Breaking — They Bombed Iran. Without a Vote. Without Evidence. Without Warning.

Operation Epic Fury. 53 dead children. No congressional vote. No evidence. No shame.

While others stenograph, grift, or chase the next distraction
this is the news that matters and how it's connected.

Thursday, the Pentagon issued an ultimatum to Anthropic: remove all AI safety restrictions — including blocks on autonomous weapons — or lose every federal contract. Anthropic refused. The deadline expired Friday at 5:01 PM.

Saturday morning, the bombs dropped.

We're not saying those two things are connected. We're saying: the people demanding AI without human guardrails just launched a war without congressional authorization, without evidence, without even the decency to fabricate a justification — and dropped a bomb on a girls' elementary school.

Keep that in the back of your mind.

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The Attack

At 9:27 AM Tehran time on Saturday, February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel launched a joint military assault on Iran. The US codename: Operation Epic Fury. Israel's: Roaring Lion. Targets across Tehran, Isfahan, Qom, Karaj, Kermanshah, Tabriz, Ilam, and Lorestan.¹ Two aircraft carriers. Hundreds of sorties. The operation is expected to last "a few days."¹

The US focused on Iran's ballistic missile and nuclear infrastructure. Israel focused on something else entirely: decapitation. Israeli forces targeted Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Masoud Pezeshkian.¹ ² "Several senior figures essential to the management of the campaign and the regime's governance were eliminated," an Israeli military official told NBC News.¹ As of early Saturday, Khamenei had been transferred to a secure location; Iran's FM said he was alive "as far as I know."¹

Trump announced the operation in an eight-minute video posted to Truth Social: "Bombs will be dropping everywhere. When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be, probably, your only chance for generations."²

Regime change. Stated explicitly. By the President of the United States. In a social media post.

Iran retaliated immediately. Ballistic missiles struck the US Navy's 5th Fleet headquarters in Bahrain — home to 8,300 sailors, including hundreds of family members. Plumes of black smoke and fire rose over the base.³ Missiles also hit Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, where thousands of American troops are stationed, plus bases in Kuwait, the UAE, Jordan, and Iraq.¹ ⁴ Iran's IRGC announced: "This operation will continue relentlessly until the enemy is decisively defeated."

No US casualties were reported in the first two hours. One Asian migrant worker was killed in Abu Dhabi when shrapnel from an intercepted Iranian missile fell on him.⁵

The attack hit on Saturday — Iran's first workday of the week. People were at work. Children were in school.

A missile struck a girls' elementary school in Minab, Hormozgan province. At least 53 students were killed.² ⁵ No warning had been given. Communications across Iran went 99% dark after the strikes began.¹

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They Stopped Pretending

Let's be honest about what the justification was.

On Tuesday — three days before the bombs dropped — Trump stood before 30 million Americans at the State of the Union and declared that Iran refused to say "those secret words": that they would never build a nuclear weapon. The implication was clear: Iran is intransigent, diplomacy failed, and force is the only option.

There was one problem. Hours before that speech, Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi had posted publicly on X — in exact words — that Iran "will under no circumstances ever develop a nuclear weapon."⁶ Those were the words Trump told Congress he'd never heard. They were on the internet before he walked to the podium. Then, two days after the speech, the third round of nuclear talks concluded in Muscat: six hours, both sides calling them "positive," another session expected in Vienna the following week.⁷ It never happened.

Oman's Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi — the mediator — flew to Washington on Friday to brief US officials on what he believed was an imminent breakthrough. He made an extraordinary public statement trying to stop the attack: "Active and serious negotiations have yet again been undermined."⁵ ⁷

Iran's FM asked the only question that matters now: "I don't know why, while we were progressing in our talks and a deal was at our reach, why they decided to attack us?"¹

Senator Mark Warner — Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, with full access to the classified record — answered it this way: "The American people have seen this playbook before — claims of urgency, misrepresented intelligence, and military action that pulls the United States into regime change and prolonged, costly nation-building."⁸

At least with Iraq, they performed the theater. Powell at the UN. The satellite photographs. The anthrax vial. All fabricated — but they dressed it up. This time? A lie at the SOTU. A 10-day countdown from a room called "Peace." And then war. They've stopped pretending.

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The Plan Was the Plan

Forty-eight hours before the attack, Politico reported — based on two people familiar with administration discussions — that Trump's senior advisers wanted Israel to strike Iran first.⁹ Not because Israeli interests demanded it. Because an Israeli strike would trigger Iranian retaliation against American bases, giving the White House the political justification it needed.

The exact quote: "There's thinking in and around the administration that the politics are a lot better if the Israelis go first and alone and the Iranians retaliate against us, and give us more reason to take action."⁹ Sources acknowledged "a high likelihood of American casualties" as an acceptable risk. The strategy counted on Americans getting hit.

Two days later, American bases across the Gulf were on fire.

The attack date was "set weeks ago," per an Israeli defense official — even as negotiations were ongoing.⁴ Netanyahu and Trump had coordinated for months, running a deception campaign to lull Iran: fake tensions, staged normalcy, Netanyahu's vacation — all while the target bank was finalized.¹⁰ Trump reportedly acknowledged he "played the game together with Israel."¹⁰

The diplomacy was the cover.

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Congress Never Got a Vote

The Khanna-Massie War Powers Resolution — a bipartisan measure requiring the president to get congressional authorization before attacking Iran — was formally announced on February 26.¹¹ Two days before the bombs dropped.

The entire House Democratic leadership signed onto it. Their joint statement called any unauthorized military action "unconstitutional."¹¹ The night before the attack, Jeffries said war with Iran would be "reckless," "dangerous," and "harmful to America's national security interests."¹²

The vote never happened. The bombs dropped at dawn.

Congressional reactions revealed the real fault line — not party, but war hawk vs. everyone else. Graham (R) praised the operation; Fetterman (D) tweeted "God bless the United States, our great military, and Israel."¹³ But Massie (R) called it "acts of war unauthorized by Congress,"¹³ and Gallego (D), a Marine Corps combat veteran, said: "I lost friends in Iraq to an illegal war. Young working-class kids should not pay the ultimate price for regime change and a war that hasn't been explained or justified to the American people."¹³

The Constitution is not ambiguous. Warner — who has seen the classified intelligence — was direct: the strikes were launched "in the absence of an imminent threat to the United States" and raise "serious legal and constitutional concerns."⁸ The check existed. He outran it.

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Back to the Guardrails

The Pentagon demanded Anthropic remove all safety restrictions from Claude AI — including blocks on autonomous weapons and mass surveillance. Amodei refused: "We cannot in good conscience accede to their request."¹⁴ Hegseth called it ideological obstruction.¹⁵ Trump blacklisted Anthropic across the federal government.¹⁶ Warner called it what it was: potentially a pretext to steer contracts to a preferred vendor whose model agencies had "already identified as a reliability, safety, and security threat."¹⁷

He also said Hegseth's "all lawful purposes" AI standard provides "cold comfort against the backdrop of Pentagon leadership that has routinely sidelined career military attorneys and challenged longstanding norms and rules regarding lethal force."¹⁷

The people who want AI without guardrails launched a war without congressional authorization, against a country in active negotiations, on a manufactured pretext — and killed 53 children.

This is why you don't remove the guardrails.

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The Call

This isn't an isolated incident. We track stories like this using the fascism syndrome—ten indicators that a democracy is sliding into fascism—so you don't lose the thread in the daily chaos:

• Cult of the leader: One man launched a war. No vote. No congressional debate. No authorization. He outran the constitutional check deliberately — the vote was two days away.

• War on reality: Hours before Trump's SOTU, Iran's FM posted the exact words Trump claimed he'd never heard: Iran would "under no circumstances ever develop a nuclear weapon."⁶ Trump told Congress those words hadn't been said. Three days later, the bombs dropped.

• Aggression as virtue: "Bombs will be dropping everywhere." "We are going to annihilate their navy." The quiet part has become the entire speech.

• Capture of the state: The constitutional war powers mechanism existed. Congress was assembling to use it. Trump struck before the vote could happen.

• Consolidation of economic power: Brent crude hit a 7-month high on day one. Analysts project $100+ per barrel if prolonged. The extraction class doesn't need the war to succeed — the chaos itself prints money.¹⁸

Lie at the SOTU. Outrun Congress. Bomb a school. Call it freedom. That's not leadership. That's not foreign policy. That's fascism.

But we're not here just to tell you the house is on fire.

We built this publication to equip you with the tools to fight back—the frameworks, the messaging, the strategies that actually work. See the links below. But we can only keep doing this with your help. If this matters to you, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. You keep the fight alive.

• Fighting Fascism: How We Charge Ahead and Win — The strategic playbook for reclaiming power

• The Trump Regime Messaging Guide — How to talk to people who've been captured by the machine

• The Freedom Illusion — How we got here, and the counter-ideology that gets us out

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Article Sources:

1. NBC News staff, "Live updates: U.S. and Israel launch major attack on Iran", NBC News, February 28, 2026.

NBC News's live blog is the primary real-time record of the joint US-Israel attack. It documents the dual operation objectives (Israel targeting leadership, US targeting missiles and nuclear infrastructure), Iran's broad regional retaliation against American bases across the Gulf (UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan), Trump's regime-change address, the girls' school massacre in Minab (at least 51 killed per a special governor), Iran's FM offer of de-escalation, and the confirmation of no US casualties in the first hours. It also reports that Trump's own briefing to the "Gang of Eight" earlier that week described military action as something that "may become necessary" — revealing the attack was not a surprise response but a planned escalation.

2. Daniel Estrin and Rebecca Rosman, "U.S. and Israel strike Iran in operation 'Epic Fury.' Trump calls for regime overthrow", NPR, February 28, 2026.

NPR's main breaking news account of Operation Epic Fury, providing Trump's verbatim quotes in full — including "Bombs will be dropping everywhere" and his explicit call for Iranian citizens to "take over your government." It documents the operation's multi-day timeline, the targeting of Khamenei and Pezeshkian, Iran's regional retaliation, and the girls' school massacre. The article confirms that Israel targeted Iranian leadership including the Supreme Leader, and that the operation was expected to "last a few days" — establishing from the outset that this was not a limited strike but an extended military campaign aimed at regime change.

3. Lara Korte and Shannon Renfroe, "Counterstrikes continue at US Navy base in Bahrain", Stars and Stripes, February 28, 2026.

Stars and Stripes' on-the-ground military account from Manama, Bahrain — written by correspondent Shannon Renfroe physically present in the capital. Confirms smoke and fire visible at the US Navy's 5th Fleet headquarters, no US casualties in the first two hours, and continued targeting of Al Udeid in Qatar and bases in Kuwait. Documents that Bahrain hosts approximately 8,300 sailors plus hundreds of family members in an "accompanied posting" — contextualizing the human stakes of Iran targeting the base. The article also confirms Trump's explicit statement that "American heroes may be lost," establishing that the administration anticipated US casualties and launched the operation anyway.

4. Al Jazeera Staff, "US, Israel launch attack on Iran, explosions in Israel, Arab states", Al Jazeera, February 28, 2026.

Al Jazeera's main attack article provides granular geographic detail of the strikes — specific Tehran neighborhoods (University Street, Jomhouri, Seyyed Khandan), Iranian counterstrike targets (Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, US Navy 5th Fleet HQ in Bahrain, UAE, Kuwait), and the "no red lines" declaration from a senior Iranian official. The article also documents the most damning single operational fact: an Israeli defense official confirmed to Reuters that the attack date was "decided weeks ago" — even as US-Iran nuclear negotiations were ongoing and being described by both sides as productive.

5. Jane Arraf, "Panic, fury, and some hope, in Iran as U.S. launches strikes", NPR, February 28, 2026.

Jane Arraf's on-the-ground account from Amman, based on direct phone contact with residents in Tehran before communications were severed. Confirms 53 students killed at a girls' elementary school in Minab, Hormozgan province. Captures the full spectrum of Iranian civilian reaction — panic, fury, and the voice of anti-regime Iranians "really hopeful that the regime will fall." Also documents that Oman's Foreign Minister flew to Washington on Friday to brief US officials on diplomatic progress and tried to stop the attack — and that Iran's foreign ministry confirmed Tehran was in the middle of active nuclear negotiations when the strikes began.

6. Joe Walsh, "Trump says Iran must commit to never building a nuclear weapon", CBS News, February 24, 2026.

The smoking gun for the SOTU lie. CBS News documents Trump's claim at the State of the Union that Iran hadn't said "those secret words" — "We will never have a nuclear weapon" — and immediately notes that Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi had posted exactly those words on X earlier the same day: "Iran will under no circumstances ever develop a nuclear weapon." CBS explicitly documents the direct contradiction: the words Trump told Congress he'd never heard had been said publicly, in English, on social media, hours before he walked to the podium. This establishes Trump's SOTU Iran claim as a knowing misrepresentation — the manufactured pretext for a war he had already decided to launch.

7. Chantal Da Silva, Andrea Mitchell, and Natasha Lebedeva, "U.S. and Iran hold nuclear talks as Trump raises pressure with military buildup", NBC News, February 26, 2026.

NBC News's account of the sixth-hour nuclear negotiations in Muscat on February 26 — two days before the attack — confirmed by both sides as "positive" and "productive." Iran's FM said both sides were showing "greater seriousness" and expected talks to continue in Vienna "about a week" later. The article also documents the simultaneous US military buildup: the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier departed Greece for the region the same day talks concluded. This source is the definitive evidence that diplomacy was progressing at the exact moment the administration was finalizing attack preparations.

8. Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-VA), "Statement of Sen. Warner on Military Action in Iran", warner.senate.gov, February 28, 2026.

Official statement from Sen. Warner in his capacity as Vice Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence — a position giving him access to the classified intelligence record underlying the strike decision. Warner confirms the strikes extended "not limited to nuclear or missile infrastructure but to a broad set of targets, including senior Iranian leadership" — establishing regime-change intent. His explicit citation of "claims of urgency, misrepresented intelligence" from the position of someone who has seen the classified briefings makes this the most authoritative congressional condemnation of the operation, and his invocation of "absence of an imminent threat to the United States" directly undercuts any self-defense legal justification.

9. Taegan Goddard, "Trump Aides Want Israel to Strike Iran First", Political Wire (aggregating Politico), February 26, 2026.

Political Wire aggregating the Politico report that — published 48 hours before the attack — documented Trump's senior advisers explicitly wanting Israel to strike first so Iran would retaliate against US bases, providing domestic political justification for full US involvement. Sources acknowledged "high likelihood of American casualties" as an acceptable risk. The administration source's quote — "the politics are a lot better if the Israelis go first and alone and the Iranians retaliate against us" — is the single most important pre-attack documentation of the "false flag by proxy" strategy that was executed two days later. White House spokesperson declined to confirm or deny.

10. Washington Post / Times of Israel staff, "Netanyahu, Trump ran deception campaign to hide attack plans from Iran", Times of Israel, February 28, 2026.

Reports, citing the Washington Post, that Netanyahu and Trump coordinated for months on the attack while deliberately running a deception campaign — fake diplomatic signals, staged US-Israel tensions, Netanyahu's vacation and his son's wedding preparations — all while finalizing the target bank. Trump reportedly acknowledged he "played the game together with Israel. It was a whole coordination." This source establishes that the attack was not an improvised response to diplomatic failure but the execution of a plan developed over an extended period while both governments were publicly claiming to prefer a negotiated outcome.

11. House Armed Services Committee (Democrats), "Dem Leadership, Smith, Meeks, Himes, Khanna Announce Iran WPR Vote Next Week", House Armed Services Committee Democrats, February 26, 2026.

Official press release issued two days before the strikes, signed by the entire House Democratic leadership — Jeffries, Clark, Aguilar, plus ranking members of Armed Services, Foreign Affairs, and Intelligence. The joint statement calls any unauthorized military action against Iran "unconstitutional" and announces the Khanna-Massie War Powers Resolution would be brought to a full House vote as soon as Congress reconvened. The document is direct proof that the administration launched a war in the explicit face of bipartisan congressional warning — two days after this release appeared, the bombs dropped without the vote.

12. Associated Press, "Congress prepares for war powers resolution vote to block U.S. strikes on Iran", PBS NewsHour, February 27, 2026.

Published the night before the strikes, capturing House Minority Leader Jeffries at his most explicit: war with Iran would be "reckless," "dangerous," and "harmful to America's national security interests." Written approximately 12 hours before the first explosions in Tehran, this article stands as contemporaneous proof that Democratic leadership publicly declared the war both unconstitutional and dangerous — and was ignored. The article confirms the parallel Kaine-Paul Senate effort and the bipartisan nature of congressional opposition.

13. Christina Santucci, "Reactions pour in from members of Congress after U.S. and Israel attack Iran", Spectrum News, February 28, 2026.

Congressional reaction roundup capturing the full ideological spectrum, from Graham's "liberation" enthusiasm to Gallego's "I lost friends in Iraq" fury. Documents the cross-partisan divide: Democrat Fetterman praising Trump, Republican Massie calling the strikes "acts of war unauthorized by Congress." Confirms the parallel Senate War Powers effort led by Kaine (D-VA) and Paul (R-KY), and Moskowitz's formal briefing requests. This source establishes that the constitutional confrontation between Congress and the executive over war powers was both bipartisan and formally underway.

14. Bobby Allyn, "Anthropic won't give the Pentagon unrestricted access to its AI. Here's why", NPR, February 27, 2026.

NPR's account of Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's public refusal of the Pentagon's demand to remove all safety restrictions from Claude AI — including blocks on autonomous weapons systems and mass domestic surveillance. Amodei's statement: "We cannot in good conscience accede to their request." The article documents that Anthropic's restrictions had previously allowed legitimate military use while maintaining human oversight requirements, and that the Pentagon's "best and final offer" language indicated the administration was escalating toward the blacklisting that occurred hours later.

15. Jennifer Jacobs, "Pentagon brand's Anthropic's CEO a 'liar' with 'God complex'", CBS News, February 27, 2026.

CBS News obtained a Pentagon memo attacking Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei personally, written by Emil Michael — a key Hegseth adviser — describing Amodei as a "liar" with a "God complex." The memo represents the administration's escalation from contractual dispute to personal attack, signaling that the blacklisting was about more than a contract disagreement. The article also documents the "best and final offer" ultimatum language and the Palantir connection — noting that Anthropic had inquired about the Pentagon's use of Claude for the Venezuela operation that captured Maduro, which was flagged as a grievance triggering the dispute.

16. Matt O'Brien, "Trump orders federal agencies to stop using Anthropic's AI after company refuses to drop safeguards", ABC News, February 27, 2026.

Documents Trump's Truth Social announcement ordering every federal agency to "IMMEDIATELY CEASE all use of Anthropic's technology" — executed via social media post with no formal legal process and without any direct communication to Anthropic. The article confirms Anthropic said it had received "no direct communication from the Pentagon or White House about the status of negotiations." The blacklisting was announced publicly the same day OpenAI announced a Pentagon deal with the exact same safety provisions Anthropic had demanded — directly undercutting the administration's stated position that those terms were incompatible with military use.

17. Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-VA), "Warner Condemns Pentagon Pressure Campaign, Raises Concerns about Politicized Directive Targeting Anthropic", warner.senate.gov, February 27, 2026.

Official press release from Sen. Warner — Vice Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence — directly accusing the Trump administration of blacklisting Anthropic potentially "as the pretext to steer contracts to a preferred vendor whose model a number of federal agencies have already identified as a reliability, safety, and security threat." Warner explicitly connects Hegseth's demand for "all lawful purposes" AI to Pentagon leadership that has "routinely sidelined career military attorneys and challenged longstanding norms and rules regarding lethal force" — making this the clearest congressional statement linking the AI dispute to the broader pattern of lawless executive behavior.

18. Thomas Watkins, "Oil prices jump on fears of supply disruption, economic fallout", CBS19/AP, February 28, 2026.

Documents the immediate economic impact of the Iran attack: Brent crude rising to $73/barrel, a 7-month high, on fears of Strait of Hormuz disruption. Notes analyst projections of $100+ per barrel if the conflict becomes prolonged. Establishes the financial dimension of the conflict: whoever benefits from oil price spikes — energy companies, hedge funds, foreign producers with dollar-denominated contracts — profits regardless of military outcome, making the economic incentive structure for prolonged conflict visible.