+ Let’s review the shifting rationales (all fallacious) for Trump/Netanyahu’s criminal attack on Iran that has quickly engulfed much of the Middle East: Israel was going to attack Iran and Iran would respond by attacking the US; Iran was going to launch a pre-emptive attack on Israel; Iran was going to launch a preemptive attack on the US; Iran was close to having a nuclear weapon; Iran was close to having intercontinental missiles capable of striking the US; Iran was governed by lunatics. Netanyahu talked Trump into doing it. MBS convinced Trump to do it. Trump convinced Netanyahu to do it. Let confusion be their epitaph. (It will almost certainly be ours.)

+ Marco Rubio: “The imminent threat was that we knew that if Iran was attacked, and we believed they would be attacked [by Israel], that they would immediately come after us, and we were not going to sit, sit there and absorb a blow before we responded.”

CNN Reporter: Yesterday, you told us Israel was going to strike Iran and that’s why we needed to get involved. But today the president said Iran–

Rubio: No. Were you there yesterday?

CNN Reporter: Yes. I asked the question.

+ The “preventative war” rationale, whichever of the shifting versions you choose, is preposterous. A preemptive strike on US targets by Iran would have done minimal damage to the US arsenal in the region and ensured the massive counter-attack the Iranians were seeking to prevent. And, even the Pentagon knows it wasn’t true…

Reporter: Thousands of Americans are stranded. Why wasn’t there an evacuation plan?

Trump: Well, because it happened all very quickly, we thought, and I thought maybe more so than most. I could ask Marco, but I thought we were going to have a situation where we were going to be attacked. They were getting ready to attack Israel. They were getting ready to attack….If anything, I forced Israel’s hand.”

+ Sen. Mark Warner: “There was no imminent threat to the United States by the Iranians. There was a threat to Israel. If we equate a threat to Israel as the equivalent of an imminent threat to the US, then we are in uncharted territory.”

+ Israel has hundreds of nuclear weapons. Iran has none. If Iran were really planning a preemptive strike on Israel, that would pretty much invalidate the notion of nuclear deterrence. Let’s get rid of them all! On the other hand, would Trump and Israel have risked launching a preemptive attack on Iran if the Islamic Republic possessed its own nuclear arsenal? Unlikely. (It’s more likely Trump would have written love letters to the Ayatollah, ala his endearing correspondence with Kim Jong-Un.) I think it’s safe to conclude that Iran had no plans to preemptively attack Israel or the US.

+ Rafael Grossi, Director General of the IAEA, told the nuclear inspection agency’s board on March 2 that inspectors found no structured effort by Iran to build nuclear weapons, despite ongoing strikes on sites like Natanz. The U.S. and Israel launched operations Roaring Lion and Epic Fury on February 28, damaging above-ground structures but sparing underground centrifuges and causing no radiation leaks. While leaders like Trump and Netanyahu cited imminent threats, U.S. intelligence sources and Russia disputed the urgency, and Grossi called for diplomacy to prevent escalation.

Reporter: “So, why did the US attack?”

Rubio:  “Iran is run by lunatics.”

+ Lindsey Graham has always wanted a world war and he just might get one: “I’m calling on President Trump today — join Israel to attack Hezbollah …Fly with Israel.”

+”We were neck deep in the Big Muddy/And the big fool said to push on”…

+ Lindsey Graham, Israeli intel asset?

To help make the case on Iran, Graham traveled several times to Israel in recent weeks, meeting with members of the country’s intelligence agencies “They tell me things our own government won’t tell me,” he said. He spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, coaching him on how to lobby the president for action. Netanyahu showed the president intelligence that persuaded Trump to go ahead, Graham said. (“Lindsey Graham’s Quest to Sell Trump on Attacking Iran,” Wall Street Journal, March 6, 2026)

+ This article could easily have been titled, “Israel’s Use of Lindsey Graham to Sell Trump on Attacking Iran.”

+ Trump: “I guess the worst case would be, we do this, and then somebody takes over, who’s as bad as the previous person, right? That could happen.”

+++

“The visuals!”

+ If the Iranians had hit an Israeli girls’ school in a drone attack, I doubt very much that Kristof would have emphasized how bad the visuals looked for Iran.

+ Has the UN ever proved itself to be more useless? It did nothing to slow the genocide in Gaza. It couldn’t even stop Israel from bombing UN facilities and systematically killing UN workers. It’s done even less to stop the US/Israeli assault on Iran. And where are the BRICS nations, who held themselves forth as a countervailing force to US militarism? They can’t even get fuel to Cuba.

+ Here’s the latest parapraxis episode from the minority leader of the US Senate…

Reporter: Do you think Israel boxed the US into war with Iran?

Schumer: “Look, no one wants a nuclear war, no one wants a nuclear Israel, but we certainly don’t want an endless war.”

Schumer walks away. A reporter says, “Nuclear Israel, senator?”

Schumer turns around and asks, “What’d I say?”

Reporter: “Nuclear Israel.”

Schumer: “Oh, no! Lemme say that again. No one wants an endless war, but we certainly don’t want a nuclear Iran, that’s for sure, okay?”