Top image credit: Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby speaks at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee. (Screengrab via armed-services.senate.gov)
Colby: Israel is fighting a different war in Iran
March 03, 2026
The U.S. is pursuing “scoped and reasonable objectives” in its military campaign against Iran and is not seeking regime change through force, argued Undersecretary of Defense Elbridge Colby in a Tuesday Senate hearing.
When pressed about why the campaign began with the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Colby declined to comment directly. “I’m talking about the goals of the American military campaign,” he told the Senate Armed Services Committee. “Those are Israeli operations.”
The comments come as the Trump administration is increasingly seeking to place the responsibility on Israel for the growing war with Iran. On Monday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. decided to attack because “we knew that there was going to be an Israeli action” against Iran.
“And we knew that if we didn't preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties,” Rubio told reporters. “And then we would all be here answering questions about why we knew that and didn't act.”
Israeli officials have pushed back on these claims, with anonymous sources telling Axios that Israel could only have moved forward with explicit approval from Trump. “If Trump had preferred to keep negotiating, the strike would have been postponed,” Axios reported, citing anonymous Israeli officials.
The back-and-forth puts a spotlight on the Trump administration’s desire to distance itself from the history of regime change wars in the Middle East, which have often led to prolonged civil wars and instability. Sometimes this has led to confusing statements, like the comment from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth that “this is not a so-called regime change war, but the regime sure did change.”
Further muddying the picture have been Trump’s exhortations to the Iranian people to “take over your government” as the bombing campaign continues. Asked about these comments, Colby told the Senate that “this is objectively a historic opportunity” for the Iranian people.
“One of the reasons this isn't an example of nation-buildling” is “precisely because it is looking to the Iranian people to take the initiative,” Colby argued, adding that American goals are focused narrowly on taking out Iran’s missile program and navy.
Amid these efforts to shift responsibility for the war’s consequences, it appears that regime change efforts continue apace. On Tuesday, Israel bombed a meeting of the Iranian Supreme Council in which the government’s remaining leaders were deciding who would take over the country after Khamenei’s death.
“Israel struck while they were counting the votes for the appointment of the supreme leader,” an anonymous senior Israeli official told Fox News.
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Top photo credit: . DoD photo by Staff Sgt. Vince Parker, U.S. Air Force.
Trump: We have 'unlimited' weapons to fight 'forever' war
March 03, 2026
In a startling Truth Social post overnight on Monday, President Donald Trump defied reality and claimed that U.S. weapons were "unlimited" and the U.S. could fight "forever" with "these supplies."
Of course by every measure this is not true. It would never be true, but in the case of today, after four years of emptying our stores for Ukraine, and then more than two years for Israel, fighting the Houthis, defending Israel twice, Operation Midnight Hammer in June, and now Operation Epic Fury — well you remember the nursery rhyme: Old Mother Hubbard, the cupboard is bare, and soon we won't be able to give the dog a bone.
Perhaps what is the most absurd about Trump's words, other than the lack of truth (he did not "rebuild" the stockpiles in one year following President Biden's departure; the missiles were still being sent to Ukraine under previous agreements,, and then he told the Europeans they could buy them, depleting the stores even further). But then his Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dan "Razin'" Caine, also warned too, that an operation, especially an extended one, could be risky. From the Washington Post last week:
Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, expressed his concerns at a White House meeting last week with Trump and his top aides, these people said, cautioning that any major operation against Iran will face challenges because the U.S. munitions stockpile has been significantly depleted by Washington’s ongoing defense of Israel and support for Ukraine. Caine’s remarks at the White House meeting have not been previously reported.
Trump immediately went to Truth Social to contradict the story, saying the opposite was true. But this concern does not come from nowhere. As we reported here the military was already "razin" the alarms last summer about the "shocking" number of missiles that had been depleted from the stockpiles. According to a deep dive by defense writer Mike Fredenberg, along with all the other diminished capacity, the standard missile (SM-3) variant was down 33% and those cost $12.5 to $28 million a piece. He said:
And with each interception attempt requiring at least two missiles, and often more than that, thwarting a few missiles can easily end up costing more than it does to buy an F-35, making missile defense against a peer adversary seem unaffordable. Now that is truly alarming.
This was of course just SM-3s. According to reports, the U.S. used a quarter of its THAAD missile interceptors during the 12-day war in June alone. The Guardian reported in July that the U.S. only had 25% of the Patriot missile interceptors it would need for the Pentagon’s future military plans — with many already sent to Ukraine (and more promised).
Indeed, we knew back in 2024 during the fighting with the Houthis that the U.S. was expending overpriced, ridiculously expensive missiles to counter cheap Houthi weaponry. According to reports we were expending Tomahawk cruise missiles, air to air, and air to surface missiles at an amazing clip. That is likely one of the reasons Trump ended that conflict so abruptly.
Don't think that experts haven't already warned that Operation Epic Fury could be limited by these realities. On March 1, one day after Trump announced his war, the Wall Street Journal quoted several who said just that.
“The Trump administration has fired TLAMS (Tomahawks) at an extraordinary rate in operations around the globe, in the Middle East against Iran and the Houthis as well as in Nigeria on Christmas Day,” said Becca Wasser, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. “When we wargame, TLAMS are some of the first munitions to go within that first week of a U.S.-China conflict."
While tons of money has gone into the industry to start rebuilding the stockpiles we know that will take years to happen, especially for the more "high end" stuff, as Trump refers to it.
"We have a peacetime defense industrial base, and we've had that for decades…we're not really set up to quickly produce things,” Fredenburg told RS back in October. “We don’t know how much more capacity they can squeeze out of existing facilities.”
Having Israel as a "partner" in the war is no help either. The WSJ quotes officials who say they are low on supply too, particularly Arrow 3 air-defense interceptors, and air-launched ballistic missiles — "a weapon it used to take out Iranian missile launchers this summer and to attack Hamas leaders in Qatar last year."
Suggesting the U.S. has enough weapons for a "forever" war is wrong and Trump must know he is gaslighting everyone who ever voted for him because he said he would never get America into another forever war. But what he is doing is ultimately destructive to our military and national defense too. He is signaling that he would be willing to bleed the stockpiles dry to prove a point. He might just end up doing it.
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Top image credit: Israeli soldiers search a young Palestinian man during a security operation in the Askar refugee camp. Feb 22. 2026, Nasser Ishtayeh / SOPA Images via Reuters Connect
With focus on Iran and Gaza, Israel is quietly annexing the West Bank
March 03, 2026
Israel’s new war with Iran coupled with slaughter in the Gaza Strip — where Israeli military operations have killed more than 600 Palestinians since a “ceasefire” supposedly went into effect last October, adding to the tens of thousands killed during the previous two years — has diverted attention from events in the West Bank.
That diversion is fine with those intent on cementing Israeli control there and continuing the subjugation or displacement of the 3.8 million Palestinians who live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Among the measures that Israel has taken toward that objective during the past few months is legislation in the Knesset making it easier for Israelis to purchase land in the West Bank. More recent actions by the Israeli cabinet have furthered that same goal as well as extending Israeli control over certain holy sites and portions of the West Bank that, according to the Oslo Accords of 1993, the Palestinian Authority is supposed to administer.
At least as significant in creating facts on the ground has been violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinian residents. That violence has surged since the beginning of the assault on the Gaza Strip, with the perpetrators evidently taking advantage of the diversion of international attention to Gaza and now Iran. The increase in violence continues. Nearly 700 Palestinians were displaced by settler violence and intimidation this past January — the highest monthly figure since the Gaza offensive began in October 2023.
The Israeli government is an accessory to the settler violence. It has done little to discourage it and more often condones it. Units of the Israeli Defense Forces have even participated in it.
The Israeli activity in the West Bank is illegal and recognized as such by most of the international community. It is a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention on the protection of civilian populations. By settling its own citizens in Palestinian territory that Israel conquered in a war that it initiated in 1967, it is especially violating Article 49 of that convention, which expressly prohibits the transfer of any of the conquering nation’s civilian population to the territory it occupies.
The United States, through multiple administrations of both parties, has paid lip service to the concept of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict while doing little to impede Israeli actions in the West Bank that have been putting that solution out of reach. The Trump administration has carried these tendencies even farther. The administration’s posture is personified by the U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, an outspoken Christian Zionist whose statements appear designed less to uphold U.S. interests in the face of Israeli actions than to support religious rationales for Israeli expansionism.
In a further move along this line, the embassy that Huckabee heads announced last week that it will start opening “pop-up” consular offices in Israeli settlements in the West Bank. This move can be seen as part of the same policy that during Trump’s first term saw the closing of a U.S. consulate in Jerusalem that had long been one of the chief channels for U.S. relations with the Palestinians.
Notwithstanding the administration’s assertion that last week’s announcement does not represent a policy change, delighted Israeli officials and dismayed Palestinians each saw it as a significant statement that bestows a U.S. stamp of legitimacy on the settlements. It would be difficult to justify the move as merely a matter of administrative convenience. The first settlement to receive one of the pop-up consulates is only eight miles from the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, where consular services already are available.
The administration says it opposes Israeli annexation of the West Bank. The White House said so just last month. But that opposition refers only to formal, openly declared annexation. What matters more is the de facto annexation that has been going on for years. The administration policy toward that is not opposition but instead a condoning of it and, as the move regarding the consulates illustrates, active support for it.
Although some of the most extreme Israeli figures, such as Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, have called for formal annexation of most of the West Bank, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in no hurry to make such a declaration because it is getting almost everything it wants from the de facto annexation. A formal declaration would make it more difficult for that government to deflect international criticism of its actions in the West Bank. It would no longer be able to string along the international community with the fiction of a possible two-state solution and instead would have to defend its apartheid policies within what it says itself are its national boundaries.
With moves such as the opening of consulates in the settlements, the United States is associating itself ever more closely with the Israeli expansionist project and its inhumane treatment of the Palestinians. This is contrary to U.S interests, partly because it puts the United States ever more conspicuously on the wrong side of legality, morality, and international opinion.
Moreover, oppressed Palestinians will not forever be submissive. The long history of this conflict has already seen two intifadas, which have taken violent as well as nonviolent forms, and there could be more. The conflict will continue to be a prime source of instability in the Middle East. Besides inhibiting any U.S. effort to “pivot” away from the region, the close association of the United States with the oppressive policies of Israel makes the United States more of a target for terrorism or other reprisals.
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