Iran’s Massive Retaliation Hits Targets Throughout Middle East

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In the past few days, the US and Israel have suffered the first deaths in their war of aggression against Iran. Six US soldiers and 11 Israelis have been killed by Iran’s retaliatory strikes.  Pres. Trump offered this anodyne eulogy for those who died carrying out his criminal orders:

“As one nation, we grieve for the true American patriots who have made the ultimate sacrifice for our nation, even as we continue the righteous mission for which they gave their lives.  And sadly, there will likely be more before it ends. That’s the way it is.”

The way it is, indeed.  It’s only the way it is when a two megalomaniac criminals determine they need a war to distract from their troubles at home. More on that below.

In addition to the personnel losses, Kuwaiti air defenses mistakenly shot down three F-16 Eagle warplanes.  Each plane is worth about $75-million.  Calling this a “friendly fire” incident papers over its severity. It is a major mishap and shows a breakdown in American air defense technology or operator training. Why can’t US-supplied air defenses operated by Kuwaiti personnel distinguish between an Iranian drone and an F-16?

In the past few days Iran has successfully hit seven US bases in several Gulf states, causing extensive damage to $2-billion worth of advanced satellite communication devices. A dramatic video embedded above shows an Iranian drone direct hit on a satellite communication terminal on a US base in Bahrain (see video).  It also struck Saudi Arabia’s main oil refinery, Ras Tanura, temporarily knocking it off line. Qatar announced it was closing down its natural gas facilities.  Global energy markets are in panic mode.  Oil prices have risen 7% in the course of three days.

🚨 Iran just took out a

$1.1 billion radar at the most fortified US base in the Middle East with a single missile.

That radar was the backbone of ALL US missile defense in the Gulf. Every Patriot. Every THAAD. Now operating blind.

Qatar… pic.twitter.com/Sp4YQYj0Rz

— Brian Allen (@allenanalysis) March 4, 2026

This is a calculated strategy by Iran to spread the pain as widely as possible.

Perhaps the most dramatic development was an Iranian drone strike, which heavily damaged a $1.1-billion missile defense early warning system in Qatar.  It serves as the eyes and ears for all US missile defense operations in the region. The Qatari defense ministry confirmed the attack.

While Iran has struck several US bases in the Gulf and the US embassies in Saudi Arabia, Dubai, and Kuwait, it is also attacking soft targets around the region.  If it does enough damage to states hosting such US facilities, they will exert pressure on the US and Israel to end the fighting–or so Iran’s thinking goes. The lingering question is: how much damage can it inflict?  Enough to make the Gulf states squirm?  Or enough to anger them into joining in the conflict against Iran.

How will these states react when they see tens of billions of advanced US weaponry installed in their kingdoms, go up in the smoke of an Iranian drone?  That impregnable shield represented by American military might and technology will begin to seem quite porous. Iran will show them, the US, and Israel that it can be a formidable foe.  This is not Venezuela 2.0.

The Iranians have shown themselves remarkably resilient thus far in taking the Israeli-US punch and then responding ferociously to its adversaries and their allies.  Missiles have rained down throughout the region. No amount of US air sorties targeting missile launchers, command and control centers, etc. have diminished Iranian resistance.  It remains to be seen whether its military can sustain this level of intensity given what remain of its weapons’ stocks.  But the IRGC has been preparing for this eventuality for years, and will go anything but quietly.

No one is foolish enough to believe that this is a war of equals.  Iran is clearly outgunned in the the amount and lethality of its weapons.  But as with all insurgents in asymmetrical warfare, it doesn’t need to “win” in any conventional sense. It only needs to survive to win.  If Iran wins on these terms, then Trump and Netanyahu must lose.  Despite Trump inevitably crowing about a massive victory and “obliterating” the Iranians, the proof will be in the result: an Iranian regime still standing, if a bit wobbly.

Why we fight…I think

Meanwhile, there is no explanation forthcoming from the White House about the rationale for the war.  There is no clear strategy other than pummeling Iranian military targets. There is no end game: no desired outcome.  No consideration of what will happen after the shooting ends.  Does Trump want to eliminate the Islamic Republic as Bush did in Iraq, when he eliminated the Baath regime, plunging Iraq into a decade long civil war? Does he want to install Reza Pahlevi as Shah 2.0?  Does he want the Iranian-Iraqi Kurds to march on Tehran and become the de facto bosses of the New Iran?

Pres Trump told me tonight the US had identified possible candidates to take over Iran, but they were killed in the initial attack.

“The attack was so successful it knocked out most of the candidates,” Trump told me. “It’s not going to be anybody that we were thinking of because…

— Jonathan Karl (@jonkarl) March 2, 2026

Trump’s blithering folly is encapsulated in this tweet, in which he told a reporter that US bombing killed most of the successors he’s purportedly designated to take the reins of power.  He told another journalist:

“We don’t know who the leadership is. We don’t know who they’ll pick. Maybe they’ll get lucky and get someone who knows what they’re doing.”

Maybe in 2028 the American people will pick a president who knows what he (or she) is doing.

Trump continued:

“They don’t even know who’s leading them now. We went down 49” Iranian leaders.

“Those were the leaders, and some of them were being considered. But we don’t know who’s leading the country now. They don’t know who’s leading. It’s a little like the unemployment line.”

Except that you don’t launch missiles at people who’ve lost their jobs.

Separately, Trump suggested that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards should surrender and hand their weapons to the people who would presumably overthrow the government and take power:

When pressed on his plans for a transition of power, Mr. Trump said he hoped Iran’s elite military forces — including hardened officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps who have held substantial influence and profited from the existing regime — would simply turn over their weapons to the Iranian populace.

“They would really surrender to the people, if you think about it,” he said.

The president is a font of realism.  So is his real estate lawyer cum global special envoy, Steve Witkoff:

“He’s [Trump] curious as to why they haven’t — I don’t want to use the word ‘capitulated,’ but why they haven’t capitulated,” Mr. Witkoff said.

He added: “Why, under this sort of pressure, with the amount of sea power and naval power that we have over there, why haven’t they come to us and said, ‘We profess we don’t want a weapon, so here’s what we’re prepared to do’?”

“And yet it’s sort of hard to get them to that place,” he said.

These numbskulls have no sense of history. No idea how wars are fought and the psychology of countries fighting them.  Even more so, they have no idea about Iran or Iranians if they think they will come hat in hand to Trump and beg for quarter.

Netanyahu has his own distinct preferences and has been jawboning Trump to adopt them.  Pahlevi is Israel’s Chosen One.  Like his father, Shah 1.0, Pahlevi will be Israel’s toady, its proxy in the same way Hezbollah was Iran’s until the overthrow of Syria’s Bashar al Assad.  The irony should not be lost on those who railed against Iran and its proxy network in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen.  Israel is no different. It’s had proxies in Syria, Lebanon, and most recently Gaza.  The only difference is that Israel has a Big Brother behind it legitimizing Israeli aggression; and Iran has no equivalent patron. Meaning that the world ignores Israel and its proxies, while denouncing Iran as the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.

What polls say

While Republicans crow about American support for Trump’s War, polls say otherwise.  Nearly 60% of respondents oppose it.  That’s up from 49% just before hostilities began. 60% say the president has no clear plan. 54% believe Iran will become more of a threat as a result of the attack. 56% oppose overthrowing the Iranian government (regime change). This is a war of choice, a pre-emptive war, a war of aggression. A war no one, except two men, want.  The longer it lasts, the greater the punishment Trump will suffer in November.

In contrast, 82% of Israeli Jews support the war; thanks to the hatred for Iran which has been inculcated in Israelis far longer and more intensively than Americans. The former tend to see it as an existential threat, which is once again thanks to a manufactured sense of paranoia.  This Israeli life-and-death panic enables leaders like Netanyahu to pursue such wars of aggression with the support of the populace.  These conflicts have proven catastrophic to the region and will continue indefinitely, unless some leader, nation or international body resists.