Trump Flirts With Armed Militias as He Enters Phase Two of Iran War

On Tuesday, Israel bombed Iran’s Council of Experts while it was in the process of choosing a new supreme leader. That same day, it was reported that President Trump is open to supporting armed militias in the region. 

These two events seem to indicate that Trump has entered phase two of his regime-change plan in Iran, and, unlike in Venezuela, will not be working with the existing apparatus to do so. 

Israel stated that the council bombing occurred while votes for the next supreme leader were being counted by its 88 members. There is no casualty count at the time of this writing.  

“We wanted to prevent them from picking a new supreme leader,” an Israel Defense Forces official told Axios.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump spoke with Kurds and other local factions, and may potentially support them in their efforts to fill the massive leadership gap that Israel and the U.S. are attempting to create in Tehran. It’s not clear whether the leaders were based in Iran or in neighboring countries.

“The attack was so successful it knocked out most of the candidates,” Trump said on Sunday. “It’s not going to be anybody that we were thinking of because they are all dead. Second or third place is dead.”

FBI Director Kash Patel didn’t want the bureau’s forensic experts examining the scene of Renee Good’s killing in Minneapolis because he didn’t want her referred to as a “victim” in the warrant, according to Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

In a post on X, the senators said that a “credible whistleblower” disclosed Patel’s reasoning for ordering agents not to investigate Good’s death. Instead, Patel wanted “to portray her as the subject of an investigation into the assault of a federal law enforcement officer.”

It’s a shocking revelation, suggesting that in the initial hours and days after Good was shot and killed, the Trump administration was already trying to exonerate itself and create its own narrative.

It’s well established that the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension attempted to investigate Good’s killing on its own, only to be immediately shut out by the FBI. Now we know why the FBI was holding off on a civil rights investigation of Good’s death: The Trump administration wanted to brand Good as some kind of insurrectionist or terrorist.

That accusation didn’t stick, and would set off mass protests in Minneapolis against Operation Metro Surge. Good’s killing would be followed by that of nurse Alex Pretti, who similarly was branded a terrorist by the White House. Ultimately, federal prosecutors in the state would resign en masse over the administration’s handling of the two deaths, as well as their immigration strategy overall.

It’s obvious now that Patel’s action failed to convince the public that ICE was in the right when agent Jonathan Ross decided to shoot her. In fact, it’s a major reason why the immigration agency is so unpopular with Americans and why many people want to see the agency abolished. But all of that is falling on deaf ears in the White House.

The six American service members killed in an Iranian drone attack in Kuwait reportedly received no counter-rocket, artillery, and mortar defense; didn’t get the drone defense systems they asked for; didn’t hear the warning sirens in time; and were in a makeshift office based out of a trailer that there were concerns about using.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth initially claimed that the soldiers were killed when a “squirter” missile made it through the defenses of a fortified base.

“You have air defenses, and a lot’s coming in, and you hit most of it,” Hegseth said Monday at the Pentagon. “Every once in a while, you might have one, unfortunately, we call it a squirter, that makes its way through. And in that particular case, it happened to hit a tactical operations center that was fortified, but these are powerful weapons.”

But three anonymous military officials told CBS News that the base at the Shuaiba port in Kuwait, where the troops were killed, wasn’t just unfortified, it wasn’t a base at all—it was a triple-wide trailer surrounded by four concrete walls. They claimed that the trailer was struck directly from above and engulfed in flames. Two of the three officials also said they didn’t hear any of the warning sirens that were supposed to go off, even though the siren had been functioning properly for days prior. There was also no rocket defense system that could prevent the attack.

It becomes clearer with each passing day that this war is being waged on the fly by individuals whose lust for militancy supersedes any kind of measured, planned action. And if these officials’ reports are true, Americans are getting killed because of it.

Kash Patel baselessly fired an elite team of agents specializing in foreign threats from the Middle East just days before Donald Trump launched an illegal military campaign in Iran.

Patel terminated a dozen employees and staff after accusing them—without providing evidence—of improperly investigating Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence. The FBI director specifically gutted a group known as CI-12, a counterintelligence unit tasked with monitoring threats from Iran and its proxies. Days later, Trump toppled Iran’s regime and sparked a sprawling regional conflict in the Middle East.

The targeting of this global espionage team was first reported on by The New York Sun.

It’s not surprising that the members of CI-12 were involved in investigating Trump for holding onto classified documents after he left the White House in 2020. CI-12 is charged with media leaks and the mishandling of classified documents, and the documents found at Trump’s estate reportedly included U.S. military plans for Iran.

These latest firings have raised concerns that the U.S. will be unable to respond to threats as the United States and Israel engage in major combat operations in Iran. Nearly half of all working FBI agents have been reassigned to immigration enforcement, including those working in counterterrorism.

The terminations also occurred amid wider reductions in force and waves of resignations at the Department of Justice. The DOJ’s National Security Division—including the counterterrorism office—has already lost at least half of its workforce, people familiar with the matter told CNN.

Patel’s decision to terminate his elite experts on Iran is just one of many elements of Trump’s decision to take the U.S. into war that feels unplanned, and leaves Americans exposed.

Donald Trump really doesn’t have an Iran war plan, he told Congress on Monday. 

In a letter to Congress regarding the War Powers Resolution for Iran, Trump wrote, “Although the United States desires a quick and enduring peace, it is not possible at this time to know the full scope and duration of military operations that may be necessary.” This means that he has no idea how long the war will last and whether ground troops will be necessary. 

The letter goes on to outline the threat that the Trump administration claims Iran poses, from “ballistic, cruise, anti-ship, and other missiles” to its supposed efforts “to seek the means to possess and employ nuclear weapons.” According to Trump, the threat to the United States and its allies had become “untenable.” 

The letter avoids the shifting rationale given by White House officials since the weekend. Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed Monday that the administration knew that Israel was going to strike, and “we knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces.” Trump has claimed that the threat from Iran was imminent, but experts say he is exaggerating. 

The War Powers Resolution in question is spearheaded by Democratic Representative Ro Khanna and Republican Representative Thomas Massie in the House, with Senator Tim Kaine doing the same in the Senate. While Trump would almost certainly veto it if the bill ends up on his desk, it would be a rebuke for the president and would show that Congress is listening to what most Americans are saying, according to polls.  

The State Department has urged all Americans  in the Middle East to leave immediately, but U.S. embassies in the region are telling people trying to flee that they are on their own. 

U.S. allies within the region are at high risk of being targeted by Iranian missiles, with Iran strikes already occurring across Israel, Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia, after the joint attack by the United States and Israel last weekend. Meanwhile, Israel has bombed Lebanon. American civilians currently in those areas are being told that they’ll need to figure out their own evacuation plans without any help from their home country. 

On Tuesday, the U.S. shut down its embassies in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait after Iranian attacks. 

“The U.S. Embassy is not in a position at this time to evacuate or directly assist Americans in departing Israel,” the U.S. Embassy in Israel posted Tuesday on X, instead telling them to check out the Israeli Ministry of Tourism’s shuttle. “The U.S. Embassy cannot make any recommendation (for or against) the Ministry of Tourism’s shuttle. If you choose to avail yourself of this option to depart, the U.S. government cannot guarantee your safety. The information is provided as a courtesy to those wishing to leave Israel.” 

The U.S. Embassy in Qatar said the same, stating that Americans there “not rely on the U.S. government for assisted departure or evacuation.” This has only increased the frantic nature of these evacuations, as demand for transportation skyrockets, prioritizing only those with enough funds and/or status to get out. 

“Called the State Department emergency number because the advisory said ‘depart via commercial means’ and to call if you need assistance arranging departure,” one X user wrote. “Airspace is shut. Airports aren’t functioning. Airlines can’t be reached. After 30 minutes on the line, they read back the same security update posted online.”

Americans from across the political spectrum sounded off on the abandonment of their fellow citizens in an active war zone.

“All those years demagoguing Benghazi and pretending to give a shit about Americans overseas, and now the White House starts a reckless war with Iran and tells everyone trying to escape the chaos that you’re on your own,” liberal podcaster Tommy Vietor said. 

“American tax payers are forced to give Israel $3.8 BILLION every single year, and here is our own U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem telling Americans good luck getting out, you are on your own,” former MAGA Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote. “The betrayal is unbelievable.”

President Donald Trump’s illegal war in Iran is so unpopular, his own former spokesperson is calling him out.

During an appearance on Fox News Monday night, Caroline Sunshine pointed to a statement from Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Dan Caine, who said that the United States could “expect to take additional losses” as it engaged in ongoing “major combat operations” in Iran.

“I voted for President Trump, and I worked for President Trump because I didn’t want to hear statements like that from my government again regarding American involvement in the Middle East,” Sunshine, who previously served as Trump’s deputy communications director, said.

Sunshine urged the Trump administration to be clear about their objectives for the military campaign, arguing that the president’s supporters did not support intervention in Iran.

“Are any of those objectives in the direct national interest of the United States and of the American people, or is this going to be another regime-change war that the American people rejected and did not vote for?” Sunshine said. “If they wanted that, they would not have voted for Donald Trump as many times as they have and put him in the Oval Office.”

She also called out the administration’s flimsy rationale for launching the strike in the first place.

“Six months ago, the American people were told that we used B2 bunker-buster bombs to completely obliterate and destroy Iran’s nuclear program, and anybody who said otherwise was fake news,” she said. “Now we’ve been told that we’ve—somehow in those six months they were able to restart the program—now we’re told that we’ve completely destroyed it again.”

The White House claimed to have “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capabilities in June, and as recently as last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed that Iran was not currently enriching uranium. Meanwhile, U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff claimed last month that Iran’s enrichment level had reached “60 percent.”

Sunshine noted that in addition to assassinating Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, the U.S. and Israeli strikes had wiped the chessboard of potential replacements and that Trump had indicated he was ceding power back to the people.

“If all of that has been done, why are we still there?” Sunshine asked. “Because we’ve lost six U.S. service members at our bases in the Middle East, and I don’t think the American people are going to have a very high tolerance for losing more U.S. soldiers unless those objectives are very clear, and those timelines are very clear, and it’s made clear how it is in the direct interest of the American people.”

A total of six U.S. military service members have died in a suspected drone strike on their makeshift operations center at a civilian port in Kuwait. There was no warning or siren to warn the officers of the oncoming attack, CNN reported Monday.

Meanwhile, the number of civilian deaths in Iran has surpassed 700, including dozens of school-age girls.

The Iran war could go on “forever”—if Donald Trump wanted it to.

In an ominous Truth Social post late Monday, the president suggested that U.S. munitions stockpiles could allow the fighting to stretch into eternity.

“The United States Munitions Stockpiles have, at the medium and upper medium grade, never been higher or better—As was stated to me today, we have a virtually unlimited supply of these weapons,” Trump wrote. “Wars can be fought ‘forever,’ and very successfully, using just these supplies (which are better than other countries finest arms!).

“At the highest end, we have a good supply, but are not where we want to be,” he added.

But that is not the Pentagon’s analysis. Speaking to The Washington Post Monday under the condition of anonymity, military officials stressed that just two days of fighting Iran had already drastically depleted America’s missile defense systems.

“There is concern about this lasting more than a few days,” one source told the Post, adding that it often takes several air defense interceptors to stop an incoming missile. “I don’t think people have fully absorbed yet, like, what that has done with stockpiles.”

Trump acknowledged the diminished reserves in his post, but claimed that there was “additional high grade weaponry … stored for us in outlying countries.” He also blamed the loss on former President Joe Biden and his decision to transfer military equipment to Ukraine, derisively referring to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy as “P.T. Barnum.”

In the weeks leading up to the explosive hostilities, Trump’s top military adviser—Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine—warned the White House against such an attack, arguing that it could entangle America in a prolonged conflict. But the Oval Office disagreed.

“The idea that we’re going to be in a Middle Eastern war for years with no end in sight—there is no chance that will happen,” Vice President JD Vance told the Post late last month.

Despite his criticism of the offensive, Caine acquiesced to the president’s whims. Over the last month, he assembled the largest military presence in the Middle East since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, a hardware collection across a web of U.S. bases that includes numerous ships—including naval destroyers and aircraft carriers—and more than a dozen jets in the region, reported CNN.

So far, six U.S. soldiers have been killed in the conflict, as have more than 20 Iranian officials, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Eighteen American soldiers have also been seriously injured. More than 700 Iranian civilians have been killed, including 176 children, dozens of whom were at a girls’ school in the country’s south.

Former President Bill Clinton may have just put a massive hole in President Donald Trump’s claims about how he and deceased sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein ended their friendship.

In video testimony released by the House Oversight Committee on Monday, Clinton claimed that Trump told him exactly what happened between him and Epstein at a golf tournament for Major League Baseball executive Joe Torre’s Safe At Home Foundation, “20-something years ago.”

“It was designed to combat domestic violence, of which Joe Torre had been a victim as a child. And so I wanted to support it.… Donald Trump gave him the golf course in New York to have a tournament on, and I played in it a couple times,” Clinton said. “Donald Trump would come out and play a few holes with us. And he somehow knew I had flown in Jeffrey Epstein’s aircraft, and he said, ‘You know we had some great times together over the years, but we fell out. All because of a real estate deal.’ And he said that ‘I’m sorry it happened.’ That’s all.”

This completely contradicts Trump’s story that he made the valorous decision to kick Epstein out of his Mar-a-Lago club.

“And as far as you recall, President Trump characterized the nature of the ending of their friendship as being solely due to the real estate bidding?” an official clarified.

“That’s what he said.”

Clinton’s testimony confirms previous reporting that the two men really fell apart over a 2004 bidding war over a mansion in Palm Beach, Florida.

“Jeffrey Epstein was a member at Mar-a-Lago until Trump kicked him out, because Jeffrey Epstein was a pedophile and he was a creep,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said last November.

Clinton’s deposition states otherwise. You can view his full testimony below.

Local authorities in Minnesota are investigating former Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino and other federal agents for potentially breaking the law during Operation Metro Surge in the Minneapolis area.

Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty announced in a news conference Monday that her office is already looking into 17 instances of “potential unlawful behavior” and asked local residents to submit any potential evidence of federal agents committing illegal activity through an online form at the new Transparency and Accountability Project. Minneapolis is the county seat of Hennepin County, where Border Patrol and ICE agents focused much of their activity.

Citizens will be able to upload video and audio evidence of agents breaking the law, and they can send descriptions if they saw anything illegal from ICE and Border Patrol, Moriarty said, according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

“I want to be clear with our community about the challenges these investigations entail, because the federal government has refused to provide us information about the actions of their officers in Minnesota,” Moriarty said.

One of the 17 instances under investigation includes Bovino throwing a gas canister into a park full of residents in south Minneapolis on January 21. The incident occurred just two weeks after Renee Good was shot and killed, and three days before Alex Pretti was killed by federal agents. Another incident under investigation concerns Border Patrol agents confronting protesters outside of Roosevelt High School on January 7, also in South Minneapolis.

“There are many victims whose stories need to be told,” Moriarty said. “We will investigate and pursue charging where appropriate.”

The Trump administration effectively made Bovino its scapegoat for the horror in Minneapolis, reassigning him to his old office in California (and possibly retirement after that) after mass protests in the city. But he has largely escaped criminal charges, even from previous misdeeds in Chicago.

That could soon change. A local jurisdiction taking steps to investigate and even charge ICE and Border Patrol agents over illegal actions as part of the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda is a big step. These agents have rarely been held accountable, and have in fact been protected from prosecution, as White House officials such as Stephen Miller have gone as far as to claim that they have “federal immunity.” Hennepin County is about to test that, and if it’s successful, may inspire other localities.