Khamenei apparently killed in today’s attack

WASHINGTON, Feb 28 (Reuters) – In the run-up to the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Saturday, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency assessed that even if Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in the operation, he would likely be replaced by hardline figures from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), two sources briefed on the intelligence said.

JD Vance in 2023: There are many reasons I changed my mind on Donald Trump, but Iraq is perhaps the most important. Not that he was an early critic of the war, but that the people in the conservative movement who hated him most were the most wrong, and the most proud, about foreign policy in 2003

JD Vance in 2026: “I do think we have to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. I also think that we have to avoid overlearning the lessons of the past. Just because one president screwed up a military conflict doesn’t mean we can never engage in military conflict again. We’ve got to be careful about it, but I think the president is being careful.”

Pete Hegseth: “The War Department will not be distracted by democracy-building, interventionism, undefined wars, regime change…and feckless nation-building.”

Trump has apparently said Operation Epic Fury — we are ruled by 12 year old boys — could last weeks, though I can’t find the exact quote. Also it’s a small thing in itself, I guess, but this murderous imbecile was wearing a USA baseball cap in the video announcing this epically furious venture. What are the odds that Trump is even aware of the difference between Shia and Sunni Muslims? (Hopefully Jared has read up on that a bit).

I got a grim laugh out of this current CNN headline:

Are Trump’s strikes against Iran legal? Experts are skeptical

. . . Axios caught Trump between rounds of golf:

President Trump told Axios on Saturday that he has several “off ramps” from Operation Epic Fury, the extraordinary U.S. military campaign against Iran that he launched early Saturday morning.

What they’re saying: “I can go long and take over the whole thing, or end it in two or three days and tell the Iranians: ‘See you again in a few years if you start rebuilding [your nuclear and missile programs],” Trump said in a five-minute phone interview from Mar-a-Lago.

• “In any case, it will take them several years to recover from this attack,” he predicted.