“Iran can’t get their act together. They don’t know how to sign a nonnuclear deal. They better get smart soon! President DJT,” the president wrote on Truth Social in a post at about 4 am EST.

Also on Wednesday, Axios reported that US Central Command has prepared a plan for a “short and powerful” wave of airstrikes against Iran to break the deadlock in negotiations, but any US strikes would almost certainly plunge the region back into a full-blown war.

Sources told Axios that there hasn’t yet been a decision by Trump to restart the bombing, but he appeared to confirm a report from The Wall Street Journal that said he told aides to prepare for a long-term blockade on Iran, which will continue to exacerbate the global economic crisis caused by the war.

“The blockade is somewhat more effective than the bombing. They are choking like a stuffed pig. And it is going to be worse for them. They can’t have a nuclear weapon,” Trump told Axios.

According to Tehran Times, Jamshid Nazmi, an advisor at Iran’s Foundation of Martyrs and Veterans Affairs, said that at least 3,468 were killed by the US-Israeli strikes. He said that 1,460 of the victims were identified as civilians.

The Human Rights Activist News Agency (HRANA), a US-based and US-funded NGO that’s very critical of the Iranian government, has put out similar numbers, though it has reported a higher number of civilians killed. The group said in its last update on the death toll on April 7 that it recorded the killing of 1,701 civilians, 1,221 military personnel, and 714 people yet to be identified, a total of 3,636 deaths.

The US-Israeli war against Iran opened with a US Tomahawk missile strike on an elementary school in Iran, which killed 156 people, including 120 boys and girls, 26 teachers, who were all women, seven parents, a bus driver, and a technician who worked at a nearby clinic.

‘At the Request’ of Israel

The statement was issued by the State Department’s legal adviser, Reed D. Rubinstein, who attempted to provide a legal justification for the war.

“As the United States has explained in multiple letters to the UN Security Council, including most recently on March 10, the United States is engaged in this conflict at the request of and in the collective self-defense of its Israeli ally, as well as in the exercise of the United States’ own inherent right of self-defense,” Rubinstein said.

in Southern, Eastern Lebanon

Strikes were reported against the towns of Kfara and Qleia in southern Lebanon, with one civilian reported killed so far in the attacks and multiple others wounded. Locals reported the continued destruction of residential areas across the Israeli-occupied south.

Bekaa Valley hadn’t seen an Israeli strike in nearly three weeks, but the town of Nabichit, a popular target for the IDF in the past, reportedly came under fire in what the IDF said was an attack on “Hezbollah infrastructure.”

Despite holding the view that Israel committed genocide, Sherman, who left the Biden administration in July 2023, before the start of Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza, still said it was important for the US to support Israel.

“It is critical that Israel remains an ally of the US and we protect the right of a Jewish state,” Sherman said. “I also believe that Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] has led us down a road – and we have been part of it – that has, in essence, created a genocide in Gaza that has destabilized the Middle East.”

The generally held view, which is frequently taught in schools across the U.S. and beyond, is that the bombings were necessary to save lives, both American and Japanese; just how many lives were saved has itself been subject to debate, though President Harry Truman claimed half a million U.S. lives in his 1955 memoirs. This assessment is not only disputed by the facts, but it ignores the realities of what the bombings meant for the initiation of the Cold War and the future of humanity, in a world long awash with civilization-ending weapons.

Most importantly, the bombings quite simply were unnecessary. There were at least three ways that Japanese surrender could have been induced without the instantaneous killing of more than a hundred thousand civilians and another several hundred thousand men, women, and children being subjected to third-degree burns, injuries, and radiation exposure that would either end their lives shortly thereafter, or cause health problems in the years and decades following the fateful attacks.

Dave DeCamp

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