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Saturday, February 28, 2026

02/28 Links: US and Israel launch major joint assault on Iran; Trump indicates goal is to topple regime; Trump says ‘evil’ Khamenei is dead

From Ian:

US and Israel launch major joint assault on Iran; Trump indicates goal is to topple regime
After long weeks of escalating regional tensions and burgeoning threats of conflict, Israel and the US launched a major joint strike on Iran on Saturday morning, with waves of attacks on sites across the Islamic Republic continuing throughout the day.

Strikes targeted Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Masoud Pezeshkian, an Israeli official said. Other top regime and military commanders were also targeted, according to the official. The results of the strikes were not yet clear.

Targets in the campaign, which began shortly after 8 a.m. Israel time, also included Iran’s military, symbols of government and intelligence targets, according to an official briefed on the operation, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss nonpublic information on the attack.

Several senior Revolutionary Guards commanders and political officials were killed, an Iranian source close to the establishment told Reuters. Among them were the commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Gen. Mohammad Pakpour, and Iranian defense minister Aziz Nasirzadeh, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

US President Donald Trump announced that the US had begun “major combat operations in Iran,” calling the campaign “a massive and ongoing operation to prevent this very wicked, radical dictatorship from threatening America and our core national security interests.”

“We are going to destroy their missiles and raze their missile industry to the ground. It will be totally… obliterated. We are going to annihilate their navy,” he said in a video statement posted on his Truth Social account.

“We are going to ensure that the region’s terrorist proxies can no longer destabilize the region or the world and attack our forces.”

Trump indicated that the goal was to topple the regime, and he called on the Iranian people to seize the opportunity and take over their government.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in his own video message to the public that the operation was launched “to remove the existential threat” posed by the Islamic Republic, and “create the conditions” for Iranians to change their destiny.

“The time has come for all parts of the Iranian people… to cast off the yoke of tyranny and bring about a free and peace-seeking Iran,” the premier said.
Stephen Pollard: Donald Trump has just demonstrated the decisive leadership the West needs
Today that same Donald Trump – braggart, authoritarian and many other equally awful labels – stands before the world after an act of global leadership that makes all other leaders look like pygmies beside him. The decision to take on Iran and provide a platform for the destruction of the Tehran regime is one of the most vital and necessary acts of recent decades.

Trump’s statement this morning repays close reading. It is the most clear-sighted, compelling and important speeches by and Western leader since 9/11. For decades the Western nations have allowed Iran to grown in strength and deepen its threat. It has been allowed to become the global leader in state-sponsored terror. And the JCPOA – the Iran nuclear deal – was perhaps the most misguided international treaty in living memory. Who ripped it up? Donald Trump in his first term.

Now he is seeking to finish the job he started by using the might of the US military to cripple the Iranian regime and offer the brave, young people of Iran the chance of freedom. There is no greater prize in the Middle East. Iranians are natural allies of the West – and of Israel – and today is a day of hope and wonder, with the possibility now opening up that they might have the chance to witness the overthrowing of the hated regime. Naturally Trump’s war on the Iranian regime has attracted the ire of the usual suspects. Good. These are the same people who have either directly or indirectly aided the regime for decades. It is all to the good that they and their arguments are being treated with the contempt they deserve. This is no time for talk, but for action: and only Trump has the strength and bravery required to provide it.
Jake Wallis Simons: The world’s most evil regime is on the brink – and Britain has nothing to do with it
Where was Britain? As missiles reportedly killed the Ayatollah in Tehran, his office in London remained open. His ambassador has not been expelled. His Revolutionary Guards have not been banned in this country, even as they are under attack in their own.

Iran, together with its allies in Beijing and Moscow, is the clearest global evil since the Nazi regime. Its tentacles stretch into Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq, and into the campuses, mosques and protest movements of Britain. Yet our response has been more Neville Chamberlain than Winston Churchill.

What will it take for us to call an enemy an enemy? Domestically, the regime has murdered more than 40,000 citizens for the crime of calling for freedom. It has removed the uteruses of female protesters, injected prisoners with toxic substances, executed wounded activists in their hospital beds and demanded huge sums to return corpses of loved ones. The scenes of mothers weeping over the bodies of their children, or dancing in defiance at their funerals, have been unbearable.

Abroad, the regime is the foremost sponsor of terror, giving birth to Hezbollah, sponsoring Hamas and mounting scores of assassination and kidnap plots on British soil. Through its proxies, it runs a narcotics network stretching from Latin America to the Middle East, with supplies of Captagon alone fostering widespread addiction, violence and criminality.

Behind it all is a fanatical theology that lusts after an apocalyptic war to trigger the coming of the Mahdi, a 10th-century cleric who will supposedly return from invisibility to conquer the globe in the endtime. This is not an empty faith. For 47 years, the Ayatollah – who has reportedly been killed by a US or Israeli missile – has been plotting to fulfil this prophecy with a triune strategy of proxy militia, ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons.

That is where Iran’s resources and ingenuity have gone. While its citizens have languished in poverty atop the second-largest gas reserves on Earth, more than half-a-trillion dollars was spent on a failed nuclear programme and about $2 billion a year on proxy militia, for the sake of little more than bigotry and superstition.

Iran could have been a G20 country. Instead, in the fume-filled Palestine Square in central Tehran, a public clock counts down the hours to the supposed destruction of the Jewish state. Well, yesterday, while Britain blocked American warplanes from RAF bases because of “international law”, Israel and the United States called time on that countdown by rising to strangle the octopus.

The move was bold and fraught with risk. Without boots on the ground, there is no guarantee that the regime, which holds a monopoly on weapons in the country, will fall. If it does, there is no guarantee that a free, stable and democratic nation will emerge from the chaos.

But sometimes evil demands courage. What odds faced our soldiers on D-Day, or our pilots during the Battle of Britain? Which returns us to Downing Street. Hours after the war began, neither our Prime Minister nor his Foreign Secretary, fresh from humiliation at the hands of a political Islamist insurgency in Gorton and Danton, had even issued a public statement.


Top US official: Iran planned to preemptively launch missiles, Trump was forced to act
US President Donald Trump authorized Operation Epic Fury against Iran after Washington received intelligence indicating that the Islamic Republic would deploy its ballistic missiles either preemptively or simultaneously with any American action against Tehran, a senior US official said on Saturday.

For their part, Iranian officials have asserted that they would only deploy the country’s arsenal if attacked, which is what ended up happening.

“The president decided he was not going to sit back and allow American forces in the region to absorb attacks from conventional missiles,” the senior US official said, briefing reporters on condition of anonymity.

“We had analysis that basically told us [that] if we sat back and waited to get hit first, the amount of casualties and damage would be substantially higher than if we acted in a preemptive, defensive way to prevent those launches from occurring,” the senior US official claimed.

“We cannot continue to live in a world where these people not only possess missiles but the ability to make 100 of them a month in perpetuity, to overwhelm any potential defenses,” the US official continued.

“We are not going to be held hostage by them, and we are not going to let them hit us first because it would have substantially increased the risk to our troops in the region and to our allies,” he added.

The senior US official said the Trump administration viewed Iran’s “ambition” of nuclear weapons as a longer-term threat and Tehran’s existing stockpile of missiles that can reach US military bases across the region as a “short-term” threat posing “an intolerable risk to the US.”

The comments from the senior US official indicated a shift in Washington’s justification for launching a joint strike with Israel against Iran on Saturday morning, as Trump had hitherto placed much greater emphasis on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program than its ballistic missile program.

Reflecting on the last three rounds of nuclear talks with Iran, the senior US official asserted that Tehran demonstrated “no seriousness to achieve a real deal.

The official revealed that Washington had offered Iran “free nuclear fuel forever” in the negotiations.

“They basically said that didn’t work for them. And we basically said, ‘Well, that makes absolutely no sense,'” the senior US official recalled, accusing Iran of trying to “buy time,” rather than negotiating in good faith.

“They were in the throes of rebuilding everything that had been destroyed” in the US and Israeli strikes last June, the US official claimed.
Full text of Trump’s declaration of ‘major combat operations’ against Iran

Full text of Netanyahu’s message as Israel, US strike Iran: We will remove ‘existential threat’

Trump says ‘evil’ Khamenei is dead; Israeli official says his body has been found
US President Donald Trump declared the death of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday night, less than 24 hours after Israel and the US launched the most ambitious attack on Iran in decades.

“Khamenei, one of the most evil people in History, is dead,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, adding that US strikes would continue “uninterrupted” for the coming week or until peace is secured in Iran.

Israeli and US officials had increasingly projected confidence in the hours leading up to Trump’s remarks that the leader of the Islamic Republic had been killed in an airstrike on his compound.

An Israeli official briefing local media said the Iranian leader had been killed in an Israeli strike on his compound on Saturday morning, and a senior Israeli official told Reuters that his body had been found. Israel’s Channel 12 reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been shown an image of his body after it was recovered from the compound in Tehran.

There was no confirmation from Iran — though state media did say Khamenei’s daughter and grandchild were killed — and a tweet was posted from the supreme leader’s X account purporting to show that he was still alive.

Nevertheless, Trump wrote on social media that Khamenei’s death was “not only justice for the people of Iran, but for all great Americans, and those people from many countries throughout the world [who] have been killed or mutilated by [him] and his gang of bloodthirsty THUGS.”

Netanyahu, in a video address to the public on Saturday night, said there were growing signs that Khamenei “is no more,” but stopped short of confirming he had been killed.

“This morning, in a powerful surprise strike, the compound of the tyrant Ali Khamenei was destroyed in the heart of Tehran… and there are many signs that this tyrant is no longer alive,” the premier said.

Cheers could be heard on Tehran’s streets after reports of the death, according to witnesses.

A Fox News reporter, citing an unnamed US official, said Washington believed Khamenei and five to 10 other top Iranian officials were killed in the initial Israeli strike of the operation, dubbed “Operation Roaring Lion” by Israel and “Operation Epic Fury” by the US.

Israel, having coordinated with the US, dropped some 30 bombs on Khamenei’s compound in the opening minutes of the assault, according to an unsourced Channel 12 news report. The same report claimed that the Iranian leader was underground at the location, but not in one of the two deepest bunkers that only US bombs could have penetrated.

Satellite imagery has shown the compound largely destroyed.

Two Iranian sources told Reuters that Khamenei had met with Shamkhani and Supreme National Security Council Secretary Ali Larijani at a secure location shortly before the strikes started.

Iran responded to the Israeli and US strikes by firing dozens of ballistic missile barrages at Israel and the Gulf states, which are close allies of the US and host its military bases.

As of Saturday night, two people had been confirmed dead in the strikes, including a woman in her 40s who was fatally wounded in a ballistic missile impact in Tel Aviv. The other confirmed casualty was a foreign worker in Abu Dhabi, the Emirati capital.


Muslim nations turn on Iran after regime's retaliatory strikes on their territories
Arab nations are sounding off against Iran after the regime launched strikes against U.S. interests in neighboring countries in the region in retaliation for U.S.-Israeli joint strikes against Iran’s leaders.

The Iranian response targeted all U.S. bases in the Gulf, except for U.S. bases in Oman, Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin reported. The Omani foreign minister had tried to mediate the nuclear talks in Geneva, even flying to Washington, D.C., to meet Vice President JD Vance at the White House Friday to try to avert what is quickly turning into a regional war.

Griffin reported that approximately 40 missiles had landed in Israel. Meanwhile, the U.S. military in Iraq intercepted at least one missile targeting U.S. sites. Additionally, Iran appeared to hit the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet, but no casualties were reported.

Iran also launched missiles at Saudi Arabia and Jordan, where the U.S. has squadrons of advanced fighter jets, Griffin reported. map showing Iran's regional strikes

Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates were among the Gulf states that condemned the Iranian strikes, with many saying they reserve the right to defend themselves and respond accordingly to attacks on their sovereign territories.

Qatar’s Foreign Ministry said it reserves its "full right" to defend itself after what it described as Iranian aggression targeting Qatari territory. Its Defense Ministry said it "successfully thwarted a number of attacks targeting the country’s territory" after multiple rounds of alerts sounded. Authorities reported no immediate injuries or damage in residential areas. map showing locations of US bases in Middle East in relation to Iran

Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Ministry said it affirmed "its full solidarity with and unwavering support for the brotherly countries" and warned of "grave consequences resulting from the continued violation of states' sovereignty and the principles of international law."

The United Arab Emirates' Ministry of Defense said the country "was subjected to a blatant attack involving Iranian ballistic missiles," adding that air defense systems "successfully intercepted a number of missiles." Authorities said falling debris in a residential area caused "one civilian death of an Asian nationality" and material damage.

The ministry called the attack "a dangerous escalation and a cowardly act that threatens the safety of civilians and undermines stability" and said the UAE "reserves its full right to respond."

Jordan's foreign minister wrote a series of posts on X, saying that King Abdullah II "condemns the attack on the territories of Jordan, and any attacks on Arab countries," expressing Jordan’s "solidarity with the brotherly Arab countries in confronting any aggressions that affect their sovereignty, security, and stability."

Lebanon’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it also "strongly condemns the Iranian attacks," adding it "affirms its full solidarity with these fellow Arab States and firmly rejects any violation of their sovereignty, any threat to their security, or any action undermining their stability."

The Omani Foreign Ministry condemned the U.S.-Israeli operation against Iran.
1 killed in UAE as Iran targets 6 Arab countries with missiles; Riyadh slams ‘brutal Iranian aggression’
One person was killed Saturday in the United Arab Emirates as Iran targeted six Arab countries in addition to Israel in response to strikes launched by Israel and the US.

Israel and the US launched major joint strikes on Iran on Saturday, with waves of attacks on sites across the Islamic Republic as US President Donald Trump suggested that the eventual aim of the operation was the overthrow of the regime.

Strikes targeted Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Masoud Pezeshkian, an Israeli official said. Other top regime and military commanders were also targeted, according to the official. The results of the strikes were not yet clear.

In response, Iran launched multiple waves of missiles at Israel as well as at Arab countries in the region — some of them hosting US military facilities — with at least one person killed in Abu Dhabi.

Given their reputation for calm, Saturday’s sudden attacks on US military bases caused widespread shock among the Gulf’s diverse, expat-heavy populations.

The strikes on the Gulf states led to panic in the glitzy, generally peaceful cities of Doha, Manama and Abu Dhabi, as stunned tourists and residents watched interceptor missiles fly overhead, with many deciding to flee the cities.

United Arab Emirates
The United Arab Emirates Defense Ministry said “a worker of Asian nationality” was killed in a missile strike in a residential area of the capital Abu Dhabi, where falling shrapnel also damaged some homes.

Abu Dhabi said it “reserves its full right to respond” and slammed the attacks as “a dangerous escalation.”


The Free Press: The War in Iran Begins
“The hour of your freedom is at hand.”

So said President Donald Trump to the people of Iran, in an early morning address announcing a joint military attack by the U.S. and Israel against the Islamic Republic. Overnight, waves of air strikes pounded military installations across Iran. According to initial reports from Israel, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has been killed.

“For 47 years, the Iranian regime has chanted ‘Death to America’ and waged an unending campaign of bloodshed and mass murder,” Trump said. “It’s been mass terror, and we’re not going to put up with it any longer.”

“They will never have a nuclear weapon,” he continued. “We’re going to destroy their missiles and raze their missile industry to the ground.”

Iran has responded with a barrage of strikes targeting Israel, as well as sites across the Middle East, including in the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Qatar. Israeli authorities have instructed residents to remain in bomb shelters until further notice.

“When we are finished,” Trump said to the Iranians, “take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be, probably, your only chance for generations.”

This is a region on the brink. What happens next will reshape the Middle East—and the world. Today at 11 a.m. ET, a slate of experts including Douglas Murray, Michael Oren, Haviv Rettig Gur, and more will join The Free Press live to help us understand what this all means, and how it will play out in the coming hours and days






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