Early in the morning on the first of March 2026, the U.S. and Israel launched a major military assault on Iran. Early reports suggested that Israel targeted senior officials in Iran’s government while the U.S. attacked military targets. The U.S. government named the assault “Operation Epic Fury.” Iran state media reported the strikes killed at least 200 people, including 118 students from a girls’ school, and wounded more than 700.

Iran retaliated with strikes against Israel, where one person was killed and 121 others injured, and with strikes on U.S. bases in Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. U.S. Central Command said there are no U.S. casualties and there has been little damage to U.S. facilities.

Shortly after the strikes, President Donald J. Trump, who was in Florida at Mar-a-Lago, posted an 8-minute video on social media announcing “major combat operations in Iran.” He warned : “The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties. That often happens in war. But we’re doing this not for now. We’re doing this for the future. And it is a noble mission.”

President Donald Trump referred to that mission vaguely, rehearsing a litany of complaints over the tensions and sometimes combat between the U.S. and Iran since 1979, but indicated the U.S. and Israel were attacking to prevent the country’s murderous regime from becoming “a nuclear-armed Iran.”

In June 2025, the Trump administration struck Iran’s nuclear laboratories at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan, after which President Donald Trump insisted the U.S. had “completely obliterated” Iran’s nuclear facilities. In his message, President Donald Trump said the U.S. in negotiations afterward warned Iran “never to resume their malicious pursuit of nuclear weapons, and we sought repeatedly to make a deal. We tried. They wanted to do it. They didn’t want to do it. Again they wanted to do it. They didn’t want to do it. They didn’t know what was happening. They just wanted to practice evil. But Iran refused, just as it has for decades and decades.”

President Donald Trump did not mention the landmark 2015 nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), negotiated by Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama, that limited Iran’s nuclear capabilities. President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from that accord in 2018, and within a year, Iran was ignoring the limits the JCPOA imposed.

But, hours after his team posted his video, President Donald Trump told Natalie Allison and Tara Copp of the Washington Post that his real goal is regime change for Iran. “All I want is freedom for the people,” he told the reporters in a phone call shortly after 4 A.M. Eastern Time. In his video address, President Donald Trump told Iran’s armed forces and police they “must lay down your weapons and have complete immunity. Or in the alternative, face certain death.” He told the Iranian people that “the hour of your freedom is at hand. Stay sheltered. Don’t leave your home. It’s very dangerous outside. 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.”

Michael Birnbaum, John Hudson, Karen DeYoung, Natalie Allison, and Souad Mekhennet reported this evening in the Washington Post that U.S. intelligence officers assessed that a threat from Iran was not “imminent,” saying it was unlikely that Iran would pose a threat to the U.S. mainland for at least ten years. The International Atomic Energy Agency says there is no evidence Iran has an active plan for creating nuclear weapons, and the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency assessed that if Iran tries to build an intercontinental ballistic missile, it will take them at least a decade.

In the afternoon on the first March 2026, President Donald Trump posted on social media that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a cleric who has ruled Iran as supreme leader since 1989, was killed in the strikes, a fact later confirmed by Iran. After celebrating Khamenei’s death, President Donald Trump posted : “This is the single greatest chance for the Iranian people to take back their Country.” He claimed without offering evidence that many of Iran’s soldiers and police “no longer want to fight, and are looking for Immunity from us,” and expressed hope that those forces “will peacefully merge with the Iranian Patriots, and work together as a unit to bring back the Country to the Greatness it deserves.”

Notably, he did not suggest how one would get “immunity,” or from whom, or what the process of taking back the country would look like just months after the regime killed tens of thousands of protesters. He also appears unconcerned that the coordinated response to the attack from Iran’s leadership even after the death of Khamenei suggests regime change will not be a question of knocking out the leader.

In his triumphant post, President Donald Trump concluded with an Orwellian “war is peace” statement, writing that the process of rebuilding should start soon because in just a day the bombing had “very much destroyed and, even, obliterated” so much of the country. “The heavy and pinpoint bombing, however, will continue, uninterrupted throughout the week or, as long as necessary to achieve our objective of PEACE THROUGHOUT THE MIDDLE EAST AND, INDEED, THE WORLD !”