“Why Are We Going to War?”: Former U.S. Middle East Officials Say Trump Has “No Clear Plan” on Iran

March 5, 2026
As the U.S. and Israel continue their bombardment of Iran and the conflict spreads throughout the region, we speak with two former U.S. government officials with experience in Middle East policy. Hala Rharrit is a career diplomat who resigned from the State Department in 2024 to protest the Biden administration’s Gaza policy, and Jasmine El-Gamal served as a Middle East adviser at the Pentagon during the Obama administration.

“This is exactly what American diplomats have been trying to avoid for two decades. And before my resignation, it is exactly what I was warning against,” says Rharrit, now in Oman after leaving Dubai with her family for safety.
El-Gamal casts doubt on the Trump administration’s shifting reasons for the war, including President Trump’s “feeling” that Iran was about to strike first. “It is ludicrous to expect the American people to believe that Iran would have attacked the U.S. preemptively in the middle of negotiations,” she says, adding that the contradictory messages show “how little they were really thinking this through before they went to war.”
 
Transcript
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran have entered a sixth day as the war spreads beyond the Middle East. In Iran, the U.S.-Israeli attacks have reportedly killed more than 1,230 people. According to the Iranian Red Crescent Society, the U.S. and Israel have struck at least 174 cities in Iran since Saturday. Iranian officials have accused the U.S. and Israel of intentionally striking civilian infrastructure, including schools, hospitals and sports stadiums.
Iran is continuing to retaliate across the Gulf. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claims it’s inflicted significant damage on 20 U.S. military targets in Kuwait, Bahrain and the UAE. Iran has been accused of firing drones and missiles at Azerbaijan and Turkey, but Iran denies both claims. On Wednesday, NATO air defenses shot down a ballistic missile headed into Turkish airspace. Earlier today, Iran’s IRGC took credit for attacking a U.S. oil tanker in the Persian Gulf.
This comes a day after a U.S. submarine torpedoed an Iranian naval vessel off the coast of Sri Lanka, killing at least 87 people. The ship had been returning from India, where it took part in a major international naval exercise called Milan 2026. The U.S. had been invited to take part in the same exercise but pulled out. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi accused the U.S. Navy of committing an atrocity at sea. He said on social media, quote, “Mark my words: The U.S. will come to bitterly regret [the] precedent it has set,” unquote.
Meanwhile, the death toll from Israel’s attacks on Lebanon has reached 77. More than 300,000 people have evacuated southern Lebanon.
Earlier today, the Pentagon revealed the final two names of the six U.S. soldiers killed in an Iranian attack in Kuwait. On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth criticized how the news media has reported on U.S. troop deaths.
DEFENSE SECRETARY PETE HEGSETH: We’ve taken control of Iran’s airspace and waterways without boots on the ground. We control their fate. But when a few drones get through or tragic things happen, it’s front-page news. I get it. The press only wants to make the president look bad. But try, for once, to report the reality.
AMY GOODMAN: CNN’s Kaitlan Collins later questioned White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt about Hegseth’s remarks.
KAITLAN COLLINS: The president is going to attend the dignified transfer for these families. Given what Secretary Hegseth said this morning, is it the position of this administration that the press should not prominently cover the deaths of U.S. service members?
PRESS SECRETARY KAROLINE LEAVITT: No, it’s the position of this administration that the press in this room and the press across the country should accurately report on the success of Operation Epic Fury and the damage it is doing to the rogue Iranian regime that has threatened the lives of every single American in this room.
KAITLAN COLLINS: Hegseth was complaining that it was front-page news about these six service members who were killed.
PRESS SECRETARY KAROLINE LEAVITT: That’s not what the secretary said, Kaitlan, and that’s not what the secretary meant, and you know it.
KAITLAN COLLINS: I can produce quotes.
PRESS SECRETARY KAROLINE LEAVITT: You know you are being disingenuous. There is not — we’ve never had a secretary of defense who cares more —
KAITLAN COLLINS: He said, “When a few drones get through or tragic things happen, it’s front-page news. I get it. The press only wants to make the president look bad.”
PRESS SECRETARY KAROLINE LEAVITT: Yeah, the press does —
KAITLAN COLLINS: As you know, we cover the deaths of U.S. service members under every president.
PRESS SECRETARY KAROLINE LEAVITT: The press does only want to make the president look bad. That’s a — that’s a fact, especially you. No, listen to me, especially you and especially CNN. And the secretary of defense cares deeply about our war fighters and our men and women in uniform.
AMY GOODMAN: This all comes as the Republican-led Senate rejected a resolution aimed to force President Trump to end the war in Iran, which was launched without congressional approval. Democratic Senator John Fetterman joined Republicans to oppose the war powers resolution. Republican Senator Rand Paul was the sole Republican to vote to curtail Trump’s war powers. The House is scheduled to vote on a similar resolution today.
We’re joined now by two former U.S. government officials with long histories working on Mideast policy. Jasmine El-Gamal is the founder and CEO of Averos Strategies, foreign policy analyst and former Middle East adviser at the Pentagon during the Obama administration. She’s joining us from London. Also with us, Hala Rharrit. She’s an 18-year career diplomat who resigned from the State Department over the Biden administration’s Gaza policy. She was the first State Department diplomat to publicly resign. She had served as Arabic-language spokesperson for the State Department. Rharrit is now an IMEU Policy Project nonresident fellow, joining us from Muscat, Oman, after evacuating from Dubai.
Let’s begin with you there, Hala Rharrit. Explain what happened, why you have evacuated your family to Oman. And respond to what the U.S. has been doing over the last six days. We have entered the six-day mark for the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran, and then Iran retaliating throughout the Gulf.
HALA RHARRIT: Amy, it’s such a pleasure to be back with you. I wish it was under better circumstances.
But, yes, like the rest of the world, I woke up on Saturday morning to the horrific news that the United States and Israel had attacked Iran. And I had the most sinking feeling, because this is exactly what American diplomats have been trying to avoid for two decades. And before my resignation, it is exactly what I was warning against and what I was trying to alleviate and was trying to stop. And it was just a horrific feeling, knowing that the day had come and that this would absolutely not end well.
When it comes to my family, I live in Dubai, as you mentioned, and I knew that the retaliation would come quickly. And so, as a mother, I went into action mode as to what we needed to do to keep our family safe. Now, it did not take very long for the strikes to begin, and we could hear them very loudly in Dubai, unfortunately. My kids were very frightened. We could hear the fighter jets, and we could also hear the interceptions. Now, luckily for the civilian population in Dubai, there’s a robust missile defense system provided by the United States, unlike — and I have to stress — the civilian population in Gaza, that did not have the luxury of having a missile defense system or any type of defense system. So we were relatively safe. But for the sake of my children, we slept — we did not sleep. We had a sleepless night on Saturday, because the noises were scaring them, and also we were getting these automatic updates. Whether your phone is on silent, the government was pushing out these very scary-sounding eeeh, that was really, really frightening to my kids. We were all in one — in my bedroom.
And after that, we knew, my husband and I understood, and I understood deeply as an American diplomat, that this situation would only escalate. So we decided on Sunday morning; as soon as we woke up, we hit the road to Oman. And I have been here since. Now we’re in a bit of limbo, along with a lot of other American citizens, because the airspace is heavily restricted, and it’s very hard to get air flights out. So, for the time being, we’re here and trying to figure out our next steps.
AMY GOODMAN: So, there were indirect U.S.-Iran talks going on in Geneva that were facilitated by Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr bin Hamad Albusaidi, key mediator in the U.S.-Iran nuclear talks. This was the foreign minister speaking to CBS’s Face the Nation this weekend.
BADR ALBUSAIDI: The single most important achievement, I believe, is the agreement that Iran will never, ever have a nuclear material that will create a bomb. This is, I think, a big achievement. This is something that is not in the old deal that was negotiated during President Obama’s time. This is something completely new. It really makes the enrichment argument less relevant, because now we are talking about zero stockpiling. And that is very, very important, because if you cannot stockpile material that is enriched, then there is no way you can actually create a bomb, whether you enrich or don’t enrich. And I think this is really something that has been missed a lot by the media, and I want to clarify that from the standpoint of a mediator.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s really interesting, Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi, the key mediator in the U.S.-Iran nuclear talks. He flew from Geneva to Washington, D.C., apparently, word has it, to be able to directly convey to the president through the media to make sure that he was not only getting — the president was not only getting the Witkoff-Jared Kushner version of the talks, but also to say, “You have a better deal than President Obama got back in 2015.” I wanted to bring Jasmine El-Gamal into this conversation, former Middle East adviser to the Pentagon during Obama’s administration. Your response to what has taken place?
JASMINE EL-GAMAL: Well, first of all, thank you so much, Amy, for having me on. I’m a big fan of the show, and it’s really good to see Hala, as well.
I think, you know, there are really two big questions that any U.S. administration should have the answer to before it goes to war. One is: Why are we going to war? Is this necessary? Have all other avenues been exhausted? That’s one set of questions. And, of course, the other one is: What are our objectives? Are they achievable? And what is our exit strategy? That’s the second bucket of questions. And neither of those two buckets of questions have been adequately answered by the U.S. administration, by any official, whether it’s Pete Hegseth at the Defense Department, Secretary Rubio or the president himself.
AMY GOODMAN: So, let’s talk about the Trump administration’s shifting rationales for why the U.S. attacked Iran amidst ongoing negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. So, this is Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaking Monday.
SECRETARY OF STATE MARCO RUBIO: We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action. We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces. And we knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties, and perhaps even higher those killed. And then we would all be here answering questions about why we knew that and didn’t act.
AMY GOODMAN: On Tuesday, Rubio backtracked and said the decision to strike came from President Trump, not Israel. On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary [Karoline] Leavitt said Trump had a, quote, “good feeling” Iran would attack.
PRESS SECRETARY KAROLINE LEAVITT: I think the president, prior to that phone call, had a good feeling that the Iranian regime was going to strike United States assets and our personnel in the region.
AMY GOODMAN: So, Jasmine El-Gamal, as a former Pentagon official, your characterization of these shifting reasons that the U.S. has attacked Iran?
JASMINE EL-GAMAL: I mean, it obviously shows you that there was no clear plan and no well-thought-out strategy before the U.S. entered into this war. Now, I don’t want to remove all agency from President Trump. After all, he is the one who gave the order at the end. But we do know, from extensive reporting from Hala and I — I’m sure she can agree — from our time in government, that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been for decades trying to drag the U.S. into war with Iran. Senator Van Hollen yesterday said he just hadn’t found a president stupid enough to be dragged into that war.
So, he was under — we know that President Trump was under heavy pressure from Prime Minister Netanyahu to strike Iran while it was down, while it was weak. The way that the Israeli prime minister — and certainly this is true — describe Iran today is probably at its weakest point from a security and defense perspective, from the perspective of its proxies, and from an economic and internal domestic perspective, as well. So, the idea here for those who are pushing for war with Iran was that it was now or never, it was really the right time to do so.
Now, Amy, that doesn’t mean that there was an imminent threat from Iran to the United States, which is what the U.S. needs to have a proper legal basis for this war. Intelligence assessments do not agree with the president’s characterization that Iran was about to strike first. And I can tell you, having worked at the Pentagon, that it is ludicrous to expect the American people to believe that Iran would have attacked the U.S. preemptively in the middle of negotiations, especially when, as you said, according to the Omani foreign minister who was mediating, that Iran was actually trying to make some kind of progress in these talks.
And I think, lastly, it’s just important to separate two things here, which can be true at the same time. One is that this Iranian regime was a brutal, oppressive regime, and, second, that it is not a legal justification to go to war to have the president talk about his “feeling” that Iran was going to strike. And we have seen the administration, every day since then, retroactively try to provide a series of justifications and objectives for this war. And the fact that they’re doing so now, after the fact, tells you a lot about how little they were really thinking this through before they actually went to war.
AMY GOODMAN: Hala Rharrit, you’re an 18-year career diplomat. You resigned over the U.S.'s Gaza policy under President Biden, the first diplomat to publicly resign over the U.S. support for the Israeli assault on Gaza. If you can talk about the through-line from there to here — while you say that you were shocked Saturday morning, you weren't actually surprised — and what this means in terms of a wider conflict, the massive Israeli assault right now on Lebanon, with tens of thousands of Lebanese fleeing, Syrian refugees who have lived in Lebanon now crossing back over the border into Syria, terrified about what’s happening in Lebanon? Take it from there.
HALA RHARRIT: Absolutely. No, I was horrified by what was happening, but I was not at all surprised. This is what I was warning against. This is what multiple diplomats were warning against and what we were working and trying to avoid.
Now, if you rewind back to 2023 and 2024, you’ll remember that there was a lot of activity, even then, with the Iranians. Israel attacked Iran and killed Iranian commanders in Syria. Three service members in Jordan were killed, as well, by an Iranian-backed group. All of this was a lead-up that was dragging the United States into a direct conflict with Iran. And as an American diplomat, my role was to protect and defend the United States of America. And so, our warnings were “pull back, pull back.” But Netanyahu obviously had other plans.
Now, we insisted — we insisted that U.S. law would actually be followed, meaning you cannot continue to surge unconditional weapons to the state of Israel. We knew, and we were documenting, and I even reported this to Congress after my resignation, that these weapons were not being stockpiled by Israel. The weapons that we were sending to Israel were not only being used for the genocide in Gaza, but that they were going to be used for a regional conflict with Iran, which would have the proportions to bring down, really, the entire region. I don’t think we can underestimate what is actually happening now.
So, for Netanyahu, there is not two policies. It is not Gaza, West Bank, Lebanon. It is one in the same.
AMY GOODMAN: I —
HALA RHARRIT: For the state of Israel — sorry, go on.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation saying it’s been inundated with over 200 calls from members of the U.S. military regarding religious comments made by U.S. commanders about the war in Iran. One combat unit commander reportedly said the war is, quote, “part of God’s divine plan,” and that, quote, “President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth,” unquote. Last month, Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, or, as Trump calls him, the war secretary, invited the controversial Christian nationalist Pastor Doug Wilson to lead the Pentagon’s prayer service. Wilson has opposed Muslims holding public office, does not believe women should be allowed to vote. Jasmine El-Gamal, you’re a former Pentagon official. Your response to how this is being framed and the danger of this, what’s seen as a Christian crusade by some?
JASMINE EL-GAMAL: Look, I mean, obviously, it’s horrifying to hear those remarks, and there certainly has been in this second Trump administration that surge of Christian nationalism, of Christian Zionism, into U.S. policymaking when it comes to the Middle East. And it is absolutely horrifying, because it means that we are sending American soldiers, U.S., using American taxpayer money, to a region that has been ravaged over the years by successive ill-thought-out U.S. interventions. The human cost of America’s wars in the Middle East has been devastating. In just the last five days, as you mentioned earlier, almost 1,200 people killed and injured, tens of thousands displaced. The human cost is not something to be taken lightly here. And the recklessness and the callousness of these decisions that are being made by a handful of men, essentially, that are — that are upending the region, you know, and the global economy, as well, especially if it continues much, much further, is extremely irresponsible —
AMY GOODMAN: Jasmine El-Gamal, we’re going to have to —
JASMINE EL-GAMAL: — and extremely dangerous.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to have to leave it there, former Middle East adviser at the Pentagon under President Obama. Hala Rharrit is an 18-year career diplomat who resigned from the State Department over Gaza under Biden, has now moved their family to Oman because of the escalating war.
 

Who Bombed Girls’ School in Iran? Reporter Nilo Tabrizy on What We Know About Massacre,175 Killed

March 4, 2026
After a strike on a girls’ elementary school in Minab, Iran, killed at least 175 people, nearly all young schoolchildren, online reports spread disinformation about the attack, including claims that the Iranian government itself had bombed the school. Journalist Nilo Tabrizy describes how outside reporters have been able to verify the attack despite Iran’s internet blackout and says attempts are still being made to confirm whether the strike is attributable to the U.S. or to Israel.
 
Transcript
AMY GOODMAN: It happened early Saturday morning. One of the first strikes of the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran hit a girls’ school in Minab, in southern Iran. The death toll is now at least 175, most of them primary school girls. On Tuesday, thousands of people filled the streets of Minab for a mass funeral. The girls’ ages range from 7 to 12. Iran’s school week runs from Saturday to Thursday. When the missile hit the school on Saturday morning, the girls were in their morning session. After the strike, parents searched for their children among the dead.
PARENT: [translated] This is her math book, Mohanna Zari, first grade. This is her folder with her schoolwork, her homework here. What wrong has she done? Her color pencil box is still in her bag.
AMY GOODMAN: While Iran blamed Israel for the attack, neither Israel nor the United States has taken responsibility for the bombing. On Tuesday, the United Nations Human Rights Office urged the forces behind the attack on the girls’ school to investigate.
RAVINA SHAMDASANI: In Iran, the Iran Red Crescent Society reports put the death toll at 787. In the single deadliest and devastating incident, dozens of girls were reportedly killed and injured when their primary school in Minab in the south of the country was struck during the school day. The high commissioner calls for a prompt, impartial and thorough investigation into the circumstances of the attack. The onus is on the forces that carried out the attack to investigate it. We call on them to make public the findings and to ensure accountability and redress for the victims.
AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by investigative reporter Nilo Tabrizy. She’s worked extensively with open-source material to report on Iran for The Washington Post and The New York Times. She’s been tracking what she calls the information wars online over the school bombing. Her recent piece for New Lines Magazine is headlined “Investigation Debunks Claims IRGC Bombed Iranian School.” She joins us now in studio.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain exactly what you understand took place. And it’s really hard right now with the internet almost totally turned off in Iran.
NILO TABRIZY: Yeah, absolutely. So, right now we’re not necessarily able to get in touch with eyewitnesses or, you know, friends and families of the young girls who were killed, but we were able to verify the video. So, there was one video that I saw probably around 6:30 a.m. Eastern Time on Saturday, and I was able to verify that and know that the video that we saw that showed at least, you know, half of the structure was hit. You know, two stories were torn down. The scene was really graphic. I saw things like a small child’s hand in the rubble, blood-stained backpacks, homework scattered everywhere. And so, when I see scenes like that, it’s important to verify and know that it’s from the current moment, so I was able to do that.
And then, once I found the location of the school itself, just being able to map, you know, some of the features we saw in the video with satellite imagery, I wanted to understand what was around there. You know, Minab is a small town in the southern Hormozgan province. I was trying to understand why the school was struck. What I saw, and what many others online saw, as well, is that it was close to an IRGC Navy barracks.
AMY GOODMAN: And explain what the IRGC is.
NILO TABRIZY: The IRGC is the Revolutionary Guard. So, there was an IRGC, you know, Navy barracks around there. And I wanted to, you know, understand: Is this an issue of wrong targeting? Once I looked at satellite imagery, it was clear that for — years ago, it used to be part of — you know, it looked like it was very close to the base, part of the base. As far back as 2016, it was completely walled off. There was a separation between that school and the IRGC Navy barracks. And, as well, the walls of the school were painted with these bright murals. So, obviously, if I can see as an open-source investigator that as far back as, you know, eight years ago, these brightly colored walls are visible, I know that this is not part of an IRGC base, and so should anybody that’s adding this to a target list.
AMY GOODMAN: You’ve reported that the pro-Pahlavi monarchy accounts have been spreading a narrative that this was a failed IRGC rocket. And explain what these forces are.
NILO TABRIZY: Yes. So, right now there’s — I think there’s a — people are trying to coopt a narrative or, you know, put forth what’s happening that feels convenient to the story that they want to push and the goals that they have. And right now it seems that any reporting on civilian casualties becomes a flashpoint. And there was one quite prominent user on X that tweeted out and said that this — that actually the Iranian state already took responsibility for the strike. So we started to look at that claim. The channel that they put forward was not an Iranian state official channel. It was a Telegram channel that’s a pro-monarchy channel. So, you can understand, OK, where this type of misinformation is starting to spread.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the response on the ground, this mass funeral that took place in Minab, and how the media is covering this around the world.
NILO TABRIZY: Yeah, I mean, many member — many journalists were quite horrified to see an attack like this. Right? The death toll is up to 175 people, many of them young schoolgirls. And right now I think people are trying to verify imagery of this. So, there were some claims saying, “Oh, this aerial imagery showing, you know, the small graves that were dug comes from a different image in Pakistan,” while there’s been a lot of great reporting, some by BBC, some by The New York Times, that have verified this aerial imagery and said that, no, indeed, this is of the current moment. This is for these funerals, as well. So, this is a incident that many of us are looking at, because it absolutely demands accountability.
AMY GOODMAN: And what has the U.S. and Iran said?
NILO TABRIZY: The U.S. said that it was looking into this incident. And Iran has said this was on the fault of Israel, this is what happens in an air campaign. And we’re still trying to figure that out. So, as it stands, we need more information. Either we need remnants of the weapons that was used from the scene. We haven’t been able to obtain that. Or what would — another visual clue that would be helpful is to see the moment of impact. If we saw the missile hit, we could maybe look at the angle where it comes from and get more information.
So we still don’t exactly who did what. Some of the claims coming out, as well, just about the general operation, have said that Israel is mostly responsible for Tehran, you know, western Iran strikes, and that the southern Iran strikes are being done by the U.S., which is why some reporters have gone to the U.S. and asked for answers.
AMY GOODMAN: UNESCO says, “The killing of pupils in a place dedicated to learning constitutes a grave violation of the protection afforded to schools under international humanitarian law.” Nilo?
NILO TABRIZY: Absolutely. I mean, this is not — you know, a school for young girls is absolutely not a viable nor is it a legal target, especially as we’re trying to still understand the aims of this type of operation. It doesn’t seem a legitimate target based on the information that we know at all. And it really calls in — you know, it highlights that no matter if there’s an air campaign, whether the objectives are understood or not, that civilians will always pay the price in these types of conflicts. And right now it’s the young girls in Minab.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you, Nilo, for being with us, and ask you a final question. What most surprised you about this horrific attack?
NILO TABRIZY: I was surprised to see that people were trying to doubt it immediately, or saying that just because they’re civilian casualties, that’s an Islamic Republic talking point. No, these deaths happened. They’re important for us to investigate, and all of us should be interrogating what happened.
AMY GOODMAN: And can I ask you — you were with The Washington Post. We all know that The Washington Post has gutted its staff, laid off a third of the staff, almost the entire Middle East division. You should be doing this for The Washington Post. So, what’s happening without coverage?
NILO TABRIZY: Yeah, I mean, I would love to continue reporting this for the Post. That’s not what’s happening right now. I’m seeing my colleagues, that I deeply respect, that are still there, scrambling and trying to cover this important moment, but they’re not getting voices from inside Iran, and understandably. Connectivity is really difficult right now. That’s why you need reporters like myself, like my colleague Yeganeh, who was the bureau chief for Iran based in Turkey. That’s why this reporting is deeply important in this moment.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, thank you for doing it, Nilo Tabrizy, author, investigative journalist, who’s worked extensively with open-source material to report on Iran for The Washington Post and The New York Times. Her recent piece for New Lines Magazine, and we will link to it, is titled “Investigation Debunks Claims IRGC Bombed Iranian School.” We’ll link to it at democracynow.org. Back in a minute.
 

“Iran Is Not Going to Surrender”: Johns Hopkins Prof. Says U.S. and Israel Underestimate Iran

The U.S.-Israeli war on Iran is now in its fifth day. Following the assassination of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Israel has made it clear that it intends to target any official successors. Observers also warn that Israel could soon deploy its “Dahiya doctrine,” a military strategy it first developed in Lebanon that involves carpet-bombing densely populated residential areas. Despite U.S. hopes for a short engagement, however, Iran appears to be settling in for a “war of attrition” against “the biggest military superpower in world history, and the only nuclear-armed state in the Middle East,” says scholar Narges Bajoghli. “This could turn into a regional war of a scale that will make the past 25 years of forever wars in the Middle East seem like a walk in the park.”
 
Transcript
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.
Israel has launched another wave of airstrikes against Iran, with loud blasts reported in Tehran this morning. As the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran enters a fifth day, the reported death toll in Iran has surpassed 1,000, with the victims including many children. This is a resident of Tehran who was forced to flee to Armenia.
AMIR ZAKHARI: [translated] I am from Tehran. There were constant bombings. … There are 50 to 60 bombings daily. Very scary. It is unimaginable for the people with children. … Food stores are working. The hospitals are working, too. So do the fueling stations. Nothing else is working. … There’s practically nobody in the city of Tehran. Everybody moves in the countryside, those who have cottages over there. Others stay indoors. The city is deserted.
AMY GOODMAN: This comes as President Trump said Tuesday the U.S. Navy could soon begin escorting oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, after a commander in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps threatened to set ablaze any ship that passes through there. Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz in response to the U.S.-Israeli joint attacks, disrupting global energy markets as the strait is a key waterway for oil and gas.
Meanwhile, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the Trump administration had sunk an Iranian warship in the Indian Ocean, leaving over a hundred people missing.
Iranian media reported today’s funeral ceremony for Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was assassinated Saturday, has been postponed. His son, Mojtaba Khamenei, has reportedly emerged as the front-runner to replace his father as Iran’s supreme leader, according to The New York Times. Israel has said whoever is chosen as new supreme leader will become, quote, “an unequivocal target for elimination,” unquote. Israel has already bombed the Assembly of Experts building in Qom, where the decision was expected to be made.
For more, we’re joined here in New York by Narges Bajoghli. She’s an associate professor of anthropology and Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, or SAIS.
Professor, welcome back to Democracy Now! Talk about the latest, the significance of what’s happening right now, and about the killing, the assassination of the Supreme Leader Khamenei.
NARGES BAJOGHLI: So, it seems like one of the first strikes that happened on Tehran in — as soon as this war began was a decapacitation strike on the supreme leader, as well as other military and political leaders in the country. It’s important to note that the supreme leader did not go into hiding this time like he did in June. He didn’t go into bunkers. And so, in many ways, and because he was killed in his compound, he wanted to be martyred this time around.
AMY GOODMAN: He was dying of cancer already.
NARGES BAJOGHLI: He was 86 years old. He was already a very elderly gentleman and sick. But he now has become a symbol of martyrdom and resistance against Israeli and American war, and that has significant meaning within Shia culture. And this is why we’re seeing, as you showed earlier on this show, protests happening in Pakistan, as well as in Bahrain, as well as India and across the Muslim world, because he was not just a leader of a country, but for many Shia Muslims, they also saw him as a spiritual leader.
AMY GOODMAN: And can you talk about Mojtaba Khamenei?
NARGES BAJOGHLI: Mojtaba Khamenei is his son, and he’s long been rumored to be next in line. It is still unclear whether that’s actually the case. I know The New York Times is reporting that, but we have to wait and see if he — what we do know is that because the Iranians have been obviously looking at and studying the way that the Israelis and Americans do war across the region, they know that their MO is decapacitation strikes. So, in the lead-up to this war, the leader in Iran had already ordered across the government to create three and four lines of succession for every major post. So, they know that whoever is announced next might be next in line for assassination. And they —
AMY GOODMAN: I mean, Israel announced that.
NARGES BAJOGHLI: And Israel knows that, as well, yep.
AMY GOODMAN: They said that the next person would be the target of —
NARGES BAJOGHLI: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: — of elimination, I think they put it.
NARGES BAJOGHLI: Yeah, and this is what they’ve done across the region.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the doctrine that Israel is citing, what they’re going to do next.
NARGES BAJOGHLI: So, yesterday, there were reports on Israeli media that Bibi Netanyahu, Benjamin Netanyahu, has said that he wants to start enacting the Dahiya doctrine in Tehran. The Dahiya doctrine is a doctrine that the Israeli military created for striking the southern suburbs of Beirut in the many wars that Israel has waged on Lebanon. And what the Dahiya doctrine is is carpet-bombing residential infrastructure and critical infrastructure of densely populated cities in order to eventually turn the population against their ruling establishments. That’s sort of the idea of it. But what it means is that they want to carpet-bomb really densely populated areas in Tehran.
AMY GOODMAN: Let’s talk about Iran’s strategy. Netanyahu has been saying that Iran is weak. And now the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, is trying to walk back comments that Israel was going to attack Iran no matter what, and the U.S. had to engage in this attack on Iran, because, otherwise, the U.S. would be attacked.
NARGES BAJOGHLI: So, for over a year now in Washington, you would hear over and over again this Israeli talking point that Iran is very weak, that it’s the weakest it’s ever been, and that this is the right time to now strike it. And so, eventually we got to a point, as in this weekend, in which those strikes happened. And, you know, we’re only in day five of the war now, and I think part of what we’re seeing is that the Israelis and the Americans have underestimated Iran’s capabilities to strike back hard against the region.
Iran is up against the biggest military superpower in world history and the only nuclear-armed state in the Middle East. So, in military terms, yes, it is not as powerful as those countries. However, it has sort of defined and declared and developed its defense doctrine over all of these decades to be asymmetrical warfare against these kinds of forces in the region. And so, what we’re going to see play out, Iran is not going to surrender. Iran is going to continue to fight this and to inflict as much damage, not just on Israel, but, importantly, on the American security architecture in the Gulf region.
AMY GOODMAN: At the White House Tuesday, a reporter asked President Trump about the worst-case scenario in Iran. This is what he said.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, I don’t know if there’s a worst case. We have them very much beaten militarily, from the military standpoint. They’re still lobbing some missiles. At some point they won’t even be able to do that, because we’re hitting all of their carriers. We’re hitting all of their missile stock. You know, they built up all these missiles over the last few years. They had a lot of them. They’ve shot a lot of them. And we’re knocking out a lot. 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. We don’t want that to happen. It would probably be the worst. You go through this, and then in five years you realize you put somebody in who is no better. So, we’d like to see somebody in there that’s going to bring it back for the people. And we’ll see what happens with the people. You know, they have their chance. We’ve said, “Don’t do it yet. If you’re going to go out and protest, don’t do it yet. It’s very dangerous out there. A lot of bombs are being dropped.” But I would say that would be about the worst.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Bajoghli, your response?
NARGES BAJOGHLI: The way that Iran is responding to all of these strikes right now is by — it knows that the U.S. has critical low amounts of interceptors in the region, and it’s playing the long game. The Americans do not want a long-term war and a war of attrition. And Iran is absorbing the hits and is going for a long-term war of attrition. And this is something that both the Americans, the Israelis and those in the region have to sort of consider.
AMY GOODMAN: And the CIA arming Kurds?
NARGES BAJOGHLI: Yeah, the CIA, there’s reporting —
AMY GOODMAN: Where do the Kurds live, right through to Iraq?
NARGES BAJOGHLI: Right through to Iraq and also on the border with Turkey. If the CIA does this, and the Kurds come in and sort of foment an internal uprising, we’re going to see this really continue. And then Turkey will probably be giving a lot of intel to the Iranians on this, because this is not in Turkish national interests, either. This is the — this is the danger of this moment. This has already turned into a regional conflagration, and this could turn into a regional war of a scale that will make the past 25 years of forever wars in the Middle East seem like a walk in the park.
AMY GOODMAN: Narges Bajoghli, I want to thank you for being with us, associate professor of anthropology and Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, co-author of How Sanctions Work: Iran and the Impact of Economic Warfare, also author of Iran Reframed: Anxieties of Power in the Islamic Republic.