US-Iran tensions escalate after Trump-ordered attack

President Donald Trump is now the most unpopular he has been during his second term.

More than half of American adults disapprove of the job he is doing, and he’s underwater on nearly every important issue of the day.

A day after an Iran-backed militia killed one British and two American troops in Iraq, the United States responded by bombing five of the group’s weapons facilities on Thursday night — escalating an already intense rivalry with Tehran that could turn into a bigger war.

On Wednesday, a group believed to be Kata’ib Hezbollah launched about 30 rockets into Camp Taji, a large base north of Baghdad hosting members of the US-led coalition to defeat ISIS. The rocket attacks killed three service members — two Americans and one British soldier — while injuring 14 other coalition members. Kata’ib Hezbollah has yet to take responsibility for the attack, though in a Wednesday statement they praised those who conducted the “precision jihadi operation.”

Iran may be getting close to having enough nuclear material to make a single bomb if it chooses to do so. Although experts estimate it would still take Iran roughly a year to actually build a bomb (which it has long said it does not want to do), it’s still a worrying development.

It’s also a predictable one — in fact, it’s what many experts warned was likely to happen if President Donald Trump withdrew the US from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

The Senate, on Thursday, once again attempted to limit the president’s war powers.

In a 55-45 vote, lawmakers passed a resolution that would require President Donald Trump to obtain congressional approval if he wanted to take additional military action against Iran. It’s the latest lawmaker response to an airstrike Trump authorized in early January that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, and follows the passage of a similar measure in the House. Differences in the legislation mean is must be voted on by the lower chamber before it heads to the president’s desk.

The number of US troops injured in Iran’s attack earlier this month is now three times higher than the Trump administration had previously claimed, according to new information released by the Pentagon.

In a press briefing on Friday, Defense Department spokesperson Jonathan Hoffman told reporters that 34 US military members received concussions or other traumatic brain injuries (TBI) in the missile strikes Iran launched at US military targets in Iraq on January 8.

The Trump administration’s top envoy for Iran just put assassination back on the table when he said the US will take out the successor to slain Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani — if the successor continues along the path of killing Americans.

That forceful message, delivered by Brian Hook during an interview with the Asharq al-Awsat newspaper in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday, serves as a stark warning to Tehran — and could conceivably increase tensions with the US.

President Donald Trump is minimizing the injuries sustained by US troops attacked by Iran earlier this month, describing them as just “headaches.”

“I’ve seen what Iran has done with roadside bombs to our troops. I’ve seen people with no legs and no arms. I’ve seen people that were horribly, horribly injured,” Trump said Wednesday during his trip to the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland. “I don’t consider them very serious injuries relative to other injuries that I’ve seen.”

Last week, Iran attacked two US military sites in Iraq. Now, a week later, one thing has become unmistakably clear: The US and Iran only barely avoided a potentially devastating war.

Defense One reported on Thursday night that 11 US troops sustained injuries in the strikes, which followed report after report after report that some Americans were blown out of towers and received concussions when the missiles hit.

Protests erupted in Iran over the weekend as vigils to mourn the 176 victims of the Ukrainian jet crash transformed into anti-government demonstrations.

The Iranian government had tried to conceal that its military accidentally shot down the plane, killing all on board. When it finally admitted its culpability, protesters reacted with rage and fury.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani just said his country is now enriching uranium at a higher level than before the nuclear deal restricted that activity — an assertion that is likely to anger both the Trump administration and the administration’s critics.

That’s because highly enriched uranium can be used to make a nuclear bomb.

Days after admitting it accidentally shot down a Ukrainian passenger plane carrying 176 civilians, Iran has announced that those responsible have been arrested.

Iranian Judiciary spokesperson Gholam-Hossein Esmaili said Tuesday that “extensive investigations” have taken place and some individuals were arrested.

Having come to the brink of war with the US last week and facing anti-regime protests at home, Iran apparently decided it didn’t have enough to deal with and has now picked a fight — with the United Kingdom.

On Saturday, Iranian authorities arrested the UK’s ambassador to the country and accused him of participating in the anti-government demonstrations over the downing of the Ukrainian airliner.

The Trump administration’s argument that it killed Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani to stop an “imminent” attack on Americans was just dealt another blow.

A pair of news reports claim that a) President Donald Trump was thinking about killing Soleimani as far back as spring 2017, and b) he went as far as authorizing a strike on Soleimani last June.

If you’re worried about a war between the US and Iran, you’re not the only one.

The two nations have fought a shadow war for decades, and lately that shadow war has been getting a lot more dangerous — threatening to break out into full-scale war.

The Trump administration has given ever-changing answers about its reasons for deciding to kill Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani, first claiming that the leader posed an “imminent threat” to the US, before suggesting that maybe the threat wasn’t so imminent after all.

The rationale took a new turn Friday evening when President Donald Trump gave Fox News’s Laura Ingraham what has been perhaps the most definitive answer so far on what the threat was; according to the president, Soleimani was planning attacks on “four US embassies,” including the one in Baghdad, which faced violent protests on New Year’s Eve.

President Donald Trump tweeted support for anti-government Iranian protesters in both English and Farsi Saturday evening, writing, “I’ve stood with you since the beginning of my Presidency, and my Administration will continue to stand with you. We are following your protests closely, and are inspired by your courage.”

Protests began Saturday at two universities in Iran, as Iranians gathered to mourn the 176 lives lost on Ukraine International Airlines Flight PS752, which the Iranian government admitted to accidentally shooting down early Saturday. That flight contained 82 Iranian citizens; Iran initially blamed its crashing on a technical error, calling US and Canadian claims that it had been shot down “lies.”

The Trump administration has maintained from the start that it ordered the assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani in order to forestall an imminent threat to American lives.

It’s pretty clear this is not true, that the administration instead simply made a calculated decision to escalate American pushback on Iran as part of a larger series of back-and-forth actions that began with the US pullout from the Iran nuclear deal.

The Trump administration’s stated rationale for killing Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani — that he posed an “imminent threat” to Americans requiring the US to take him out — is looking more and more bogus.

From political rallies to press conferences to secret briefings to official documents, Trump administration officials have repeatedly failed to provide evidence that Soleimani posed more danger to Americans at the time he was killed than he routinely did for decades. Trump’s team has so bungled its justification for the strike that even some Republicans have criticized the administration.

It looks like President Donald Trump may have considered his impeachment prospects when making the decision to kill Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani last week. If that’s the case, then the Trump-ordered strike wasn’t solely about protecting Americans from an imminent threat — it was also partially about saving his presidency.

The administration has made a slapdash case for why it chose to assassinate Soleimani, but the main arguments have been that he was planning to attack Americans within days, and that the US would always respond forcefully after US citizens were killed. In December, an Iranian-backed militia killed an American contractor in Iraq.

In his speech declaring a kind of victory over Iran on Wednesday, President Donald Trump said “Iran appears to be standing down,” implying the threat America faces from the Islamic Republic is over.

But it ain’t over yet.

The House of Representatives on Thursday sent President Donald Trump a decisive message on conflict with Iran, voting overwhelmingly to block his ability to engage in further military action without congressional approval.

Three Republicans and one independent joined Democrats to advance a war powers resolution introduced by Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) that closely mirrors a proposal from Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) in the Senate. The final vote total was 224-194, and while Democrats were broadly united, eight moderate members of the caucus ultimately defected.

Iran may not have killed US troops in its retaliatory strikes in Iraq on Tuesday night, but it’s looking more and more like the country did kill civilians, albeit likely unwittingly: the 176 passengers of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752.

Just a few hours after Iran fired more than a dozen ballistic missiles at two US military targets in Iraq Tuesday night, Flight 752, which was flying from Tehran to Kyiv, crashed minutes after taking off from Imam Khomeini International Airport, killing all 176 people on board — half of whom were Iranian.

Babak stays up late, so he saw the news in real time, in the early Friday morning hours in Iran. The Americans had killed Qassem Soleimani, one of the country’s most celebrated military figures, in a targeted strike.

“I didn’t know how to feel,” Babak, a 25-year-old software engineer from Bandar Abbas, a city in southern Iran, told me. “I couldn’t say I’m glad that he died, and I couldn’t say I was happy.”

Democratic lawmakers with questions about the rationale behind the Trump administration’s decision to kill Iran’s Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani didn’t get the answers they wanted at the time of his death.

The administration promised all of their concerns would be addressed during Senate and House briefings on secret Iranian intelligence. Those briefings concluded Wednesday afternoon — and most Democrats (and some Republicans) are pissed.

This is the second of a two-part series examining the arguments for and against the Trump administration’s decision to kill Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani. Read the case against the targeting of Soleimani here.

Last Thursday, the Trump administration authorized a drone strike that killed Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s paramilitary forces and one of the most powerful men in the country.