Antiwar.com’s Week in Review for April 24, 2026

The post Trump amplified was written by Marc Thiessen, who served as a speechwriter for the George W. Bush administration. “If there are two factions in Iran, one that wants a deal and one that doesn’t, let’s kill the ones who don’t want a deal,” Thiessen said in a post on X where he was quoting himself from an appearance on Fox News.

Thiessen also made the case to kill Iranian leaders in an op-ed published by The Washington Post on Wednesday titled “Trump Doesn’t Need a Deal to Get What He Wants From Iran,” which President Trump also shared on his Truth Social account.

In the piece, Thiessen argued that Trump should restart the bombing campaign against Iran. “Right now, the remnants of the Iranian regime are under the misimpression that Trump wants a deal more than they do,” he wrote.

“Israel is prepared to renew the war against Iran. The IDF is ready in defense and offense, and the targets are marked,” Katz said, according to The Times of Israel.

Katz said Israel was “awaiting a green light from the United States, first and foremost to complete the elimination of the Khamenei dynasty, the initiator of the extermination plan against Israel, and the successors of the successors of the leadership of the Iranian terror regime, and in addition to return Iran to the age of darkness and stone by blowing up central energy and electricity facilities and crushing national economic infrastructure.”

With Virtually No Media Attention

From January 2025 to March 2026, the YDP found 21 reports of US drone strikes in Yemen through an investigation of open-source material. In some of the strikes, the victims were said to be members of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), or sometimes the slain were not identified. In at least one strike, which targeted an AQAP gathering in the Marib Governorate on December 8, 2025, a woman and a child were injured.

The drone strikes against AQAP in central and eastern Yemen are separate from the bombing campaign the Trump administration conducted against the Houthis, officially known as Ansar Allah, who govern Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, and territory in northwestern Yemen, where most Yemenis live.

Trump’s bombing campaign against the Houthis, dubbed “Operation Rough Rider,” was conducted from March 15, 2025, to May 6, 2025, and involved very heavy missile strikes that killed more than 250 civilians.

in Pentagon’s $1.5 Trillion Budget Request

“This budget was formulated, honestly, before we went into conflict with Iran,” Jules Hurst III, the Pentagon’s acting chief financial officer, told reporters on April 21, according to USA Today.

The record-shattering budget is a nearly 50% increase over this year’s $1 trillion budget, but the Trump administration is going to ask Congress for even more military spending to make up for depleted weapons and other military operations related to the Iran war.

Initial reports said the administration was planning to request $200 billion for the war, but the number may be revised down to $80 billion or $100 billion. Russell Vought, the director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB), told lawmakers last week that he didn’t have a “ballpark” estimate to share.

With Iran Violates Just-War Theory

The Pope’s condemnation of war drew the ire of the self-proclaimed “Peace President” and his allies. On TruthSocial, President Trump described the Pope as “Weak on Crime, Weak on Nuclear Weapons” and “terrible for Foreign Policy.” At a Turning Point USA event, Vice President J.D. Vance remarked, “When the pope says that God is never on the side of people who wield the sword, there is more than a 1,000-year tradition of just war theory.” Speaker of the House Mike Johnson was likewise “taken a little bit aback.” He told reporters, “It’s a very well-settled matter of Christian theology. There’s something called the just war doctrine.”

Yet just war is precisely the Pope’s point. As Bishop James Massa, the chairman of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Doctrine, said in a statement:

‘For over a thousand years, the Catholic Church has taught just war theory and it is that long tradition the Holy Father carefully references in his comments on war. A constant tenet of that thousand-year tradition is a nation can only legitimately take up the sword ‘in self-defense, once all peace efforts have failed’ (Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2308). That is, to be a just war it must be a defense against another who actively wages war, which is what the Holy Father actually said: ‘He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war.’

In very sharp contrast, the New York Times said only 41 percent favored going to war in Iran, and several polls showed even less support, in the 20-30 percent range, before the war started.

In comparison, the Times survey said 97 percent favored going to war after Pearl Harbor, 92 percent supported the war in Afghanistan, and 76 percent were for going to war in Iraq.

Despite a brief “rally around the flag” period shortly after the Iran War started because many feel they should “support the troops,” this war has become less popular with each passing day. In fact, many people have called it the most unpopular war in US history.

I became one of Donald Trump’s first Congressional endorsers because he was the only Republican running for President in 2016, after Rand Paul decided not to run, who had criticized the war in Iraq.

Also, Trump promised to run with an America First agenda, which I had supported as far back as the campaigns of Pat Buchanan, who was a hero to me.

Dave DeCamp

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