On Saturday, Iranians were going about their morning routine when they suddenly learned they were being bombed. President Donald Trump, with no prior authorization from Congress, joined Israel in what he called “major combat operations” to eliminate “imminent threats from the Iranian regime.”
Speaking directly to the people of Iran, he called for regime change. “To the great, proud people of Iran, I say tonight 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 are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take.”
What we know so far is these attacks are far more intense than the June strikes that targeted Iran’s nuclear facilities and its top leaders. The current bombing campaign is already expected to last several days. One senior U.S. official told CNN that there will be an escalating series of strikes, with each round expected to last one to two days, followed by a pause to reset and assess damage. (The official added that there will be off-ramps along the way.)
So far, the strikes have hit cities throughout Iran including Tehran, Qom, Karaj, Isafahan, Tabriz, Kermanshah, and more. Israeli officials have said they are targeting all Iranian leaders (past and present), including President Masoud Pezeshkian, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Mohammad Pakpour, Iranian Defense Minister Amir Nasirzadeh, Khamenei’s top security adviser Ali Shamkhani, and former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The supreme leader’s compound in Tehran was razed to the ground—though he is not assumed to be in the city at all. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi (who played a key role in negotiating the 2015 Iran nuclear deal) has said that all top leaders are still alive, including the supreme leader, president, speaker of parliament, judiciary chief, and secretary of the Supreme Supreme National Security Council.
“Almost all officials are safe and sound and alive,” he said. “We may have lost one or two commanders. But that is not a big problem.”
Meanwhile, Iranian state media has reported, at least 63 girls were killed in a strike on an elementary school in the city of Minab. The Iranian regime has cut off phone calls from abroad, and the country is once again in a near total internet blackout, which will soon make it harder to get accurate news of what is happening.
It is impossible to speak for all 90 million people inside Iran—to say nothing of the millions of Iranians who have been forced to leave their country over the last 47 years. I will just tell you where I stand: I want Iran to be free more than anything. I also do not trust Trump.
Trump can talk about how he cares about the freedom of Iranians all he wants, but everything he has done until now makes that hard to believe.
Just examine how the Trump administration is viewing its operation inside Iran. This round of strikes on Iran is not called “Operation Aiding Freedom”—or some feel-good cliche. It is called “Operation Epic Fury,” which is being led by the newly-renamed “Department of War.”
But if that is too small a point, perhaps we can look at what Trump has really done to support the Iranian people thus far. In 2017, just one week after becoming president, he banned all Iranians from the United States. It is almost silly to mention that now, given how much worse things have gotten since then, but at the time, it was a nightmare. For a few days, that ban applied to valid visa holders and permanent residents as well. I remember calling my cousins with green cards who were outside the country, trying to explain to them in my broken Farsi the latest on immigration law.
That ban has only gotten worse in his second term—with no new visa applicants allowed to enter the United States. (In his first term, Trump eventually relented and allowed Iranian students the opportunity to continue to come study here.)
In 2018, Trump withdrew from the Iranian nuclear deal. Also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, that agreement was negotiated by Iran, the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, and Germany, a remarkable feat of diplomacy. Some Iranians—or Americans—may have amnesia about it now, but at the time, it was widely celebrated. In Iran, thousands took to the streets to celebrate the deal, which promised relief from the sanctions crippling their country and their lives. In America, one poll found that nearly 60 percent of American voters supported the agreement. When Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018, he called it a “horrible one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made”—and reimposed sanctions to “target critical sectors of Iran’s economy,” never shrinking from the fact that this would hurt the very Iranians he now purports to support.
In his second term, it has been nearly impossible to track the number of Iranians who have been deported from the United States. Queer Iranians, fearing death upon their return to Iran, have been targeted. Christian Iranians, fearing the same, have been sent back to Iran or to a detention center in Panama, with no freedom in sight. The Trump administration is reviewing the green cards of nationals of 19 countries, which—surprise, surprise!—also includes Iran. Just this week, we got news of a woman who was adopted from Iran at the age of two by a U.S. veteran, who is now at risk of deportation because she overstayed her visa, as a toddler. This administration has spent the past year endeavoring to get as many Iranians who got out of the country sent back to face the current bombing campaign.
A war is a welcome distraction for Trump, who is failing on all fronts domestically and collecting the sort of polling numbers you’d expect for these failures. This week, the Department of Justice was caught removing a picture from its Epstein files cache of Howard Lutnick, now Trump’s commerce secretary, seen cavorting with the sexual predator on his private island. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made headlines after he implored Americans to “eat liver” instead of steak, amid a growing affordability crisis (he issued this call while on a “real food” tour of high-end barbecue restaurants in Texas). And Trump’s aforementioned poll numbers continue to drop every week, with the latest being that nearly 60 percent of Americans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. This bombing campaign is the latest desperate act from a desperate man.
Trump has never cared for the Iranian people. He has only ever cared about himself, and his pursuit of ego gratification has made life more dangerous for an increasing number of people. I’m not holding my breath for that to change anytime soon. I am, however, deeply worried for what comes next.
