Iran/Israel and Trump Evening…3/4/2026…No Quick Ending….Trump says he went with his ‘Gut’ Decesion…

American officials insisted that there would be no letup in U.S. and Israeli strikes. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said American and Israeli warplanes would soon gain total control of Iranian airspace, allowing them to pick off targets and deliver “death and destruction all day long.”

In Washington, Senate Republicans turned back a bid for Congress to weigh in on what has been shaping up to be an open-ended military campaign. The vote reflected a deep partisan divide on the war. Only one Republican, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, backed the measure, which invoked a provision of the 1973 War Powers Act.

Late Wednesday, as the fifth day of the U.S.-Israeli assault on Iran drew to a close, the Israeli military announced it had launched a new wave of attacks on Tehran. Earlier, Turkey’s defense ministry announced that NATO air defenses had shot down a ballistic missile fired from Iran that had been heading toward Turkish airspace.

The ministry did not say what the missile’s intended target was, and Iran did not comment on the claim. But an attack on Turkey, a NATO member that hosts a major U.S. military base, would be a dangerous escalation in Iran’s retaliatory targeting of neighboring countries.

In a sign of the growing international concern, China, the largest buyer of Iranian oil, said it would send a special envoy to the Middle East to help conduct conflict mediation efforts, according to Xinhua, the state news agency. The U.S. State Department ordered more employees to leave their posts at embassies and consulates in four more countries, and the United Kingdom, France and Greece said they were deploying military assets to the region to defend their citizens and interests.

In Lebanon, Israel ramped up its attacks against Hezbollah, ordering a mass evacuation in the country’s south. The Israeli military ordered Lebanese to flee north of the Litani, a river long seen as a front line in the conflict.

Financial markets appeared to stabilize after days of turmoil, as investors assessed the effects of rising energy costs and fears that a prolonged war could send those costs surging. But gasoline prices in the United States jumped again, and are now 20 cents higher than last week.

Hundreds of people in Iran have been killed in the U.S.-Israeli strikes, but Iran’s leaders have vowed not to bow to the bombing campaign, and Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Kuwait announced new Iranian attacks on Wednesday.

Top Iranian officials were deliberating over the replacement for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader assassinated by Israel on Saturday. Iran’s leaders are leaning toward anointing his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, a hard-liner who would likely carry on his father’s legacy, according to three Iranian officials familiar with the deliberations. Israel’s defense minister vowed that if the next supreme leader followed Ayatollah Khamenei’s ideology, he would become “an unequivocal target for elimination.”

Here’s what else we’re covering:

• Submarine strike: Mr. Hegseth said that a torpedo launched by a U.S. submarine was used to sink an Iranian warship, the first time an American sub has fired a torpedo against an enemy ship since World War II. Dozens were feared dead after an Iranian naval ship with a crew of 180 people sank in the Indian Ocean on Wednesday off the coast of Sri Lanka, according to the authorities in that country. Read more ›

• Funeral rites: The farewell ceremony for Ayatollah Khamenei was postponed, Iran’s state news agency, IRNA, reported. The three-night observance had been scheduled to start on Wednesday. A top official told IRNA that millions of people were expected to attend and the authorities need to provide “the necessary infrastructure.”

• Evacuations: Western governments were working to evacuate hundreds of thousands of their citizens from the region. The White House press secretary said that 17,500 Americans had returned safely since the start of the war. Wednesday evening the State Department, after facing criticism about not doing enough to help facilitate evacuations, said a charter flight was returning to the United States with Americans who wanted to leave the region. Read more ›

• Death toll: The Red Crescent Society, Iran’s main humanitarian relief organization, said the death toll had risen to 787 since the start of the U.S.-Israeli attacks. The bombing of a girls’ elementary school in Iran killed at least 175 people. Dozens of people in Lebanon also have been killed, according to the Lebanese health ministry, in Israel’s retaliatory strikes against Hezbollah. Read more ›

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Hegseth plans to join a campaign rally in the home district of a soldier killed in the Iran war.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is scheduled to headline a “Top Gun”-themed political fund-raiser next week for a Republican congressman whose constituent was among the four American soldiers killed in the opening hours of the war with Iran. All four service members had been stationed in the district before deployment.

The event, on behalf of Representative Zach Nunn, who is facing a potentially competitive re-election race, comes as the secretary has signaled he expects more U.S. casualties in the broadening regional conflict.

1. The United States and Israel have continued to attack Iranian internal security institutions. The combined force also continued to target police stations, including an Iranian Cyber Police (FATA) station in Kermanshah, Kermanshah Province.
2. The US-Israeli combined force continued to degrade Iran’s ballistic missile and drone infrastructure in Iran. US Central Command (CENTCOM) Commander Admiral Brad Cooper stated on March 3 that the combined force has “severely degraded” Iran’s air defenses and destroyed hundreds of Iran’s ballistic missiles, drones, and launchers.
3. The combined force continued to target Iranian defense industrial sites. The combined force struck at least two buildings at the Khojir Missile Production Complex in Hajarabad, Tehran Province.
4. The combined force continued to attack Iranian naval capabilities. CENTCOM announced on March 4 that the United States has struck or sunk more than 20 Iranian ships.
5. US Central Command (CENTCOM) reported on March 4 that the number of ballistic missiles Iran has fired regionally has decreased 86 percent since the start of the combined force’s campaign on February 28, with a 23 percent decrease in the past 24 hours. The combined force has designed its campaign to destroy Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities before the force depletes its interceptor stockpiles.
6. Hezbollah has conducted several attacks targeting IDF positions and forces in northern Israel and southern Lebanon since ISW-CTP’s last data cutoff. Hezbollah launched two rocket attacks targeting Israeli forces in northern Israel, as well as a rocket attack targeting the Haifa Naval Base on March 3….

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The Guardian Live Report…

• The US-Israel war on Iran has entered a sixth day, with US forces reportedly ready to provide air support to Kurdish fighters if they enter the conflict. Kurdish officials told the Associated Press that Kurdish Iranian dissident groups based in northern Iraq were preparing for a potential cross-border military operation in Iran, and the US has asked Iraqi Kurds to support them. Intense waves of airstrikes have hit dozens of military positions, frontier posts and police stations along northern parts of Iran’s border with Iraq in what appears to be preparation by US and Israel for a new front in their war.

• Experts predicted that backing armed groups from Iran’s ethnic communities would “open up a hornet’s nest”, aggravating divisions within the diverse country and increasing the risk of a chaotic civil war if the current regime collapses.

• Mojtaba Khamenei, the second son of the assassinated Ali Khamenei, is being heavily tipped to succeed his father as supreme leader of Iran, which would pitch a hardliner into the task of steering the Islamic republic through the most turbulent period in its 48-year history and offer a powerful signal that, for now, it has no intention of changing course.

• A torpedo fired by a US submarine sank an Iranian warship off the south coast of Sri Lanka. At least 87 Iranian sailors were killed in the attack on the Iris Dena on Wednesday. The frigate was sailing in international waters as it returned from a naval exercise organised by India in the Bay of Bengal. The torpedo strike prompted questions from former US officials about whether Washington’s aim of eliminating all of Iran’s military breached international law.

• Iran launched missiles at Israel early Thursday. Air sirens sounded in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem shortly after the Israeli military said it had begun new strikes in Lebanon targeting the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group in Beirut’s southern suburbs.

• Air traffic appeared to be picking up slightly, even as travel across the region remained heavily disrupted by the widening Iran war. Governments around the world are rushing to organise the return of their citizens from the Middle East. Officials have chartered jets or deployed military aircraft, routing stranded travellers through Oman, Egypt and Saudi Arabia – key exit points where planes could land and take off.

• Top US military officials told lawmakers in a closed door briefing on Tuesday that they may not be able to shoot down every Iranian dronebeing launched against military installations and assets, according to two people familiar with the matter. The officials, led by the chair of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Dan Caine, said Iran has been deploying thousands of one-way attack drones and that they have capacity to take down the vast majority but not all of the barrage.

• Senate Republicans voted down a war powers resolution that would have forced Donald Trump to receive Congress’s permission before continuing the war with Iran. Republicans batted aside concerns from Democrats that the campaign is illegal and risks plunging the United States into a prolonged conflict. The measure would have forced an end to the US air and naval campaign against Iran and require the president to go to Congress before re-entering the war.

• The White House pushed back against questions on US involvement in the bombing of an Iranian girls’ school which killed 175 people. The press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, did not accept US responsibility for the attack, and noted that the Pentagon is investigating the strike. Defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, said the US was investigating it.

• Hegseth also signaled a possible longer time frame for the conflict than has previously been floated by the administration, saying it could last eight weeks but that the US has the munitions and the equipment to beat Iran in a war of attrition. He declined to set a specific time range, saying the specific duration of the war would depend on how it unfolds. More forces are arriving in the region, including jet fighters and bombers, Hegseth said, and the US “will take all the time we need to make sure that we succeed.”

• The impact of the Iran conflict on energy markets will be temporary and a “small price” to pay for US military goals, US energy secretary, Chris Wright, told Fox News. US and Israeli strikes on Iran and the subsequent response by Tehran have widened regional tensions and paralysed shipping through the strait of Hormuz, disrupting vital Middle East oil and gas flows and sending energy prices higher. Donald Trump has pledged to provide insurance and naval escorts for ships exporting energy from the region to contain soaring costs….

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Note….

Donald Trump KNOWS he’s digging himself into a BIG HOLE….