March 30, 2026
As the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran enters its second month, President Donald Trump has said he wants “to take the oil” and seize Kharg Island, Iran’s key export hub in the Persian Gulf. President Trump’s comments come as 3,500 U.S. troops began arriving in the region on Friday, with The Washington Post reporting that the Pentagon is preparing for weeks of potential ground combat in Iran. According to a consortium of human rights groups in Iran, nearly 1,500 Iranian civilians, including at least 217 children, have been killed in U.S. and Israeli strikes. Iranian scholar Ali Kadivar says the increased targeting of residential areas, schools and hospitals in recent days shows that regime change is no longer the main goal, if it ever was. “These recent attacks on civilian infrastructure makes the war look more like a war on Iran as a nation-state,” says Kadivar, fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard University and an associate professor at Boston College.
As the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran enters its second month, President Donald Trump has said he wants “to take the oil” and seize Kharg Island, Iran’s key export hub in the Persian Gulf. President Trump’s comments come as 3,500 U.S. troops began arriving in the region on Friday, with The Washington Post reporting that the Pentagon is preparing for weeks of potential ground combat in Iran. According to a consortium of human rights groups in Iran, nearly 1,500 Iranian civilians, including at least 217 children, have been killed in U.S. and Israeli strikes. Iranian scholar Ali Kadivar says the increased targeting of residential areas, schools and hospitals in recent days shows that regime change is no longer the main goal, if it ever was. “These recent attacks on civilian infrastructure makes the war look more like a war on Iran as a nation-state,” says Kadivar, fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard University and an associate professor at Boston College.
