Former US defense official Michael Mulroy breaks down the US justification for striking Iran, while some US officials say there were no immediate threats.
Published On 3 Mar 20263 Mar 2026
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A shock-and-awe campaign laying down a tsunami of bombs. An enemy succumbing rapidly under overwhelming firepower. And a triumphant U.S. president trumpeting a quick and easy campaign.
In 2003, President George W. Bush strode confidently on the deck of an aircraft carrier less than five weeks after he ordered the invasion of Iraq and declared the “end of major combat operations” under a banner proclaiming “Mission Accomplished.”
It proved anything but.
The invasion became a meat grinder, leaving thousands of Americans and possibly more than a million Iraqis dead. It unleashed forces whose effects are felt in the region and beyond to this day.
More than two decades later, another U.S. president attacked another Persian Gulf nation, promising rapid success in yet another Middle East adventure that he says will remake the region.
President Trump and his staff have vehemently rejected any comparison between “Operation Epic Fury,” launched Saturday, and “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” On Monday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a pugnacious news conference, insisting, “This is not Iraq. This is not endless.”
Yet the assault on Iran — almost four times larger than Iraq with more than double its population — presents no lack of challenges, ones that could spread chaos far beyond Iran’s borders and become a defining feature of Trump’s presidency.
In many ways, analysts say, toppling Iran’s leadership represents a much more complex task than Iraq ever did. Iraq was a state with deep sectarian divisions that was largely dominated by a single dictator: Saddam Hussein.
The Iran that emerged after the 1978-79 Islamic Revolution had a supreme leader, but Iran also developed an elaborate system of governance. That includes a president, a parliament and varying governmental, military and religious hierarchies, noted Paul Salem, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute.
“Unlike Saddam’s Iraq, the Iranian state is multi-institutional and hence much more resilient — and, yes, not as vulnerable,” Salem said. “And hostility to the United States and Israel is at the heart of the Islamic Revolution — baked into the state.”
Here are some of the ways the Iran attacks could develop into the very scenarios Trump once derided in his days as the antiwar candidate:
For now, the U.S. and Israel have wielded air power to pound Tehran into submission. In the first minutes of the joint operation, a 200-plane fleet — Israel’s largest — struck more than 500 targets in Iran, according to the Israeli military. One such strike killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Iran is still fighting back, lobbing missiles at Israel, Persian Gulf nations, Jordan and other areas with U.S. bases in the region. The U.S. has the qualitative and quantitative edge of materiel to eventually prevail, but Iran’s capabilities will not make it easy, as the losses in service members and planes have demonstrated in the last two days.
And wars have never been won with air power alone. Rather than relying on boots on the ground, Trump expects ordinary Iranians to finish the job for him.
“When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take,” he said in a video address on the first day of the campaign.
During the Arab Spring of 2011, protesters throughout the Middle East took to the streets to demand change. But those efforts mostly did not lead to significant reforms and, in some countries, prompted further repression.
In Iran, it’s true many people would welcome the Islamic Republic’s demise — as many Iraqis rejoiced at Hussein’s fall. But it’s unlikely that mostly unarmed protesters will triumph in a confrontation against enforcers from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or its volunteer wing, the Basij.
It’s also difficult to gauge how many of Iran’s 93 million people despise the government enough to rise up against it.
Meanwhile, Trump has left the door open for dispatching U.S. troops, but the math of such a deployment raises doubts.
According to the U.S. Army, counterinsurgency doctrine dictates 20 to 25 troops for every 1,000 inhabitants to achieve stability. In the case of Iran that would entail deploying 1.9 million people — almost all the U.S. military’s active duty, reserve and National Guard personnel.
At this point, it’s not clear that decapitation of much of Iran’s leadership class will produce any real change in government, much less a successor inclined to bend to U.S. wishes. The top echelons of the Islamic Republic boast a deep bench of mostly hard-liners — not surprising, perhaps, for a nation that has braced for attack for years, if not decades.
Whatever new leadership that does emerge could rally around the “martyrdom” of Khamenei. Not especially popular in life, he appears to have become, in death, a rallying cry for defiance. And martyrs are exalted in Shiite Islam, Iran’s prevalent faith.
“He was the religious leader of the Shiites, so it’s sort of like killing the pope,” Salem said. “And he’s more popular dying as a martyr, than, say, of a heart attack. … He went out in style, no doubt about it.”
When the U.S. occupied Iraq, the expectation was that whatever came next would be a fervent U.S. ally, an idea perhaps best captured in the notion in Washington that a grateful Iraqi populace would shower U.S. troops with flowers. That didn’t happen. And in the Darwin-esque culling of leaders that followed, the ones that emerged victorious had little love for the U.S.
One of them was Nouri Al-Maliki, a Shiite supremacist whose policies were blamed for fueling years of sectarian bloodletting, and whose loyalties often seemed more aligned with Tehran than Washington.
Meanwhile, Tehran, playing on its proximity and deep ties to the new Iraqi ruling class, was able to steer Iraq — a majority Shiite country — deeper into its orbit.
After the Iraqi government — with the help of a U. S.-led coalition — pushed Islamic State out of Iraq in 2017, Iran was able to embed allied militias into Iraq’s armed services. That created the paradoxical situation of Tehran-aligned fighters wielding U.S.-supplied materiel.
Iraq has yet to emerge from Iran’s shadow. After Iraq’s most recent elections, Maliki seems poised to become prime minister once more, prompting Trump to write on Truth Social, “Because of his insane policies and ideologies, if elected, the United States of America will no longer help Iraq.”
Iran’s population is diverse; an estimated two-thirds of Iranians are Persian, while minorities include Kurds, Baloch, Arabs and Azeris.
Those minorities have long-standing grievances against the ruling majority. It’s possible that Trump’s campaign and the resulting disorder could fuel separatist tensions.
Just last month, Iranian Kurdish factions joined together in a coalition that they said would seek the overthrow of the Islamic Republic “to achieve the Kurdish people’s right to self-determination, and to establish a national and democratic entity based on the political will of the Kurdish nation in Iranian Kurdistan.”
Over the decades, the Islamic Republic created a network that at its peak stretched from Pakistan to Lebanon.
It was a fearsome constellation of paramilitary factions and amenable governments that became known as the Axis of Resistance. It included Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestinian lands, Yemen’s Houthis, and militias in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
After Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, Israel — and, eventually, the United States — launched offensive campaigns to defang the groups.
Although weakened, the factions still survive, and could form a powerful, transnational and motivated insurgency when the time comes to fight whatever emerges if the Islamic Republic falls.
Bulos reported from Khartoum, Sudan, and McDonnell from Mexico City.
With 100 days to go until the tournament kicks off, appetite for tickets to the 2026 World Cup in the United States, Mexico and Canada is reaching fever pitch despite eye-watering prices that have fans crying foul amid global unrest after the US-Israeli attacks on Iran.
In addition to the war against Iran – a country scheduled to play its World Cup group stage games in the US – the heavy-handed immigration crackdowns in the US and the violence that erupted near host city Guadalajara after the death of Mexico’s most-wanted drug cartel leader are causing concern for fans.
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“I’m afraid I might not be allowed into the country. I’ve decided to fly to Canada at most but not to the USA,” German football fan Tom Roeder told the Reuters news agency
“I hope that at least the issue of war with Iran does not reach North America, at least not in a way that affects us personally.”
FIFA, which did not immediately respond to a request from Reuters for comment, has said nearly 2 million tickets were sold in the first two sales phases and demand was so intense that World Cup tickets were oversubscribed more than 30 times.
The most expensive tickets for the opening game are going for almost $900 and more than $8,000 for the final while tickets in general cost at least $200 for matches involving leading nations. The cheapest tickets for the final cost $2,000 and the best seats $8,680 – that is before taking into account FIFA’s official resale site, where one category three seat for the game in New Jersey on July 19 was being advertised for an eye-watering $143,750, more than 41 times its original face value of $3,450.
Political and social tensions surrounding host nations are nothing new for the World Cup.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said there was “no risk” for fans coming to the country, and Adrian Nunez Corte, leader of Unipes, a fan association in Spain, said the situation has not affected willingness to buy tickets.
“Obviously, it is causing concern, but some Spanish fans living in the area have helped to calm things down after the initial hours of alarm,” Corte said.
“There is no alarm regarding US immigration policy, but people are taking preparation of the necessary visas seriously to avoid problems, especially since some fans will be travelling between the US and Mexico due to the match schedule.”
The buzz around the tournament in North America is unprecedented.
“The demand for the 2026 World Cup in the USA, Canada and Mexico is the strongest I’ve ever experienced,” said Michael Edgley, director at Australia’s Green and Gold Army Travel.
“I think FIFA will make record amounts of money. There’s no question.
“This World Cup will be a massive financial success, and the beneficiaries will be the member federations.”
But such popularity comes with a price.
Geography adds another layer of complexity as the tournament spans 16 host cities across three countries, making it more challenging and expensive for fans wanting to follow their teams.
“The price of tickets has been a major drawback, particularly affecting the number of matches each fan will attend, as well as the distances between venues and the costs involved,” Corte said.
The sticker shock is even more pronounced this year, especially with a huge resale market in which tickets are sold at above face value, which is legal in the US and Canada.
FIFA defended the ticketing model.
“Unlike the entities behind profit-driven third-party ticket marketplaces, FIFA is a not-for-profit organisation,” a spokesperson said.
“Revenue generated from the FIFA World Cup 2026 ticket sales model is reinvested into the global development of football. … FIFA expects to reinvest more than 90 percent of its budgeted investment for the 2023-2026 cycle back into the game.”
Mehdi Salem, vice president of the French football fans association Les Baroudeurs du Sport, said its members are seeing more than a 200 percent increase on what they were told would be the prices in 2018 by the French federation and FIFA.
The pricing pain is so acute that Salem’s association, which boasts about 400 members, will have only 100 attend the tournament – a dramatic drop that he attributed to ticket prices and the political landscape in the US.
“We feel like this World Cup will not really be a people’s World Cup but rather an elitist World Cup,” Salem added.
Jeffrey Feltman, former US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, questions the legal basis and endgame of the US-Israel war on Iran, saying he does not believe Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States that would justify war.
Published On 3 Mar 20263 Mar 2026
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Kinshasa welcomed the sanctions while Kigali said the US move ‘unjustly’ targets Rwanda.
Published On 3 Mar 20263 Mar 2026
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The United States has imposed sanctions on Rwanda’s military and four of its top officials for “direct operational support” of the M23 rebel group that has seized large swaths of territory in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
Rwanda has long rejected allegations from DRC, the United Nations and Western powers that it backs M23 and its affiliated Congo River Alliance (AFC), which captured key cities in the mineral-rich east, including the capitals of North and South Kivu provinces last year.
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The US Department of the Treasury said on Monday that the rebels’ gains would not have been possible without Rwandan backing.
The US State Department separately added that M23 continued to capture territory even late last year “in clear violation” of a US-mediated agreement.
US President Donald Trump in December brought together the leaders of Rwanda and the DRC to sign a peace deal, predicting a “great miracle”.
But just days afterwards, the State Department noted, the M23 captured the key Congolese city of Uvira.
The Treasury Department said those included in Monday’s sanctions are Vincent Nyakarundi, the Rwandan Defence Force (RDF) army chief of staff; Ruki Karusisi, a major-general; Mubarakh Muganga, chief of defence staff; and Stanislas Gashugi, special operations force commander.
The US said they were critical to M23’s gains.
“M23, a US- and UN-sanctioned entity, is responsible for horrific human rights abuses, including summary executions and violence against civilians, including women and children,” State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said in a statement.
“The continued backing from the RDF and its senior leadership has enabled M23 to capture DRC sovereign territory and continue these grave abuses,” he added.
Rwandan government spokesperson Yolande Makolo said in a statement that the sanctions “unjustly” target Rwanda and “misrepresent the reality and distort the facts of the conflict” in eastern DRC.
She accused DRC of violating the peace agreement by allegedly conducting “indiscriminate” drone attacks and ground offensives.
Rwanda’s government also told the Reuters news agency that Kigali was “fully committed to disengagement of its forces in tandem with the DRC implementing their obligations” under US-led mediation, but accused DRC of failing to keep promises such as ending support for militias.
The Congolese government, however, said it welcomed the sanctions, describing them as “a strong signal in support of respect” for its territorial integrity and sovereignty.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement that the department “will use all tools at its disposal to ensure that the parties to the Washington Accords uphold their obligations”.
“We expect the immediate withdrawal of Rwanda Defence Force troops, weapons and equipment,” Bessent said.
Fighting continues in eastern DRC on several fronts, despite the accord signed between Kigali and Kinshasa in Washington, and a separate peace deal signed between M23 and the Congolese government in Qatar last year.
Though M23 later pulled out of Uvira under US pressure, the rebels still hold other key Congolese cities, including Goma and Bukavu. The US Treasury Department said on Monday that M23’s continued presence near Burundi’s border “carries the risk of escalating the conflict into a broader regional war”.
M23 is the most prominent of about 100 armed factions vying for control in eastern DRC, near the border with Rwanda. The conflict has created one of the world’s most significant humanitarian crises, with more than seven million people displaced, according to the UN agency for refugees.
M23 are already under US sanctions since 2013.
Israeli attacks on Lebanon have killed more than 50 people. It says the strikes are a response to Hezbollah rockets and drones fired into Israel to protest the US-Israeli killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader.
Published On 3 Mar 20263 Mar 2026
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US First Lady Melania Trump has presided over a UN Security Council meeting focusing on children in conflict days after dozens of children at a school in Iran were reportedly killed after Israel and the United States launched attacks.
Published On 3 Mar 20263 Mar 2026
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Iran strikes energy infrastructure across the Gulf as IRGC announces closure of Strait of Hormuz.
Published On 3 Mar 20263 Mar 2026
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Secretary of state says he hopes Iranian people would overthrow regime as US military says six service members killed.
Published On 2 Mar 20262 Mar 2026
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US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has suggested that a planned Israeli attack against Iran determined the timing of Washington’s assault against the government in Tehran.
The United States’ top diplomat told reporters on Monday that Washington was aware that Israel was going to attack Iran, and that Tehran would retaliate against US interests in the region, so American forces struck pre-emptively.
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“We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action. We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t pre-emptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties,” Rubio said.
The US secretary of state’s comments came minutes before the US military confirmed that its death toll from the conflict has risen to six after recovering two bodies from a regional facility struck by Iran.
Tehran retaliated against the joint US-Israeli attacks that killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, several top officials and hundreds of civilians with drone and missile launches across the region, including against American bases and assets in the Gulf.
Rubio’s assertion highlights the Israeli role in bringing about the war, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been seeking for years.
On Sunday, Netanyahu said the attacks on Iran are happening with the assistance of his “friend”, US President Donald Trump.
“This coalition of forces allows us to do what I have yearned to do for 40 years,” the Israeli prime minister said in a video message.
For his part, Rubio told reporters on Monday that an attack on Iran had to happen because Tehran was amassing missiles and drones that it would have used to protect its nuclear programme and acquire an atomic bomb.
Israel and the US launched the war less than 48 hours after a round of talks between American and Iranian officials over Tehran’s nuclear programme.
Rubio said the goal of the war is to destroy Iran’s missile and drone programmes, but stressed the US would welcome ending the current ruling system in Tehran.
“We would not be heartbroken, and we hope that the Iranian people can overthrow this government and establish a new future for that country. We would love for that to be possible,” he said.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has condemned US and Israeli strikes on Iran.
Published On 2 Mar 20262 Mar 2026
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Spain says the United States is not using – and will not be using – joint military bases on its territory for operations against Iran, a mission condemned by Madrid.
“Based on all the information I have, the bases are not being used for this military operation,” Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares told Spanish public television on Monday.
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Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has condemned US and Israeli strikes on Iran that began on Saturday as an “unjustified” and “dangerous military intervention” outside the realm of international law, in another break from US policy.
“The Spanish government will not authorise the use of the bases for anything beyond the agreement or inconsistent with the United Nations,” Albares said, referring to the Rota naval base and the Moron airbase.
The US operates at the bases under a joint-use arrangement, but they remain under Spanish sovereignty.
Defence Minister Margarita Robles said the bases “will not provide support, except if, in a given case, it were necessary from a humanitarian perspective”.
Spain also condemned the retaliatory attacks by Iran on Gulf countries.
According to maps by flight-tracking website FlightRadar24 on Monday, 15 US aircraft have left bases in southern Spain since the US and Israel launched attacks on Iran. At least seven of the aircraft were shown on FlightRadar24 as having landed at Ramstein airbase in Germany.
The Spanish position is an outlier among the major European countries.
Britain had also initially refused to allow the use of its bases for an attack on Iran, but on Sunday, Prime Minister Keir Starmer authorised their use for “collective self-defence”, amid Iranian counterattacks targeting US assets across the Middle East and energy infrastructure in the Gulf region.
France and Germany, meanwhile, are prepared to do the same.
The three countries’ leaders were “appalled by the indiscriminate and disproportionate missile attacks launched by Iran against countries in the region, including those who were not involved in initial US and Israeli military operations”, read a joint statement on Sunday.
“We have agreed to work together with the US and allies in the region on this matter,” they stated.
WASHINGTON — When President Trump announced that he was taking the United States to war against Iran, he offered a long list of ambitious goals.
He said the operation aimed not only to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, but also to destroy Iran’s ballistic missiles and defang its proxy forces in the Middle East.
Then he added the most audacious objective of all: regime change.
“To the great, proud people of Iran … the hour of your freedom is at hand,” he said. “Take over your government. It will be yours to take.”
That was a striking turnabout for Trump, who campaigned for president in 2016 promising: “We’re going to stop the reckless and costly policy of regime change.”
But it’s far from clear that the president has a coherent plan for replacing Iran’s radical Islamist autocracy with a friendlier regime. Nor is it clear that he’s fully committed to the goal.
On Monday, at a White House event, Trump reiterated the military goals of the operation, but did not mention regime change — suggesting he may be having second thoughts. However, he did describe the current Iranian regime as “sick and sinister.”
Military experts and Iran scholars are virtually unanimous that airstrikes alone, no matter how destructive, are unlikely to transform the Islamic republic into a peaceable, democratic country.
“Air power rarely produces friendly regime change,” said Robert A. Pape of the University of Chicago, a prominent scholar of air power. “Bombing can destroy targets. It does not reliably reshape politics.”
A more likely outcome is that Iran’s militant Islamic security force, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, will seize power, experts said. The Washington Post has reported that the CIA also made that assessment before the war began.
A takeover by the Revolutionary Guard would change the names of the people in charge, but it would fall far short of a genuine regime change.
Trump has said he doesn’t believe ground troops will be necessary, although he hasn’t ruled them out. He hasn’t offered a plan for pushing Iran’s theocratic rulers out of power beyond continuing the airstrikes. The outcome on the ground, he said Sunday, is up to ordinary Iranians.
“Be brave, be bold, be heroic and take back your country,” he said in a video message on Sunday. “America is with you. I made a promise to you, and I fulfilled that promise. The rest will be up to you, but we’ll be there to help.”
In an interview with the New York Times, he said he hopes the Revolutionary Guard will simply “surrender” to the opposition forces it was brutalizing only a month ago.
In effect, he is abandoning the so-called Pottery Barn rule — “You break it, you own it” — that was popularized by then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell before the Iraq war in 2003. Trump’s message to Iranians looks like: “I’ll break it, you own it.”
The central problem with Trump’s apparent theory of regime change, scholars say, is that the Revolutionary Guard and other security services are well-organized and well-equipped, but the country’s democratic opposition is fragmented.
“Even if the clerical regime were to fall, the security forces are best positioned to take its place,” warned Richard N. Haass, a former top State Department official in the George W. Bush administration.
Meanwhile, he added, “the political opposition is not united or functioning as a government-in-waiting. It is not in a position to accept defections [from the regime], much less provide security.”
Some experts argue that there is more the administration could be doing to improve the prospects for regime change, without putting troops on the ground.
Haass faulted the Trump administration for failing to work more closely with the Iranian opposition to prepare it for a role in a potential future government.
Others said the United States should now make it clear that it would provide substantial economic aid to a new Iranian regime, but only if its behavior is benign. Iran’s economic crisis, its worst in recent history, helped spark the popular uprising in January that the regime suppressed at the cost of thousands in lives.
“There are more steps the administration could be taking now to help the democratic opposition,” said Kelly Shannon, a visiting scholar at George Washington University. “Close coordination with dissidents on the ground. Protection from the security forces if they open fire. Money, including support for a general strike fund. Assistance with ensuring internet access for all Iranians. And ensure that airstrikes don’t hit Evin Prison or other prisons where dissidents are being held; a lot of potential opposition leaders are in there.”
If the Revolutionary Guard remains intact, Iran experts have described several different scenarios for the regime that may emerge.
One might be called the Venezuela scenario: an Iran ruled by officers from the current regime who have agreed to cooperate to some extent with the United States. This would resemble the situation in Venezuela, where the United States captured President Nicolás Maduro but left the rest of his regime in power.
Trump has already endorsed that quick-fix scenario and said he’s willing to open talks with the newly named successors to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed by an Israeli airstrike. “What we did in Venezuela, I think, is the perfect, the perfect scenario,” he told the New York Times.
Another option might be called the Hamas scenario: a battered and weakened Islamic Republic could stay in power but remain hostile to the United States, even after losing much of its military infrastructure.
A third possibility would be the Libya scenario: an Iran in which the regime has been toppled, and several factions battle for power. That’s what happened in Libya after the United States and other countries used air power to help overthrow longtime dictator Moammar Kadafi.
But none of those scenarios would be the transition to democracy that many Iranians hope for — the more positive version of regime change.
Trump, meanwhile, sounds as if he is already looking for an opportunity to declare victory and withdraw.
In an interview with Axios on Saturday, he said he believes he has several “offramps” from the war.
“I can go long and take over the whole thing — or end it in two or three days and tell the Iranians, ‘See you again in a few years.’”
“He seems to be looking for an offramp,” Haass said. “He may say ‘It’s up to the Iranian people’ and leave the opposition to its fate…. He might claim a victory in terms of obliterating — or, I guess, ‘re-obliterating’ — Iran’s nuclear program and downgrading its ballistic missiles.”
“But he would still face a danger in that scenario. If it comes down to a physical confrontation [between the regime and the opposition], the opposition could be killed in even larger numbers before. … After offering regime change as one of the reasons for the war, we may not only fail to produce regime change; we could see a second massacre.”
Early on Monday, a suspected Iranian drone crashed into the runway at the United Kingdom’s RAF Akrotiri base in southern Cyprus. British and Cypriot officials said the damage was limited. There were no casualties.
Hours later, two drones headed for the base were “dealt with in a timely manner”, according to the Cypriot government.
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The incidents came as Prime Minister Keir Starmer signalled on Sunday that the UK was prepared to support the United States in its confrontation with Iran – raising the prospect that it could be drawn deeper into a war it did not choose by its closest ally.
In a joint statement with the leaders of France and Germany, Starmer said the European group was ready to take “proportionate defensive action” to destroy threats “at their source”.
Later, in a televised address, he confirmed that Westminster approved a US request to use British bases for the “defensive purpose” of destroying Iranian missiles “at source in their storage depots, or the launches which are used to fire the missiles”.
But his agreement did little to placate US President Donald Trump, who said the decision came too late.
UK-based military analyst Sean Bell cautioned against reading too much into the Akrotiri incident.
“I understand the projectile that hit Cyprus was not armed, it hit a hangar [with] no casualties, and appears to have been fired from Lebanon,” he said, citing sources.
Al Jazeera was not able to independently verify the claim.
The broader context, he argued, is more consequential.
The US has taken the action “and everybody else is having to deal with the fallout”, he said.
Iran’s military strength lies in its extensive ballistic missile programme, he said, adding that while some have the range to threaten the UK, they do not extend far enough to strike the US.
“I don’t think [US] President Trump has yet made the legal case for attacking Iran, and … international law makes no discrimination between a nation carrying out the act of war and a nation supporting that act of war, so you’re both equally complicit,” he said.
Bell said that Washington likely reframed the issue, communicating to London that, whatever triggered the escalation, US forces were now effectively defending British personnel in the region.
That shift, he suggested, provided a legal basis to “not to attack Iran, but to protect our people”, allowing the UK to approve US operations from its bases under a “very, very clear set of instructions” tied strictly to national interest and defence.
However, concerns of complicity had reportedly shaped earlier decisions, according to Tim Ripley, editor of the Defence Eye news service, who said the British government initially concluded that US and Israeli strikes on Iran did not meet the legal definition of self-defence under the United Nations Charter.
When Washington requested the use of bases such as RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire, UK, and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, Starmer is understood to have consulted government lawyers, who advised against participation.
Up until Starmer’s televised address, in which he approved the US request, the UK had not considered the campaign a war of self-defence, said Ripley. While Washington’s legal reasoning has not changed, the war’s trajectory has.
Iranian retaliatory strikes – which have seen drones and missiles targeting Gulf states – have placed British expatriates and treaty partners under direct threat.
“The basis of our decision is the collective self-defence of longstanding friends and allies, and protecting British lives. This is in line with international law,” Starmer said.
According to Ripley, several Gulf governments, which maintain defence relationships with the UK, sought protection, allowing London to focus on protecting British personnel and partners rather than endorsing a broader campaign. However, with memories of the Iraq War hanging over Westminster, British ministers have stopped short of explicitly backing the US bombing campaign.
British officials are “tying themselves in knots” trying to describe a position that is neither fully participatory nor detached, he said.
Starmer on Monday told Parliament that the UK does not believe in “regime change from the skies” but supports the idea of defensive action.
But Ripley warned that any arrangement allowing US warplanes to operate from British air bases carries significant risks.
Iran’s missile systems are mobile and launchers mounted on trucks, he said. From RAF Fairford or Diego Garcia, US aircraft face flight times of seven to nine hours to reach Iranian airspace, necessitating patrol-based missions.
Once airborne, pilots may have only minutes to act. The idea that a US crew would pause mid-mission to seek fresh British legal approval is unrealistic, he said.
London must rely on Washington’s assurance that only agreed categories of “defensive” targets will be struck. If an opportunity arose to eliminate a senior Iranian commander in the same operational zone, the temptation could be strong. Yet such a strike might fall outside Britain’s stated defensive mandate. The aircraft would have departed from British soil, and any escalation could implicate the UK, Ripley said.
Bell highlighted another weakness: Britain has no domestic ballistic missile defence system.
If a ballistic missile were fired at London, he said, “We would not be able to shoot it down.”
Intercepting such weapons after launch is notoriously difficult, reinforcing the argument that the only reliable defence is to strike before launch.
The UK, therefore, occupies a grey zone: legally cautious, operationally exposed and strategically dependent on US decisions, it does not fully control.
Beyond the legal and military dilemmas, Starmer must also contend with a sceptical public.
A YouGov poll conducted on February 20 found that 58 percent of Britons oppose allowing the US to launch air strikes on Iran from UK bases, including 38 percent who strongly oppose.
Just 21 percent support such a move, underscoring limited domestic backing for deeper involvement.
Blaming Iran for previous attacks on Americans in the region, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth says Washington didn’t start the war, but under President Donald Trump, “we’re finishing it”.
Published On 2 Mar 20262 Mar 2026
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The killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in a United States-Israeli air campaign has sent shockwaves through the Middle East, decapitating the leadership of the “axis of resistance” at its most critical moment.
For decades, this network of groups allied with Iran was Tehran’s forward line of defence. But today, with its commander-in-chief dead and its logistical arteries cut, the alliance looks less like a unified war machine and more like a series of isolated islands.
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Hassan Ahmadian, a professor at the University of Tehran, warned that the era of strategic patience is over and the Iranian government is now prepared to “burn everything” in response to the attacks.
While Tehran promised to retaliate against the US and Israel “with a force they have never experienced before”, the reaction from its key proxies in Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq revealed a deep hesitation driven by local existential threats that may outweigh their ideological loyalty to a fallen leader.
In Beirut, the response from Hezbollah, long considered the crown jewel among Iran’s regional allies, has been cautiously calibrated.
After Sunday’s announcement of Khamenei’s death, the group issued a statement condemning the attack as the “height of criminality”. However, Al Jazeera correspondent in Beirut Mazen Ibrahim noted that the language used was defensive, not offensive.
“If one dismantles the linguistic structure of the statement, the complexity of Hezbollah’s position becomes clear,” Ibrahim said. “The secretary-general spoke of ‘confronting aggression’, which refers to a defensive posture. … He did not explicitly threaten to attack Israel or launch revenge operations.”
This caution is rooted in a new strategic reality. Since the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria in late 2024, the “land bridge” that supplied Hezbollah has been severed. Ali Akbar Dareini, a Tehran-based researcher, noted that this loss “cut the ground link with Lebanon”, leaving the group physically isolated.
Now with top leaders of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) killed alongside Khamenei, Hezbollah appears paralysed – caught between a battered domestic front in Lebanon and a vacuum of orders from Tehran.
In Yemen, the Houthis face an even more volatile calculus.
In his first televised address after the strikes on Iran began on Saturday, the group’s leader, Abdel-Malik al-Houthi, declared his forces “fully prepared for any developments”. Yet his rhetoric notably emphasised that “Iran is strong” and “its response will be decisive,” a phrasing that analysts interpreted as an attempt to deflect the immediate burden of war away from the Houthis.
The Houthis are under immense pressure. While they have successfully disrupted Red Sea shipping and fired missiles at Tel Aviv, they now face a renewed threat at home.
The internationally recognised Yemeni government, having won a power struggle against southern separatists, has sensed a shift in momentum. Defence Minister Taher al-Aqili recently declared: “The index of operations is heading towards the capital, Sanaa,” which the Houthis control. The statement signalled a potential ground offensive to retake Houthi territory.
This places the Houthis in a bind. While Houthi negotiator Mohammed Abdulsalam recently met with Iranian official Ali Larijani in Muscat, Oman, to discuss “unity of the arenas”, the reality on the ground is different. Engaging in a war for Iran could leave the Houthis’ home front exposed to government forces backed by regional rivals.
“Expanding the circle of targeting will only result in expanding the circle of confrontation,” the Houthi-affiliated Supreme Political Council warned in a statement that threatened escalation but also implicitly acknowledged the high cost of a wider war.
Perhaps nowhere is the dilemma more acute than in Iraq, where the lines between the state and the “resistance” are dangerously blurred.
Iran-aligned militias, many of which operate under the state-sanctioned Popular Mobilisation Forces, are now caught in a direct standoff with the US. Tensions have simmered since late 2024 when Ibrahim Al-Sumaidaie, an adviser to Iraq’s prime minister, revealed that Washington had threatened to dismantle these groups by force, a warning that led to his resignation under pressure from militia leaders.
Today, that threat looms larger than ever. Unlike Hezbollah or the Houthis, these groups are technically part of the Iraqi security apparatus. A retaliation from Iraqi soil would not just risk a militia war but also a direct conflict between the US and the Iraqi state.
With the IRGC commanders who once mediated these tensions now dead, the “restraining hand” is gone. Isolated militia leaders may now decide to strike US bases of their own accord, dragging Baghdad into a war the government has desperately tried to avoid.
Khamenei’s assassination has essentially shattered the command-and-control structure of the “axis of resistance”.
The network was built on three pillars: the ideological authority of the supreme leader, the logistical coordination of the IRGC and the geographic connection through Syria. Today, all three are broken.
“The most important damage to Iran’s security interests is the severing of the ground link,” Dareini said. With Khamenei gone, the “spiritual link” is also severed.
What remains is a fragmented landscape. In Lebanon, Hezbollah is too exhausted to open a northern front. In Yemen, the Houthis face a potential domestic offensive. In Iraq, militias risk collapsing the state they live in.
When the dust settles in Tehran, the region will face a dangerous unpredictability. The “axis of resistance” is no longer a coordinated army. It is a collection of angry, heavily armed militias, each calculating its own survival in a world where the orders from Tehran have suddenly stopped coming.
A poll conducted in the hours after the United States and Israel launched a major military operation against Iran, sparking regional retaliation, shows dismal approval for the strikes from the US public.
The Reuters Ipsos poll was conducted beginning on Saturday and closing on Sunday, before the administration of President Donald Trump announced that the first US troops had been killed in the conflict. Only one in four respondents approved of the US-Israeli attacks.
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The early findings could have a significant effect on how the Trump administration moves forward in the days ahead and on how lawmakers respond to the attacks, particularly as they look to a punishing midterm election season.
Trump on Sunday promised to continue what he described as a “righteous mission” until “all objectives are achieved”. Referencing the three US military members announced killed on Sunday, Trump said that “there will likely be more before it ends”.
After a US-Israeli strike killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Trump again framed Iran as an existential threat to the US, claiming that the country’s leaders “have waged war against civilization itself”.
The Reuters-Ipsos poll suggested that the US public does not share that view, with 43 percent of respondents saying they disapproved of the war and another 29 percent saying they were unsure.
Approval among Republicans was stronger, but not resounding, with 55 percent saying they approved of the strikes, 13 percent disapproving and 32 percent unsure.
Perhaps most significantly, about 42 percent of Republicans said they would be less likely to support the operation if it led to “US troops in the Middle East being killed or injured”.
About 74 percent of Democrats disapproved of the strike, with 7 percent approving and 19 percent unsure.
The poll released on Sunday comes as Republican lawmakers have largely coalesced around Trump’s message on Iran, even as its contradiction to Trump’s campaign promises risks alienating his Make America Great Again (MAGA) base.
Trump had run on a pledge to cease “endless wars” and halt US interventionism abroad in an “America First” pivot.
While Trump has shown a unique ability to shape the views of his staunchest supporters in his likeness, some conservative commentators have warned that he is playing with fire.
“If this war is a swift, easy, and decisive victory, most of them will get over it,” Blake Neff, a former producer for late conservative activist Charlie Kirk, wrote on X on Saturday.
“But if the war is anything else, there will be a lot of anger.”
He added that “success can override bad explanations. So we must pray for success.”
Speaking to Al Jazeera, Doug Bandow, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, said the confirmation that US soldiers had been killed “brings home the cost of the war”.
“Americans, by a very large margin, don’t want to be tied up in an ongoing conflict in the Middle East,” he said during a television interview. “The fact that Americans have died suddenly shows this is not just a video game from the standpoint of America.”
Beyond the three US military personnel killed, at least 201 people have been killed in Iran, nine in Israel, two in Iraq, three in the United Arab Emirates and one in Kuwait.
Meanwhile, 45 percent of respondents to the Reuters-Ipsos poll, including 34 percent of Republicans and 44 percent of independents, said they would be less likely to support the campaign against Iran if gas or oil prices increased in the US.
The conflict has threatened arterial trade routes, with several companies suspending shipments in the area.
Democrats will also be keeping a close eye on public sentiment on the war, which will surely hang over the campaign season ahead of the midterm elections in November.
The party has made affordability a key issue, with incumbents and upstart challengers alike portraying Trump’s military adventurism, which has also included the US abduction of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, as out of touch with his messaging.
Elected Democrats, meanwhile, have given a range of responses to the US operation against Iran, with at least one Democratic senator praising Trump’s strikes. Others celebrated Khamenei’s killing, but remained more circumspect on Trump’s justification for the attacks, while several others were forthright in condemning the strikes.
Several Democrats on Sunday said the killing of US soldiers underscored the urgency of passing a war powers resolution, which would require approval from Congress before further military action is taken.
“I’m thinking of the brave American soldiers killed today,” Senator Chris Van Hollen, a proponent of the resolution, posted on X on Sunday. “They should still be with us.”
“Trump said he would keep us out of war. This is his war of choice.”
A vote on the resolution is expected early this week.
Israel’s prime minister says strikes on Tehran will increase in the coming days, with US support, to do what Benjamin Netanyahu says he’s ‘hoped to do for 40 years’. Israel and the US killed Iran’s Supreme Leader on Saturday in a renewed war on Iran.
Published On 2 Mar 20262 Mar 2026
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United States President Donald Trump has pledged to continue the “righteous mission” against Iran, until “all objectives are achieved”, adding there will likely be more US troop deaths in the process.
Speaking in a video posted to his Truth Social account on Sunday, Trump again framed the war against Iran as a response to an existential threat to the US, saying that “an Iranian regime armed with long-range missiles and nuclear weapons would be a dire threat to every American”.
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Trump and his top officials had repeatedly made similar statements in the run-up to Saturday’s attacks, which killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and several high-ranking members of the country’s leadership.
However, they have to date presented no evidence to support that Iran was developing a long-range missile capable of hitting the US or was anywhere close to developing a nuclear weapon.
Tehran has long denied seeking such a weapon, with experts assessing that if it did seek nuclear weapons, the development would still be several years off. The US launched its attacks alongside Israel in the middle of ongoing US-Iran talks on its nuclear programme.
Trump also referenced the three US military personnel confirmed killed on Sunday amid Iran’s regional retaliation.
“As one nation, we grieve for the true American patriots who have made the ultimate sacrifice for our nation, even as we continue the righteous mission for which they gave their lives,” Trump said.
“And sadly, there will likely be more before it ends,” he said. “That’s the way it is – likely be more, but we’ll do everything possible where that won’t be the case.”
He added: “But America will avenge their deaths, and deliver the most punishing blow to the terrorists who have waged war against, basically, civilisation”.
The speech marked a stark contrast to several interviews Trump had given throughout the day, in which he appeared to float diplomatic off-ramps.
“They want to talk, and I have agreed to talk, so I will be talking to them,” Trump told the Atlantic magazine, referring to what the publication described as Iran’s “new leadership”.
“They should have given what was very practical and easy to do sooner. They waited too long,” he said.
A White House official confirmed to Al Jazeera that Trump was willing to engage with Iran’s new leaders.
Earlier on Sunday, Iran announced a three-member interim leadership council to run the government in the wake of Khamenei’s killing. It includes: President Masoud Pezeshkian; the chief justice of the Supreme Court, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei; and a member of the Guardian Council, Ayatollah Alireza Arafi.
Trump acknowledged that some of the negotiators involved in the talks with the US had since been killed.
Some analysts have argued that Iran’s new leadership will likely be wary of engaging with the Trump administration, given its track record. The US also launched attacks alongside Israel during US-Iran negotiations in June last year.
The new leadership could instead pursue a protracted conflict that could be politically damaging for Trump, some experts have said.
“Most of those people are gone,” Trump told The Atlantic. “Some of the people we were dealing with are gone, because that was a big – that was a big hit.”
In his speech on Sunday, Trump did not reference any diplomatic overtures, instead calling for regime change in Iran.
He again offered amnesty to Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) members, the Iranian military and police who “lay down” their arms. If they do not, they will face “certain death”, he said.
He also again called on “Iranian patriots who yearn for freedom to seize this moment to be brave, be bold, be heroic, and take back your country”.
He appeared to reference his threats in January to strike Iran in response to the government’s crackdown on protesters.
“I made a promise to you, and I fulfilled that promise,” Trump said. “The rest will be up to you. We’ll be there to help”.
Trump spoke as fighting continued across the region.
The US command that oversees the Middle East (CENTCOM) announced the killing of the three members of the US military earlier on Sunday, but did not provide further details. It said five others were “seriously wounded” in the operation.
The US media has reported that those killed in Iranian strikes were based in Kuwait. Iran has also launched a barrage of attacks against Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain, and Oman.
Meanwhile, at least 201 people have been killed in Iran, with 747 wounded, while at least nine have been killed and 121 wounded in Israel.
At least one person has been killed in Kuwait, three have been killed in the UAE, and two have been killed in Iraq since the escalation began.
Iran’s IRGC said earlier on Sunday that it had targeted the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier with four ballistic missiles, but a US official told Al Jazeera that no damage was caused.
Speaking in a separate Fox News interview on Sunday, Trump said that 48 “leaders” had been killed in Iran, although a full list of those killed has not been released. In a post on Truth Social, the US president said the US had “destroyed and sunk 9 Iranian Naval Ships, some of them relatively large and important”.
“In a different attack, we largely destroyed their Naval Headquarters,” he said.
In a post on X, CENTCOM said the IRGC “no longer has a headquarters”.
Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Abbas Araghchi, meanwhile, said Iran’s military command had been interrupted, with units acting in an “independent and somewhat isolated” way. He said they were operating “based on general instructions given to them in advance”.
Still, Araghchi told ABC News, “We see no limit for ourselves to defend our people, to protect our people.”
The US military has confirmed at least three of its soldiers have been killed and five others injured in its war with Iran. US media reports the three were killed in Kuwait, but Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher says the military will be hesitant to give more details.
Published On 1 Mar 20261 Mar 2026
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According to President Trump, the United States attacked Iran because the Iranian regime posed “imminent threats” to the U.S. and its allies, including through its use of terrorist proxies and continued pursuit of nuclear weapons.
“Its menacing activities directly endanger the United States, our troops, our bases overseas and our allies throughout the world,” he said in a recorded statement Saturday.
According to leading Democrats in Congress, Trump’s justification is questionable, especially given his claims of having “completely obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capabilities in separate U.S. bombings last year.
“Everything I have heard from the administration before and after these strikes on Iran confirms this is a war of choice with no strategic endgame,” said Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee and part of a small group of congressional leaders — the Gang of Eight — who were briefed on the operation by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
That divide is bound to remain an issue politically heading into this year’s midterm elections, and could be a liability for Republicans — especially considering that some in the “America First” wing of the MAGA base were raising their own objections, citing Trump’s 2024 campaign pledges to extricate the U.S. from foreign wars, not start new ones.
The debate echoed a similar if less immediate one around President George W. Bush’s decision to go to war in Iraq following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, also based on claims that “weapons of mass destruction” posed an immediate threat. Those claims were later disproved by multiple findings that Iraq had no such arsenal, fueling recriminations from both political parties for years.
The latest divide also intensified unease over Congress ceding its wartime powers to the White House, which for years has assumed sweeping authority to attack foreign adversaries without direct congressional input in the name of addressing terrorism or preventing immediate harm to the nation or its troops.
Even prior to the weekend bombings, Democrats including Sen. Adam Schiff of California were pushing Congress to pass a resolution barring the Trump administration from attacking Iran without explicit congressional authorization.
“President Trump must come to Congress before using military force unless absolutely necessary to defend the United States from an imminent attack,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), a member of the armed services and foreign relations committees, said in a statement Thursday.
In justifying the daylight strikes that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei just two days later, Trump accused the Iranian government of having “waged an unending campaign of bloodshed and mass murder” for nearly half a century — including through attacks on U.S. military assets and commercial shipping vessels abroad — and of having “armed, trained and funded terrorist militias” in multiple countries, including Hezbollah and Hamas.
Trump said that after the U.S. bombed Iran last summer, it had warned Tehran “never to resume” its pursuit of nuclear weapons. “Instead, they attempted to rebuild their nuclear program and to continue developing long-range missiles that can now threaten our very good friends and allies in Europe, our troops stationed overseas, and could soon reach the American homeland,” he said.
Other Republican leaders largely backed the president.
“The United States did not start this conflict, but we will finish it. If you kill or threaten Americans anywhere in the world — as Iran has — then we will hunt you down, and we will kill you,” said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
“Every president has talked about the threat posed by the Iranian regime. President Trump is the one with the courage to take bold, decisive action,” said Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi.
While Iran’s coordination with and sponsorship of groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas are well known, Trump’s claims about its ongoing development of nuclear weapons systems are less established — and the administration has provided little evidence to back them up.
Democrats seized on that lack of fresh intelligence in their responses to the attacks, contrasting Trump’s latest claims about imminent threats with his assertion after the separate summer bombings that the U.S. had all but eliminated Iran’s nuclear aspirations.
“Let’s be clear: The Iranian regime is horrible. But I have seen no imminent threat to the United States that would justify putting American troops in harm’s way,” said Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a member of the Gang of Eight. “What is the motivation here? Is it Iran’s nuclear program? Their missiles? Regime change?”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a statement that the Trump administration “has not provided Congress and the American people with critical details about the scope and immediacy of the threat,” and must do so.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said the Trump administration needs congressional authority to wage such attacks barring “exigent circumstances,” and didn’t have it.
“The Trump administration must explain itself to the American people and Congress immediately, provide an ironclad justification for this act of war, clearly define the national security objective and articulate a plan to avoid another costly, prolonged military quagmire in the Middle East,” he said.
After the U.S. military announced Sunday that three U.S. service personnel were killed and five others seriously wounded in the attacks, the demands for a clearer justification and new constraints on Trump only increased.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) said Sunday he is optimistic that Democrats will be unified in trying to pass the war powers resolution, and also that some Republicans will join them, given that the strikes have been unpopular among a portion of the MAGA base.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who partnered with Khanna to force the release of the Epstein files, has said he will work with him again to push a congressional vote on war with Iran, which he said was “not ‘America First.’”
Benjamin Radd, a political scientist and senior fellow at the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations, said that whether or not Iran represented an “imminent” threat to the U.S. depends not just on its nuclear capabilities, but on its broader desire and ability to inflict pain on the U.S. and its allies — as was made clear to both the U.S. and Israel after the Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which Iran praised.
“If you are Israel or the United States, that’s imminent,” he said.
What happens next, Radd said, will largely depend on whether remaining Iranian leaders stick to Khamenei’s hard-line policies, or decide to negotiate anew with the U.S. He expects they might do the latter, because “it’s a fundamentalist regime, it’s not a suicidal regime,” and it’s now clear that the U.S. and Israel have the capabilities to take out Iranian leaders, Iran has little ability to defend itself, and China and Russia are not rushing to its aid.
How the strikes are viewed moving forward may also depend on what those leaders decide to do next, said Kevan Harris, an associate professor of sociology who teaches courses on Iran and Middle East politics at the UCLA International Institute.
If the conflict remains relatively contained, it could become a political win for Trump, with questions about the justification falling away. But if it spirals out of control, such questions are only likely to grow, as occurred in Iraq when things started to deteriorate there, he said.
Israel and the U.S. are currently betting that the conflict will remain manageable, which could turn out to be true, Harris said, but “the problem with war is you never really know what might happen.”
On Sunday, Iran launched retaliatory attacks on Israel and the wider Gulf region. Trump said the campaign against Iran continued “unabated,” though he may be willing to negotiate with the nation’s new leaders. It was unclear when Congress might take up the war powers measure.
Footage captured the moment an Iranian drone struck the US military’s Camp Buehring in northwestern Kuwait, impacting with an explosion and cloud of smoke.
Published On 1 Mar 20261 Mar 2026
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The president of Iran’s soccer federation says he does not know if the national team can play World Cup matches in the United States following the surprise U.S. and Israeli bombardment of his country.
“What is certain is that after this attack, we cannot be expected to look forward to the World Cup with hope,” Mehdi Taj told sports portal Varzesh3 as Iran traded strikes with Israel as part of a widening war prompted by the bombardment.
The U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran continued for a second day on Sunday after the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei threw the future of the Islamic Republic into uncertainty and raised the risk of regional instability.
Iran has been drawn in Group G at the World Cup and is scheduled to play in Los Angeles — where it faces New Zealand and Belgium on June 15 and 21, respectively at SoFi Stadium — before it plays Egypt in Seattle on June 26.
The United States is hosting the tournament with Canada and Mexico from June 11-July 19.
Fans from Iran were already banned from entering the U.S. in the first iteration of the travel ban announced by the Trump administration.
FIFA did not immediately reply to an email from The Associated Press over the current situation regarding Iran’s participation in the World Cup.
Trita Parsi says Iran had offered major nuclear concessions and that Trump could have claimed diplomatic victory.
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