowitz said, “and we need to be honest about what he did, and didn’t, say.”
Mr. Trump’s increasing willingness to deploy military force underscores the broader change between his first term and second term. He is far more comfortable using the instruments of power than he was the last time around, at home as well as abroad. What he sometimes threatened or considered doing in his first stint in the White House, he more readily acts on now, whether it be sending federal forces into American streets, prosecuting his perceived enemies, purging the government of those deemed disloyal or imposing tariffs on countries around the world.
The team he assembled in the first four years included establishment Republicans or career military officers who often restrained his most radical impulses. But there is no John F. Kelly, Jim Mattis, Mark T. Esper or Mark A. Milley this time around. Instead, he has surrounded himself with more aggressive break-the-china advisers pushing for more ambitious action along with figures like Mr. Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, who view their jobs as facilitating the president’s desires rather than talking him out of them.
Mr. Trump’s journey as commander in chief has been a fitful one. He had no experience in either the military or public office when he first arrived in the Oval Office in January 2017. He promoted a more aggressive war against the Islamic State, but sometimes hesitated to use force, at one point calling off a retaliatory military strike on Iran with just minutes to go, deeming it not worth the casualties.
He was intent on pulling back from much of the world, seeking to bring U.S. troops home from places like South Korea, Germany and Syria. He negotiated a peace agreement with the Taliban to withdraw all American forces from Afghanistan, a deal then executed by his successor, President Joseph R. Biden Jr., in a disastrous operation.
But he was also emboldened when a U.S. strike in 2020 targeted and killed Iran’s Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani without instigating the devastating reprisals or prolonged regional war that some critics had predicted. Likewise, in this second term, the successful commando raid that captured President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela also energized Mr. Trump.
His public posture, however, has veered wildly over the past year. One moment, he presents himself as a historic peacemaker, forming a so-called Board of Peace and griping that he has not won the Nobel Peace Prize while claiming, inaccurately, that he has ended eight wars — including one with Iran. The next moment, he threatens to seize Greenland, take back the Panama Canal, strangle Cuba and even go after Colombia’s president as he did Venezuela’s.
Charles Kupperman, who was a deputy national security adviser to Mr. Trump in the president’s first term, said he did not think Mr. Trump had evolved in his thinking about foreign threats. But in the case of Iran, Mr. Kupperman said, the president set himself up by investing in a diplomatic effort that was always doomed to fail, leaving little alternative but to take military action.
“It is difficult to determine Trump’s decision-making process given the serious downgrade of the N.S.C. and its policymaking role,” he said of the National Security Council. “What options were developed and presented to Trump and the process for generating them are key questions.” But he added that “the diplomatic effort to engage Iran was never going to yield the results that Trump sought. Pure Kabuki theater.”
The outcome of Mr. Trump’s geopolitical gamble will depend not just on how the military operation proceeds, but what comes next. Success has a way of making voters forget about broken promises. There is little love lost for the Tehran regime, and video showed Iranians in the streets cheering Ayatollah Khamenei’s death. If Mr. Trump manages to push the remaining government from power, he will have something to boast about that none of his predecessors dared try.
Unlike the so-called forever wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that helped fuel his political rise, Mr. Trump has not made any major commitment of ground troops in Iran, and seems determined to stick to air power, avoiding the sort of grinding guerrilla warfare that turned Americans against past wars.
Still, as Mr. Trump himself warned in his overnight video, there could be American casualties. And if the Tehran government does fall, it could yield a replacement that is still hostile to the United States, or result in fratricidal chaos, as happened in Libya after Muammar el-Qaddafi was deposed and killed in 2011.
One way or the other, his allies were already talking about it being a legacy moment for Mr. Trump. What kind of legacy is not yet clear. But it will not be the one that he originally promised.
More on the Assault on Iran
· Iran’s Supreme Leader Killed: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei died during the U.S. and Israeli military strikes. In more than three decades of authoritarian rule, Khamenei brutally crushed dissent at home and expanded the Islamic Republic's influence abroad. Large crowds of people in the country celebrated his killing, while many others gathered to mourn.
· Trump and the American Public: Hours after the U.S.-Israeli attacks began, President Trump made unsupported and exaggerated claims in a video posted to social media. The American public’s appetite for an attack on Iran was low before Trump and Israel took action.
· Hope for Regime Change?: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has portrayed the Islamic republic as a singular threat to his country and the world for more than three decades. Israel and the United States declared that their attacks would pave the way for regime change in Iran. Trump urged for Iranians to “take over” their government, but questions remained about how much effort his administration would put into changing the Iranian government.
· Iran Claims Children Killed in Strikes: HRANA, an Iranian rights group based in Washington, said late Saturday that at least 133 civilians had been killed and 200 others wounded in the attacks. A strike in the town of Minab was one of two that appear to have hit schools on Saturday.
· Israel’s Shelter Shortage: Iranian missile and drone attacks repeatedly targeted Israel on Sunday, forcing much of the country to take cover and highlighting a shortage of bomb shelters in the country. The Israeli ambulance service said nine people were killed and nearly 30 others wounded in Beit Shemesh, a city about 18 miles west of Jerusalem.
· U.S. Congress Weighs In: After the attack, Democrats and a few Republicans escalated their calls for swift votes on whether to curb Trump’s power to continue using force against Iran without explicit authorization.
· Iranian Americans Find Hope: Some Californians of Iranian descent said they welcomed the possible end of an oppressive government in Tehran that their families had fled.
· World Reacts: Global leaders urged all sides to exercise restraint after the attacks, although some officials backed the campaign.
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6) Can Nations Agree How to Mine the Sea? This Is the Year, She Says.
Leticia Carvalho heads a global authority that’s been struggling to set rules for a decade. President Trump’s aggressive push on ocean mining makes her task more urgent.
By Sachi Kitajima Mulkey, Published Feb. 28, 2026, Updated March 1, 2026
After a decade of debate, by year’s end the world should finally have a rulebook for mining the deep sea, Leticia Carvalho, the head of the International Seabed Authority, said in an interview.
It’s her job to help make it happen. And in the past year, the Trump administration has made the task far more urgent. She called it “absolutely existential” that the 170 nations in the authority now reach an agreement.
That’s because the Trump administration has said it will start unilaterally issuing permits for seabed mining in international waters, the vast stretches of the ocean that are not the domain of any one country. Regulators in the United States are now considering applications from companies that want to mine in these areas for valuable minerals, a practice that is environmentally controversial and has never been done on a commercial scale.
“The world agreed 30 years ago that this is an area that belongs to all of us, and we should go there collectively,” Ms. Carvalho said. In a world without international rules, she said, the oceans could turn into a kind of “Wild West” where each nation makes up its own.
This week, the seabed authority that she leads began its annual meetings in Kingston, Jamaica, to try to end the impasse. The authority was created in 1994 under a global treaty, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, as an independent body to regulate use of the seafloor in international waters, which cover nearly half the planet.
The United States has not ratified the U.N. convention, but has observer status at the authority’s deliberations and, until recently, followed its standards.
“It was quite extraordinary that such assertive messaging is coming out from the secretariat already, ahead of this meeting,” said Pradeep Singh, an expert on ocean governance at the Oceano Azul Foundation, a Portuguese science and advocacy group, who has attended several years of the authority’s meetings. He is among the experts concerned that rushing to complete the rules this year might lead to sloppy work.
Reaching an agreement on these rules, often called a mining code, would make history. The authority has been locked in debate over what the rules should look like for more than a decade. At the same time, the potential environmental toll of the industry has come under increasing scrutiny.
A completed mining code wouldn’t necessarily give the greenlight for commercial mining. But The Metals Company, which is leading the race to the seafloor, has told investors it will be ready to start mining by the end of 2027 with the assistance of the Trump administration.
Much of the activity would happen in the Pacific Ocean in an area known as the Clarion-Clipperton Zone between Hawaii and Mexico. There, the ocean floor is blanketed with fist-sized nodules of valuable minerals and metals including cobalt, nickel and manganese that have accumulated over millions of years. (Some countries, like Japan, are planning to mine for similar resources in territorial waters rather than international ones.)
By some estimates, these deep ocean riches could eclipse all land-based reserves. But accessing such remote areas is technologically complex and costly. Some critics say that the industry may not turn a profit.
Scientists also say mining would damage deep sea ecosystems. There, all manner of animals exist, like tuba-shaped sea sponges and delicate, featherlike corals, that live on the nodules and around them. A scientific study of a Metals Company test run found that collecting nodules could reduce the abundance and biodiversity of seabed life by 30 percent.
Ms. Carvalho was elected to run the authority last year, and, as a trained oceanographer, she is its first secretary-general with a background in science. She is also a former oil industry regulator from Brazil.
United States actions in international waters circumvent the authority, Ms. Carvalho said.
Particularly concerning, she said, is that U.S. regulations were recently modified to combine the permitting process for exploration licenses and commercial ones. As a result, half as many environmental review periods are required before a company’s application can be approved.
Gerard Barron, the chief executive of The Metals Company, said he was doubtful that the International Seabed Authority could finalize its regulations this year. “Unlike the I.S.A., the U.S.A. has a complete and modernized set of regulations,” he said, noting that at least 10 mining applications have been submitted under United States law. “The industry has clearly demonstrated which regime it believes in,” he said.
His company also holds exploration permits from the seabed authority and has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on tests and scientific studies in an allotted area of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone.
Last year, shortly after President Trump ordered federal regulators to prioritize seabed mining, the company applied for new permits from the United States in the same location.
Environmental groups have staunchly opposed seabed mining. “We shouldn’t see deep sea mining as inevitable simply because the front-runner company is now essentially pretending that international law doesn’t exist,” said Louisa Casson, a project leader for Greenpeace International’s campaign against the practice. The organization is among the environmental groups and 40 countries calling for a ban or moratorium on the industry.
The U.N. convention was also designed to protect the interests of small and less wealthy countries, a core promise that Greenpeace argues it is failing to deliver. A recent study, commissioned by Greenpeace International, found that under the seabed authority’s current proposal, developing countries would get a small fraction of the estimated revenue.
In the interview, Ms. Carvalho said she viewed moratoriums as counterproductive. Banning mining outright, she said, takes money away from scientific research into deep sea ecosystems and delays the authority from establishing strict environmental standards.
“Being able to make the rules before activity starts is unique in human history,” she said, adding that the time for ideological debate is over. If the United States acts independently, then other nations may follow, she said. A patchwork of rules could result, which she said would leave the environment less protected and provide fewer benefits for developing countries.
As the authority gets to work this week, Ms. Carvalho said there were 32 specific issues that need to be resolved, some as small as a few words in a sentence, others as hefty as a paragraph. She said she believed the draft could be completed this year without rushing or risking mistakes.
The completed regulations wouldn’t be set in stone, Ms. Carvalho said, and could continue to be perfected over time. “The most important thing that the member states in the council now need to decide is what is desirable versus what is tolerable,” she said. “The perfect is the enemy of the good.”
Ms. Carvalho has not made her goals a secret. Ahead of this year’s meeting, she met with European leaders to urge them to support a mining code.
To some, her current view may come as a surprise. During the 2024 election that elevated her to lead the seabed authority, she had argued that several years of work most likely remained before a code could be finalized. Her predecessor’s tenure ended amid criticism from diplomats who said he was rushing the process to favor The Metals Company.
As the authority’s head, Ms. Carvalho is expected to remain impartial and not take a position on mining itself, but rather to facilitate deliberation among the 170 member states. “My job is not to design these regulations,” she said. “I know my job is to set the table.”
Still, the mission has become personal. “If I am the lucky one, if this agreement can be reached under my watch, then I would say that is the biggest achievement of my career,” she said.
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7) Trump Promises More Strikes on Iran as U.S. Adds to Forces in Mideast
Iran and allied militias, including Hezbollah, attacked Israel and U.S. targets, and Israel struck in Lebanon. Top U.S. officials talked of new attacks and an extended campaign.
By Aaron Boxerman, Eric Schmitt, Helene Cooper, Shawn McCreesh and Richard Pérez-Peña, March 2, 2026
An aircraft leaving R.A.F. Akrotiri, a British military base in Cyprus, on Monday. The base was hit by an unmanned drone on Sunday night. Yiannis Kourtoglou/Reuters
Here’s the latest.
The Pentagon said on Monday that more U.S. forces were headed to the Middle East, amid reports that President Trump declined to rule out sending ground troops into Iran and promised that still bigger waves of airstrikes against that country were coming, in further signs of an expanding, lasting war.
In his first public event since the strikes in Iran began on Saturday, Mr. Trump predicted the attacks against “this sick and sinister regime” would go on for at least a month. “Right from the beginning we projected four to five weeks, but we have the capability to go far longer than that,” Mr. Trump said at the White House. “We’ll do it.”
Listing his objectives, Mr. Trump said, “We’re destroying Iran’s missile capability, and we’re doing that hourly.” He added that the strikes were “annihilating their navy” and ensuring that Iran “can never obtain a nuclear weapon,” and that the country cannot continue to sponsor militant groups across the Middle East.
Internationally, he claimed, “everybody was behind us, they just didn’t have the courage to say so.”
Qatar’s ministry of defense said its air force had shot down two Su-24 bombers coming from Iran, the first report that Iran, which has fired missiles and drones at its Gulf neighbors and Israel in retaliation for the Israeli-U.S. assault, had also sent warplanes into their airspace. President Trump spoke about the war at the White House in his first public event since the strikes began.
Jake Tapper of CNN reported that Mr. Trump had told him in a phone call on Monday that the huge U.S. and Israeli airstrikes against Iran that began early Saturday could soon intensify. “We haven’t even started hitting them hard, the big wave hasn’t even happened,” Mr. Trump said, according to CNN. “The big one is coming soon.”
And the New York Post reported that the president had said in an interview: “I don’t have the yips with respect to boots on the ground — like every president says, ‘There will be no boots on the ground.’ I don’t say it.”
As U.S. and Israeli planes pounded targets in Iran for the third day, the fighting expanded into Lebanon, where the Iran-allied militia Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel, prompting Israel to bombard the militia’s strongholds outside Beirut.
Israeli fighter jets streaked through the skies over the Iranian capital, Tehran. Iran fired explosive drones across the Persian Gulf. Three U.S. jets were shot down by Kuwaiti air defenses in what the U.S. military called an “apparent friendly fire incident,” with the crew members said to have been brought to safety. The attacks have claimed hundreds of lives, at least, in Iran, rattled global markets, sent oil prices soaring and raised fears of a spiral into a wider, more intensive regional war.
Four U.S. service members have been killed so far, and “we expect to take additional losses,” Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a Pentagon news conference.
The Pentagon said it was sending more forces to the Middle East, and military officials said the campaign was in its early stages, but they declined on Monday to give a time frame for bringing the war to a conclusion.
Mr. Trump told The New York Times on Sunday that the United States and Israel could keep striking Iran for “four to five weeks.”
The president has offered conflicting visions of how the war could end and who should take over in Iran after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s autocratic supreme leader, was killed in a U.S.-Israeli attack on Saturday. Critics say the Trump administration has no clear endgame.
More than 550 people have been killed in Iran since the beginning of the war, the Iranian Red Crescent emergency service said on Monday. The Lebanese health ministry said that at least 31 people had been killed in Israeli airstrikes. At least 10 people have been killed in Israel and six, including civilians, across the Gulf since Saturday, according to the authorities.
Iran’s leaders remained defiant. The country’s top security official, Ali Larijani, denied news reports that Iran’s new leaders were seeking to negotiate with Washington, denouncing Mr. Trump for “delusional fantasies” and for plunging the Middle East “into chaos.” Iran, he said in a string of fiery social media posts, “has prepared itself for a long war.”
Here’s what we’re covering:
· Iran: The Israeli military said it was bombarding sites in Tehran and across the country, with little apparent resistance from Iran’s air defenses. The U.S. and Israel have struck more than 2,000 targets in Iran since Saturday, military officials said.
· Persian Gulf: Attacks affected oil and gas facilities in Saudi Arabia, where a small fire broke out at a refinery after drones targeting the facility were intercepted, and in Qatar, where unspecified “military attacks” on two facilities prompted the state-owned petroleum company to stop production of liquefied natural gas, the authorities in those countries said. Iranian missiles and drone attacks also led to explosions in Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and other countries where the U.S. has military bases.
· Lebanon: Hezbollah fired a volley of rockets at Israel overnight on Monday as a fragile yearlong truce between the sides collapsed in the wake of Mr. Khamenei’s killing. Israel subsequently launched waves of airstrikes around the capital of Beirut and across Lebanon.
· Israel: Israelis repeatedly sought shelter as the country’s air defenses have repelled most of the attacks from Iran, though a direct hit on Sunday killed at least nine people in Beit Shemesh, west of Jerusalem.
· Cyprus: The Mediterranean island nation’s president said that an Iranian drone had crashed into a British air base there. The incident risked dragging Britain deeper into a conflict that Prime Minister Keir Starmer has sought to maintain distance from. Read more :
Starmer Faces Dilemma After British Base in Cyprus Was Hit by a Drone
The government of Prime Minister Keir Starmer risks being dragged deeper into the conflict, after allowing the U.S. military to use British bases for “defensive” purposes.
By Stephen Castle, Reporting from London, March 2, 2026
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/02/world/middleeast/starmer-faces-dilemma-as-british-base-in-cyprus-hit-by-drone.html?smid=url-share
When missiles began striking Iran on Saturday, Britain made it clear that it had not taken part in the American and Israeli attacks.
But by Sunday evening, Britain had granted the United States permission to use British military bases for a “specific and limited defensive purpose.” Then came news that a drone had crashed into a British air base in Cyprus, without causing casualties. The Cypriot president, Nikos Christodoulides, said the drone was Iranian.
With Iran apparently intent on stoking a wider conflagration, Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain risks being dragged further than he wishes into the conflict.
In a prerecorded video statement released on Sunday night, Mr. Starmer said he had agreed to a request from the United States to allow it to use British bases for a “specific and limited defensive purpose”: to help destroy Iranian missiles “at source in their storage depots, or the launchers which are used to fire the missiles.”
British military involvement had previously been limited to deploying Typhoon jets on defensive patrols.
Mr. Starmer sought to reassure Britons that their country would not become embroiled in a wider war as it did more than two decades ago in Iraq — a conflict that still casts a long shadow over British politics.
“I want to be very clear: We all remember the mistakes of Iraq,” he said. “And we have learned those lessons.”
Britain, he said, would “not join offensive action,” adding that his decision to allow the United States to use British bases was based on collective self-defense and was in accordance with international law.
That was significant, not just because Mr. Starmer is a former human rights lawyer. He is also under pressure at home where some critics argue that Britain is getting sucked into an American and Israeli-led conflict.
On Monday, John McDonnell, a veteran left-wing lawmaker from Mr. Starmer’s Labour Party, told the BBC it was “important to point out the lessons of Iraq because I think we are being drawn in.”
With its military presence in the region, and its history of antagonistic relations with Iran, Britain was always a possible target for retaliation by the regime in Tehran.
In a statement on Sunday, Britain’s defense ministry said it was “responding to a suspected drone strike” at the British air base in Akrotiri in Cyprus “at midnight local time.”
“Our force protection in the region is at the highest level and the base has responded to defend our people,” the statement added.
The ministry believes the strike was launched before Mr. Starmer’s announcement, rather than in response to it, John Healey, the British defense minister, wrote on social media on Monday. He described the strike as “an example of the dangerous and indiscriminate attacks by Iran and its proxies across the region.”
The attack at Akrotiri was not the first report of drone activity potentially targeting Cyprus. Mr. Healey told Sky News on Sunday morning that two Iranian missiles had “fired in the direction of Cyprus.”
The British government also confirmed that some of its military personnel in Bahrain had been within several hundred yards of an Iranian missile and drone strike on Saturday.
· Economic fallout: Oil and natural gas markets remained highly volatile as the fighting shut down shipping routes and damaged oil and gas facilities. Naval traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, the conduit for one-fifth of the world’s oil supply, has shut down, according to shipping companies and Iranian media.
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8) Strike on Girls’ School Kills at Least 175, Iranian State Media Says
Videos and images verified by The New York Times showed that at least half of the school was destroyed. It was not immediately clear why the school was hit, or which country’s forces had fired at it.
By Malachy Browne, Ephrat Livni and Sanam Mahoozi, Published March 1, 2026, Updated March 2, 2026
More than 175 people, mostly children, were reportedly killed when an elementary school in Minab was hit by an apparent airstrike on Feb. 28 during a wave of attacks across Iran by the U.S. and Israel. Credit...Mehr News Agency
At least 175 people, most of them likely children, were killed in a strike on a girls’ elementary school in southern Iran on Saturday, health officials and Iranian state media said.
The search for survivors in the rubble of the Shajarah Tayyebeh school in the southern town of Minab ended Sunday, according to Mohammad Radmehr, the governor of Minab, Iranian state media reported. It appeared to be the deadliest attack in the ongoing American-Israeli bombing campaign.
Several videos and images verified by The New York Times showed that at least half of the two-story school was destroyed in the explosion. Emergency workers with the Red Crescent could be seen alongside families desperately combing through the rubble, which was littered with schoolbooks and book bags covered in blood and ashes. Portions of the building jutted out from the rubble, with bits of colorful murals visible on what were once the walls of the school. Desks were piled with debris.
In other verified videos, rescue workers retrieved a severed arm from the rubble. Victims were laid out in body bags at the scene, where throngs of people were gathered among ambulances and rescue workers.
“The Minab school incident has no comparison with any other incident,” said Pirhossein Kolivand, the head of Iran’s Red Crescent, in a video posted on social media on Sunday.
“Even in Gaza,” he added, there had not been such a high number of students killed simultaneously, calling the attack “a unique and bitter incident.”
Times reporters are trying to confirm the death toll and details about the attack. It was not immediately clear why the school had been hit, or which country’s forces had done so.
The United Nations cultural and education agency, UNESCO, condemned the strike, saying in a statement on social media on Sunday: “The killing of pupils in a place dedicated to learning constitutes a grave violation of the protection afforded to schools under international humanitarian law.”
Intentionally attacking a school, hospital or other civilian structure is a war crime, and indiscriminate strikes also violate the law. Even if schools are used for military purposes, the law requires armed parties to avoid or minimize harm to civilians and civilian infrastructure, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Citing in part the strike on the school, the Center for Civilians in Conflict, a Washington-based nonprofit dedicated to minimizing civilian harm in war, on Sunday called for “immediate de-escalation, maximum restraint, and urgent action to protect civilians and civilian infrastructure.”
Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani campaigner for female rights and the youngest recipient of a Nobel Peace Prize, said on social media on Saturday that she was “heartbroken and appalled” by the strike.
The school is adjacent to a naval base belonging to Iran’s most powerful military force, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, or IRGC. Satellite images reviewed by The Times show that, in 2013, the school building was part of the base. Roads led to and from other areas of the base to the school building that was struck on Saturday. But by September 2016, satellite images show, the same building had been walled off and was no longer connected to the base.
Other witness videos shared by Iranian media and verified by The Times showed dark plumes of smoke billowing from two buildings inside the naval base, indicating that it had been targeted in Saturday’s wave of Israeli and U.S. strikes.
The Israeli military did not respond to requests for comment on Sunday.
“We are aware of reports concerning civilian harm resulting from ongoing military operations,” Capt. Tim Hawkins, a U.S. Central Command spokesman, said on Saturday. “We take these reports seriously and are looking into them.”
He added that protecting civilians was of “the utmost importance.” No new details were available from Central Command on Sunday.
The midmorning strike on Shajarah Tayyebeh was one of two attacks that appeared to have hit schools on Saturday. Another strike appeared to have hit the Hedayat High School in Iran’s capital, Tehran, near 72nd Square in the district of Narmak, local media and rights groups said. Two students died in that attack, according to the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, which focuses on Iran.
A spokesman for the Red Crescent Society said on Saturday that nearly 750 people had been injured and that more than 200 had been killed in attacks across 24 provinces, Iranian state media reported.
Video production by Cynthia Silva.
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9) Trump May Come to Regret This
By Ben Rhodes, March 2, 2026
Mr. Rhodes, a contributing Opinion writer, was deputy national security adviser when President Barack Obama entered the Iran nuclear deal in 2015.
Photo Illustration by Ioulex for The New York Times
Authoritarian politics and military aggression are a dangerous mix. As Donald Trump announced his war on Iran wearing a baseball cap in a video released in the early hours Saturday morning while he was at Mar-a-Lago, that lesson hung heavily over the proceedings. This was a decision made by one man with no legal basis, little public support and no coherent explanation of an endgame.
Within a few months, Mr. Trump has ordered the military to blow up boats in the Caribbean, abduct the leader of Venezuela and decapitate the government of Iran. The absence of any congressional authorization or campaign to prepare the American people feels intentional. We are not meant to think too much about the basis for action, how much it costs or what happens after the spectacle of bombs falling. Before we digest the last operation, there is the threat of a new one. The dizzying nature of these actions makes them seem routine.
But something has shifted. Mr. Trump now regularly uses the military as an extension of his personal instincts. He may try to keep the operation short. That won’t stave off the consequences. Whatever happens in the coming weeks, the United States has extended its post-9/11 forever war into Iran, an act that will reverberate across the Middle East for years to come.
The immediate questions concern the course of the war. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was a brutal and repressive force in the lives of Iranians for decades. His demise hardly resolves the matter of who will control a country of more than 90 million people, particularly as the most heavily armed factions tend to be the most hard-line and are faced with a direct threat to their power and wealth.
The Iranian regime is weakened but still capable of inflicting damage. Strikes at U.S. military facilities and civilian targets from the Gulf States to Israel suggest an initial strategy of trying to redistribute the violence and disruption wrought upon Iran to its neighbors. Attacks on energy infrastructure and shipping could bring those costs to the global economy. (Energy prices have already jumped.) Retaliatory cyberoperations, terrorism and proxy strikes could also come in waves.
Mr. Trump’s only stated plan for regime change was a call for the Iranian people to rise up. Then what? Those who do may be massacred. Some version of the regime could still cling to power. Iran could devolve into civil conflict, as Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya did after the initially triumphant toppling of their leaders. Separatist movements among ethnic minorities could fracture the country and draw in neighboring states. Protracted violence or extreme poverty could lead to a surge of refugees into Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkey and ultimately Europe.
There are, of course, better scenarios. A chastened regime could pursue some form of accommodation with America and evolution at home. Or perhaps Iran could buck the trend of nearly every other country from North Africa to South Asia that has undergone regime change this century and transition peacefully to a democratic form of government.
Mr. Trump will surely declare victory in Iran, just as he did last summer. But wars play out in the lives of people and nations, not news cycles. The 1953 U.S. and British-backed coup that enabled the shah to consolidate power in Iran appeared to be a victory, but it became part of the DNA of the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the Islamic Republic that has bedeviled the United States ever since.
Even those who welcome the decapitation of the Iranian regime may feel deep unease about America’s behavior. The United States, like Israel, now seems to follow no rules, consult few allies and pay little regard to the destruction it leaves behind, including in the prosperous Arab Gulf States. Like an empire of old, it demands tribute — be it Venezuelan oil or payments to the amorphous Board of Peace. Mr. Trump’s tariff policies, maximum pressure sanctions, episodic threats on Greenland and military action are experienced as a strategy of calculated chaos.
What lessons will nations draw from this new reality? For would-be nuclear powers, it is that North Korea’s arsenal brought security that Iran’s negotiations could not. For Russia and China, it is that might makes right. For our European allies, it is that the United States is an unpredictable force that could again threaten Greenland or meddle in their internal politics at any moment. The old U.S.-led order is dead; the new one feels unstable and ominous, as if a storm could descend at any moment.
Mr. Trump likely would not have become president without his stated opposition to forever wars — it is a feature, not a bug, of MAGA. Yet in his return to the presidency, he has proved to be far more interested in power itself. Setting aside the risks outlined above, this dynamic alone should compel stronger and sustained Democratic opposition to this war.
Rather than representing a break from America’s imperial instincts, Mr. Trump has personalized them. There is no reason to believe he won’t lash out militarily again. (How many Americans even know we bombed Nigeria on Christmas Day?) Cuba is currently being starved by a blockade, despite posing no danger to U.S. national security.
After 25 years of constant war, there is little appetite for this kind of adventurism among the American people. The operations around Venezuela and in Iran are both estimated to cost at least several billion dollars, with more to come. That is not how American taxpayers want their money spent amid a cost-of-living crisis, deep cuts to the social safety net and exploding deficits.
More profoundly, the way Mr. Trump has deployed the newly minted Department of War abroad should raise concerns about what he might do with the military at home. Already he has tried to send troops into American cities, but faced judicial pushback. He has mused about invoking the Insurrection Act, which would grant him emergency powers to deploy the military to enforce laws within the United States. Whether in response to peaceful protests or an election loss, this would put American democracy into dangerous territory.
If these scenarios seem fanciful, consider what has already happened. Mr. Trump addressed general officers and suggested that U.S. cities become military training grounds. He called for the imprisonment of a handful of Democratic members of Congress for suggesting that service members should not follow illegal orders. And last week he ordered the government to stop using the services of the artificial intelligence company Anthropic because it refused to allow the Pentagon to have unfettered access to its technology for the mass surveillance of Americans.
We must not be numbed to the repeated, illegal use of the United States military. Nor should we discount what Mr. Trump’s extension of the forever war is doing to us.
Foundational questions are at stake for Americans. Do we want to continue forever wars financed with borrowed money and fought by service members whose sacrifices stand in stark contrast to the cowardice of our billionaire class? Do we want to regularly bomb other countries while endangering the lives of millions of human beings by dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development? Do we want to remain in a permanent state of war that migrates from one place to another while rampant inequality and revolutionary technologies remake our communities with little resistance?
Mr. Trump’s authoritarianism is not abstract. There is nothing stopping him from wielding the awesome power of the United States to serve his own interests, not the public’s. War should never be normal. We don’t know where this one will lead, but we do know that it has already killed untold civilians — including dozens of girls who did nothing but go to school. The desensitization of Americans to this kind of violence is part of what is broken in our society.
By aligning themselves with public opinion, the Constitution and a sense of shared humanity at home and abroad, Democrats can offer an alternative vision to the forever war. The just and lasting peace that most Americans seek is one in which government responds to their problems, rather than constantly looking for regimes to change or enemies, whether foreign or domestic, to crush.
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10) Our Hospice System Subverts the Very Point of Hospice Care
By Sandeep Jauhar, March 2, 2026
Dr. Jauhar is a cardiologist in New York who writes frequently about medical care and public health.
Clara Mokri
When my siblings and I decided to put our father in hospice care at his home in the spring of 2021, his Alzheimer’s was near end-stage. He could barely get out of bed or dress or feed himself. Hospice care seemed to be the best way for him to end his life with dignity.
Nearly all Medicare hospice patients receive care in their residence. So, as is standard, we enlisted the services of a Medicare-approved hospice agency.
We soon encountered a harsh reality, however. Dying at home isn’t easy, even with hospice care. The hospice system, we learned, requires family involvement in the dying process to a degree that even we, as a family of doctors, weren’t comfortable with. We were responsible for bathing my father and helping him use the toilet, changing his clothes and, most daunting, administering morphine and other sedatives to treat his pain and anxiety. A nurse was scheduled to come to the house only for about an hour twice a week. Getting an aide to help with basic activities of daily living was nearly impossible.
The main problem was funding. In 2024, the average per-patient Medicare payment to hospice agencies was about $200 a day, with an annual cap of $33,500. That outlay would barely pay for a part-time aide, yet it is also needed to cover medications, medical equipment and nurse visits. So hospice agencies are forced to shift the bulk of responsibilities to families as the dying process unfolds over weeks or months.
I remember a Friday evening when we decided that my father, who had stopped swallowing, was severely dehydrated and needed intravenous fluid. The hospice agency wasn’t equipped to provide that service, even as a comfort measure, so my brother drove to a hospital to get an IV kit and a few bags of saline and then came back to the house and inserted the IV catheter himself, as my father kicked and hollered. When my brother was done, he tied the bag of fluid to a ceiling fan with some sewing thread because we didn’t have an IV pole.
Ironically, we could have put my father in an acute-care hospital bed costing $3,000 a day without any pushback from Medicare. The Medicare hospice benefit is supposed to provide a cost-effective alternative at home to expensive end-of-life care in hospitals. But by providing so little funding, Medicare too often makes hospice care an unviable option.
Our family was fortunate that we had the resources to provide the care my father needed. My siblings and I divided up responsibilities, and one of us stayed with him at all times. But many families are unable to manage and are forced to move their loved one to a hospital or a nursing home (or in the rare cases that Medicare allows for it, an inpatient hospice facility). Patients themselves may choose to die in an institutional setting for fear of being a burden on their families or not receiving adequate symptom relief.
Sadly, the practice of relying so heavily on families subverts the very purpose for which hospice care was created. When Cicely Saunders, a nurse and doctor, opened the first modern hospice program in London in 1967, she laid out three guiding principles for easing the process of dying: relief of physical pain, preservation of dignity and respect for the psychological and spiritual aspects of death.
In my family’s experience of the hospice system, all these principles were compromised. The care responsibilities we had to shoulder were more than we were emotionally prepared to take on in those grieving final days. And my father’s dignity and comfort would have been better served with more guidance from nurse specialists on how to administer his pain medications and sedatives.
Tight hospice budgets can compromise care in even more serious ways. Not long ago, a patient of mine with end-stage heart disease was being moved from the hospital to hospice care at home. I appealed to a hospice director to approve a standard medication for him that helped control his shortness of breath and nausea. My patient had been on the drug at the hospital, and staying on it at home was essential to his comfort. Yet my application was denied. The hospice director said that the medication was too expensive, even if, as expected, my patient had less than a month to live.
I could have tried to get my patient admitted to an inpatient hospice facility, where he could have gotten the drug he needed more easily, but he wanted to die at home. So, reluctantly, I had to send him home without it.
Compounding all these issues is the fact that dying in America is increasingly corporatized. Today, about three-quarters of hospice agencies are for-profit, and many are owned by private equity companies. It is hardly a stretch to imagine that many of these companies skimp on care to protect their bottom line.
The key to a better hospice experience would be more in-home support — a minimum number of hours of aide visits per week, for example. This would require increasing Medicare hospice budgets, of course. In the current political climate, that may be a hard sell, though in the end it would almost certainly save money by avoiding costly hospitalizations.
Fortunately, our family was able to keep our father at home till the end, as was his wish. Yet when I reflect on our experience, I am reminded of what an older woman with terminal heart disease once told me: “My husband said the hardest thing to do is to die. I always thought it would be easy.”
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11) States Move to Limit Access to H.I.V. Treatment
Citing rising costs and shortfalls in federal support, about 20 states are toughening eligibility requirements for patients in drug assistance programs.
By Apoorva Mandavilli, March 2, 2026
Tens of thousands of Americans are losing access to treatment for H.I.V. as nearly 20 states impose restrictions on assistance programs and several others weigh such changes.
The states, led by both Democrats and Republicans, are tightening requirements for people benefiting from Ryan White AIDS Drug Assistance Programs, or ADAPs, according to an analysis released on Monday by the health research group KFF.
The programs help pay for H.I.V. medications or provide them free to some people, and pay insurance premiums for others.
H.I.V. medications suppress the virus to undetectable levels, eliminating the chance of spreading it to others. Interrupting treatment may lead to an increase in new infections and in AIDS cases.
Moreover, some people may try to extend their supplies by alternating days or sharing their pills with others. If the virus replicates in people with only partial protection, it can become resistant to the medications. People living with the virus may then pass the resistant virus on to others.
The biggest change took effect in Florida on Sunday, when officials cut off benefits for at least 16,000 residents living with H.I.V. The state also will no longer cover Biktarvy, the most widely prescribed H.I.V. medication.
On Friday, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services opened a special enrollment period allowing Floridians who lose financial support for insurance premiums to choose a new plan. The period ends April 30.
ADAPs support roughly 25 percent of the 1.2 million people living with H.I.V. in the United States. The programs had a 30 percent surge in enrollment from 2022 to 2024, in part because states were removing people from Medicaid after keeping them on during the pandemic.
ADAPs are funded by Congress through the Ryan White federal H.I.V. program. The programs are contending with rising costs as H.I.V. drugs become more expensive even as health care subsidies have expired, sending premiums soaring.
At the same time, funding for the programs has remained flat for more than a decade.
“Effectively, programs are being asked to do more with less federal funding,” said Lindsey Dawson, associate director of H.I.V. policy at KFF.
The financial constraints have led 18 states to take at least one cost-cutting measure, including restricting eligibility by income and reducing the number of medications covered. Five other states are considering changes that would go into effect next month.
More states may consider such measures, as new work requirements drive patients out of Medicaid and increase enrollment in ADAPs, some experts warned.
“We’re expecting to see more states anticipating or contending with budget deficits, and we do anticipate a growing number of states having to implement cost-containment measures,” said Tim Horn, director of medication access at the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors.
The alliance began tracking modifications to state programs last fall, when Pennsylvania amended its eligibility criteria for income from 500 percent of the federal poverty level to 350 percent.
The changes will have ripple effects well beyond the communities of people living with H.I.V., some experts said. The cost of thousands of people losing their insurance will have to be absorbed by other parts of the public health system.
“This is really an economic disaster, a public health disaster, a moral disaster,” said Esteban Wood, director of advocacy and legislative affairs at the advocacy group AIDS Healthcare Foundation.
The foundation has filed an injunction seeking to halt Florida’s health department from carrying out its ADAP restrictions.
With more than 32,000 clients, Florida’s program is the largest in the country. In January, the state informed members that it was altering income eligibility to 130 percent of the federal poverty level from the previous 400 percent — to an annual income of $20,748 for an individual, from the previous $63,840.
The Florida health department has cited a projected $120 million budget shortfall as the reason for the adjustments, but it has not released details. The department did not respond to a request for comment.
Advocacy groups tried to stop the limits from going into effect, noting that the state had not followed the protocols for changing the rules. On Tuesday, the state filed an emergency rule that would enforce the restrictions beginning on Sunday.
“We’re seeing patients across the state full of anxiety and fear rationing their lifesaving medication,” Mr. Wood said.
“These are people who have no other safety net,” he added. “ADAP is the safety net.”
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12) Five Takeaways on America’s Boom in Billionaires
The number of billionaires in the United States has soared, with nowhere feeling the effects quite like Jackson, Wyo. Here’s where all that money came from.
By Katie Benner and Steven Rich, March 2, 2026
Construction of a home in Jackson, Wyo. Credit...Will Warasila for The New York Times
The billionaire class has never been bigger.
Supercharged by Trump-era tax cuts and other policies that favor the rich, America’s wealthy minority has more power over the country than at any time in the last century.
At the dawn of this new plutocracy, the United States faces a central quandary: Will it allow several hundred families to continue to amass economic control and political influence? And what will the country look like as it becomes increasingly shaped by the needs and beliefs of its top 1 percent?
Nowhere is the dilemma more pronounced than in Teton County, Wyo., the area around Jackson Hole. Long the richest per capita in America, the county is now the home of the nation’s most pronounced wealth gap. With the help of the Freedom Caucus (itself supported by ultrarich donors), the top 1 percent has exerted influence over many decisions on land use, education and tax policy. Life for those who are not rich has become unaffordable.
Here are five takeaways from a New York Times examination of the nation’s emerging plutocracy, and how it is playing out in places like Jackson, Wyo.
About 350 people became billionaires in just eight years.
The analysis shows the stunning velocity at which the fortunes of the 1 percent have increased in recent years. The richest Americans saw their net worth soar by 120 percent from 2017 to 2025, a colossal leap from the 45 percent growth they had seen over the previous similar period.
As a result, the number of U.S. billionaires jumped by 50 percent from 2017 to 2025, to more than 900 people, according to some estimates.
Moreover, the top 0.1 percent of households — the richest of the rich — saw their fortunes grow at a faster pace than everyone else did, in part because wealthy people benefit the most when stock markets rise.
The top 1 percent of American households, which have a minimum net worth of $11.1 million, now collectively own about $25.6 trillion worth of stocks and mutual funds, the same amount as the remaining 99 percent of the country, according to the Federal Reserve.
Of the $25.6 trillion worth of stock owned by the 1 percent, more than half is in the hands of the top 0.1 percent.
Trump’s tax cuts bolstered private jet sales, corporate profits and billionaire bank accounts.
While the wealth gap has widened steadily for 40 years, President Trump’s 2017 tax cuts supercharged the trend, according to a Times analysis and a range of new studies.
The tax law allowed private jet buyers to write off the cost of planes — ostensibly purchased for business — and global jet transactions grew by 42 percent from 2017 to 2025, according to Global Jet Capital. The law also doubled the amount of money that households could pass on to heirs tax-free.
The provision that lowered the corporate tax rate to 21 percent from 35 percent had the biggest impact on the ultrarich. As companies became more profitable, they used the additional profits to buy back stock. The stock market soared, benefiting the executive class, which receives much of its compensation in company shares. Few companies meaningfully reinvested in businesses and employees, a Brookings analysis found, and the raises that wage workers received were rarely high enough to offset higher food and housing costs.
The pandemic was a force multiplier.
The coronavirus pandemic supercharged the effects of the tax cuts. Tech prices soared as employees geared up to work at home, and technology gains contributed to about half of the wealth gained by all billionaires. About two-thirds of new billionaires minted since the start of 2020 also made their money in tech.
Elon Musk led the pack, with his wealth growing to well over half a trillion dollars, from $25 billion in early 2020 — a 2,100 percent increase. Jeff Bezos’ net worth jumped by 165 percent; Mark Zuckerberg’s increased more than fourfold; and Larry Ellison, the billionaire co-founder of Oracle, saw his fortune rise by 275 percent.
The pandemic blew open the socioeconomic gaps that emerged during Mr. Trump’s first term. Most of the country sheltered at home and weathered a sharp recession in early 2020, and then grappled with skyrocketing inflation that ate up most of the wage increases that companies had given workers.
But rich Americans used the downturn to buy stocks, real estate and other assets, essentially on sale. UBS found that the 2,000 or so billionaires in the world at that time added more than $2 trillion to their wealth, a 28 percent jump from April to July 2020. And their spending, especially on real estate and construction, helped increase housing and construction costs for all.
Vast wealth in Teton County
This confluence of events was deeply felt in Teton County, where the rich saw their fortunes rise during the first Trump administration. Even more elites flocked to the area during the pandemic, sending prices for real estate (and everything else) sky-high. The average price for a single family home has pushed past $7 million.
By 2024, Teton County’s per capita income hit $532,903, the highest county-level figure in the country; Summit County, Utah, clocking in at around $280,000, was a far second. That high income was largely driven by the top 1 percent of residents, who have an estimated annual income of about $35 million, according to a Times analysis of tax data. That amounts to 221 times the average annual income of the bottom 99 percent in the county.
Nowadays, some people no longer recognize their town. Andrew Munz, who was raised in Jackson Hole, said that it was as if the region went into a deep slumber during the pandemic and awoke to find that the uberwealthy had taken over.
The conservative Freedom Caucus rose to power in the State Legislature at the end of 2024, thanks in part to wealthy donors like the former commodities trader Dan Brophy, who lives in Wyoming. Soon after that year’s general election, lawmakers approved a substantial cut in property taxes, one of the state’s few sources of revenue from wealthy residents — a move that many economists said was regressive. In November, they considered a bill that would repeal property taxes entirely, another boon for the rich.
They also passed a universal school voucher program that would give Wyoming families $7,000 a year in taxpayer funds to spend outside the public school system. The new law could divert funds from public schools and toward the kinds of private and charter schools often favored by wealthy families. The Wyoming Supreme Court is weighing whether the law will take effect.
In Teton County, the social contract is fraying.
Local residents said there used to be much to like about living among the 1 percent, even as inequality rose. Teton County had better medical care than the rest of the state. The public schools had better academic outcomes. But the latest billionaire boom, paired with a tax regime that favors the rich, has eroded the quality of life.
The property tax cut took an immediate toll on funding for schools, police forces, road and parking maintenance, and hospitals, according to Mike Yin, a Democratic state legislator who represents Teton County. The county hospital has cut clinics. The Health Department has reduced staff. Last year, two sheriff’s deputies assigned to patrol duty did not have proper vehicles.
And the affordable housing shortage, which has been a problem for decades, is now so acute that teachers, medical staff members and even doctors are being priced out of the county.
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13) What to Know About the Widening Fallout From the Bombing of Iran
The Middle East is facing deaths and destruction as Iran retaliates against a huge American-Israeli military campaign.
By Amelia Nierenberg, Reporting from London, March 2, 2026
A yacht sailing past a plume of smoke rising from the port of Jebel Ali, in Dubai, following a reported Iranian strike there on Sunday. Credit...Fadel Senna/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Fallout from an extensive U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign against Iran has spread across the Middle East in recent days, killing scores of people, damaging military bases and civilian infrastructure, and severely disrupting air travel and commercial shipping.
The United States and Israel have conducted thousands of airstrikes across Iran since Saturday. These have killed some of the country’s top officials — including its supreme leader — and hundreds of other people, including civilians.
Iran has responded by firing drones and missiles at Israel, American bases in the region, and U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf. Israel and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia in Lebanon, also traded strikes on Monday, opening another front in the widening conflict.
Iran
The U.S. and Israeli strikes have killed several military leaders and senior officials in Iran — including Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s supreme leader for over three decades.
Many of the strikes have damaged military infrastructure and government buildings. Israel said it had hit Iranian missile launchers, air defense systems and command centers. The U.S. military said it had targeted Iran’s ballistic missile program and the headquarters of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, a powerful military force; and left at least one Iranian warship sinking.
The assault has also left many civilians dead. The Iranian Red Crescent said on social media on Monday that the American and Israeli strikes had killed 555 people across Iran.
At least 175 people, most of them likely children, were killed in a strike on a girls’ elementary school in southern Iran on Saturday, health officials and Iranian state media said. It was not immediately clear why the school had been hit or by whom. The school is near a naval base belonging to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps.
United States
An Iranian strike at a base in Kuwait killed three American soldiers, who have not been identified. Five other service members were seriously wounded in the attack.
A fourth American soldier later died after being wounded during “Iran’s initial attacks,” the U.S. military said on Monday. It was not immediately clear if that soldier was one of those wounded at the base in Kuwait.
Three American jets were also shot down, targeted “mistakenly” by Kuwaiti air defenses during “an apparent friendly fire incident,” the U.S. military said on Monday, adding that all six crew members had ejected safely and were recovered.
Israel
At least 10 people have been killed in Israel. Nine of them were killed on Sunday by an Iranian missile strike in Beit Shemesh, about 18 miles west of Jerusalem — Israel’s worst casualty event since the start of the conflict. A woman also died after a missile strike in Tel Aviv on Saturday.
Missile barrages and air-raid sirens have sent Israelis running repeatedly to bomb shelters.
Lebanon
At least 31 people have been killed in Israeli airstrikes, the Lebanese Health Ministry said on Monday in a statement carried by official government media.
Israel struck around Beirut, the capital, and in the country’s south, in response to Hezbollah rocket fire on Monday morning. Hezbollah said it had attacked Israel to avenge Ayatollah Khamenei. The strikes shattered a fragile truce that had held for about a year.
Gulf States
Countries in the Persian Gulf that are allied with the United States or that host U.S. military bases have been targeted by Iranian strikes. Iran has hit six facilities across Bahrain, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, including a key naval headquarters, air bases hosting U.S. forces and a naval recreational area. Iranian drones have also hit hotels and airports.
Most of the Iranian attacks were intercepted, the Gulf countries said, but at least six people were killed in the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain.
The Emirates: In Dubai, five-star hotels caught fire, explosions shattered the windows of apartment towers and the bustling international airport was damaged, injuring four people and shaking the city’s image as a safe haven.
Three people from Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh were killed across the Emirates, an indication that foreign workers, who make up a large proportion of the population, could be among the worst affected.
Bahrain: One person was killed and two were seriously injured after debris falling from an intercepted missile started a fire on a ship, the interior ministry said. A luxury hotel and several residential buildings were hit in Manama, the capital. An Iranian drone hit a building, starting a fire, a Times analysis showed.
Kuwait: At least one person was killed and more than 30 were injured, Kuwaiti authorities said.
Oman: An oil tanker in Omani waters was attacked, Oman said on Monday. One crew member, an Indian, was killed.
Qatar: At least 16 people were injured in the country, its interior ministry said. Qatar hosts a major American air base.
Iraq
Videos and photos verified by The Times appeared to show that Iran had struck the military base at Erbil International Airport, which hosts U.S. forces. Smoke and flames could be seen rising from the direction of the base.
Syria
Four people were killed in Syria after an Iranian missile struck a building in the southern city of Sweida, according to a Syrian state news agency. The missile was most likely intended for Israel. Sweida is near Israeli-controlled territory.
Pakistan
At least 22 people were killed on Sunday as thousands gathered across the country to denounce the U.S.-Israeli airstrikes against Iran. At least 10 of those people were killed as crowds tried to storm the U.S. Consulate in Karachi.
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14) As Trump Bombs Iran, America’s Allies Watch Fitfully From Sidelines
Disregarded by President Trump over Iran, Europe’s leaders are adapting to a world in which they are little more than bystanders.
By Mark Landler, Reporting from Paris, March 2, 2026
Strikes on Tehran on Sunday. Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times
As American and Israeli warplanes continue to bombard Iranian cities, European allies have been left in a familiar place: on the sidelines. President Trump cut them out of planning for a conflict that has direct implications for their security.
The awkward patchwork of responses from European leaders — a mix of guarded approval and plaintive calls for a return to diplomacy — attest to the complexities of dealing with a United States increasingly untethered to post-World War II rules and norms.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany suggested on Sunday that Mr. Trump was doing a job that Europe could not do itself. Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, flatly rejected the strikes as destabilizing. President Emmanuel Macron of France tried to keep the focus on Europe’s campaign to defend Ukraine.
“For Europeans, the dilemma is that they were always defenders of the liberal world order,” said Vali R. Nasr, a professor of international affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. “But their response to the war in Gaza, and now their response to the bombing of Iran, underscores the incoherence of their position.”
Europe’s inability to control its message is not altogether surprising. From the president’s capricious tariffs to his open-ended military campaigns, America’s allies are discovering, to their chagrin, that it’s Mr. Trump’s world and they’re just living in it.
Whether it was the targeted killing on Saturday of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, or the nighttime capture in January of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, Mr. Trump has acted without any pretense of enlisting international support, a stamp of approval from the United Nations, or legal legitimacy.
“I don’t suppose it ever crossed his mind that he should consult the Europeans,” said Kim Darroch, who served as Britain’s ambassador to Washington during Mr. Trump’s first term. “It shows that America First mainly means America Alone.”
It was not always this way. Mr. Darroch contrasted Mr. Trump’s latest attack with his missile strike on Syria in April 2018. Back then, the United States was joined by Britain and France, after the Syrian government carried out a chemical weapons attack on civilians during that country’s civil war.
Such collaboration, Mr. Darroch said, is hard to imagine in the second Trump administration, given the makeup of Mr. Trump’s national security team and unyielding tone of its language, especially at it applies to the European Union.
In one way, he said, Mr. Trump’s brazen disregard of the Europeans has made it easier for the leaders. Had he asked for European support in the strikes against Iran, Mr. Darroch said, they would likely have felt obliged to rebuff him, driving an even greater wedge between Europe and the United States.
While European leaders were careful to note they were not involved in the strikes, they endorsed two of Mr. Trump’s ostensible goals: preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and degrading its missiles, some of which could theoretically hit Europe. Some also welcomed the elimination of its supreme leader.
A spokeswoman for the French government, Maud Bregeon, said Ayatollah Khamenei was “a bloodthirsty dictator who oppressed his people,” degraded women and minorities, and was responsible for the deaths of thousands of civilians. “We can only be satisfied with his death,” she told reporters.
Germany said the White House had notified it in advance of the attacks. On Sunday, Mr. Merz voiced surprising tolerance for Mr. Trump, given the lack of consultation. “Now is not the moment to lecture our allies and partners,” Mr. Merz said, before leaving on a trip to Washington to meet with Mr. Trump. “Despite all doubts, we share many of their goals without being able to achieve them ourselves.”
Arancha González Laya, a former foreign minister of Spain, said Europe’s cautious response reflected both its skepticism about Mr. Trump’s war aims, and the fact that the war in Ukraine remains its overriding priority.
“Europe is looking at this through the eyes of Russia in Ukraine,” said Ms. González Laya, who is the dean of the Paris School of International Affairs at Sciences Po, a French university. “We’re much closer to the risks than the U.S. is,” she said, citing Iranian missiles that could hit European targets.
On Sunday, the leaders of Britain, France and Germany issued a joint statement in which they said they were are “appalled by the indiscriminate and disproportionate missile attacks launched by Iran against countries in the region, including those who were not involved in initial U.S. and Israeli military operations.”
Whatever their ambivalence about the American operation, the risks of being drawn into it are real. Britain’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, said on Sunday that he would allow British bases to be used for “defensive” strikes, hours before a drone crashed into a Royal Air Force base on the island of Cyprus in the Mediterranean.
Amid the fears of escalation in the Middle East, Mr. Macron separately promoted a military operation in the North Sea in which French Navy helicopters dropped Belgian forces aboard a tanker carrying Russian oil. He called it a “major blow” against the so-called shadow fleet, which helps finance the war in Ukraine.
Mr. Macron is sticking to a plan to deliver a speech Monday about France’s nuclear deterrence in Europe, despite the likelihood that it will be overshadowed by Iran. French officials said the timing of his remarks, at a submarine base in Brittany, would demonstrate the value of having an independent military force in dangerous times.
Among European leaders, only Mr. Sánchez of Spain came out squarely against the attacks. “We reject the unilateral military action of the United States and Israel, which represents an escalation and contributes to a more uncertain and hostile international order,” he wrote on social media.
Ms. González Laya recalled that Spain’s support of the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 triggered the fall of a previous Spanish government. She said that hostility to Mr. Trump in Spain made this a popular position for Mr. Sánchez, her former boss, to take, at a time when he is facing political problems.
For every European leader who has struggled to respond to Mr. Trump, there are leaders elsewhere in the world who are well positioned to profit from him. Indeed, some already have.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has succeeded, twice now, in getting the United States to back a long-sought military campaign against Iran, even though its rationale for the United States this time is questionable.
Analysts say President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia could use Mr. Trump’s new enthusiasm for regime change to justify his aggression in Ukraine. The same goes for President Xi Jinping of China, who seeks to control Taiwan, which China regards as a breakaway province.
In Europe, critics say, acquiescing to Mr. Trump’s military adventurism in the Middle East could exacerbate problems closer to home. He might, for example, feel emboldened to revisit his designs on Greenland.
“They’re having trouble navigating this new world because they are caught between these two positions,” Mr. Nasr said. “If you’re defending the principle that the U.S. and Israel can bomb everybody they want, you can’t turn around and say, ‘This doesn’t apply to Ukraine.’ Why wouldn’t the United States take Greenland?”
Ana Castelain contributed reporting from Paris and Christopher F. Schuetze from Berlin.
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