Category: News

Canadian leader also said the US-Israeli attacks on Iran appear to be ‘inconsistent with international law’.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said that he could not rule out his country’s military participation in the escalating war in the Middle East, after earlier saying that the US-Israeli strikes on Iran were “inconsistent with international law”.

Speaking alongside Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in Canberra on Thursday, Carney was asked whether there was a situation in which Canada would get involved.

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“One can never categorically rule out participation,” Carney said, noting the question was “hypothetical”.

“We will stand by our allies,” he said, adding that “we will always defend Canadians”.

Carney said earlier that he supported the strikes on Iran “with some regret” as they represented an extreme example of a rupturing world order.

The Canadian prime minister also stressed that his country was not informed in advance of the US-Israeli attack on Iran, in his first remarks since the war was launched on Saturday.

“We were not informed in advance, we were not asked to participate,” Carney told reporters travelling with him in Australia on Wednesday.

“Prima facie, it appears that these actions are inconsistent with international law,” he said.

“The United States and Israel have acted without engaging the United Nations or consulting with allies, including Canada,” he added, according to Australia’s SBS News, while also condemning strikes on civilians in Iran and calling for “all parties … to respect the rules of international engagement”.

Whether the US and Israeli attacks on Iran had broken international law was “a judgement for others to make”, he added.

Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand said on Wednesday that efforts were under way to help more than 2,000 Canadians who have requested assistance from the government to leave the ⁠Middle East region since the war broke out on Saturday.

Anand said about half of all inquiries for help were from Canadians in the United Arab Emirates, more than 230 from Qatar, at least 160 from Lebanon, more than 90 from Israel and 74 from Iran.

Canada’s Foreign Ministry has been instructed to contract charter flights out of the UAE ‌in the coming days, contingent on approval from the UAE government to use its airspace, the minister said.

Commercial ⁠air traffic remains largely absent across much of the region, with major Gulf hubs – including Dubai, the world’s busiest airport for international passengers – largely shut amid the conflict, in the biggest travel disruption since the COVID pandemic.

Repatriation flights chartered by foreign governments, including Britain and France, were due to leave on Wednesday and Thursday, while the UAE opened safe air corridors to allow some citizens to return home.

Under ⁠normal circumstances, thousands of commercial flights would depart the region each day.

Among the wide-ranging ramifications of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, Iran’s participation in the FIFA World Cup 2026 has become a key talking point, with the tournament less than 100 days away.

The global sporting event will be co-hosted by Canada, Mexico and the United States from June 11 to July 19, with Iran among the 48 nations expected to travel to North America at least a week prior to the opening game.

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US President Donald Trump says he doesn’t care if Iran participates in the World Cup or not.

“I think Iran is a very badly defeated country. They’re running on fumes,” Trump told the American news site Politico on Tuesday.

The US and Israel launched attacks on Iran on Saturday that have killed at least 1,045 people, including its Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and sparked a regional conflict that has spread to 12 countries.

Tehran responded by launching waves of missiles and drones at Israel and towards several military bases in the Middle East where US forces operate.

Following the escalations, Iran’s spot at the World Cup has come under question, and officials from the Iranian football federation and FIFA have been noncommittal on the world’s 20th-ranked football nation’s participation.

“After this attack, we cannot be expected to look forward to the World Cup with hope,” Mehdi Taj, president of the Football Federation of the Islamic Republic of Iran (FFIRI), told local sports portal Varzesh3 on Sunday.

Uncharted territory

A leading expert on sports and geopolitics believes that Iran’s participation in the tournament is in serious doubt amid an armed conflict between one of the host nations and a participant.

“Ultimately, the diplomatic solution [will be] that Iran itself just steps aside and withdraws from the tournament,” Simon Chadwick, a professor of Afro-Eurasian sport at the Emlyon Business School in Shanghai, told Al Jazeera.

Chadwick said it’s “very difficult” to see the US allowing players, backroom staff and officials to enter the country.

“The US will not be keen to admit [Iranian] players, officials or medics – who normally travel alongside teams to tournaments.

“Given that they [Iran] are going to have to play their games in the US, I find it unlikely that they will be there.”

Despite the logistical quagmire and its unlikely resolution in a timely manner, Chadwick said withdrawal will not be an easy option for Iran, who will think “very long and hard before walking away”.

The last time a team pulled out of a FIFA World Cup due to political reasons was in 1950, when Argentina withdrew, citing disagreements with the Brazilian Football Confederation.

“We are in uncharted territory here,” Chadwick explained.

“We tend to associate boycotts and countries not participating in sport mega-events with the Olympic Games, where mass boycotts were seen in 1980 and 1984 during the Cold War.

“Typically, that doesn’t tend to happen in World Cups.”

Chadwick, who has written several books on the economy and politics of sport, believes the impact of withdrawal will not just be political, but also financial.

“On the one hand, we are living in very complex and sensitive times, and arguably there are reasons for a country either to withdraw or be banned,” he said.

“But we’re [also] living in highly commercial times, and the financial consequences of unilaterally walking away from what is arguably the world’s biggest sport mega event is an act of self-harm. We also don’t know how FIFA might react if a nation were to unilaterally walk away from its qualifying spot.”

Can sport diplomacy save the World Cup?

Despite the tournament being spread across three host nations, all of Iran’s matches are allocated to venues on the US West Coast.

This could largely be due to the presence of a sizeable Iranian community, especially in Los Angeles, where Team Melli will play two of their three Group G games.

According to Chadwick, had Iran been playing games in Canada or Mexico, the team could have swayed their decision to participate. But the organisers are unlikely to move the games out of the US now.

“It would be extremely unusual to take games to another country to accommodate one particular country, particularly when the president of FIFA and the president of the US seem to be very close,” he said, adding, “the relationship between the US and Canada, and the US and Mexico is somewhat complicated, too.”

While FIFA hasn’t made a clear statement on the issue, its Secretary-General Mattias Grafstrom has said the world football governing body is monitoring the conflict and the situation emerging from it.

“We had a meeting today, and it is premature to comment in detail, but we will monitor developments around all issues around the world,” he said last week.

With the tournament a little more than three months away, FIFA said it will “continue to communicate with the host governments”.

Chadwick believes that FIFA will try to avoid an outcome where Iran is excluded, as it would cause a logistical headache and set the wrong precedent.

“What we’re more likely to see is sport diplomacy really kicking in,” he predicted.

“The last thing that FIFA will want is for a country to be excluded or simply not turn up because that does set precedent and puts pressure on FIFA.”

‘Sport’s cold war’

With the conflict raging on for the fifth day and spreading further across the Middle East, it is unclear when the Iranian football officials will take a call on sending their team to the US.

However, if Iran does opt to withdraw from the World Cup, it could lead to a sporting crisis.

Chadwick thinks the consequences could be wide-ranging and long-term.

“Politically, it would perhaps take us towards a new sports cold war, and what I find very interesting is that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia have been toying with the idea of creating a sports world championship called the Peace Games, that looks like the Olympic Games and sounds like the Olympic Games but it’s not the Olympic Games.

“And Russia managed to recruit over 70 countries to participate in that sports event.”

Such an event could find support from Iran, should it be left with no choice but to withdraw from the World Cup. It may even lead to the creation of a tournament similar to it, according to Chadwick.

“It’s not inconceivable that at some stage in the future, countries could create their own equivalent of a football World Cup, especially with FIFA being an organisation established by Europeans, having its headquarters in Europe, and its presidents typically being European.”

“Some countries may take this as an opportunity to think about alternative ways of staging global football competitions – almost like a football cold war.”

Despite the current scenario and the conflict’s expansion in the past few days, Chadwick believes organisers and leaders could still find a way to include Iran in the World Cup.

“If, at the end of the conflict, a new Iran emerges – in which big apparel companies can sell their products without sanctions or broadcasters can win big contracts – then the World Cup could play a role in building that diplomacy between the US and Iran, as well as reintegrating Iran into the international community.”

Washington, DC – Hours after the United States and Israel unleashed their bombing campaign against Iran on Saturday, President Donald Trump said that all he wants from the war is “freedom for the people”.

Analysts say that despite this claim and other objectives articulated by US officials, Trump appears to be seeking to collapse the ruling system in Tehran.

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Kelly Grieco, senior fellow at the Stimson Center think tank, told Al Jazeera that achieving such a sweeping political shift will be difficult – if not impossible – without troops on the ground.

“It seems like they’re not willing to pay certain costs to achieve regime change, so there’s sort of a set of secondary goals that perhaps will be enough if they can’t achieve that through air power alone,” Grieco said.

After the opening US-Israeli strikes, Trump told the Iranian people that their “moment of freedom” is at hand.

“When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take,” he said, suggesting that the US will take down the Iranian regime.

Matthew Duss, the executive vice president at the Center for International Policy, stressed that air strikes alone cannot collapse the Iranian ruling system.

“You can damage buildings; you can damage the regime, but we don’t have examples of when air power alone has achieved regime change,” Duss said.

A NATO-led air campaign in Libya in 2011 managed to dislodge Muammar Gaddafi from power, but Libyan rebels led the offensive on the ground that removed the regime.

While Trump and other US officials have called on Iranians to rise up against their government, as of now, there does not appear to be any meaningful force on the ground capable of taking on the Islamic Republic system.

Boots on the ground?

While the US has kept the door open for the involvement of ground troops in the war, the move would pose an increased risk to American forces and mark a stark departure from Trump’s stated preference for swift military campaigns.

“The war is already unpopular, even without any American boots on the ground in Iran,” said Duss.

A recent Reuters survey suggested that only about one-quarter of Americans support the war.

Duss drew a contrast between the ongoing conflict and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which had more than 55 percent support from the US public, according to various polls.

“I would imagine that as this war continues, especially if US troops are put on the ground, that support will drop even more,” Duss told Al Jazeera.

On Tuesday, Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal told reporters after a classified hearing with administration officials that he fears that the US may be heading towards a ground operation in Iran.

“I am more fearful than ever after this briefing that we may be putting boots on the ground and that troops from the United States may be necessary to accomplish objectives that the administration seems to have,” Blumenthal said.

Other objectives

Over the past few days, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth have articulated more modest goals than regime change in Iran: destroying the Iranian nuclear and drone programmes as well as the country’s navy.

Rubio has argued that Iran was building a large missile and drone arsenal to “achieve immunity” and deterrence against foreign attacks that would allow it to build a nuclear weapon.

For his part, Hegseth has emphasised that the bombing campaign in Iran will not turn into a “forever war”.

“We’re ensuring the mission gets accomplished, but we are very clear-eyed – as the president had been, unlike other presidents, about the foolish policies of the past that recklessly pulled us into things that were not tethered to actual, clear objectives,” he said.

Grieco, however, noted that Trump’s own objectives have been unclear.

“What is this all for? What are we trying to achieve? The administration certainly has not done itself any favours in the fact that they don’t seem to have a consistent narrative or message on this,” she told Al Jazeera.

Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat, emerged from a briefing with Trump officials on Tuesday with a similar assessment.

“It is so much worse than you thought. You are right to be worried,” Warren said in a video message.

“The Trump administration has no plan in Iran. This illegal war is based on lies, and it was launched without any imminent threat to our nation. Donald Trump still hasn’t given a single clear reason for this war, and he seems to have no plan for how to end it.”

The US and Israel launched the bombing campaign against Iran early on Saturday, killing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, several top officials and hundreds of civilians.

The conflict quickly spread across the Middle East, with Iran lashing out against Gulf countries, launching drone and missile attacks at US assets as well as energy and civilian targets.

Tehran has also been targeting Israel with missile volleys.

Iran-allied groups in Iraq joined the war as well, claiming drone attacks against US-affiliated targets. Hezbollah in Lebanon also entered the fray amid reports that Israel was planning an invasion of the south of the country.

Weeks or ‘far longer’

Despite Hegseth’s insistence that the war is not open-ended, the Trump administration’s timeline for the conflict has been elastic.

Trump has said that the US is ahead of schedule in completing its mission as the conflict expands. At the same time, he said the war could last four to five weeks and “far longer”.

The US president’s allies have also been hailing the war as a success, predicting that the Iranian system will soon fold.

“We are not there yet but, in my view, it’s not if this terrorist regime falls in Iran — it is only a matter of when,” Republican Senator Lindsey Graham wrote on X after a call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Graham said the “gateway to peace that would be opened” after the Iranian regime falls and ties between Israel and Arab states would take the region to a “new level of prosperity and security”.

However, Duss said it is hard to assess US progress in the war because Trump “has not been clear yet what the objectives really are”.

“You really can’t judge whether we’re ahead of time or behind time on those objectives. That’s the problem here,” he said.

“They didn’t bother to build any case for why this war was necessary. They certainly did not bother to explain what they hope to achieve and how and when. So all we have is just this killing.”

With the war still in its first week, it is starting to appear like a longer conflict than the decisive strikes Trump prides himself on, such as the abduction of Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro in January and the strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities in June.

“I think the problem here is that he seems to have become enamoured with air power and what he thinks it can achieve,” Grieco said of Trump.

Madrid, Spain – Spain has pledged to keep opposing the war waged by the United States and Israel on Iran after President Donald Trump said Washington would cut off all commercial links with Madrid.

Trump’s rebuke on Tuesday came after Washington’s European ally refused to let the US military use its bases for missions linked to strikes on Iran.

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“Spain has been terrible,” the president told reporters on Tuesday during a meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, adding, “We’re going to cut off all trade with Spain. We don’t want anything to do with Spain.”

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, one of the few left-wing leaders in Europe to condemn the US-Israel attack on Iran as “unjustifiable” and “dangerous”, said in a televised nationwide address on Wednesday that Spain’s position was “no to the war”.

“This is how humanity’s great disasters start … The world cannot solve its problems with conflicts and bombs.”

His position cements Spain’s status as an outlier in Europe; Madrid has been one of the few European nations to consistently condemn Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

At the Patron Bar in Malasana, Madrid, Gema Tamarit watched Sanchez’s address on the television in the restaurant, which turned up the volume.

“That Trump is mad. We are not afraid of him. Good for Sanchez for sticking up to him. Some more leaders in Europe should do the same,” said Tamarit, 53, a software engineer. “Of course, Iran is an awful regime, but is this the way to change things, by going to war like this?”

A series of opinion polls suggests that more than half of Spaniards oppose Trump’s foreign policy.

According to a poll published by Eurobazuka in February, 53 percent said they opposed the US president’s policies, the third highest group by nationality after the French and Belgians, with 57 percent and 62 percent, respectively.

In another poll published in January, nearly 60 percent of Spaniards said they disagreed with the US president’s operation to arrest the former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, according to a survey published by GESOP for Prensa Iberica media group.

The Eurobazuka poll said 48 percent of Europeans considered Trump to be “an enemy of Europe”, compared with 10 percent who believed he was an ally.

Trump’s trade threat

Analysts said the US may not be able to inflict much commercial damage on Spain, as it is part of the European Union.

Last month, the US Supreme Court declared Trump’s threat to impose a range of tariffs worldwide as illegal.

Victor Burguete, an expert in trade and economics at the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs think tank, said the only way Trump could act against Spain would be to prove the US faced a situation of national emergency.

“It is not likely that he can prove acting against Spain is a national emergency,” he told Al Jazeera. “I think this is more a threat than a real possibility of ending trade with Spain.

The dispute erupted when the US relocated 15 aircraft, including refuelling tankers, from the Rota and Moron military bases in southern Spain on Monday after the country’s socialist government said it would not allow them to be used to attack Iran.

Trump has also referred to Spain’s refusal to raise spending on NATO from 2 to 5 percent of gross domestic product, saying “Spain has absolutely nothing that we need.”

Sanchez has provoked Trump’s anger with policies including refusing to let vessels transporting weapons to Israel dock in Spain and condemning Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Spain was among the first European nations to recognise a State of Palestine in 2024, along with Ireland, Slovenia and Norway.

“Trump is just angry because Spain has refused to raise NATO spending and condemned the technology companies connected with social media. And done this publicly,” said Burguete.

Spain last month announced it was considering banning children under 16 from accessing social media, and was studying legal action against Grok, Instagram and TikTok.

Bruguete said he believed Sanchez took this stance against the war because he opposed the “strongman politics” of Trump, but also because it played well domestically before the general elections next year.

“There is no doubt that the foreign policy of Trump is not popular in Spain,” he added.

Spain is the world’s top exporter of olive oil and sells auto parts, steel and chemicals to the US, but is less vulnerable to Trump’s threats of economic punishment than other European nations.

The US had a trade surplus with Spain for the fourth year in a row in 2025, at $4.8bn, according to US Census Bureau Data, with US exports of $26.1bn and imports of $21.3bn.

The EU said on Wednesday it expected the US to abide by a trade deal with the EU, was “ready to act” to safeguard its interests, and stood in “full solidarity” with member states, but did not name Spain.

Lutnick’s relationship with the late financier and sex offender has come under scrutiny after files revealed closer ties than previously known.

US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick has agreed to give testimony to lawmakers about his ties to Jeffrey Epstein, the head of a committee investigating the late sex offender has said.

Lutnick, who lived next door to Epstein in New York for more than a decade, “proactively agreed” to provide a transcribed interview to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, panel chair James Comer said on Tuesday.

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“I commend his demonstrated commitment to transparency and appreciate his willingness to engage with the Committee. I look forward to his testimony,” Comer, a Kentucky Republican, said on X.

Axios, which first reported the commerce secretary’s intention to testify, quoted Lutnick as saying he had done nothing wrong and he wished to “set the record straight”.

Lutnick’s relationship with Epstein, who died in 2019 while awaiting sex trafficking charges, has come under mounting scrutiny after he appeared to misrepresent the extent of his associations with the notorious financier.

In a podcast interview last year, Lutnick said he decided to “never be in the room” with Epstein again following an uncomfortable encounter at the sex offender’s Manhattan penthouse in 2005.

But files released by the Justice Department earlier this year showed that Lutnick met and communicated with Epstein for years after the reported 2005 encounter, and the commerce secretary later acknowledged that he visited the financier’s private island of Little Saint James in 2012.

Comer said on Tuesday that he had also sent letters to seven individuals seeking written testimony about their knowledge of Epstein’s crimes, including Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates, private equity investor Leon Black, and top Goldman Sachs lawyer Kathryn Ruemmler.

Gates, Black and Ruemmler have repeatedly denied wrongdoing in connection with Epstein, or having knowledge of his abuse of women and girls.

The committee’s requests for testimony come after former US President Bill Clinton and his wife, ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, appeared before lawmakers last week to answer questions about their ties to Epstein.

Bill Clinton told the committee he did nothing wrong and “saw nothing that ever gave me pause” while interacting with Epstein.

Hillary Clinton told lawmakers she had no recollection of encountering Epstein and that she never “flew on his plane or visited his island home or offices”.

China’s foreign minister tells Israel to end attacks; Russian FM Lavrov says no sign Tehran seeking nuclear bomb.

Russia and China have criticised the US and Israeli attacks on Iran, with Moscow saying it had seen no evidence that Tehran was developing nuclear weapons, and Beijing demanding an immediate halt to the joint attacks.

Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang ⁠Yi told his Israeli counterpart, Gideon Saar, on Tuesday that the attack on Iran came as negotiations between Washington and Tehran had “made significant progress, including addressing Israel’s security concerns”, China’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

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“Regrettably, this process has been interrupted by military action. China opposes any military strikes launched by Israel and the US against Iran,” Wang told the Israeli foreign minister during a phone call, according to the ministry.

“China calls for an immediate cessation of military operations to prevent the further escalation and loss of control of the conflict,” Wang said.

“Force cannot truly solve problems; instead, it will bring new problems and serious long-term consequences,” he added.

According to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Saar agreed to a request from Wang to take “concrete measures to ensure the safety of Chinese personnel and institutions” in Iran.

The call on Tuesday with Israel and Beijing’s apparent efforts to stabilise the spiralling regional situation followed calls Wang made on Monday to discuss the conflict with the foreign ⁠ministers of Iran, Oman and France.

‘US doesn’t attack those who have nuclear bombs’

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also criticised the US and Israel on Tuesday, saying their war on Iran could lead to the very outcome they claimed they wanted to prevent: nuclear proliferation.

Lavrov told a news conference that the logical consequence of the US and Israel’s actions could be that “forces will emerge in Iran… in favour of doing exactly what the Americans want to avoid – acquiring a nuclear bomb”.

“Because the US doesn’t attack those who have nuclear bombs,” Lavrov said.

Lavrov also said that Arab countries could now join the race to acquire nuclear weapons, given the experience of recent days and “the nuclear proliferation problem will begin to spiral ⁠out of control”.

Israel is widely seen as the Middle East region’s only nuclear-armed state, which it neither confirms nor denies.

“The seemingly paradoxical declared noble goal of starting a war to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons could stimulate completely opposite trends,” he said.

Lavrov, who said that Moscow had still seen no evidence that Iran was developing ⁠nuclear weapons, spoke with his Iranian counterpart, ⁠Abbas Araghchi, on Tuesday, and said that Russia stood ready to help find a diplomatic solution to the conflict, while rejecting the US and Israel’s use of “unprovoked military aggression” in the region.

As the US and Israel launched their first strikes on Iran on Saturday, Russia’s Foreign Ministry accused the close allies of carrying out a “premeditated and unprovoked act of armed aggression against a sovereign and independent UN member state”.

The two countries had hidden their true intention of regime change in Tehran “under the cover” of negotiations to normalise relations with Iran, the ministry said.

The US and Israel were “swiftly pushing the region toward a humanitarian, economic, and potentially even radiological disaster”, the ministry warned.

“Responsibility for the negative consequences of this manmade crisis, including an unpredictable chain reaction and spiralling violence, lies entirely with them,” the statement added.

Russia has faced its own accusations of aggression against a sovereign state after it launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a war now in its fifth year.

Despite promising to end United States involvement in costly and destructive foreign wars, President Donald Trump, together with Israel, has launched a massive military assault on Iran, targeting its leadership and nuclear and missile infrastructure.

Much like his predecessors, Trump has relied on military force to pursue US strategic interests, continuing a pattern that has defined US foreign policy for more than two decades.

Since the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and the US capital, the US has engaged in three full-scale wars and bombed at least 10 countries in operations ranging from drone strikes to invasions, often multiple times within a single year.

The graphic below shows all the countries the US has bombed since 2001.

These may not include all military strikes, particularly covert or special operations.

The cost of decades of war

In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks, President George W Bush launched what he called a “war on terror”, a global military campaign that reshaped US foreign policy and triggered wars, invasions and air strikes across numerous countries.

According to an analysis by Brown University’s Watson Institute of International & Public Affairs, US-led wars since 2001 have directly caused the deaths of about 940,000 people across Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and other conflict zones.

This does not include indirect deaths, namely those caused by loss of access to food, healthcare or war-related diseases.

The US has spent an estimated $5.8 trillion funding its more than two decades of conflict.

This includes $2.1 trillion spent by the Department of Defense (DOD), $1.1 trillion by Homeland Security, $884bn to increase the DOD base budget, $465bn on veterans’ medical care and an additional $1 trillion in interest payments on loans taken out to fund the wars.

In addition to the $5.8 trillion already spent, the US is expected to have to lay out at least another $2.2 trillion for veterans’ care over the next 30 years.

This would bring the total estimated cost of US wars since 2001 to $8 trillion.

Afghanistan war (2001-2021)

The first and most direct response to 9/11 was the invasion of Afghanistan to dismantle al-Qaeda and remove the Taliban from power.

On October 7, 2001, the US launched Operation Enduring Freedom.

The initial invasion succeeded in toppling the Taliban regime within just a few weeks. However, armed resistance groups mounted a prolonged resistance against US and coalition forces.

The war went on to become the longest conflict in US history, spanning four presidencies and lasting 20 years until the final withdrawal in 2021, after which the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan.

An estimated 241,000 people died as a direct result of the war, according to an analysis from Brown University’s Costs of War project. Hundreds of thousands more people, mostly civilians, died due to hunger, disease and injuries caused by the war.

At least 3,586 soldiers from the US and its NATO allies were killed in the war, which is estimated to have cost $2.26 trillion for the US, according to the Cost of War project.

Iraq war (2003-2011)

On March 20, 2003, Bush launched a second war, this time in Iraq, claiming that President Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction – a claim that proved to be false.

On May 1, 2003, Bush declared “mission accomplished” and the end of major combat operations in Iraq.

However, the subsequent years were defined by violence from armed groups and a power vacuum that fuelled the rise of ISIL (ISIS).

In 2008, Bush agreed to withdraw US combat troops, a process completed in 2011 under President Barack Obama.

The drone wars: Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen

Although not declared wars, the US has also expanded its air and drone campaigns.

Beginning in the mid-2000s, the CIA launched drone strikes inside Pakistan’s tribal areas along the Afghan border, targeting al-Qaeda and Taliban figures believed to be operating there. These strikes marked the early expansion of remote warfare.

Obama dramatically expanded the drone strikes in Pakistan, particularly in the early years of his presidency.

At the same time, the US conducted air strikes in Somalia against suspected al-Qaeda affiliates, later targeting fighters linked to al-Shabab as that armed group grew in strength.

In Yemen, US forces carried out missile and drone strikes against al-Qaeda leaders.

Libya intervention

In 2011 during an uprising against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, the US joined a NATO-led intervention in Libya. American forces launched air and missile strikes to enforce a no-fly zone.

Gaddafi was overthrown and killed, and Libya descended into prolonged instability and factional fighting.

Iraq and Syria

From 2014 onwards, the US intervened in the Syrian war with the stated goal of defeating ISIL. Building on its campaign in Iraq, the US conducted sustained air strikes in Syria while supporting local partner forces on the ground.

In Iraq, US forces advised Iraqi troops, fought ISIL remnants and tried to counter Iranian influence, highlighted by a Trump-ordered 2020 strike that killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani.

Washington, DC – As the US and Israeli militaries expand their strikes on Iran, the administration of US President Donald Trump has alternated its justification for the war between preventing immediate attacks and countering the long-term existential threat of a nuclear Tehran.

This was on full display on Monday, with Trump and Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth appearing to make the case that the culmination of Iran’s regional policies in the 47 years since the Islamic revolution, coupled with the future of its ballistic and nuclear programmes, represented an immediate threat to the US.

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US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, meanwhile, argued that Washington’s close ally Israel was planning to attack Iran. In which event, the administration expected Iran to strike US assets, therefore justifying launching a preemptive attack, he said.

To date, the administration has offered little clear evidence to support any of its claims, according to advocates and analysts, as well as Democratic lawmakers who have recently attended classified briefings.

“The reality is, they’ve put forth very little evidence, and that’s a huge problem,” Emma Belcher, the president of Ploughshares, a group that advocates for denuclearisation, told Al Jazeera.

“It says, one: They don’t think they need to [make the case] for the war; that they won’t necessarily be held to account for it,” Belcher said. “But it also says to me that the evidence quite possibly isn’t there, and that they want to avoid particular scrutiny.”

Republicans have largely coalesced around the administration’s messaging, even as Democrats have pledged to force votes on war powers legislation to assert constitutional authority over the president’s military action.

Still, the administration remains in a tenuous political position as Trump’s Republican Party stares down midterm elections in November. Early public polling indicates little outright support from the US public, even as Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) base has been staid in its response.

But the more days that pass, and the more US service members are killed, the more likely that Trump will be confronted with the contradictions to his past anti-interventionist promises.

“The longer it goes on and the more costly it is in terms of lives… the more the lack of evidence becomes an albatross around the neck of the administration – one that it will have to account for come November,” according to Benjamin Radd, a senior fellow at the UCLA Burkle Center’s international relations department.

A kaleidoscope of claims

Speaking from the White House on Monday, Trump praised the “obliteration of Iran’s nuclear programme” in US strikes last June. But moments later, he claimed that efforts to rebuild that programme, coupled with Iran’s ballistic missile programme, represented a menace to the US.

“An Iranian regime armed with long-range missiles and nuclear weapons would be an intolerable threat to the Middle East, but also to the American people,” Trump said. “Our country itself would be under threat, and it was very nearly under threat.”

Trump also said that, if not for US and Israeli attacks, Iran “would soon have had missiles capable of reaching our beautiful America”.

Daryl Kimball, the executive director of the Washington, DC-based Arms Control Association (ACA) said any claims of immediate or middle-term threats posed by Iran in terms of their ballistic and nuclear power are not supported by available evidence.

That is significant, as such “imminent threats” are required for a president justify attacks on foreign countries under both US domestic law and international law, save for approval from Congress.

“Iran did not possess, prior to this attack, the capability to quickly enrich its highest uranium to bomb grades, and then to convert that into metal for constructing a bomb,” Kimball told Al Jazeera.

“At the soonest, it might have taken many, many months to do that, but Iran does not have access to its 60 percent highly-enriched uranium. Its conversion facility is damaged and idle. Its major uranium enrichment facilities have been severely damaged by the US strikes in 2025.”

He explained that despite having “significant conventional short and medium range ballistic missile capabilities”, Iran has said it has imposed 2,000km (1,200-mile) limits on its ballistic missile range, and is not near having an intercontinental ballistic missile capability.

The “latest [US intelligence] assessment is that Iran could, if a decision is made, have an ICBM capability by 2035. So Iran is nowhere close to having an ICBM threat that could be called imminent,” he said, referring to intercontinental ballistic missiles, which have a range of at least 5,000km (3,400 miles).

Democrats say no new intelligence

Secretary of State Rubio on Monday said there “absolutely was an imminent threat” presented by Iran.

“We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action,” he said. “We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.”

But top Democrats who received classified intelligence briefings in recent days said they had not been provided with evidence to justify the attack.

“I’m on two committees that give me access to a lot of classified information; there was no imminent threat from Iran to the United States that warrants sending our sons and daughters into yet another war in the Middle East,” Senator Tim Kaine, who sits on both the Armed Services Committee and the Foreign Relations Committee, told CNN on Saturday.

Senator Mark Warner, who was briefed on classified intelligence related to Iran last week as part of the “gang of eight”, a collection of the top lawmakers from both parties in Congress, told the network: “I saw no intelligence that Iran was on the verge of launching any kind of preemptive strike against the United States of America”.

Several sources speaking to both the Reuters news agency and the Associated Press, following a closed-door briefing of congressional staff on Sunday, said the administration presented no evidence that Iran was planning a preemptive strike, and had instead focused on a more generalised threat posed by Iran and its allies to US troops and assets in the region.

Trump looking for quick success

All told, the Trump administration appears to be arguing that “Iran has been a national security threat to the United States since 1979… that Iran was responsible for more American lives being killed than any other state or non-state actor; that Iran has never been held to account for this”, according to the Burkle Center’s Radd.

Trump, therefore, appears to be taking the position that given the totality of Iranian actions, including during recent indirect nuclear talks, the US “has no choice but to perceive Iran as an imminent threat”.

Oman’s foreign minister, who mediated the talks, had pushed back on the administration’s characterisation, maintaining that “significant progress” had been made before the US-Israeli attacks.

Radd noted that under the War Powers Act of 1973, a US president has between 60 and 90 days to withdraw forces deployed without congressional approval. Therefore, Trump appears to be saying, “We’re not obliged to prove to Congress any of that if we can conduct and execute this operation within the 60 to 90 day window,” he said.

Meanwhile, Ploughshare’s Belcher said that the administration’s own actions led to the current situation with Iran.

She pointed to Trump’s withdrawal of The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2018, which had seen the US impose maximum sanctions on Iran, and Iran, in turn, begin enriching uranium beyond the levels laid out in the agreement. Trump also derailed nuclear talks last year by launching attacks on Iran.

“We’re in this situation precisely because President Trump gave up on an agreement that was negotiated by his predecessor,” Belcher said. “He gave up on diplomacy.”

‘America First’ war?

In his speech on Monday, Hegseth, in particular, appeared to try to frame the war within Trump’s political worldview, pledging to “finish this on America First conditions”.

He drew a contrast with the US invasion of Iraq, describing the attacks on Iran as a “clear, devastating, decisive mission”.

“Destroy the missile threat, destroy the navy – no nukes,” he said.

He also sought to draw a distinction between a “so-called regime-change war” and US attacks that happened to lead to regime change. As of Monday, US strikes had killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and several top officials, but the ruling government has remained intact.

Hegseth said that the US is unleashing attacks “all on our terms, with maximum authorities, no stupid rules of engagement, no nation-building quagmire, no democracy building exercise, no politically correct wars”.

It remains unclear how the message will resonate with the US public.

A Reuters-Ipsos poll released on Sunday suggested dismal approval for Trump’s strikes, but also indicated that large swaths of Americans were unsure about the conflict.

That could create opportunities for those challenging Trump’s actions and his justification for them.

“I think it does seem as though the narrative is still up for grabs,” Belcher said.

United States President Donald Trump’s second term in office has been defined by the abduction of Venezuela’s left-wing President Nicolas Maduro, joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran that killed the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, among hundreds, and new threats against other leaders from Latin America to even Europe.

This policy is testing alliances, legal norms, and the idea that shock action abroad yields predictable outcomes at home. At its core is a message Trump repeats in different ways: “We can reach you – and we might not protect you if you do not do what we want.”

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Trump talks directly to foreign leaders, promising swift punishment or personal favour, and casts himself as the only US president “with the gloves off”.

While his supporters see strength and candour, critics underline threats and deals aimed at domestic politics as much as foreign capitals.

A doctrine built around enemies

Trump’s decision to attack Iran has been described as the “biggest foreign policy gamble of his presidency”, with analysts saying he has pivoted from “swift, limited operations like last month’s lightning raid in Venezuela” to what could be a more protracted conflict that is already morphing into a wider regional war.

His doctrine is anchored in identifying adversaries – Iran, China, Russia and North Korea – alongside a cluster of actors such as Venezuela, Cuba, certain Latin American leaders, as well as drug cartels, Hezbollah and Hamas.

Analysts at the Atlantic Council say Trump’s National Security Strategy “elevates great power competition with China and Russia while casting Iran and North Korea as rogue regimes”, creating an organising map of enemies reflected in his rhetoric and operations.

The Foreign Policy Research Institute describes Trump’s strategy as “a deeply transactional document”, arguing that security guarantees and pressure on adversaries are framed around what others “pay” or concede to the US.

Iran and the regional spread of war

The Pentagon has named its Iran campaign Operation Epic Fury, with Trump insisting the US “did not start this war”, but intends to finish it – a claim rejected by Iran’s foreign minister in an interview with Al Jazeera.

Trump said US forces would “lay waste” to much of Iran’s military, deny Tehran a nuclear weapon, and “give Iranians a chance to topple their rulers”. Some media reports said he has privately claimed Iran would “soon have a missile that can hit the US”, even though intelligence assessments do not support that.

Analysts say Trump is hoping the US-Israeli strikes would incite a popular uprising to oust Iran’s rulers, even though outside airpower has never directly achieved government change without ground forces. The Atlantic Council warns the Iran attack risks drawing Washington into a wider regional war “without a clear endgame”.

A briefing from the Royal United Services Institute says if Iran’s retaliation causes significant US casualties, Washington will be under intense pressure to expand Operation Epic Fury into a larger military campaign.

Meanwhile, hawks in Washington see an opportunity. A report by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies says the attacks on Iran provide “a historic opportunity to help the Islamic Republic fall”.

Trump has told the US media the military operation could take “four weeks or less”, even as his defence secretary acknowledged it could be shorter or longer, depending on how Iran and its allies respond.

Within days of the Iran strikes on Saturday, the war has spread across the region, with Israel on Tuesday saying it has launched ground operations in Lebanon. Meanwhile, Iran’s retaliatory attacks have targeted US assets and even civilian infrastructure in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and other Gulf nations.

This is exactly the escalation experts had warned about: strikes framed as targeted decapitation of Iran’s leadership now pulling in a weakened Hezbollah and even Lebanese civilians, reinforcing the perception that the US is willing to put an entire region at risk to prove that it can reach one man or topple one regime.

Like he did in Venezuela by capturing Maduro in an in‑and‑out raid in Caracas after a CIA tip – an episode analysts say emboldens similar thinking elsewhere.

‘Troubling precedent’

The Caracas raid came on the back of a “maximum pressure” campaign, which saw sanctions, criminal cases and asset seizures in a high‑visibility operation. Maduro’s abduction gave the US considerable control over Venezuela’s vast oil reserves.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies calls the Maduro operation “a military victory with no viable endgame”, arguing that while the exfiltration of the president was tactically successful, the structural drivers of Venezuela’s crisis remained in place.

A Brookings analysis warned that the raid “sets a troubling precedent for US‑led regime change by special forces”, suggesting that other Latin American leaders may see it as a potential US “template” rather than a one‑off.

Like Colombia, whose President Gustavo Petro was referred to by Trump as “sick”, suggesting a Venezuela-like intervention there “sounds good to me”, and warning Petro to “watch his a**”.

Petro in January said the US was behaving like an empire that treats Latin American governments as subjects, warning that Washington risks shifting from “dominating the world” to being “isolated from the world”.

The killing or abduction of leaders or prominent figures from other nations violates international law. Experts say Trump’s expanding “targeted killing” doctrine erodes the taboo on assassinating political leaders, making reciprocity more plausible.

Protection as transaction

With allies, Trump’s posture is less kinetic but equally blunt.

Trump once boasted about telling a NATO partner, “You didn’t pay? You’re delinquent … No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage [Russia] to do whatever the hell they want.”

The comments triggered alarm in European capitals and prompted what analysts described as efforts to “Trump‑proof” NATO by locking in higher defence spending and deeper political commitments.

The European Council on Foreign Relations alleges Trump has “exported MAGA to Europe”, turning NATO into “a protection racket in all but name” where security guarantees appear conditional on allies’ political and financial alignment.

A declassified White House memo from 2019 remains the clearest example of how Trump’s transactional logic extends to partners. The memo shows Trump responding to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s request for more weapons.

“I would like you to do us a favour though,” Trump purportedly said before asking Zelenskyy to investigate former US President Joe Biden and his son – a conversation that led to Trump’s first impeachment.

Who could be next?

Put together, the Maduro raid, the Iran attack, threats to Petro and pressure on NATO suggest who could be next: Latin American leaders labelled soft on drug cartels; the Iran‑aligned groups in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon; or smaller European nations branded “delinquent” by Trump.

US media reports say Trump’s advisers have urged him to focus on the domestic economy, warning that a prolonged confrontation with Iran could alienate parts of his “America First” base that are sceptical of open‑ended wars.

Meanwhile, Trump’s backers cite the rising NATO outlays, the Maduro raid and Iran strikes as proof that Trump “does what he says”. Some argue that degrading Iran’s nuclear programme, even without regime change, would still count as a victory for Trump.

Critics, however, worry that the Iran campaign could escalate into the biggest US military campaign since the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, with some of Trump’s stated claims on Iran not backed by intelligence.

Whether the US power produces durable outcomes without blowback – in Iran, Lebanon, Latin America and inside the US – is a key test for Trump in the days ahead.