by Steve Benen | Mar 11, 2026 | Iran Tensions, Maddowblog, Politics
At a press conference last week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth took a moment to push back against reporting that he disagreed with. The beleaguered Pentagon chief said he’s heard commentary that the war in Iran “might be expanding” beyond Iranian borders.
“Nothing could be further from the truth,” he said.
On Tuesday, the former Fox News host tried to re-emphasize the same argument.
Hegseth: “I see in the media banners that say, ‘War expanding’ or ‘War spreading’ — it’s actually the opposite. It’s actually quite contained.”— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-03-10T12:29:44.166Z
“It’s worth underscoring, I see in the media banners that say, ‘War expanding,’ or ‘War spreading,” Hegseth said. “It’s actually the opposite. It’s actually quite contained.”
Perhaps he was referring to some other war?
On the first day of the military offensive, the conflict involved three countries: The United States, Israel and Iran. But it wasn’t long before that list grew. By the sixth day of the war, The Washington Post noted that the violence had “touched 12 countries across the Middle East.”
Soon after, an Iranian drone strike hit Bahrain, injuring 32 people, and the day after that, the United Arab Emirates felt the need to shut down one of the larger oil refineries in the world in response to an Iranian strike. The developments coincided with related violence spreading to Iraq and Lebanon, where a conflict with Israel has intensified.
What’s more, other countries around the world have been economically impacted by the war, widening the conflict beyond the Middle East.
Donald Trump’s attack on Iran is already having profound effects on economies around the world.— MaddowBlog (@maddowblog.bsky.social) 2026-03-10T20:07:34.699Z
None of this is a secret. It’s been well
by Julia Jester | Mar 11, 2026 | Iran Tensions, News
As a Democratic candidate for president in 2020, Tulsi Gabbard built her campaign around a singular warning: No war with Iran. Six years later, as director of national intelligence under President Donald Trump, she sat in the Situation Room as the president launched military strikes on the Islamic Republic from Mar-a-Lago — and has said nothing publicly since, as a full-blown war erupted and engulfed much of the Middle East.
Even as she traveled to Dover Air Force Base with other administration officials for the dignified transfer of six service members killed in action, saluting in full military uniform, Gabbard has neither posted on her personal account nor spoken about the fallen troops or their mission.
While national security leaders in the Trump administration have publicly made the case for military action against Iran, Gabbard’s silence has been conspicuous.
According to a source familiar with Gabbard’s interactions in principal-level meetings leading up to war with Iran, Gabbard did not raise concerns with Trump, if she had them, and read “sentences off of a piece of paper” rather than brief from her own knowledge — a style that the famously unscripted president is not receptive to.
Gabbard is on the outside looking in when it comes to “serious national security matters,” the source said. That does not mean she is on the outs with the president — especially as she has undertaken a central role in his undercutting of the results of the 2020 election.
“But that status is threatened by her seeming unwillingness to go and serve that role on things like this, where she hasn’t been willing to go out and defend the president
by Steve Benen | Mar 9, 2026 | Iran Tensions, Maddowblog, Politics
MS NOW reported over the weekend that Russia has provided Iran with information that could help Iranian forces strike American ships, aircraft and bases in the region, according two U.S. officials, one whom said point-blank, “Russia is providing intelligence help to Iran.”
The Associated Press and The Washington Post had related reports, with the latter noting, “The assistance … signals that the rapidly expanding conflict now features one of America’s chief nuclear-armed competitors with exquisite intelligence capabilities.” On NBC’s “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker pressed Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on this, and he made no effort to deny the accuracy of the reporting, emphasizing Iran’s “strategic partnership” with Russia is “not a secret.”
Common sense might suggest that Donald Trump and his team should express outrage over this development and condemn any effort to help Iran target American personnel and resources.
It’s just not quite working out that way.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, for example, told Fox News on Friday that it “does not really matter” whether Russia is sharing intelligence with Iran to target U.S. assets. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth similarly told CBS’s “60 Minutes” that the administration is “not concerned” about whether Russia is assisting Iran.
At a White House event on Friday, the president himself brushed off the issue, chiding a reporter for asking what Trump described as “a stupid question” — because he wanted to focus solely on college athletics, not the deadly, ongoing conflict in the Middle East.
If we were to stop here, it’d be a striking story about a Republican administration that has expressed little more than indifference to serious allegations. But as it turns
by Steve Benen | Mar 9, 2026 | Iran Tensions, Maddowblog, Politics
On the first day of the U.S. war in Iran, there was an apparent strike on an Iranian girls’ school that killed scores of children, and a Reuters report noted that U.S. military investigators “believe it is likely that U.S. forces were responsible for” the deadly incident.
Though the Reuters report was not independently verified by MS NOW, it dovetailed with a detailed analysis from The New York Times that indicated the school building “was severely damaged by a precision strike that occurred at the same time as attacks on an adjacent naval base operated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.” On Monday morning, a related Times report added, “A newly released video adds to the evidence that an American missile likely hit an Iranian elementary school where 175 people, many of them children, were reported killed.”
If these assessments hold, the strike on the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school building would rank among the worst cases of U.S. civilian casualties in decades.
Over the course of the first week of the conflict, Donald Trump said effectively nothing about the deadly incident, but during a Q&A with reporters aboard Air Force One on the seventh day of the war, the president was asked whether the United States had bombed the school.
“No,” he replied. “No. In my opinion and based on what I’ve seen, that was done by Iran. … We think it was done by Iran.”
Reporter: Did the US bomb an elementary school and kill 175 people?Trump: Based on what I’ve seen, it was done by Iran. Reporter: Is that true Mr. Hegseth?Hegseth: We’re investigating.Trump: They are very inaccurate with their munitions. It was
by Steve Benen | Mar 6, 2026 | Iran Tensions, Maddowblog, Politics
When Donald Trump spoke to ABC News’ Jonathan Karl on Thursday, he was eager to talk about how pleased he was with himself and his decision to start a war in Iran. “I hope you are impressed,” the Republican president said. “How do you like the performance? I mean, Venezuela is obvious. This might be even better. How do you like the performance?”
When Karl explained that the public had real concerns about what happens next, Trump replied, “Forget about ‘next.’”
That three-word reply offered a valuable insight into his perspective: Trump apparently doesn’t want to be bothered about consequences. To the contrary, there’s reason to believe he and his team want to have fun with the war.
On Wednesday, the White House released a brief video via social media that combined real footage of combat in Iran and computer-generated sequences from a popular combat video game. A day later, Team Trump followed that up with another online video that spliced together snippets from popular action movies (Tom Cruise features prominently) with war footage, alongside text that read, “JUSTICE THE AMERICAN WAY.”
This is a real video from the official White House account on a war that is currently killing people. I don’t know how the US is going to come back from this.The post was “JUSTICE THE AMERICAN WAY. ”— Ulrike Franke (@rikefranke.bsky.social) 2026-03-06T08:22:47.767Z
It was against this backdrop that Time magazine’s Eric Cortellessa spoke to the president and asked a good question. From the report:
Iran retaliated with missile and drone bombardments against U.S. bases and allied territory, targeting military facilities across the Gulf, including Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. One Iranian drone
by Steve Benen | Mar 4, 2026 | Iran Tensions, Maddowblog, Politics
During an Oval Office event with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Tuesday, Donald Trump did something he hadn’t done since launching the war in Iran a few days earlier: The president fielded some questions from reporters in public.
The first line of inquiry was a notable one: “Mr. President, what’s the worst-case scenario that you have planned for in Iran?” a reporter asked.
By all appearances, it wasn’t a question he’d previously considered in any meaningful detail.
“I guess the worst case would be we do this and then somebody takes over who’s as bad as the previous person, right? That could happen.”President Trump responds to a question on potential consequences of Iran War.— MS NOW (@ms.now) 2026-03-03T17:23:46.140Z
The Republican’s response meandered for a while, though Trump ultimately arrived at an answer: “I guess the worst case would be we do this and then somebody takes over who’s as bad as the previous person, right? That could happen. We don’t want that to happen. That would probably be the worst. You go through this and then in five years, you realize you put somebody in who is no better. … I would say that would be about the worst.”
Part of what made the president’s comments notable was the fact that he publicly acknowledged, for the first time, that failure is a distinct possibility. In fact, just days into the deadly military conflict, Trump can apparently envision a near future in which the entire operation is in vain, and from the United States’ perspective, we’re no better off in five years than we were last week.
But there’s another element to this that’s even more important:
