Iranian children are dug out of rubble after a missile strike on their school. Sailors drown in a US torpedo attack. Nato intercepts a missile headed for Turkey. The CIA recruits Kurds to fight the Iranian regime. Iran and Hizbullah fire drones and missiles at Israel, as Israeli bombing drives hundreds of thousands of Lebanese from their homes. Beirut’s southern suburbs “will soon look like [the flattened Gaza town] Khan Younis,” warns minister for finance Bezalel Smotrich.

Within six days, 14 countries had been attacked and more than 1,300 people had been killed. The US is spending $1 billion daily on a conflict without a time frame or clear objectives. Potential consequences of the war waged by nuclear powers with AI-enhanced weapons and stretching from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean are terrifying.

US president Donald Trump contradicted his claim to have “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear programme last June, saying Iran was two weeks away from obtaining a nuclear weapon, an allegation debunked by the UN’s nuclear watchdog IAEA as well as Trump’s own intelligence agencies.

Secretary of state Marco Rubio said the US decided to fight because it knew Israel was about to attack, seemingly confirming that Israel determines US Middle East policy. Maga stalwarts Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene were outraged. US comedian Michelle Wolf invented the combined name “US-rael”. Trump denied he was following Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

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How will the US and Israel’s war on Iran end?

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