Letters from an American - February 28, 2026

Episode Date: March 2, 2026

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February 28, 26. Early this morning, the U.S. and Israel launched a major military assault on Iran. Early reports suggested that Israel targeted senior officials in Iran's government, while the U.S. attacked military targets. The U.S. government named the assault Operation Epic Fury. Iran's state media reports the strikes killed at least 200 people, including 118, students from a girls' school and wounded more than 700. Iran retaliated with strikes against Israel, where one person was killed and 121 others injured, and with strikes on U.S. bases in Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. U.S. Central Command said there are no U.S. casualties, and there has been little damage to U.S. facilities.

Shortly after the strikes, President Donald J. Trump, who was in Florida at Mar-a-Lago, posted an eight-minute video on social media announcing major combat operations in Iran. He warned, the lives of courageous American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties. That often happens in war. But we're doing this not for now. We're doing this for the future. And it is a noble mission. Trump referred to that mission vaguely, rehashing a litany of complaints over the tensions and sometimes combat between the U.S. and Iran since 1979, but indicated the U.S. and Israel were attacking to prevent the country's murderous regime from becoming a nuclear-armed Iran. In June 2025, the Trump administration struck Iran's nuclear laboratories at Fordo, Natanz, and Ishfahan.

after which Trump insisted the U.S. had completely obliterated Iran's nuclear facilities. In his message, Trump said the U.S. in negotiations afterward warned Iran never to resume their malicious pursuit of nuclear weapons, and we sought repeatedly to make a deal. We tried. They wanted to do it. They didn't want to do it. Again, they wanted to do it, they didn't want to do it, they didn't know what was happening, they just wanted to practice evil. but Iran refused just as it has for decades and decades. Trump did not mention the landmark 2015 nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA,

negotiated by Trump's predecessor Barack Obama that limited Iran's nuclear capabilities. Trump withdrew the U.S. from that accord in 2018, and within a year, Iran was ignoring the limits the JCPOA imposed. But hours after his team posted his video, Trump told Natalie Allison and Tara Kopp of the Washington Post that his real goal is regime change for Iran. All I want is freedom for the people, he told the reporters in a phone call shortly after 4 a.m. Eastern Time. In his video address, Trump told Iran's armed forces and police they must lay down your weapons and have complete immunity, or in the alternative, face certain death.

He told the Iranian people that the hour of your freedom is at hand. Stay sheltered. Don't leave your home. It's very dangerous outside. Bombs will be dropping everywhere. When we're finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.

Michael Burnbaum, John Hudson, Karen DeYoung, Natalie Allison, and Suad McKennett reported this evening in the Washington Post. that U.S. intelligence officers assessed that a threat from Iran was not imminent, saying it was unlikely that Iran would pose a threat to the U.S. mainland for at least 10 years. The International Atomic Energy Agency says there is no evidence Iran has an active plan for creating nuclear weapons, and the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency assessed that if Iran tries to build an intercontinental ballistic missile, it will take them at least a decade.

This afternoon, Trump posted on social media that Ayatollah Ali Khomeini, a cleric who has ruled Iran as supreme leader since 1989, was killed in the strikes, a fact later confirmed by Iran. After celebrating Khomeini's death, Trump posted, this is the single greatest chance

for the Iranian people to take back their country. He claimed, without offering evidence, that many of Iran's soldiers and police no longer want to fight and are looking for immunity from us, and expressed hope that these forces will peacefully merge with the Iranian patriots and work together as a unit to bring the country back to the greatness it deserves. Notably, he did not suggest how one would get immunity, or from whom, or what the process of taking back the country would look like,

just months after the regime killed tens of thousands of protesters. He also appears unconcerned that the coordinated response to the attack from Iran's leadership, even after the death of Khomeini, suggests regime change will not be a question of knocking out the leader. In his triumphant post, Trump concluded with an Orwellian, War is Peace statement, writing that the process of rebuilding should start soon, because in just a day, the bombing had very much destroyed and even, obliterated so much of the country. The heavy and pinpoint bombing, however, will continue uninterrupted throughout the week, or as long as necessary to achieve our objective of peace

throughout the Middle East and indeed the world. Trump's objectives for going to war sound vague because they are. The event that triggered his attack is also vague. So far, there is no evidence of an imminent threat that required the attack. His prescription for what his war is trying to accomplish is also vague. It's a given that this sort of vaguely justified attack on another country usually reflects that the leaders in the attacking country are worried about losing power and are launching a war to try to get disaffected people to rally around the flag. Indeed, social media users are already referring to the attack as, Epstein Fury, suggesting it is an attempt to distract from the frequent appearance of the president's

name in the Epstein files, as well as the recent story that the Department of Justice illegally withheld an allegation that Trump raped a 13-year-old. Before a state of the union address, Trump's approval rating had fallen to an abysmal 37%, while 59% of Americans disapproved. His speech did little to convince Americans that he is trying to address their concerns about the economy. G. Eliot Morris, of strength and numbers, reported that after the speech, only 30% of Americans think Trump is focused on the things that matter to them, while 57% think he is focused on other things. The January inflation report out yesterday showed prices rising faster than expected, inspiring Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to suggest Americans should buy cheaper food.

Most of the cheap cuts of meat are very inexpensive, he said. You can buy liver or the cheaper cuts of steak. Scholar of authoritarianism, Timothy Snyder, noted in thinking about that Trump's personal corruption is another interpretive framework for thinking about his decision to go to war. Trump's sudden foray into regime change, after years of attacking other presidents who tried it, raises the question of whether he is acting for other countries in the Middle East he considers his allies. Given the stupefying overt corruption of the Trump administration, Snyder wrote, one must ask whether the United States Armed Forces are now being used on a per-hire basis. Snyder noted that Gulf Arab states, eager to curb Iran's power, have generated extremely generous packages of compensation for companies associated with Trump personally and with members of his family.

Last week, Hugo Lowell of The Guardian reported that Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and Middle East Envoy Steve Whitkoff, both of whom have deep financial ties to the Middle East, would guide the decision of whether to strike Iran. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been lobbying for U.S. strikes on Iran for a long time. And hours after Snyder wrote,

Washington Post-Journalists Burnbaum, Hudson, DeYoung, Allison, and McKinnett reported that Trump decided to attack Iran after Saudi crown prince Muhammad bin Salman made multiple private phone calls to Trump over the past month

advocating a U.S. while at the same time publicly calling for a diplomatic solution. At Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall pointed out that as his power diminishes, Trump is leaning heavily into the presidential prerogative powers where his power is most untrammeled, where the loss of political power doesn't really matter. Almost no presidential power is more clearly in that character than the president's control over the military. And that is the crux of the matter. For all the vagueness of Trump's justifications and goals in attacking Iran, he has launched a war, his word, on his own, assuming the powers of a dictator. The Constitution gives to Congress, not to the President, the power to declare war. After fighting for their independence against a king, they considered a tyrant. The men of the Constitutional Convention were not about to hand the power of raising an army to,

a single man. One delegate commented that he never expected to hear in a republic a motion to empower the executive alone to declare war. Trump's attack on Iran also violates the charter of the United Nations, under which members promise not to attack other states. This particular attack raises the specter of a larger war. In an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council today, U.N. Secretary General Antonio Gutierrez warned that everything must be done to prevent a further escalation in the Middle East. Trump launched his attack while lawmakers were not scheduled to be in Washington, D.C. for a week, but Democrats are demanding Congress return immediately to vote on whether to continue military action against Iran. Senator Andy Kim, a Democrat of New Jersey,

said in an interview, this is one of the most dangerous efforts that Trump is undertaking in the second term, trying to normalize war without Congress, trying to normalize the idea that a president can do whatever they want when it comes to foreign policy. Huge, though, this is,

there is a larger issue behind it. Since taking office again, Trump has gone out of his way to define tariffs, deportations, and so on, as part of national states. security policy. The president is supposed to get Congress's buy-in to go to war, in part because that requirement forces an executive to convince the American people that a contemplated military action is worth their tax dollars and their lives. But Trump made little effort to explain his Iran attack

to the American people, and they oppose it. Morris notes that support for attacking Iran has held fairly steady for months and remained so after the strikes, with 34% in favor of them and 44% opposed. This is incredibly low support for a foreign war, Morris writes, and support for military action tends to be highest at the start of a war. Trump's attack on Iran scorns the will of the people and their constitutional right to decide whether they want to pay for a war with their money, and their lives. That disdain for democratic government reveals that Trump's military adventure against Iran

is also, fundamentally, an attack on the United States of America. Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, dead in Massachusetts. Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.