March 2, 2026

operation epic fu***ry

Dear friends,

A beloved friend texted me this morning:

I’m not sure what happened and how this all started with Iran?

She is not alone in her confusion. No one has adequately explained the reasons why the US military joined Israel in a coordinated assault on Iran that is now in its third day.

Although they enthusiastically started a war, both Trump and his Secretary of Defense are awfully defensive.

The mad king has held no public events since the war began, instead posting belligerent, triumphal statements on social media.

Hegseth held a presser this morning with General Dan Caine and

[n]either [one] shed much more light on what the mission in Iran is expected to accomplish.

Hegseth was cantankerous in the face of questions from the media:

When a reporter said that “people also want to know what they’re sending their men and women to war for,” and asked whether there was a concern that the conflict could spiral into a longer war, his reply was combative. “Did you not hear my remarks?” he said. “We’re ensuring the mission gets accomplished, but we are very clear-eyed, as the president has been, unlike other presidents, about the foolish policies in the past that recklessly pulled us into things that were not tethered to actual, clear objectives.”

And still, we can’t get a fix on actual, clear objectives.

An editorial in The Guardian explains the violation of international law:

Force is lawful, under the UN charter, only in self-defence against an imminent attack or with security council approval. Neither condition has been met. There was no evidence of an “instant, overwhelming” Iranian attack being prepared. What Donald Trump’s Operation Epic Fury looks like is not pre-emption but prevention: a decision to eliminate a future risk while an enemy appeared weak. It is a war of choice. Mr Trump’s call to overthrow a sovereign government was extraordinary.

When Pentagon officials briefed congressional staff, they stated that Iran was not planning to strike US or Israeli forces, contradicting the administration’s public claim that Tehran posed an imminent, preemptive threat.

Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries apparently sabotaged efforts in Congress to stop a war with Iran. This unconscionable lack of leadership is, unfortunately, too familiar.

Hundreds of people have already died in this war of choice, including 165 students, teachers, and parents at a girls’ school in Iran’s southern Hormozgan province.

Call your members of Congress and Democratic ‘leaders’ Schumer and Jeffries to remind them not to allow war in our name.

If you can’t call until later today, take quick action now:

Tell Congress to stop the illegal attacks on Iran. This quick action is from Win Without War.

Congress has failed to restrain Trump’s military overreach. The US bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities in June of last year, and the senate failed to pass a war powers resolution. After the US seized Nicolás Maduro in January, the senate failed again. Only two Republicans joined House Democrats to vote for a war powers resolution, and the measure fell short.

There will likely be another vote this week.

Use the ACLU action to remind your Congressional delegation that Trump lacks Constitutional authority to start a war.

On the lazy Susan of reasons for the US assault on Iran was Trump’s desire to get Ayatollah Ali Khameini “before he got me.”

Trump told ABC News that the U.S. had identified possible candidates to lead Iran after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s death, but he said the initial strikes were so effective they “knocked out most of the candidates” and left no clear replacement, noting even the second- and third-place options were dead.

We’re sowing chaos again. The US history of regime change in Iran dates back to 1953, when the US overthrew Iran’s democratically-elected prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh. Most of us need a little primer on our own history.

Read NPR’s excellent timeline of US-Iran relations.

It is not an original observation when I say that the timing of Trump’s epic fuckery is convenient for him.

I thought it on Saturday morning when my partner told me we attacked Iran and minutes later, I read that Trump’s Treasury Secretary has refused to produce the financial records of Epstein’s criminal sex trafficking organization to the task force investigating it.

Then, on Sunday, Heather Cox Richardson included this detail in her discussion of the major military assault on Iran:

Indeed, social media users are already referring to the attack as “Operation Epstein Fury,” suggesting it is an attempt to distract from the frequent appearance of the president’s name in the Epstein files as well as the recent story that the Department of Justice illegally withheld an allegation that Trump raped a thirteen-year-old.

This is a wag-the-dog scenario.

with love,

L