US President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that the United States Navy will begin escorting commercial tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, a dramatic escalation that would place American warships directly off the coast of Iran as the illegal and murderous US-Israeli bombing campaign enters its fourth day.

Trump’s announcement on Truth Social came just one day after he refused to rule out sending ground troops to Iran. “I don’t have the yips with respect to boots on the ground—like every president says, ‘There will be no boots on the ground.’ I don’t say it,” he told the New York Post.

At a White House press conference with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz Tuesday, Trump spoke about the war in the language of a mob boss—boasting of “hits” on Iranian leaders, referring to assassinations as people being “taken out,” tallying the dead like a gangster counting bodies.

“Forty-nine people were taken out in the first hit,” he said. “And I guess there was another hit today on the new leadership, and it looks like that was pretty substantial also. So they’re getting hit very hard, and we’ll see what happens.”

Asked who would lead Iran after the war, he replied: “Most of the people we had in mind are dead. Now we have another group—they may be dead also, based on reports. So I guess you have a third wave coming in. Pretty soon we’re not going to know anybody.”

In a phone call with CNN’s Jake Tapper the day before, Trump declared: “We’re knocking the crap out of them. We haven’t even started hitting them hard. The big wave hasn’t even happened. The big one is coming soon.”

The deployment of Navy escorts into the Strait of Hormuz — just 21 miles wide at its narrowest point, within range of Iranian anti-ship missiles and drones — raises the prospect of the sinking of American vessels and major US casualties.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/03/04/vnrv-m04.html

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Tehran has decided to stop attacking neighboring countries and has no intention to invade them, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has said, adding that the Islamic Republic would not surrender under pressure.

In a televised address, Pezeshkian apologized to the countries of the region and said Iran respected their sovereignty.

The US-Israeli war against Iran has entered its second week, with uncertainty growing over when hostilities might end. US President Donald Trump demanded Tehran's “unconditional surrender,” while Israel continued attacks against targets in the Islamic Republic and Lebanon.

Pezeshkian said the country’s Interim Leadership Council had approved a decision that no missile strikes would be carried out against regional states unless an attack on Iran originated from their territory.

Early on Saturday, missiles were seen flying towards Israel after the IDF said it had identified launches from Iran. 
Explosions were heard as Israeli air defenses activated to intercept the incoming fire. Shortly after the barrage, the country’s military said it had begun a wave of strikes targeting infrastructure in the Iranian capital Tehran.

Washington and West Jerusalem have framed their first attacks on Iran as preemptive measures aimed at destroying its uranium enrichment and ballistic missile programs. The Islamic Republic insists that its nuclear program is peaceful and has denounced the strikes as entirely unprovoked.

Moscow has condemned the US-Israeli strikes as a “premeditated and unprovoked act of aggression”aimed at toppling a government that “refused to yield to the dictates of force and hegemonic pressure.”

The US-Israeli attacks have killed at least 1,332 Iranian civilians and wounded thousands, Iran’s UN ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani said. Tehran’s retaliatory attacks have killed 11 people in Israel, while at least six American service members have also been killed.

https://www.rt.com/news/634084-pezeshkian-iran-stop-attack-neighbouring-countries/

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As the US-Israeli war on Iran continues, the number of incidents of secondary instability in the region is also rising. Countries across the Middle East are dealing with increasing violence within their own borders as community loyalties and political systems are tested.

"The Middle East is burning," Mohamed Chtatou, a professor at Mohammed V University in Rabat, Morocco, wrote this week in an op-ed published in the Times of Israel. "Not with a single fire, but with a constellation of simultaneous blazes that respond to, feed off, and spread with their own logic."

In a joint commentary published this week several fellows at the European Council on Foreign Relations wrote that "the Middle East and beyond is embroiled in new violent upheaval and wider escalation could lie just around the corner."

After Israel assassinated Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, there were several days of protests in Iraq, outside the US embassy in Baghdad. These turned violent and observers believe that many of the individuals attending were sent there, or encouraged to go, by Iraqi paramilitaries aligned with Iran.

The paramilitaries have also targeted US bases and airports around Iraq, including in the semiautonomous northern Iraqi Kurdistan region.

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SEE ALSO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-WwR8HeCdo

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SEE ALSO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwSLe1qWpSs

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SEE ALSO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8viETt2Qy3g

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzE7vbFztbA

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