Study Shows U.S. Ignored Rules of Engagement in Iran Strikes

It seems that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has made good on his promise to sidestep those pesky rules of engagement: The United States and Israel have reportedly attacked schools and hospitals in Iran—a serious war crime.

At least 22 schools and 17 health care facilities have been damaged as a result of Donald Trump’s reckless five-week war in Iran, according to an analysis published Thursday by The New York Times.

Most of the damage was caused by strikes in crowded neighborhoods, namely Tehran, the nation’s capital, which is as densely populated as New York City, according to the Times. In most instances, the target of the strike was unclear. It is also unclear exactly which strikes were American or Israeli.

The outlet acknowledged that this may only be a sliver of the total damage. The Iranian Red Crescent Society, a humanitarian organization, reported that at least 763 schools and 316 health care facilities had been damaged or destroyed as of April 2.

Attacking schools and hospitals is one of the six grave violations identified by the United Nations Security Council to protect children from armed conflict. Under international law, both schools and hospitals are protected as civilian objects.

Trump’s war began with the U.S. conducting a missile strike on a girls’ primary school in Minab that killed at least 168 children and 14 teachers. A preliminary inquiry found that the use of outdated intelligence caused the school to be labeled as a military target. On the same day, a missile strike ripped through a boys’ elementary school, killing one child.

Two students were killed in another strike on a high school in Tehran, and six people, including four children, were killed in a strike on a sports hall where a girls’ volleyball team was practicing at the time, according to Iranian state media.

Dr. Mohammad Hassan Bani Assad, the president of Gandhi Hospital in northern Tehran, told Iranian state television that bombings near health facilities forced medical staff to evacuate their patients. “We have newborn babies,” he said. “We had eight patients in the ICU, two in critical condition. Women giving birth. Embryos in our fertility department.”

Hegseth has previously accused Iran of “moving rocket launchers into civilian neighborhoods near schools, near hospitals to try to prevent our ability to strike.” But he has provided no evidence for this claim, and the Pentagon declined to comment on it.

At the same time, Hegseth has openly bragged about sidestepping the “stupid rules of engagement,” and dismantled the legal guardrails that would prevent the U.S. military from committing horrific war crimes.

President Trump took time out of his day to specifically praise defense company Palantir, causing its stock to spike on Friday.

“Palantir Technologies (PLTR) has proven to have great war fighting capabilities and equipment,” the president wrote on Truth Social, even going so far as to put Palantir’s market ticker symbol in the post. “Just ask our enemies!!! President DJT.”

This blatant positive press for a private weapons manufacturer with multiple government contracts and extensive ties to the president profiting off the war he started once again raises questions of market manipulation. Last month, Trump postponed strikes on Iran just two hours before markets opened, causing skyrocketing oil prices to temporarily dip. At the time, Iran’s Speaker of Parliament Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf referred to Trump’s Truth Social announcements as “a setup for profit-taking.” This move by Trump appears to be no different, and the market shows that.

President Donald Trump endorsed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán for reelection just days after Vice President JD Vance slammed the European Union for supposedly interfering in Hungary’s elections.

Writing on Truth Social Thursday night, Trump once again endorsed Orbán, the strongman leader who captured the imagination of conservative populists, just days before the country’s election.

“GET OUT AND VOTE FOR VIKTOR ORBÁN. He is a true friend, fighter, and WINNER, and has my Complete and Total Endorsement for Re-Election as Prime Minister of Hungary,” Trump wrote.

But Trump’s latest endorsement comes shortly after Vance railed against foreign interference in Hungary’s elections—while stumping for Orbán in Hungary.

Speaking at a joint press conference with Orbán Wednesday, Vance said: “What has happened in the midst of this election campaign is one of the worst examples of foreign election interference that I have ever seen or ever even read about.”

No, he wasn’t talking about his unprecedented decision to actively campaign for a foreign dictator; he was talking about the European Union.

“The bureaucrats in Brussels have tried to destroy the economy of Hungary. They have tried to make Hungary less energy-independent. They have tried to drive up costs for Hungarian consumers. And they’ve done it all because they hate this guy,” he said.

Vance insisted that he was there to “help as much as I possibly can help” with Orbán’s reelection.

“Your success is our success,” the vice president said.

Hypocrisy that’s this blatant has become a staple of the Trump administration and its shameless shilling for foreign dictators.

It’s not clear that the European Union has engaged in any election interference—certainly none more blatant than what Trump and Vance have done this week. EU officials have been careful not to publicly endorse any candidate in Hungary’s election, according to The Guardian.

As for trying to “destroy” the Hungarian economy, roughly $21 billion in EU funds to Hungary have been frozen due to concerns over Orbán’s leadership, including threats to judicial independence and human rights violations. As far as energy independence goes, Hungary opposed the EU’s decision to phase out reliance on Russian oil, even though the country benefits from the lowest energy prices in Europe thanks to solar energy production.

Vance also accused the EU of engaging in “digital censorship” by instructing social media companies what they could show to voters. In fact, the EU is investigating a range of social media companies for a variety of reasons.

Clearly, Vance has been working with Trump for too long, because he even claimed that EU officials had threatened to exact their “revenge” on Hungarian voters if the election didn’t go a certain way.

Pope Leo XIV has issued another holy missive against Donald Trump’s war with Iran.

“God does not bless any conflict,” wrote the official X account for the Chicago-born pontiff on Friday. “Anyone who is a disciple of Christ, the Prince of Peace, is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs.”

“Military action will not create space for freedom or times of #Peace, which comes only from the patient promotion of coexistence and dialogue among peoples,” he continued.

The message is nothing unusual out of the Vatican, except for its timing. Earlier this week, reports emerged that the Pentagon had threatened an ambassador from the Holy See in January, days after the pope made similar antiwar remarks during his State of the World address.

That month, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby reportedly summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the Vatican’s U.S. representative, to a closed-door meeting at the Pentagon. The atmosphere of the occasion was anything but friendly: Pentagon officials openly threatened the religious ambassador, asserting that the Catholic Church needed to get behind the Trump administration’s global whims due to America’s military prowess.

One U.S. official present at the meeting brought up the Avignon papacy, a period in the fourteenth century when the French monarchy bent the Catholic Church into submission, ordering an attack on Pope Boniface VIII that led to his downfall and subsequent death, and forcing the papacy to relocate from Rome to Avignon.

The Vatican was so alarmed by the Pentagon’s warning that Pope Leo canceled his plans to visit the U.S. later in the year, reported independent journalist Christopher Hale, who noted that “many in the Vatican saw the Pentagon’s reference to an Avignon papacy as a threat to use military force against the Holy See.”

The Vatican also rejected the White House’s invitation to host the pope for America’s 250th anniversary on July 4.

This is the pope’s second clear snub to Trump just this week. Leo met with Obama adviser David Axelrod Thursday morning, a major step toward getting the pope and the forty-fourth president in a room together. Trump has yet to meet the pope.

The Trump administration is warning staffers not to bet on world events in futures markets.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the White House Management Office sent out a staff-wide email on March 24 telling administration employees not to engage in the practice following President Donald Trump’s announcement the previous day that he was pausing strikes against Iran.

The email was likely prompted by the rise in suspicious wagers and investments being made just before Trump announces major policy decisions. Only 15 minutes before Trump announced the pause in bombing Iran, $760 million in oil futures contracts was traded in under two minutes.

Three accounts in the prediction market Polymarket correctly bet on the timing of the Iran war ceasefire earlier this week, netting over $600,000. One of those accounts, with a 93 percent accuracy rate, was able to profit by betting on when U.S. and Israeli airstrikes would occur in 2024, 2025, and 2026.

The timing of those bets raises the question of whether one of Trump’s staffers or associates is using insider information for profit. Online prediction markets such as Kalshi and Polymarket allow their customers to bet on everything from political events to sports, and suspicious bets have been going on for months.

In January, one trader, who had only created their account in December, made $400,000 by betting that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro would be removed from power less than five hours before it actually happened. Israel arrested and charged two people, including a military reservist, in February for allegedly using classified information to make bets on Polymarket.

Insider trading in the White House is a disturbing phenomenon, made worse by Trump’s embrace of corruption as president and because it’s an even more perverse form of war profiteering. It extends further than Polymarket or Kalshi, which are problematic in their own right, and could go all the way to the presidential Cabinet, as a broker for Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth allegedly tried to invest millions of dollars in defense companies just before the U.S. began bombing Iran. One wonders if Trump himself is also engaged in insider trading, or if his corrupt Department of Justice even takes the issue seriously.