‘Vile, Horrifying, Evil’: Trump Threatens to Bomb Nation of 90 Million People ‘Back to the Stone Ages’

 

US President Donald Trump speaks from the Cross Hall of the White House on April 1, 2026 in Washington, DC.

(Photo by Alex Brandon-Pool/Getty Images)

In a primetime address, President Donald Trump reiterated his threat to destroy Iranian energy infrastructure and provided no timeline for an end to his illegal war.

Jake Johnson, Common Dreams, Apr 02, 2026

US President Donald Trump on Wednesday delivered an incoherent primetime address in which he threatened to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages” while also claiming negotiations to end the conflict were ongoing, remarks that provided no clear indication of when or how the illegal war of choice would end.

Trump’s speech marked his first major address on the war since the US, in partnership with Israel, started bombing Iran more than a month ago, without congressional approval and in violation of international law. A day after declaring that Iran “doesn’t have to make a deal” to end the war, Trump said during his Wednesday speech, “If there is no deal, we are going to hit each and every one of their electric generating plants very hard and probably simultaneously”—a grave war crime.

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In the face of polls showing the Iran War is deeply unpopular with the American public, Trump sought to justify continuing the assault by comparing its duration to that of the two World Wars, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Iraq War. At the president’s direction, thousands of troops are currently heading to the Middle East to join the tens of thousands already there, fueling fears of a ground invasion and a devastating quagmire.

After baselessly claiming Iran was pursuing nuclear weapons, Trump insisted Wednesday night that the country’s leadership was “rapidly building a vast stockpile of conventional ballistic missiles” that could soon “reach the American homeland”—an assertion contradicted by US intelligence.

The president also waved away concerns about rising gas prices, which have already cost American drivers billions of dollars collectively. The Strait of Hormuz, a critical route through which roughly 25% of global seaborne oil trade passes each year, will “just open up naturally” once the conflict is over, Trump asserted, adding that “the gas prices will rapidly come back down.”

Collin Rees, US campaign manager at the advocacy group Oil Change International, said in a statement that “Trump’s rambling lies can’t conceal how his reckless, illegal war of aggression is sending energy prices for working families through the roof.”

“Trump claims this conflict is different from past wars for oil, but it’s playing out with exactly the same deadly patterns,” said Rees. “War and volatility push prices higher and fossil fuel companies cash in on windfall profits, while every day people face rising costs for gas, food, and basic necessities. Instead of investing in what people actually need—like childcare, healthcare, and resilient communities—Trump is doubling down on senseless military escalation that serves the interest of his billionaire allies and fossil fuel CEOs.”

“More and more people are seeing through this charade,” Rees added. “This war isn’t about energy security or safety, it’s about protecting a system where fossil fuel profits come before people’s lives and livelihoods. The way to escape this cycle of death is to end this war and advance a swift and just transition to renewable energy sources that can break our dependence on volatile, unreliable fossil fuels.”

“The human cost of this war is unconscionable. The economic cost is dangerous and growing.”

Democratic members of Congress viewed Trump’s speech as further confirmation that the president never had a clear objective for the unlawful war—which has killed nearly 2,000 Iranians and displaced millions—and has no serious exit plan, just a vow to bomb Iran “extremely hard over the next two to three weeks.”

“Anyone watching that speech has no idea whether Trump is escalating or deescalating the war with Iran,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). “But to be fair, neither does he.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) wrote on social media that Trump “campaigned for the presidency on avoiding foreign wars and lowering costs ‘on day one.’”

“His promises are now in tatters,” wrote Warren. “The human cost of this war is unconscionable. The economic cost is dangerous and growing. The president should end this war today.”

The lone Iranian American in Congress, Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.), condemned Trump’s threat to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages, where they belong.”

“He’s talking about a country of 90 million people,” said Ansari. “Vile, horrifying, evil.”

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Trump Says ‘New’ Iranian President Requested Ceasefire, Tehran Denies Claim

The Iranian Foreign Minister said there were no ongoing negotiations between Washington and Tehran

by Kyle Anzalone | April 1, 2026 at 12:59 pm ET

President Donald Trump said that the “new” President of Iran had accepted a ceasefire with the US. Tehran quickly denied Trump’s statement. 

“Iran’s New Regime President, much less Radicalized and far more intelligent than his predecessors, has just asked the United States of America for a CEASEFIRE!” the President posted on his Trump Social account on Wednesday. “We will consider when Hormuz Strait is open, free, and clear. Until then, we are blasting Iran into oblivion or, as they say, back to the Stone Ages!!!”

The post is confusing as Iran does not have a new president, and Tehran says there are no ongoing talks with the US. Masoud Pezeshkian has served as President of Iran since his election in 2024. 

The Iranian Foreign Ministry said Trump’s claim that Tehran agreed to a ceasefire is false. Additionally, Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei issued a statement explaining that Iran would continue to use its leverage over the Strait of Hormuz and was seeking new domains to expand the war. 

Throughout the month-long conflict, Trump and other top US officials have repeatedly claimed that Tehran was attempting to broker an end to the conflict. Iranian officials have rebuked those statements and said that Tehran is uninterested in a truce or negotiations with Washington. 

While the White House and Pentagon have told the American people that Iran’s military capabilities have been significantly degraded, Iranian forces continue to fire missiles and drones at US bases, Israel, and other US allies in the region. 

According to data compiled by Anadolu, Iran has fired missiles and drones at a consistent rate since the war was started by a US and Israeli surprise attack on February 28. On Wednesday, Fox News chief foreign correspondent Trey Yingst said that Tel Aviv was experiencing a constant bombardment from Iranian missiles. 

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US begins B-52 bombing flights over Iran after Trump threatens to “completely obliterate” civilian infrastructure

 

Andre Damon@Andre__Damon, April 1, 2026

The United States has begun bombing Iran with B-52 bombers, setting the stage for a massive increase in the saturation bombing of the country of 90 million as the US-Israeli war of aggression against Iran intensifies. “We’ve successfully started to conduct the first overland B-52 missions,” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine announced Tuesday at a Pentagon briefing.

An Air Force B-52 Stratofortress aircraft deploys its rear chute after touching down at Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar, April 9, 2016. [Photo: Tech. Sgt. Nathan Lipscomb]

The B-52 is capable of carrying 70,000 pounds of gravity bombs and nuclear weapons. It is the aircraft at the center of a US bombing campaign that dropped more tonnage on Indochina than was used by all sides in World War II combined, that carpet-bombed Cambodia in a secret campaign that killed an estimated 100,000 civilians, and that leveled entire cities in North Vietnam—where US bombing destroyed 85 percent of all buildings and killed roughly 20 percent of the population.

The United States, having failed to achieve its war aims through a month of airstrikes, is massively escalating the war. The administration is now turning to the methods it used in Gaza: mass murder and the deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure.

The B-52 flights follow one day after President Donald Trump threatened to “blow up and completely obliterate” Iran’s power plants, oil wells and “possibly all desalinization plants.” The Trump administration declared from the start that the war would be waged without restraint. On March 2, War Secretary Pete Hegseth announced there would be “no stupid rules of engagement, no nation-building quagmire, no politically correct wars.” He has since vowed “no quarter, no mercy for our enemies” and prayed at a Pentagon Christian service on March 26 for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.”

On Monday, Trump shared a 31-second video on Truth Social showing the bombing of Isfahan, Iran’s third-largest city and one of the supreme cultural monuments of human civilization. The footage showed 2,000-pound bunker-buster bombs striking targets south of the city, producing chains of secondary detonations and fireballs detected by weather satellites. Trump offered no caption—just the footage of a great city burning, posted for consumption like any other content on the scroll.

Isfahan is home to the Naqsh-e Jahan Square—one of the largest public squares ever constructed—Imam Mosque, Ali Qapu Palace, Chehel Sotoun Palace and Masjed-e Jameh, the oldest Friday mosque in Iran, a structure in continuous use for nearly a thousand years. All are UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

The city was the capital of the Safavid Empire, a center of Persian science, where Omar Khayyam reformed the calendar and Ibn Sina—Avicenna—worked and wrote. Earlier strikes had already cracked a 17th century Safavid fresco in Chehel Sotoun, sent turquoise tiles from the Friday Mosque crashing to the ground, and shattered calligraphic panels. UNESCO had transmitted the exact coordinates of every protected site to both the United States and Israel. Both governments confirmed receipt. The bombing continued. Iranian officials report that at least 120 cultural and historic sites across the country have been damaged.

The Pentagon said the target was an ammunition depot. But Isfahan also houses the Isfahan Nuclear Technology Centre, Iran’s primary nuclear research facility, and the Isfahan Missile Complex, described as the country’s largest missile assembly and production site. The enriched uranium Washington claims to be destroying now lies beneath the rubble of repeated bombardments in a city of 2.3 million, under conditions that no international inspector can evaluate. Russia’s Foreign Ministry warned of “a real risk of catastrophic disaster throughout the Middle East.”

At Monday’s briefing, Hegseth raised the question of ground troops directly. “You can’t fight and win a war if you tell your adversary what you are willing to do or what you are not willing to do, to include boots on the ground,” he said. “Our adversary right now thinks there are 15 different ways we could come at them with boots on the ground. And guess what? There are. So if we needed to, we could execute those options on behalf of the president of the United States and this department.”

Troops are arriving. Reuters reported Monday that thousands of paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division—including a brigade combat team and the division headquarters—have begun deploying to the Middle East. The 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), carrying roughly 2,200 Marines, arrived in the Persian Gulf over the weekend. The 11th MEU is en route aboard the USS Boxer. The USS George H.W. Bush, a nuclear powered aircraft carrier, departed Norfolk on Tuesday with Carrier Air Wing 7 and more than 5,000 sailors—the third carrier strike group committed to the war, making this the largest US naval concentration in the Middle East since 2003.

According to the Washington Post Friday, the Pentagon has drawn up plans for ground operations lasting “weeks” and is preparing to deploy 10,000 additional troops. The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that the administration is actively planning a special operations mission to extract nearly 1,000 pounds of enriched uranium from deep underground in Iran.Available from Mehring BooksThe struggle against imperialism and for workers’ power in IranA pamphlet by Keith Jones

Despite the overwhelming support within the US political establishment for the Iran war, there is growing recognition among sections of the US media that Trump’s war is creating a rapidly spiraling disaster for US imperialism. On Sunday, the New York Times published a column by Thomas Friedman, its main foreign policy columnist, who wrote:

If it wasn’t clear before, it is undeniable now. President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel started a war with Iran assuming that they would trigger quick and easy regime change. They vastly underestimated the staying power of Iran’s surviving leadership and its military capacity not only to inflict damage on Israel and America’s Arab allies but also to close off the most important oil and gas shipping lane in the world.

While Friedman makes this critique as a defender of US imperialism, it captures the recklessness and desperation of the Trump administration, which sees no way out of the deepening crisis triggered by the war except further escalation.

One month of war has produced a catastrophe. The human rights group Hengaw reported at least 6,900 killed in Iran through Day 29, including 720 civilians and 150 children. Iran’s Red Crescent reported more than 85,000 civilian structures damaged, including 64,000 homes and 600 schools.

Between 3.2 and 4 million Iranians have been internally displaced. In Lebanon, according to the Health Ministry, more than 1,247 have been killed and 3,600 wounded since Israel launched its assault on March 2. The Pentagon reports that 15 American service members have been killed and more than 300 wounded.

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‘A War Crime’: UN Rights Chief Urges Immediate Repeal of Israel’s New Death Penalty

 

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk is seen at the UN Office in Geneva on September 16, 2025.

(Photo by Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images)

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said the new law “raises serious concerns about due process violations, is deeply discriminatory, and must be promptly repealed.”

Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams, Mar 31, 2026

The top United Nations human rights official was among those who on Tuesday urged Israel to repeal legislation it passed the previous day legalizing the hanging of Palestinians convicted of terrorism-related killing of Israelis—a law critics contend will not apply to Israelis who commit similar crimes.

The law passed by the Israeli Knesset states that Palestinians must be hanged within 90 days if convicted of nationalistic killings in a military court. While the legislation does not allow pardons, it gives judges discretionary power when it comes to sentencing Israeli citizens convicted of similar crimes, and observers say it’s highly unlikely that any jIsraeli would ever be hanged under the law.

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Experts argue the 90-day provision and lack of appellate process are violations of international humanitarian law.

“It is deeply disappointing that this bill has been approved by the Knesset,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said Tuesday. “It is patently inconsistent with Israel’s international law obligations, including in relation to the right to life. It raises serious concerns about due process violations, is deeply discriminatory, and must be promptly repealed.”

“The death penalty is profoundly difficult to reconcile with human dignity, and it raises the unacceptable risk of executing innocent people,” he added. “Its application in a discriminatory manner would constitute an additional, particularly egregious violation of international law. Its application to residents of the occupied Palestinian territory would constitute a war crime.”

While proponents of the law—some of whom, like Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, celebrated its passage—say they believe it will deter Palestinians from killing Israelis, studies in the United States, the only Western democracy that actively executes people, have repeatedly shown that the death penalty is not a deterrent to crime.

Palestinians and their defenders have also warned that the law could open the door to mass executions, including of anyone found to have killed Israelis during the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack, for which Israel retaliated with an ongoing assault and siege that has left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing.

“Trials for crimes related to October 7 are supremely important, but they must not be anchored in discrimination,” said Türk. “All victims are entitled to equal protection of the law, and all perpetrators must be held accountable without discrimination.”

Other human rights defenders also condemned the new Israeli law and called for its repeal.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DWhZyVAFI_F/embed/captioned/?cr=1&v=4&wp=1403&rd=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org&rp=%2Fnews%2Fun-israel-death-penalty#%7B%22ci%22%3A0%2C%22os%22%3A171967%7D

“The Israeli parliament’s adoption of a racist law authorizing the hanging of Palestinian prisoners is the very definition of apartheid,” the Washington, DC-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said in a statement Tuesday. “Even the South African apartheid government never adopted a death penalty law so explicitly racist.”

Taking aim at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza—CAIR continued, “The Netanyahu regime is completely out of control because our nation continues to bankroll its crimes, from the de facto annexation of the West Bank to the genocide in Gaza, to the ethnic cleansing of southern Lebanon, to the occupation of Syria, to the illegal war with Iran that it triggered, to the closure of Christian and Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem.”

“Congress is not just failing to act, it is actively advancing more military support while treating that US taxpayer funding as automatic, even as these abuses escalate,” the group added. “Every member of Congress—especially Democratic leaders of the House and Senate—must condemn these crimes, including the racist execution law, and announce their opposition to any further military funding for the Israeli apartheid regime.”

A 2024 ruling by the International Court of Justice in The Hague—where Israel is also facing a genocide case brought by South Africa in response to the US-backed war on Gaza—affirmed that the Israeli occupation of Palestine is an illegal form of apartheid that must be ended.

More than 9,500 Palestinians are currently locked up in Israeli prisons, including 350 children and 73 women, according to advocacy groups. Palestinian and Israeli human rights defenders say detainees face torture, starvation, and medical neglect behind bars, causing many deaths.

Former prisoners as well as Israeli staff and medical personnel say they have witnessed torture at prisons including Sde Teiman, the most infamous of Israel’s lockups, with victims ranging from children to the elderly.

Israeli physicians who worked at Sde Teiman described widespread serious injuries caused by 24-hour shackling of hands and feet that sometimes required amputations. Palestinians taken by Israeli forces recounted rapes and sexually assaults by male and female soldiers, electrocution, maulings by dogs, denial of food and water, sleep deprivation, and other torture.

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Palestine Action hunger striker arrested in dawn raid by masked police

Campaigners report that 21-year-old Qesser Zuhrah’s arrest came after she posted an Instagram story calling for ‘direct action’

Qesser Zuhrah went 46 days without food to protest her detention conditions while held on remand for 15 months (handout)

By Katherine Hearst

Published date: 30 March 2026

A former Palestine Action-linked prisoner has been arrested under the Terrorism Act by masked police in a dawn raid on her home, weeks after she was released on bail.

Footage circulated online appeared to show 21-year-old Qesser Zuhrah, who had recently been granted bail after spending 15 months on remand, being arrested at her home by police officers at around 6:30am on Monday morning.

In the footage, a masked officer informs her that she is being arrested under Section 44 of the Serious Crimes Act, the offence of encouraging others to commit crimes, and Section 1 of the Terrorism Act, encouraging others to commit an act of terrorism.

In the video footage, officers inform her that she is being taken to Hatfield police station.

Zuhrah can be heard asking why the police officers are masked.

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Counter Terrorism Policing told Middle East Eye: “Officers from Counter Terrorism Policing South East arrested a woman at her home address in Watford this morning.”

It said it was looking into why the arresting officers were wearing masks.

Zuhrah was already facing charges in connection with a raid on Israeli-owned arms factory in August 2024. She is part of a group of two dozen activists arrested over the incident known as the Filton 24.

Free the Filton 24, a campaign group supporting the defendants, reported that the arrest came after she allegedly posted an Instagram story calling for people to take “direct action”.

Met Police accused of reversing Palestine Action policy to fit previous arrests

Read More »

Palestine Action, a direct-action group protesting against Israeli war crimes, was proscribed by the British government in July 2025, months after Zuhrah’s first arrest. The government is appealing a Hugh Court ruling that the ban was unlawful.

Zuhrah was one of eight Palestine Action-linked prisoners who launched a 73-day hunger strike over their detention conditions. Zuhrah went 46 days without food and was hospitalised multiple times.

Last week, she spoke at a news conference with three other hunger strikers, alleging mistreatment in prison.

Zuhrah, who was also held HMP Bronzefield, said she was left immobile on her cell floor for 22 hours with worsening chest pains, 40 days into her hunger strike.

She also reported that throughout her imprisonment, she was subjected to prolonged periods of solitary confinement and segregated from other prisoners.

Zuhrah was released in February along with 22 co-defendants after charges of aggravated burglary in connection with the break-in at the Elbit Systems plant were dropped

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How the US Became an International Serial Killer

by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies | Mar 26, 2026

For decades, the United States moved from covert assassination plots to openly embracing assassination or “targeted killing” as policy. Now, in its war with Iran, that evolution is reaching its most dangerous phase.

On March 17th and 18th, the United States and Israel assassinated three senior Iranian government officials in targeted air strikes: Ali Larijani, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council; Brigadier General Gholamreza Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s Basij domestic security forces; and Esmaeil Khatib, Iran’s Intelligence Minister.

The missile that killed Ali Larijani also demolished an apartment building and killed more than a hundred people. Israeli defense minister Israel Katz announced that Israeli forces were now authorized to assassinate any senior Iranian official whenever they can, and they have continued to do so, bringing the number of Iranian officials assassinated in the past year to at least seventy.

The assassination of Ali Larijani is a blow to the already fraught chances for a negotiated peace between Iran and the United States and Israel. Ali Larijani was an experienced, pragmatic senior official who had played leading roles in negotiations with the US and other world powers since 2005.

Larijani had degrees in math and computer science, attended the revered seminary in Qom, and fought in the Iran-Iraq War, rising to the rank of brigadier-general in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps. After the war, he managed Iran’s state broadcasting service, earned a doctorate in Western Philosophy from the University of Tehran, and wrote three books on the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, before entering politics and government in 2005. In 2024, Larijani wrote a book on political philosophy, titled Reason and Tranquility in Governance.

If the U.S. hoped to make peace and restore relations with Iran, Ali Larijani would have been a potential negotiating partner. The decision to assassinate Larijani two weeks into this war suggests that US leaders had no interest in negotiations.

Another possibility is even more chilling. Israeli leaders may have viewed Larijani as a potential off-ramp and deliberately eliminated him to ensure the war continues.

That killing was followed by an unprecedented Israeli strike on Iran’s South Pars gas field – the largest in the world and a shared resource with Qatar. Iran retaliated with missile strikes on energy infrastructure across Israel and the Gulf. In Qatar, damage to the Ras Laffan LNG terminal – one of the world’s most critical gas hubs – could take years and billions of dollars to repair.

As global energy markets reeled, U.S. officials confirmed to The Wall Street Journal that the South Pars attack had been coordinated with Washington, contradicting denials from President Trump.

The pattern is unmistakable. As one analyst put it, Israel appears to be escalating deliberately – eliminating moderates within Iran while striking critical infrastructure – to provoke a wider regional war that leaves no room for de-escalation.

Analysts debate how much Israel is driving this escalation and how much U.S. officials are fully aligned. But an imperial power cannot outsource responsibility. As Harry Truman’s famous desk sign declared: The buck stops here.

In its alliance with Israel, the United States has normalized the systematic assassination of foreign leaders – from Palestine, and Lebanon, to Syria, Yemen and now Iran. This is not new. In 2020, President Trump ordered the drone strike that killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy head of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) that had joined with US forces to fight the Islamic State.

Yet assassination is explicitly prohibited under U.S. law. Executive Order 12333 states clearly: “No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination.”

That prohibition emerged from the Church Committee’s  investigation into U.S. assassination plots against Fidel Castro in Cuba, Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam and General René Schneider in Chile.

It also reflects long-standing international law, including the Hague and Geneva Conventions.

After 9/11, however, the United States systematically ignored or circumvented many of the constraints of U.S. and international law. As U.S. invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq led to widespread armed resistance, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld began arguing for what he called “manhunts,” to deploy US special operations forces to hunt down suspected resistance leaders and kill them, as Israeli undercover units already did in occupied Palestine.

General Charles Holland, the head of US Special Operations Command, refused to authorize such operations, but his retirement in October 2003 allowed Rumsfeld to appoint more like-minded officials to senior positions and bring in the Israelis to train American death squads in Israel and North Carolina.

“Dead men tell no tales,” as the saying goes, and there has been almost no accountability for the resulting killings, which systematically killed thousands of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. Two senior US commanders told the Washington Post that only about 50% of “kill or capture” raids by Joint Special Operations Command targeted the “right” or intended people or homes, while troops involved in these raids said that that assessment greatly overstated their rate of success.

Drone warfare accelerated the trend. Under President Obama, strikes expanded tenfold, turning targeted killing into a central pillar of U.S. policy. By 2011, night raids in Afghanistan numbered in the hundreds each month, alienating the Afghan people and ultimately ensuring the defeat of the US occupation and the return of the Taliban.

Now US and Israeli forces are using air and drone strikes to assassinate Iranian leaders and kill civilians in Palestine, Lebanon and Iran. The language of restraint has disappeared, replaced by open celebration of “lethality” and threats of further war crimes.

What was once covert, controversial, and constrained is now overt, normalized, and defended.

The cumulative effect is stark: the United States has made assassination and extrajudicial killing routine instruments of policy, as it tramples the UN Charter, the Hague and Geneva Conventions and its own laws – undermining the very international legal order it claims to uphold.

Meanwhile, a multipolar world is emerging, driven largely by nations of the Global South. But the transition to a peaceful, sustainable world is far from certain. The greatest obstacle in its way is the continued reliance of the United States on the illegal threat and use of military force and economic coercion to try to maintain its own dominance.

Iran exercised restraint for decades in the face of false accusations regarding nuclear weapons, “maximum pressure” economic sanctions and escalating threats and attacks by the US and Israel. It quietly built up its defenses and military strategies for the day that it would need them, and that day has come.

The failure of the international community to stop successive U.S. wars of aggression poses an existential threat to the UN Charter and the post–World War II order. As Colombian President Gustavo Petro warned at the CELAC Summit on March 21: “The more serious humanity’s problems become, the fewer tools we have for collective action. And that path leads only to barbarism.”

The United States now faces a stark choice: to continue down this path of lawless violence, or to turn the page on our nation’s life of international crime and finally, genuinely embrace diplomacy and peaceful coexistence with our neighbors, as the UN Charter requires.

For Americans – and for the world – that choice is becoming a matter of survival.

Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies are the authors of War In Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, now in a revised, updated 2nd edition.

Medea Benjamin is the cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and the author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran. 

Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher for CODEPINK and the author of Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.

If you liked this article, please support Antiwar.com.
We are 100% reader-supported.

Medea Benjamin (medea@globalexchange.org) is cofounder of CODEPINK: Women for Peace and Global Exchange.

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Trump to Send 3,000 More Troops to Mideast as Saudi Crown Prince Pushes Iran Ground Invasion

 

US President Donald Trump meets Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman during the G20 Summit at in Osaka, Japan on June 29, 2019.

(Photo by Bandar Algaloud/Saudi Kingdom Council/Handout/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

“Crown Prince MBS wants Trump to keep pouring Americans—and billions—into his illegal war with Iran,” said one Democratic congressman.

Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams, Mar 24, 2026

The Pentagon is preparing to deploy around 3,000 troops to the Middle East as thousands of Marines also head to the region amid the US-Israeli war on Iran, stoking fears of a possible ground invasion that is reportedly being pushed by Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler.

Two unidentified US officials told The Wall Street Journal and other media outlets Tuesday that soldiers from the Army’s elite 82nd Airborne Division quick reaction brigade—which can send troops almost anywhere in the world in under a day’s time—would be ordered to deploy in the coming hours.

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While the officials said that no decision has been made regarding a ground invasion of Iran, the deployment marks the latest escalation in the 24-day war—which President Donald Trump claimed was “very complete, pretty much” over two weeks ago.

The United States already has approximately 50,000 troops in the Middle East, where the US has attacked four countries—Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen—along with Libya and Somalia in Africa and Afghanistan and Pakistan in South Asia, since 2001.

The US deployments come as Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman—who is often called by his initials MBS—is reportedly pushing Trump to launch a ground invasion of Iran with the objective of toppling its current government, which, despite assassinations of numerous leaders, has so far demonstrated a resiliency experts say is rooted in its decentralized and highly flexible “horizontal” command structure.

According to The New York Times, the crown prince is arguing that the war on Iran offers a “historic opportunity” to reshape the Middle East. Saudi officials denied any such lobbying.

This, as Gulf monarchies are reportedly inching closer to getting directly involved in the war, as Iranian counterattacks target regional US allies including Bahrain, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

Previous reporting by The Washington Post and others detailed how, before the war, MBS and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu allegedly pressed Trump to attack Iran for the second time in as many years.

Asked during a Tuesday White House press conference if MBS has “been encouraging you to do certain things related to Iran,” the president replied: “He’s a warrior. Yeah, he does. He’s a warrior. He’s fighting with us, by the way.”

Lauren Harper, the Daniel Ellsberg chair on government secrecy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said on Bluesky Tuesday that MBS’ reported lobbying of Trump “is a great example of why a strong Presidential Records Act is essential for accountability.”

Following Trump’s deletion of social media posts—including a racist video amplifying lies about the 2020 election in which former President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle Obama are portrayed as apes—there have been renewed calls for robust enforcement of the Presidential Records Act (PRA), which requires preservation of “the activities, deliberations, decisions, and policies that reflect the performance of the president’s constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties.”

“Want to read the notes or the telcons (telephone conversations) between Trump and MBS re: Iran? Then you need an enforceable PRA that doesn’t let Trump get away with not keeping or destroying records,” Harper wrote.

US Rep. Eugene Vindman (D-Va.) said Tuesday on Bluesky: “I’ve listened to Trump’s calls with foreign leaders. The American people deserve to know exactly what he promised MBS—and at what cost to our troops and our values.”

Some critics took aim at Trump’s campaign promise of no new wars, part of his so-called “America First” agenda.

“The America First guy keeps getting headlines about the war with Iran being pursued to fulfill the aims of Netanyahu or MBS,” said Chad Stanton, political director at the faith-based progressive advocacy group SojoAction.

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