DL Open Thread: Sunday, March 1, 2026
Leave it to Trump to make me deviate from my Sunday Morning format. But when he’s perhaps started WW III without Congressional approval, I’m left with no choice.
Meet The New Old Guard, Same As The Old Old Guard?:
Iran’s top national security official said that an interim council would be formed on Sunday to rule the country after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, was assassinated in an Israeli strike.
In comments carried by Iranian state media, Ali Larijani, the security official, said the president, the head of the judiciary and a member of the Council of Guardians, a powerful group of jurists, would temporarily govern until a new leader was chosen.
The move suggested that the Islamic Republic was keen to project a sense of continuity after the death of its longtime ruler, who was at the center of the country’s theocratic system.
Before he was killed, Khamenei had delegated much of the running of the country to Mr. Larijani, a veteran politician and former commander in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps. The rise of Mr. Larijani had sidelined Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian.
The gleaming city of Dubai had long been the safest haven in a volatile Middle East, offering a life of luxury to Iranian businessmen, American celebrities and Russian oligarchs alike.
That image was irrevocably shaken this weekend, when Iran responded to an American and Israeli assault by firing hundreds of missiles and launching drones at the wealthy countries of the Persian Gulf, home to several U.S. military bases.
In Dubai, five-star hotels caught fire, explosions rattled the windows of apartment towers and the emirate’s bustling international airport was damaged, injuring seven people. Social media influencers and terrified migrant workers shared videos of fiery projectiles in the night sky, streaking past the city’s iconic skyscrapers.
More than 200 drones and 137 ballistic missiles targeted the United Arab Emirates alone, the Emirati defense ministry said on Sunday. Most of those projectiles were intercepted, but 14 drones fell into Emirati territory and waters. Fragments of missiles and drones that were intercepted rained down across the city, causing further damage and injuries.
Over the past few weeks, all of the Gulf governments had publicly sought to avert a war between the United States and Iran, fearing that the fallout would extend to their own countries. All of their economic models hinge on regional stability, and the ability to offer a safe foothold in the Middle East to financiers, businesses and tourists.
Israel, US Kill 150 At Girls’ School. Lest you’d forgotten that Israel is a rogue nation:
The death toll from a missile strike on a girls’ school in southern Iran has risen to almost 150, according to Iranian state media.
Mizan news agency, the official news outlet of Iran’s judiciary, reported that the number killed in Saturday’s strike on a girls’ elementary school in Minab in southern Iran had risen to 148 killed, with 95 others wounded. The news agency cited Ebrahim Taheri, a prosecutor in Minab.
The school, which was struck on Saturday morning, appears to be the worst mass casualty event of the US-Israeli-led bombing campaign on Iran so far.
Video and photographs from the aftermath of the strike, which have been verified as authentic and geolocated to the site, show hundreds of people gathered around the partially collapsed, smoking building, with rubble strewn across the street and men digging through it for victims. Screams can be heard in the background. In some of the images, schoolbags and textbooks are being pulled from the debris.
Any word from Melanie Ross Levin and her fellow legislative propagandists? I know, I know, those girls were future terrorists, amirite?
Trump’s War Is Unpopular. Anyone think it will become more popular as the days pass?:
Last June, after the U.S. bombed strategic military targets in Iran, I published an article compiling polls that showed just 16% of Americans supported “getting involved in the Israel-Iran conflict,” including just 19% of Trump voters. Then, the public didn’t want a war with the country, with 60% of adults opposing military action.
Eight months later, the public still doesn’t support military action in Iran.
A YouGov snap poll fielded Saturday — the day of the strikes — found 34% of Americans approve of the U.S. attacks on Iran, with 44% disapproving and 22% unsure. The partisan breakdown reflects strong polarization in opinion: Republicans approve 69–12, Democrats disapprove 70–10, and independents lean heavily against — 52% disapprove, 20% approve.
This level of support for a foreign war is incredibly low. In comparison, a Gallup poll in November 2001 found 92% of Americans approved of military action in Afghanistan. And a Pew poll in late March 2003 found 71% supported the decision to use force in Iraq. The YouGov snap poll from Saturday puts approval of the Iran strikes at 34%.
But remember to see this whole escalating series of military adventures in the proper light. Trump is very unpopular and growing more so every day. He now faces what seems close to the certainty of losing at least one House of Congress. As his public support ebbs his power and the power to dominate ebb as well. For Trump that is akin to a psychic death. So, as a matter of psychological balancing and self-care more than strategy, he is leaning heavily into the presidential prerogative powers where his power is most untrammeled, where the loss of political power doesn’t really matter. Almost no presidential power is more clearly in that character as the president’s control over the military. Put simply, he’s leaning into those powers as a matter of psychological compensation.
Unintended Consequences. We don’t know, we can’t know, how this will play out. The point being, neither can Trump:
Just a few hours into what Washington was calling Operation Epic Fury, fighting had already expanded far beyond the geographic scope of the previous war in Iran in June 2025, which was almost entirely confined to Israel and Iran.
All eyes were on Hezbollah, the Iran-backed group that previously said the killing of Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was a red line.
A statement from the group on Saturday afternoon made no mention of whether it would help its chief patron, Iran, but instead condemned what it described as a violation of the UN charter by the US and Israel.
Many Lebanese dreaded the entry of Hezbollah into the ongoing conflict, fearful of triggering a response from Israel, which has signalled through diplomatic channels that it would unleash a wide-ranging attack against Lebanon in the case of Hezbollah’s involvement.
Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said in an interview with NBC that he told Gulf states “we have no intention to attack them but we are actually attacking the American bases in the act of self-defence”.
Attacking the Gulf states was a line Iran did not cross in past rounds of conflict, with rare attacks on oil infrastructure remaining unclaimed.
Gulf states had previously tried to prevent the Trump administration from attacking Iran, fearful of blowback and unintended consequences destabilising the country of 93 million.
Imposing material costs on Gulf states, stable kingdoms unused to wars in their back yards, could be to get the monarchies to put pressure on Trump to halt the bombing campaign.
Some of the ruling families, such as the al-Thani family in Qatar and the crown prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman, have close relationships with Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, who has a heavy hand in shaping the president’s Middle East policy.
Conversely, some analysts warned targeting the Gulf kingdoms could backfire, alienating voices that were previously lobbying the US to reconsider its military campaign on Iran.
What do you want to talk about?
Three US servicemembers confirmed dead:
“Three U.S. service members have been killed in action and five have been seriously wounded, the Pentagon said in announcing the first American troops to die in President Trump’s war with Iran.
United States Central Command did not say where the troops were killed. Two military officials said that an Army base housing American troops in Kuwait was one of the many American bases in the region that had been hit in retaliatory Iranian strikes.
Several other troops “sustained minor shrapnel injuries and concussions and are in the process of being returned to duty,” Central Command said in a social media post on Sunday.”
Polling just before the attack asked voters how many American casualties would be acceptable. The answer: Zero.
I don’t think this is going to help his popularity ratings as much as he thinks it will.
https://www.rawstory.com/iran-2675431549/