Some More News - Even More News: War With Iran, But It's Not A War, But Yes It Is And They Started It

Episode Date: March 3, 2026

Hi. In today's episode, Katy, Cody, and Jonathan talk about the U.S. and Israeli assault on Iran, the Trump administration's shifting justifications and lies, and the many possibilities of what happens next.As always, we recorded right before that big thing that happened.PATREON: https://patreon.com/somemorenewsMERCH: https://shop.somemorenews.comYOUTUBE MEMBERSHIP: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvlj0IzjSnNoduQF0l3VGng/join#EvenMoreNews #Iran #trumpadministrationSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Hi, everyone. Today we are talking about the U.S. and Israel's assault on Iran, Trump's many vague motivations for war, and what comes next. Hello and welcome back to Even More News, the first and only news podcast. My name is Katie Stoll. Hi, Katie. Hi. Hey, there we go. I'm Cody. Yep. What's going on? Lots of stuff going on, Cody Johnston. In the world, newswise. Not in the United States of America, just the world.

Jonathan is also here. Do not fret. Boy, we have a lot to get through today, folks. So we're just going to dive right in. We are at war with Iran. I've always been at war. Depending on who you listen to, it's either not a war or we've been at war with them for 47 years. And this is ending the war.

peace part. This is the piece of it. Right. This is the piece of a, this major escalation is, is the peace from our peaceful president. Well, a lot has happened in the last 50 or 60 hours, I think. So early Saturday morning, the U.S. and Israel launched an aerial bombardment of Iran called Operation Epic Fury. Those initial strikes killed Ayatollah, Ali Khamene, and many other senior members of the regime, as well as many civilians and an estimated 180 young children at a girls elementary school in the southern city of Monab. And then the next day, Trump seemed to suggest that he was looking for an off ramp saying he was interested in talking to the IRGC leaders. Those leaders, the ones that we did not kill are not interested in talking right now, which makes sense. Is it because of, oh, because of the actions?

Well, because we did the ceasefire. We stopped this. We did these talks nine months ago. And I guess they're thinking, well, we could make peace right now and then just wait for the U.S. and Israel to attack us again in nine months. Right. So Trump is not getting the quick victory strike the way he may be anticipated or the way he has in the past. I'm just going to say that if he anticipated a quick victory, I don't. it's so hard to get accurate reporting out of this administration,

given that they've kicked out every news organization that aren't sycophants. That said, from what I understand, it's been very clear of through war games that they're, and just knowledge of history and of the region and of our past attempts over there. This isn't something that's a quick fix. you know any idea that this would be some quick in and out glory moment for Donald Trump would be very foolish to believe at any point well yeah I mean that that would happen immediately that's the people his his people seem to be of the mind that this is how it's supposed to go and the problem with the forever wars were that they were long not that they have happened. Like, it's not the actions of them or how many people died or there's no, it's not the moral or ethical aspect of that. It's just, well, they went on for too long. But if you go in and you just do it, then it's actually really good and great and it works really well. And it's baffling to,

it was really baffling to see all these people after like 20 hours be like, see? You can just do whatever and it's fine as if that like time paused like we went in we did this and we did it and now like time stops and there's no there are no ramifications there are no like second third order events that are going to spiral from this and it's really really really weird to see people just like take the victory lap suddenly it's this bizarre like truncated version of like all this stuff we've done right and like i feel like what happened to in venice way where we kidnapped the president, kind of bolstered them into thinking that they could do this.

And just like, yeah, it worked there. Obviously, it will work here too. And whatever happens next is really not, like, as Lindsay Graham said on Sunday. Like, it's not Donald Trump's job to figure out what comes next. We killed the bad guy. Right. End of things. So even if it had been a quick in and out, even if the war was over now, it still

wouldn't justify it or make whatever happens next necessarily good. We have no idea. The Pandora's box has been opened and obviously everyone hopes for a world of freedom that the Iranian people have not had where protesters will not be slaughtered by the tens of thousands. But that is now out of any, no one can control that and that quick in and out didn't happen. And so now the future for the Iranian people is hanging in the balance and is unknown. Yeah. And we're mired in a potential forever war. Right, because they don't know what they're doing and they don't know what they were going to do because

like every interview with the president of the country, he basically says like, yeah, I thought, you know, they at one point he's saying that he thought he assumed like, well, the regime will like hand over all their arms to the people. once we get rid of them. Okay, what? And then they had like, they had like plans of like, well, we're going to get rid of this guy and we got a list of people we're going to use to do the regime change, which they're not doing. They're not doing regime change, but they are changing their regime.

And they had this list of people who they wanted to change their team with, but then they fucking killed them. And so I guess they're number two and number three picks are dead. And so like, what are you doing? So what is it? Was it, this isn't a regime change. We don't have a plan. you have a plan? This is so

when people compare it to Israel, to the protests against Israel, well, there's some clear reasons why there is such a huge protest movement against Israel's genocide, and that is because they are our ally, and we, our taxes are supporting that. And I'm not saying that people

shouldn't be outraged about the slaughtering of civilians in Iran, but also we created this situation. It's so much more complicated than than what meets the eye. We installed a pro-Western Shah, who then was also awful and was overthrown by this regime.

And we have created this Pandora's box decades and decades ago. And so to come into this place with this administration, with absolutely no fucking clue what they're doing, to just say, yeah, we're going to hand it over to the people now. It's in your court. What do you think this system is? This is a very entrenched system. They know that Kameni was an old man.

He died a martyr. There is a system in place. There are people ready to step in. The people with the guns are still, you know, oppressing the Iranian people. So what are we doing? What was the justification? Is it to freedom? Great.

What's the plan? Is it national security? I have yet to see a single people. of evidence to say that we had any sort of a threat to America, that there was any sort of an emergency to justify this. What we are creating is more chaos. According to, I mean, CNN, Scott Jennings said breaking news, according to government officials, that Iran was planning on preemptive strikes against us within a week. And so that's what they said. And so that's what happened. But also the Pentagon 12 hours later said, no, that's not true at all. So.

Yeah, the Pentagon told Congress in congressional briefings. No, there was no evidence that they were going to strike any bases or any of our forces in the Middle East. So Scott Jennings is a... Oh. I guess the Pentagon is saying that Scott Jennings is a filthy liar. Bit of a rub, bit of a bit of a dullard. No, they're throwing everything they can at this, or at least Trump is. He is just floating every possible thing because he's posting, oh, Iran tried to steal the 20. 20 election or they did. It was them the whole time. Iran tried to have me killed a couple years ago and I got him first. The freedom for the Iranian people, he doesn't care because he was going to put those same people in charge. Whatever you, whatever you want it to be, whatever makes people happy now is the reason we're doing this. But like, it seems in hindsight so obvious that the justifications for the Iraq war were wrong and silly. But at the time, they put in a lot of work to try to sell these dangers to people.

And it's coming back to bite them that they put in no work whatsoever to try to convince anyone that Iran was an imminent threat to not just U.S. forces overseas here. they were saying oh they're two weeks away from getting a nuclear bomb that can reach the united states what but also like you months after we obliterated all of their nuclear capabilities supposedly also like you know after we after we blew up the deal and like all these steps to to push into this sort of state where we're at it's i mean those are i think those are all the excuses i have seen like there's like six or seven reasons oh it doesn't It just depends.

Not comprehensive. It's just like, it's just whatever. It is actually, it's so appalling and it's almost bizarre how little they've done to convince anybody that this is something we should be doing. Heggseth today said, we didn't start this war, but under President Trump, we are finishing it. Their war on Americans has become our retribution against their Ayatollah. They're doing this like 1984 stuff constantly. And I know evoking 1984 is like kind of old hat at this point, but like they are saying that like, yeah, this is a word that they started.

There's a reason it's been kind of prescient. And I guess Orwell was a little pessimistic that it would come. Although they were doing 1984 shit in 1984. But like they're one of the White House accounts posted like a graphic that's like President Trump is ending the war that has been waged against us by them for four. It's absurd. And it works on some of the people who like, you know, it's going to pay off for them down the line. But like, we started this. I mean, we set off this chain of events by getting involved in the region.

No, we just bombed them. We just started fucking bombing them. I know. I know. I know historically all this sort of stuff. But like literally right now, I'm like, but we just fucking started bombing them. What do you mean? And again, I.

I need to be clear. I'm not a fan of this regime. I think there are solid arguments for intervening in some capacity, but it has to be very specific. It has to be a plan. You have to have congressional approval. You have to have so many other things in place. And we're making it worse. I don't know. I've reached out to some of my, you know, Iranian, Persian friends. who have family in the region, and it's so complicated. It's so complicated and heartbreaking, and it always has been, you know, this love for their beautiful country, full of history and culture, and the oppression of this regime. But what happens next?

Are you going to make it worse? Yes, is the answer. What is the end goal here? Because it's not to save the people here. It's not that. No, it's not. As evidence by murdering all those little girls. Yeah, and that's still, I mean, I don't even know if that's going to be actually investigated

what happened there. They're already trying to say that, oh, the IRGC admits it was them. Why would they admit that? Why would they admit that it was them? They have, they're under bombardment. They could easily just say, oh, no, it was Israel. This is now just like the slop of war, I call it. Yes, that is 100% what is going on.

It is, I mean, they're fucking senators and congresspeople just tweeting videos from video games being like, yeah, we took them down. I was like, no, sir, that's from a video game. You're just falling for all the slop going out there. And it's, they all wanted to do this. It's war with Iran has always been like the juicy little morsel on the table. They've wanted it for so long. And the way they talk about it, obviously, it depends on the hour or the minute. It depends on the person.

Hegset this morning was saying how, you know, I think it's irresponsible or stupid or whatever to like say out loud the timetable we expect to our enemies. An hour later, Trump was like, yeah, I wanted to be like four weeks. Like it's, they just, it's a. Well, because he can't stop. Like, no one else would have admitted, oh, yeah, we killed a bunch of the people. We thought we were going to put in charge, which is a wild thing to admit. because it means you screwed up,

you're both admitting to a mistake and not really seeming that remorseful over killing people that you thought should be the leaders of countries. If you think they should be the leaders of countries and you killed them, shouldn't you feel bad about that? Like, none of this makes any sense

and you can see the unraveling of him. And I'm not good, like, I wish this hadn't happened. Even if this is what is the final unraveling of MAGA, if this is what people, pushes him under 30%. Like whatever. Like it was bound to happen. But he is so over his head in this. And he thought it was just, he thought it was so simple. And he learned that because Venezuela ended up being very simple for him.

Not for him. Right. Not for Venezuela and for the rest of their lives. But for him, this stuff has been so simple. And now they're coming to him and they're saying, well, Mr. President, we have this. But if we do this, then we do that. And if this happens and Trump doesn't operate like that. Trump is on ballroom duty, you know? Exactly. He wants, yeah, and he wants to be the war guy, obviously, to distract from the files. And because midterms are coming up and all the reporting will, I'm sure, get to next time about elections and so on. But he just wanted to do this and thought it would be easy for some stupid fucking reason. And they're saying all this sort of stuff. And now they're also saying Cuba.

And it's just because there's no reason. because they didn't, they didn't even bother manufacturing consent for this beyond just sort of like the American media, just sort of kind of wanting war with Iran generally. Like they've always kind of been doing it. But like this regime has not actually tried to manufacture consent for this. And they just did it. And if there's no clear cut reason and you're saying like, well, it's because of like human rights abuses. Well, how many nations have those? And are you going to do this to every single nation? to everyone. Oh, they, they, they interfered with our election. Well, you're also saying that China interfered with our election and you're going to, like, declare a state of emergency because of what China did. So, like, are you going to do this to China?

Are you going to start just a bunch of these little wars? Because eventually those little wars become very big. And I don't know, it's just very, very absurd. And I keep seeing that against this mentality of like, you can just go in. You can kill a guy. You just be done with it. And I don't know. the war uh there's a one of famous wars uh i think they call it the war to end all wars it didn't do that um

but after a famous assassination it the war the world war didn't start for like a month or something like that and to think that like well nothing's going to happen now is really really um it's not naive because i don't think they think that they maybe they did think that they would just end this i don't think they care i don't know i think that at this point at this point i think that at this point You double down, double down, double down. Everyone's making jokes. Operation Epstein distraction, whatever. And ha ha, funny.

But also, yeah, just... Keep the headlines coming. Keep it coming. Just be aggressive. Overwhelm. Get us into wars after war after war. Or at the very least, just do as throw as much shit at the wall while you can so that his legacy is what? Peaceful.

That's right. It's not like, yeah, it's, you know, it's not because of the Eustin files, but that certainly helps. Like, again, like, this is something that they've all wanted. They all want to do war with Iran. Over the weekend, some Republican took the war with Iran meme and changed all the words to be not about war with Iran. It's like, dude, you're starting a war with Iran. What do you do it? And I'm not saying that this will spiral into World War III.

I'm not trying to be a fearmonger. But this is how it starts. You enter a war into a region with complex geopolitical situations. And now Iran is striking out at our bases throughout the region. There's rumors and talk about, and I don't know how much is true or how much isn't true. I need to say that caveat. Again, we have very limited reporting that we can truly trust. from out of the White House.

But by all accounts, our stockpile of missiles and interceptors and all of that stuff is running low. Do we have enough resources to protect all of our assets in the region, to protect our allies? What happens if China does

decide to use this as an opportunity to invade Taiwan? What's happening with Russia? There are a lot of big question marks. I mean, that's why we got all those new factories. That's why we got all those new factories. To build the missiles.

And I'm not trying to fearmonger with that, but it is important for people to be aware of all the different factors at play and that this could go south so quickly so fast. It's just becoming clear that they're not prepared for this and it was a huge mistake and they don't really have a plan obviously and they don't really know why they did it.

They clearly didn't anticipate the things that happened in the last, last like 48 hours happening. They didn't think about it. They didn't think one move ahead on the chessboard, let alone six or seven. And the lack of knowledge from like major players in this, not just about Iranian history, but world history is pretty startling because Mark Wayne Mullen, Senator Mark Wayne Mullen of Oklahoma.

Oh, he tried to grab that sign on the state union. He tried to grab the sign that's a union? Yes. that guy. A hero. The four, our four named congressman. He's been on TV a lot lately and

he's the guy who seemed to in talking of the history seem to think that Kamenei is Khomeini and similar names, whatever, that they were the same guy from 1979 to today. But he also... Ayatollah. Aetola.

Yeah, that was one Ayatollah. What you named two guys Ayatola? That doesn't make sense. Why? He thinks it's a, it doesn't matter. Does he think it's like a, sorry. Yesterday he goes on CNN and Wolf Blitzer's asking him like, hey, if this war drags on and stuff, are the American public going to be cool with military losses? And instead of really talking about that, Mark Wayne Mullen does the this isn't a war thing

because we haven't declared war. And a lot of people on the GOP side are running with that. And I would love to ask them if they, what they think the last war in American history was. Because by that standard, the Iraq War is not a war. The Vietnam War is not a war. I think it was 1942. Correct me, if I'm wrong.

It was the last time we declared war against, I think, Romania and Hungary when we were being like, ah, all you guys. World War II. World War II. Are you saying that's the last war the United States has engaged in, you silly, stupid man? I don't realize we didn't. I don't realize we didn't officially declare war with Vietnam.

I didn't realize that. No, there has been no congressional. We don't do, we don't do war anymore. Okay, we're anti-war. Yeah, I would, I would direct Congressman Mark Wayne David Chapman. Senator Mark David Chapman. I would point him to our Secretary of War this morning who called it a war. I don't know what else to tell him.

Aside from like Aside from the technical aspects And like yeah There's process and this is Yeah he's calling it a war It's a war, it's an act of war You win in you fucking killed these guys Like that is an act of war

You don't have to declare war Officially to commit An act of war Which seems like what they're doing I saw another accusation Leveled at The Left that being upset At Trump

bombing Iran is Trump derangement syndrome Stop. TDS. What's that? What's Trump

derangement syndrome? I'll tell you. TDS is when he makes a crude joke about how the post office sucks and you get all back.

Oh, okay. TDS is not when he like slaughters people in another country violating not just the Constitution, but one of his

signature campaign promises. But no, No, it's Trump derangement syndrome to be mad at the random. The anti-war, anti-regime change guy saying out loud that he had regime change plans, but he did too much war and now they're dead. The anti-regime change. Okay, we're not doing a regime change.

We're just going to cause a bunch of chaos. Do you think that solves a problem for us? Do you think that makes America safer? Do you think that this is just a whole other can of worms, sir? I want to highlight that a lot of maggot are not happy about this, though. I understand that these are talking points and the way to frame it. Oh, J.D. is out there. He is tweeting like, this is wrong. We shouldn't be doing this. I said no for it. Sorry, go ahead. Kay.

I was like, no, he's not. No, he's not. But no, no, no, people aren't happy about this. Again, there's always going to be the clowns online that want their clout and their likes and their retweets. and they're just going to hold the party line. That is not the real world. And people are pissed. And you continue to see people fracturing from him and speaking out and calling this out because, yeah, they did not vote for this. They specifically did not want this. It's so complicated because every time we talk about this, I just need to stress that I am terrified by Donald Trump and this administration being involved.

I have this is so above my pay grade as to what we should do. about this region and this problem and this slaughtering of civilians. And yes, the response in Iran and around the world with expats are people part of the diaspora from there, people that have fled. It's complicated. They don't want this regime in charge. Of course not. Their families' lives have been threatened for decades and decades.

This is not the way to fix it. We're going to make it worse. Are we going to go through a list of all the nations in the world and poll them and say, are you unhappy with your regime and with what's going on there? And then we go in and we do this. That's again, like why like every excuse they give, every like reason is like, okay, but are you going to apply that anywhere else or is it just the thing that you're saying to justify what you're doing right now?

It's just again, I keep coming back to their whole like, well, we did it. no you didn't time doesn't stop things like don't end now i don't know like like you're creating all these other situations intentions and uh like you're saying people who hate us and uh i don't it's just so absurd to think it's it's narcissists i mean i know it's like diagnosing trump but it's like narcissist shit to be like everyone has to do what i say and once i take action other people will be controlled by that action. You do not have control and then the more people you radicalize,

the more bombs you drop, you are bringing people into a situation where you do not have control. And to go back to not everyone is on board, even MAGA, like this is unpopular even by going to war standards. Reuters poll from Sunday,

only 55% of Republicans approve of this. And that number for Iraq was like 90. Oh, yeah, no. Afghanistan, 95. Among all people, I mean, among all adults, they have 27% say yes, 30% don't know. 55, 45, 45 is like kind of what I would imagine, like liberals would be in certain situations, you know, but like, yeah. And in fairness, 32% of the Republicans, they didn't say no.

They said, don't know because. they're like, I don't know what the answer is supposed to be, which I think means no. Because if you're struggling with this, it means no. It means that you don't necessarily want to come out against the president. I don't know. But if you're struggling with this, if you don't have a strong opinion, it's probably a no. Before we go, we've got a few more things to talk about. One thing I wanted to point out is this American casualty statistic.

I guess, Jonathan, what is the number right now officially that they're saying? four or five five or six hundred yeah i don't know how true that is uh that might be the official number right now but i i think i have a suspicion it might be more uh especially because of the way that he's talking yeah he's well he's mentioned uh the president sorry he's mentioned that um likely be more likely be more likely be much higher is another phrase he's used he's he's alluded a couple times to like and it'll probably be higher, which to me says that it already is higher and they are not releasing that information yet and trying to keep it on the wraps and sort of like slowly dole out this, uh, this larger number that he has said it will, it will exist. He said like,

yeah, it's going to be higher. Um, and I also, it's just, um, so callous. It's so callous. I, I, this is he is woefully unprepared for this part. He's obviously always been really, really bad at talking about the military when he's not saying, like, yeah, we're going to be big, strong military. Military families, he's terrible at talking to and about, he's always said, like, he hates the losers and the people who die or get captured in war, like all this sort of stuff. But when he's talking about this, he's just like, yeah, it's going to be, and that's how it is. Like, he didn't say that's the way the cookie crumbles, but he might, as well,

well have. Yeah. He is not going to be able to deal with the more and more casualties of American soldiers that like most like especially Republican like American citizens really want you to be able to talk about in a respectful way and show deference and talk about it. But like he's just sort of like, yeah, and they got the three or four dead and whatever. But like look at the look at my my ballroom and like all this sort of stuff. and he's just, I don't know, it's a side note,

but it's really disgusting. He's not going to be able to do it. Well, the number may still be four, and if it's higher and they're just trying to keep it under wraps as long as possible, they won't be able to for very long. Like, either they can what, not call the next of kin, not let them know, and then these people will be texting their loved ones on an airbase being like, are you okay?

Like, you're not going to be able to soften that blow. Like, someone's going to get. a photo of coffins coming back with the American flag drink. And they won't be from a video game. And then you're like obviously Donald Trump, as you just said, is going to be standing.

He's not going to be able to like meet that moment, put a hand on the coffin and be like they've made the ultimate sacrifice. He cannot do that. He's incapable. His brain doesn't work that way. He'll be like, well, the cause for whatever the election is.

It's great. And I won a great election. He'll hug a flag, all the stuff. So they might be trying to, soften that, but if the number goes up significantly, I don't think Americans are going to be on board with that narrative. No, absolutely not. We're going to sacrifice, you know, U.S. service members' lives for that's what they're all

saying. Like, Hegset and Trump are both, like, talking in that way pretty consistently. Like, yeah, we're going to, you're going to die. We're going to, you know, that's the sacrifice that they are willing to make for us. and our reasons and our reasons. And it's just, yeah, he wants to be a war president so bad, but he just doesn't have that capability. One more thing I wanted to just flag while we're here. It's already being floated, apparently, that Israel is saying Turkey is the next Iran.

So there's that. So Turkey and Cuba. Turkey and Cuba. And then whoever, whatever. Greenland. Whatever you want. Oh, and then there's Katie Miller. Wait, there's Katie Miller already trotting out like Greenland's next.

And then jokes. Ha, ha, ha. Canada will be the... I know. I'm just saying it. The world, basically, is what you're saying. Yeah, it's... The United States is initiating a war against the world.

Yes, that is a world... It is a world... A war against the world. Whatever you call it. It's like that Norm MacDonald bit. Like, we're living the Norm MacDonald bit where he's like, for the, you know, the next, they took on, Germany took on the world again. Yeah.

All right, guys. Yeah, we'll be back later this week. Take care of yourself. Take breaks from watching the news, refreshing. And remember that we love you very much. Much.