Global
As the Trump–Netanyahu war against Iran drags into its third week, Americans are still asking the simplest question: why this war at all? What strategic objective justifies it? What national interest demands it? The administration has offered no answer. Instead, the public has been given spectacle.
Washington’s tone has been swagger, not seriousness—stage-managed bravado mixed with sarcasm and theatrical aggression. In a recent interview, Donald Trump boasted that U.S. strikes had “totally demolished” much of Iran’s Kharg Island oil export hub, then added, almost flippantly, that the United States might hit it again “a few more times just for fun.”
This is not responsible statecraft. War is not a reality show, and bombing critical energy infrastructure is not a punchline. Such strikes can destabilize entire regions, rattle global markets, and escalate a conflict whose boundaries are already unclear. Yet the administration presents the campaign less as a strategic necessity than as a performance of dominance.
Doubtless, the war launched by US President Donald Trump is not popular among ordinary Americans.
According to the latest public opinion poll, only a minority of Americans—part of the dwindling core of Trump's supporters—believe that the US-Israeli aggression against Iran has merit.
According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in early March 2026, only 27 percent of Americans approve of the US-Israeli strikes on Iran—while 43 percent disapprove and 29 percent are unsure.
This pro-war constituency is likely to remain supportive of Trump until the end of his term in office, and long after.
However, the war on Iran is not popular, and it is unlikely to become popular, especially as the Trump administration is reportedly fragmented between those who want to stay the course and those desperate for an exit strategy. Such a strategy would allow their president to save face before the midterm elections in November.
The Free Press Second Saturday Salon held March 14 on Zoom discussed the following;
U.S.-Cuba Relations and Global Shifts
Free Press Board member Mark Stansbery introduced Phil Wilayto, of the Virginia Defenders, who joined from New York City from the U.S.-Cuba Normalization Conference. He shared insights on U.S. foreign policy, emphasizing the shift towards a multipolar world and the extreme actions of the U.S. ruling class. He highlighted the impact of sanctions on Cuba, describing the country's severe oil shortage and its effects on daily life. Phil also shared his experience traveling through Iran in 2007, noting the friendly reception from Iranians despite tensions with the U.S., and mentioned his book "In Defense of Iran" based on that trip.
Iran's Resilience and U.S. Strategy
The Espionage Act has been used and abused to punish whistleblowers, journalists, and publishers, prosecuting them as if they were traitorous enemies, but denying them the right to put forward the defense that they were exposing, rather than committing, a crime.
We've seen indictments of Thomas Drake, Chelsea Manning, Jeffrey Sterling, John Kiriakou, Edward Snowden, Reality Winner, Julian Assange, Terry Albury, and Daniel Hale, not for trying to harm the United States but for trying to protect the United States from abuses within its government.
We need whistleblowers protected and rewarded. We need members of the press left free to exercise their First Amendment rights. We need the Constitutional right to defend oneself in court protected.
Oh, mercy, save us from Trump’s SAVE Act, which is all about restricting access to the ballot, fixing things that are not broken, and maintaining power in the hands of the minority, rather than the majority. Currently, amid a flurry of preposterous threats by Trump, the bill is bottled up in Congress, because the majority leader of the Senate, South Dakota’s John Thune, says they simply don’t have the votes, provoking a firestorm from the whacky conservative rightwing of the Republican Party. Thune is also resisting efforts to scuttle the filibuster, a long tradition in that body to block legislation unpopular with one party or another by stopping any business being done through endless talking on the floor of the body until one side or another blinks and caves into the other.
The President of the World is busy choosing new leaders for the countries that stole our idea of stealing, like Cuba, and stole our idea of terrorizing, like Iran. The Iran excursion is facilitated by white phosphorus, since he likes white things almost as much as gold ones. American remain divided over the un/dear leaders, disagreeing on whether he is racist, corrupt, cruel, or dangerous.
The extent to which Israeli interests have come to dominate US foreign policy in the Middle East can be measured in terms of its effectiveness if one considers the seven trips to the US made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during President Donald Trump’s first year in office. Bibi received a passionate reception from Congress and the media which came in spite of the fact that he was the man principally responsible for a horrific genocide being conducted against the Gazans and, more recently, unprovoked attacks on primarily civilian targets on the Palestinian West Bank as well as in neighboring Lebanon and Syria.
Admittedly, the soft landing by Netanyahu in the United States has been facilitated by the Israeli Lobby’s corruption of congress by virtue of hundreds of millions of dollars liberally distributed among both Democrats and Republicans. And the same Jewish billionaires have also been adept at buying up media outlets to make sure that the portrayal of Israelis as perpetual victims is front and center when the American public watches the news or reads a newspaper.
Let us imagine a liberated Palestine. Let us consider how justice for the Palestinian people would reshape not only the region but, indeed, the entire globe.
This is not a conversation about a "political solution" in the narrow, bureaucratic sense. Such solutions require no particular genius: true justice can only occur when the Palestinian people are granted the totality of their rights and the fulfillment of their political aspirations.
Equally true is the reality that no such justice can manifest so long as Israel remains committed to its current Zionist ideology—a framework predicated on racial supremacy and the systematic eradication of the indigenous Palestinian Arab population. Once the shackles of this ideology are broken, the exact political mechanics become secondary; history suggests that the future would lean toward a shared coexistence rather than a continuation of the current segregation along ethnic lines.