In a remarkably frank statement on Sunday, Israeli forces openly admitted to using a faked picture of a journalist they killed in Lebanon as supposed evidence that he was affiliated with armed groups. On Saturday, Israeli forces killed three journalists who were reporting on Israel’s expanded bombardments and ground invasion of Lebanon. They were in a clearly marked press car on their way to…
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The U.S. hit a school and sports hall in Lamerd, Iran, on the first day of its war on the country, using a new, untested weapon made by Lockheed Martin that unleashes an explosive barrage of metal pellets on its target, new reporting finds. The U.S. strike on February 28 hit a building where dozens of young girls were doing their regular sports training, as well as an adjacent elementary…
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As major firms have blared dire warnings about the effects of the U.S. and Israel’s war on Iran on the economy and the growing affordability crisis, President Donald Trump on Sunday bragged to reporters about plans for his $400 million gilded White House ballroom on Air Force One. Holding up printed renderings of the ballroom, Trump bragged for several minutes about the extravagant-looking…
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Israeli forces are using extremely destructive 2,000-pound bombs on residential areas in Tehran, reports say, slaughtering dozens and violating international law barring the use of such weapons in areas where a disproportionate amount of civilians may be harmed. A series of strikes in Resalat in eastern Tehran killed between 40 and 50 civilians, completely destroying three residential…
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Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth asked Pentagon officials to pray for “overwhelming violence” against enemies in Iran and elsewhere in the “name of Jesus Christ” at a Christian worship service on Wednesday. The remarks, made at Hegseth’s monthly worship service — the first he’s held since the U.S. and Israel began their war on Iran — reinforced public concerns over his Christian nationalist…
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The appearance of triumph and U.S. might has been of paramount importance to President Donald Trump and his administration amid their war on Iran, with much of their pro-war propaganda centered around a vision of the U.S. military as infallible. But the U.S. has suffered major losses in the war thus far, the extent of which were reportedly revealed in a New York Times article on Wednesday.
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The U.S. and Israel were two of only three countries to vote against a resolution in the UN to condemn the transatlantic slave trade as the “gravest crime against humanity” and calling for reparations. The resolution strongly condemns slavery and the trafficking of Africans and recognizes the impacts of the “abhorrent regimes of slavery and colonialism” and contemporary colonialism of Africa.
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President Donald Trump claimed on Wednesday that he is avoiding using the word “war” in reference to the U.S.-Israeli bombardment of Iran in order to avoid accountability from Congress — effectively openly admitting that his war on Iran is unconstitutional. “I won’t use the word ‘war’,” he said in an address to Republicans at a fundraising dinner. “They don’t like the word ‘war’ because you’…
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The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) attempted to deport nearly 300 veterans and their family members in Donald Trump’s first year back in office, according to new data released by Democratic lawmakers, despite protections offered to those officers when they joined the military. Between Trump’s inauguration on January 20, 2025, and January 26, 2026, Immigration and Customs Enforcement…
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Pope Leo XIV has said that aerial bombings should have been banned forever after the wars of the 20th century, carving out the strong anti-war stance amid a backdrop of a U.S.-Israeli war on Iran that has received international condemnation for its wanton civilian slaughter. The pope made his remarks in an address to the staff of Italian carrier ITA Airways on Monday, where he tied papal air…
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President Donald Trump dubiously claimed on Tuesday that the U.S. and Israel have already “won” their war on Iran, blaming the media for the continuation of the war as news emerges that the Pentagon is deploying 3,000 more troops to the Middle East. “We’ve won this war. The war has been won,” Trump said in remarks to the media on Tuesday, parroting the same claims of victory he’s asserted for…
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The U.S. and Israeli bombardments of Iran have devastated tens of thousands of civilian facilities, the Iranian Red Crescent Society says, killing over a thousand civilians so far and damaging infrastructure considered completely off limits in war time like schools and hospitals. Over 82,000 civilian structures have been damaged by U.S. and Israeli bombardments, the group reported this week.
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California Gov. Gavin Newsom is facing criticism for saying in a recent interview that he “reveres” Israel, just weeks after he labeled it as an apartheid state. “I revere the state of Israel. I’m proud to support the state of Israel,” Newsom said in an interview with Politico released on Tuesday, when asked whether he considers himself a Zionist. Newsom said that he is opposed to…
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German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has issued a rare condemnation of the U.S. over President Donald Trump’s “disastrous” war on Iran, saying that it causes an irreparable rupture with the U.S. akin to Germany’s rupture with Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. In remarks to German diplomats in Berlin, Steinmeier said that the war “violates international law” and that the U.S.
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Israeli settlers have rampaged through multiple towns in the occupied West Bank for two nights in a row, unleashing a campaign of destruction and terror on Palestinian residents with the backing of the Israeli and U.S. governments. On Saturday, Israeli settlers attacked at least six communities, including Jenin in the north and Masafer Yatta in the south. Settlers set homes and cars on fire…
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The first two weeks of the U.S. and Israel’s war on Iran released a deluge of carbon emissions equivalent to the combined yearly climate warming pollution output of the lowest 84 emitters in the world, a new analysis finds. Researchers for progressive think tank Climate and Community Institute found that the first 14 days of the assault released over 5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide…
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The U.S. is sending additional warships filled with thousands more Marines to the Middle East this weekend as the U.S. and Israel continue escalating their war on Iran, despite President Donald Trump having repeatedly and dubiously claimed that the U.S. has already effectively won the war. U.S. officials told news outlets of the additional deployments, saying that roughly 2,000 to 2,500…
Switzerland announced on Friday that it is halting the issuing of licenses for weapons exports to the U.S. amid its war on Iran, citing Swiss neutrality principles, a week after barring the use of its airspace to U.S. war flights. The country said that it would not authorize the export of weapons to countries involved in the war “for the duration of the conflict.
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Arab countries are fuming after the U.S. and Israel escalated their war on Iran with an attack on a key natural gas field this week, an attack that Arab states reportedly sought to prevent in order to head off further chaos in the global energy industry. The Wall Street Journal reports that Arab countries were “furious” about Israel’s attack on the South Pars natural gas field on Wednesday.
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Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) is planning to soon force a vote on legislation seeking to block over $650 million in arms sales to Israel as it slaughters civilians across the Middle East, including in its joint war on Iran with the U.S. The joint resolutions of disapproval, first reported by Politico, seek to block the sales of 5,000 “defense articles” relating to 250-pound bombs; 10,000…
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The Trump administration is seeking a whopping $200 billion supplement for the U.S. and Israel’s war on Iran, asking for Congress to shell out taxpayer money for a historically unpopular war that is already causing major price hikes that will only worsen as the war goes on. The Washington Post first reported the request to Congress, citing a senior administration official and three other…
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The Trump administration purged the State Department of its oil and gas experts last year, prior to launching its war on Iran, including people who would be responsible for examining scenarios related to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a new report says as the gas prices spike. NOTUS reports that the administration laid off a wide swath of oil and gas analysts in the State Department’s…
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This article was originally published by Truthout on Mar. 17, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license.
Israeli officials are reportedly urging the U.S. to join them in their public urging of Iranians to stage an uprising against their government, even as the Israeli government internally assesses that protesters would be “slaughtered” if they did so, demonstrating Israel’s blasé attitude toward Iranian lives amid its bombardments of the country.
According to reporting by The Washington Post published Tuesday, top Israeli officials relayed the message to U.S. diplomats in a cable that circulated in the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem on Friday. The cable said that Israeli officials assess that the Iranian government is “not cracking” and will “fight to the end” — despite hopes by U.S. and Israeli officials that they could “decapitate” the government and achieve collapse.
The cable further said that if Iranians were to stage more protests against their government, as they did in demonstrations earlier this year, “the people will get slaughtered,” Israeli officials said. According to UN Special Rapporteur on Iran Mai Sato, around 5,000 people were killed in the government crackdown on protests as of January, though it has been difficult to assess the precise number of deaths due to biases on all sides.
The cable, which summarized recent meetings by top Israeli officials and U.S. officials, said that nonetheless, Israeli officials are hoping for a revolt and that the U.S. should support such an uprising as well.
Critics have said that the cable demonstrates Israeli officials’ indifference toward whether civilians live or die, after years of Israel wantonly slaughtering civilians in Palestine and countries across the Middle East.
“This should not surprise anyone,” said Trita Parsi, executive vice president for the Quincy Institute, in a post on social media. “That the Israelis would use the Iranian people as cannon fodder in their war with the Islamic Republic was crystal clear to anyone who had followed the Israeli-Iranian rivalry in a clear-eyed way. Nor can anyone reasonably expect that Israel would act in the best interest of the Iranian people. Israel pursues its own interests, full stop.”
On the first day of the U.S. and Israel’s bombardments on February 28, U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu both put out video addresses urging the Iranian people to take up arms against their government as they rained death and destruction from the sky. Since then, the U.S. and Israel’s bombardments have killed over 1,400 people in Iran and injured at least 18,500, according to Iranian health officials. Israeli intelligence and military officials have long urged Iranians to protest against their government, and the U.S. has meddled in Iranian politics for decades.
“I think a lot of people will feel very betrayed by this assessment,” Iran analyst and Johns Hopkins University assistant professor Narges Bajoli told The Washington Post, saying that it would be viewed as exploiting Iranian lives for political gain.
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Israeli forces have killed or wounded the equivalent of a classroom’s worth of children every day in Lebanon in the past two weeks of Israel’s escalation against the country, the UN’s children’s agency has reported. Since Israel’s current escalation began on March 2, Israeli strikes have killed at least 111 children and wounded 334 in Lebanon, health officials report. That represents “a…
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President Donald Trump is dismantling U.S. democracy at an “unprecedented” rate, downgrading the U.S.’s democratic rating on a global scale and plunging the country toward autocracy at a faster rate than autocratic leaders of other countries in the 21st century, the latest report by an international democracy watchdog finds. Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Institute at Sweden’s Gothenburg…
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Israeli officials are reportedly urging the U.S. to join them in their public urging of Iranians to stage an uprising against their government, even as the Israeli government internally assesses that protesters would be “slaughtered” if they did so, demonstrating Israel’s blasé attitude toward Iranian lives amid its bombardments of the country. According to reporting by The Washington Post…
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National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett brushed aside concerns about harm to consumers caused by the U.S. and Israel’s war on Iran on Tuesday, saying that the war would hurt consumers if it continues but that’s “the last of our concerns.” In an interview with CNBC, the Donald Trump appointee said that he believes the war will be over in a few weeks, and repeated the president’s…
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This article was originally published by Truthout on Mar. 16, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license.
Israel announced on Monday that it is expanding its ground in southern Lebanon, claiming to target Hezbollah as Israel’s defense minister pledges that “hundreds of thousands” of people already forcibly displaced by Israeli attacks “will not return” for the indefinite future.
In a statement, Israeli forces said that soldiers are carrying out “limited and targeted ground operations” in southern Lebanon. The purpose is to “establish and strengthen a forward defensive posture … to create an additional layer of security for residents of northern Israel,” the statement claims, ignoring that Hezbollah has maintained in previous conflicts that it would not retaliate against Israel if Israeli forces withdrew from southern Lebanon.
Axios reported last week that Israel is planning a massive expansion of its ground invasion of Lebanon with the goal of seizing the entire area south of the Litani River. This area is protected under a UN Security Council resolution as part of a decades-old ceasefire agreement, and makes up about 8 percent of the area of the country.
A senior Israeli official told Axios the military is “going to do what we did in Gaza.”
Israel and Hezbollah reached a ceasefire agreement in late 2024, but Israel violated it over 10,000 times in the first year, UN officials said. Now, Israel has unilaterally ended the ceasefire — though some argue Israel never adhered to it in the first place — and severely escalated bombardments and forced displacement in Lebanon, as the world focuses on Israel and the U.S.’s horrific war on Iran.
In just the past two weeks, Israel has killed over 880 people in Lebanon, including over 100 children and dozens of health care workers, according to the country’s health ministry.
Israel has bombed residences, health care centers, and other civilian infrastructure, including in the capital of Beirut. The attacks have created a “humanitarian catastrophe,” as one UN official warned, forcing thousands to take shelter in makeshift shelters or on the streets. The UN says that Israel has forcibly displaced 800,000 people thus far.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz pledged on Monday to continue Israel’s displacement campaign.
“Hundreds of thousands of Shi’ite residents of southern Lebanon who have evacuated or are evacuating their homes in southern Lebanon and Beirut will not return to areas south of the Litani line until the safety of northern residents is ensured,” referring to northern Israel, Katz said in a statement.
Reuters reports that, over the weekend, Israeli forces surrounded the key town of Khiam, in southern Lebanon, close to the border of Israel and Syria’s Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
The town is on a hilltop that can oversee large swaths of the area, and is situated near the choke point where the demarcation of southern Lebanon by the Litani River and the “Blue Line” that establishes Lebanon’s southern border almost meet. Analysts say that Israel could use the town strategically to advance military occupation, potentially using it to cut off communication between parts of the occupied area.
Some residents of Lebanon, already having faced years of bombardments from Israel, say they fear that Israel will carry out an extended occupation like its 18-year occupation of Lebanon that lasted from 1982 to 2000.
“I feel like this is preparation for an occupation, and I’m afraid history will repeat itself,” said Iman Ibrahim, a resident of Blida, a town in south Lebanon, to The New York Times. “Everything we used to hear from our grandparents about occupation, we’re living it now.”
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