The Iran War entered its seventh day on Friday, with U.S. ​President Donald Trump ‌posting on Truth Social ⁠that there ​would ​be ‌no deal ‌struck ​with ​Iran ​except “unconditional ‌surrender.” “MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN (MIGA!),” the president wrote The House voted Thursday against a war powers resolution sponsored by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Ro Khanna (D-CA), with the measure failing 212–219. A similar bill failed in the Senate on Wednesday. U.S. military investigators believe that American forces were probably responsible for the bombing of an Iranian girls’ school that killed more than 150 children on Saturday, two American officials told Reuters. Iran fired ballistic missiles at central Israel late Thursday night, triggering air raid sirens in Tel Aviv. Footage of damage and casualty statistics continue to be suppressed by Israeli military censors. As of Friday morning at least 123 people have been killed and more than 680 wounded in Israeli strikes across Lebanon, according to Lebanon’s health ministry, as Israeli warplanes continued to hit Beirut and towns in southern Lebanon. Qatar’s Energy Minister Saad al-Kaabi on Friday told the Financial Times in a Thursday interview that a prolonged Middle East regional war could force Gulf producers to halt energy exports within days, potentially sending oil prices to $150 per barrel and triggering global economic disruption. Al-Kaabi said Qatar had already declared force majeure, freeing itself from contractual obligations, after an Iranian drone strike hit its Ras Laffan LNG facility, adding it could take “weeks to months” for deliveries to return to normal even if hostilities end immediately.  “Everybody that has not called for force majeure we expect will do so in the next few days that this continues. All exporters in the Gulf region will have to call force majeure,” Kaabi told the Times. “If they don’t, they are at some point going to pay the liability for that legally, and that’s their choice.” The Wall Street Journal reported that Kuwait has begun cutting oil production at its fields, and is considering limiting its production capacity to just what it needs to cover its own domestic consumption. Brent crude rose as high as $89 per barrel, the highest level since the start of the Iran conflict. AAA reported that the national gas price average on Friday morning was $3.32. The post Iran War Enters Seventh Day appeared first on The American Conservative.

Foreign Affairs Now He Owns It Trump gambles with his fragile MAGA coalition—and America First. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) Oh what a difference a week makes. Way back then, we were talking about the State of the Union. You know, a unique set of domestic problems that America First solutions were going to fix: Replacing income taxes with tariffs, reducing a Democrat-driven cost of living, combating fraud and urban crime, ending “identity politics,” acknowledging biological reality, voter ID, and secure ballots. Why, President Donald Trump even challenged his radical opposition to reaffirm that “the first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens…” They did not, and it was their bizarre agenda, we thought, that would be at the heart of the midterm elections in eight months. Now, all bets are off. Operation Epic Fury is under way and for all its initial optimism, a little realpolitik is in order. If the “war on terror” has taught us anything, it is that toppling regimes is a lot easier than replacing them. Compared even to the bipartisan failures in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria (more on that later), just toppling the government in Tehran may cost more in blood and treasure. Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reportedly warned the president of munitions and deployment constraints and is now adding forces in the Middle East. Iran is four times the size of Iraq with over 90 million people. Ayatollah Khamenei is gone, but his death likely strengthens hardline paramilitary loyalists in the 200,000-strong IRGC, and no one knows how many ballistic missiles Iran has left. It has already retaliated against regional rival Saudi Arabia, taking its major oil refinery offline. Safe haven UAE has come under a barrage of attacks, causing panic in wealthy enclaves like Dubai, directly adjacent to the Strait of Hormuz energy chokepoint. Qatar has suspended production of liquefied natural gas after attacks by Iranian drones. Caine and others have noted there likely will be more U.S. casualties. It all seems incongruent with an Iran already weakened by a series of strikes and sanctions. Its proxies such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Islamic Jihad have been effectively wiped out, and last summer’s Operation Midnight Hammer ostensibly “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capabilities. And Russia and China have not substantially aided Iran as it tries to withstand joint U.S.–Israeli pressure. So why bomb a “paper tiger” to smithereens? As with Iraq, we are told that Iran had or was about to have “weapons of mass destruction.” In this case, a nuclear weapon. Of course, we’ve been told that Tehran was close to acquiring a nuke for the last 30 years. But hey, as every member on the House Armed Services Committee can tell you, they’ve “been at war with the United States for 47 years.” Well, uh…not exactly. After the 1983 Beirut barracks suicide bombing—that Ronald Reagan refused to avenge on the grounds that “we never had the intention of getting involved in Lebanon’s civil war”—almost every terrorist attack outside the region has come from Sunni-affiliated groups that have far closer ties to Saudi Arabia than Iran. The Taliban (back in charge in Afghanistan), ISIS, al-Shabaab, Boko Haram, and, of course, Al Qaeda—responsible for around 3,000 dead on 9/11—lead the list of terrorist perpetrators responsible for actual attacks. They are not Shiites backed by Tehran, but Sunni offshoot groups. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Reagan’s mentor, understood the complexities of the region. Ike, who abhorred war from personal experience, advocated for a restrained approach to the Suez Canal crisis because the U.S. could hardly settle ancient animosities in the war torn region. “Of course,” he cautioned, “there could be no change in our basic position, which is that we must be friends with both contestants in that region in order that we can bring them closer together. To take sides, could do nothing, but to destroy our influence in leading toward a peaceful settlement of one of the most explosive situations in the world today.” Fast forward to a neoconservative era that started in earnest with Lyndon Johnson, and the U.S. not only decided to spend blood and treasure mediating the theological disputes between Arab and Jew, but between factions of Islam—primarily Sunni and Shia. And, in a tragic height of irony, intervening in this religious war has put America’s own dominant faith tradition in the crosshairs. From Syria to the West Bank, Christian communities and churches have been under violent siege. In Damascus, we got rid of Alawite Bashar al-Assad, who was protecting Christians, only to put in power a “reformed” Al Qaeda Sunni leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa. We’re now getting out all together, following the collapse of security in abandoned prisons holding thousands of ISIS bad actors. To be sure, the current president didn’t cause the problem, and most of MAGA believes he understood the failed premise—the same one that put the Shah of Iran in power as a result of Operation Ajax, a CIA/MI6 coup in 1953. The Iranian Revolution and rise of Ayatollah Khomeini was the blowback. Indeed, we police the world at our peril. Trump personifies his own movement, so perhaps he has the prerogative of redefining it. But “regime change” from Tehran to Moscow has little in common with non-interventionism. And if the U.S. was devoted to keeping “lunatics” from enriching uranium for a nuke, North Korea and Pakistan (where Osama Bin Laden hung out) wouldn’t have one. No, this is “regime change,” and whatever side you may be on and however you parse it, it’s at odds with a whole lot of Trump supporters. The only thing that those of us who harbor doubts about it can say is, “I hope he’s right.” Because if he’s not, the midterms are finished—and so is America First. What folly if in the interest of freedom in Iran, America loses her own. Recent revelations confirm a “deep state” FBI had surreptitiously obtained more phone records than previously thought, even those of Kash Patel and Susie Wiles. Former national security advisor and current Netflix board member Susan Rice is promising further retribution, saying there will be no “forgive and forget.” Netflix’s failure to bail out a corrupt CNN (in its losing bid for Warner Bros. Discovery) that buried so many Democrat abuses probably has more implications for the homeland than another hopeless agreement between myriad factions and sects fighting over the rightful successor of the Prophet Muhammad—and European colonialism. But this is no longer about empire or even oil. It’s about religious ethnicity, which means there will be no end to Mideast conflicts the U.S. can’t stay away from. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee contends an Israeli “right of return” means claim to the entire MidEast, saying, “It would be fine if they took it all.” The speaker of the House admitted that since “Israel was determined to act with or without the U.S.” we were forced to move. So the “imminent threat” was not Iranian jets bound for the mainland, incoming ballistic missiles armed with a nuke, or even a breakdown in talks. It was, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed, that there was going to be an Israeli action, 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 and perhaps even higher than those killed, and then we would all be answering questions about why we knew that and didn’t act. In Venezuela, one could cite hemispheric concerns and the fact that Nicolas Maduro, at least technically, was a fugitive from American justice. But was the regime in Iran, in power for a half century, really enough of an “imminent threat” to justify circumventing the constitutional prerogative of Congress to debate and declare war? Naturally, the armchair warriors at the Wall Street Journal are on board, declaring, “The biggest mistake President Trump could make now would be to end the war too soon.” Yet it is hard to escape history, no matter how many Fox News “military analysts” try to rewrite it. And it goes back a lot further than Baghdad. The Lusitania, “Remember the Maine,” the Gulf of Tonkin and Nord Stream come to mind, right alongside Ike’s warning about a perpetual “military industrial complex.” Charlie Kirk understood it, but he is gone. The rest of the so-called “conservative” media are already rethinking their Johnny-come-lately MAGA conversion. And make no mistake, the GOP in Congress is poised to snap back to the Bush–McConnell status quo quicker than you can say RINO. So for the sake of our country and a president who has done much to secure its future, I hope it all works out. Because now he owns it. The post Now He Owns It appeared first on The American Conservative.

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A difficult jobs report comes at a tough time for the White House. Gas prices are rising over the war in Iran, while stock market turmoil is making savers and retirees antsy about the state of their 401(k)s. Data Friday showing a loss of 92,000 jobs in February will put pressure on the Trump administration to reconsider military and homeland security policies that have complicated the nation's economic outlook. But there may simply not be enough time to force through a substantial policy shift that could improve the economic outlook before the November midterms. The state of the economy is mixed. The unemployment rate rose to 4.4% in February, reversing a decline from the month before. That rate is still low in historical terms. Meanwhile wages rose 3.8% since the year before, helping to reverse workers' losses in purchasing power from high inflation under the Biden administration.

The U.S. lost 92,000 jobs in February, a sign that the job market continues to struggle across a broad range of sectors. The hiring numbers, reported Friday by the Labor Department, fell far short of January's gain of 126,000 jobs. They were worse than the gain of 50,000 jobs that economists polled by The Wall Street Journal had expected to see.

The U.S. economy lost jobs in February, a month marred by severe winter weather and a strike at a major health-care provider, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. Nonfarm payrolls fell by 92,000 for the month, compared with the estimate for 50,000 and below the downwardly revised January total of 126,000. February marked the third time in the past five months that payrolls declined, following a sharp revision showing a drop of 17,000 in December.

The U.S. economy shed jobs unexpectedly in February as employers pulled back to start 2026 amid economic uncertainty. What are the key findings of the February 2026 jobs report? The Labor Department on Wednesday reported that employers shed 92,000 jobs in February. That figure was well below the expectations of economists polled by LSEG, who estimated the economy would add 59,000 jobs.