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Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Reviews Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary? Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting

Getting Hooked on Quitting

Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

Is College Necessary?

Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear

Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Why the Iran war was inevitable

There were many reasons behind Trump's decision to attack — but none of them were about US national security

Published March 14, 2026 11:23AM (EDT)

I was off by three days. I had formally predicted — if the time stamp on an email counts as formality — that the bombing of Iran would commence on Tuesday, with the first strikes scripted to occur just as Donald Trump was inflicting his State of the Union address on us. He could then pivot to a carefully choreographed off-script moment, bathing himself in glory to the thunderous seal-clapping of his Republican congressional courtiers.

I had assumed that the obvious theatricality of such timing would be irresistible. It  might have been the first occasion that anyone has ever overestimated Trump’s capacity for vulgar showmanship. The precise timing of the attack, however, does not matter in the long run so much as why, and what happens next.

When the attack began, Trump, rather than being in Washington, was attending a fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago. Only on the third day did he address the nation, spending most of the speech denouncing the Iranian regime as evil while veering between the objective of eliminating Iran’s nuclear program (despite claiming he had “obliterated” it in June, which would preclude the urgency of re-obliterating it, especially as negotiations to limit it were interrupted by the attack), and achieving Iranian regime change, a heretofore-taboo phrase in MAGA World.

How a bombing campaign can achieve regime change is unclear, especially as we have been told nothing about the size and military strength of Iranian opposition groups, their readiness to take power, whether a new government would be democratic and who might lead it. We heard much the same rhetoric from the Bush administration, circa 2003, about how Iraqis would rise up to liberate themselves, when these were mostly the fantasies of frauds like Ahmed Chalabi.

A notable feature of Trump’s speech was his call to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards to drop their weapons in exchange for “immunity.” What that might mean and how it would be effectuated amid an air campaign was entirely unclear, and made  even murkier by a statement the same day from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth that “This is not a so-called regime-change war,” and there would be “No stupid rules of engagement, no nation-building quagmire, no democracy building exercise, no politically correct wars.”

Rules of engagement are typically in place to avoid unnecessary civilian casualties, abide by international law, and prevent friendly-fire incidents. Given that the U.S. has already lost three aircraft to fratricide, it raises the question of whether Hegseth actually did alter the rules of engagement in a way that made such incidents more likely, and whether in that case the customarily supine Congress will attempt to hold him accountable.

Hegseth seems to have ordered unit commanders to tell their troops that the war was God’s plan and that Donald Trump had been “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.” That will go over well in the Middle East.

If Hegseth’s rules of engagement for Iran are anything like those that prevailed in the Caribbean, there will be a less-than-rigorous effort to distinguish between legitimate military targets and the general population — the same population that both Trump and Hegseth are exhorting to rise up and overthrow the theocracy running the country. Indeed, Trump announced in short order that U.S. and Israeli strikes had killed persons foreseen as possible successors to the mullahs. To complicate matters even more, Hegseth seems to have ordered unit commanders to tell their troops that the war was God’s plan and that Donald Trump had been “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.” That will go over well in the Middle East.

Then came the statement of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who said the U.S. had gone to war because it faced an imminent threat since Israel was about to attack Iran. This was interpreted by some in the MAGA base as suggesting that Israel dragged the U.S. into the conflict.

Clarifying all of this was the lapidary statement of Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, a former wrestler and mixed martial artist who has been selected as Kristi Noem’s replacement at DHS. When asked, “Did the president not run on not starting a war with Iran?” Mullin responded, “He ran on ending wars. He’s ended eight of them.” When the reporter interjected, “He started this one,” Mullin replied, “This isn’t a war.” This is reminiscent of the time, roughly a million casualties ago, when Kremlin spokesmen insisted that the 2022 invasion of Ukraine wasn’t........

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