“In case we don’t make a deal, we’ll need it,” Trump has said. Iran remains defiant in the face of ultimatums, pledging unprecedented retaliation to any attack.

Jeremy Scahill and Murtaza Hussain
Feb 18, 2026

A former senior U.S. intelligence official who is an informal advisor to the Trump administration on Middle East policy told Drop Site that, based on his discussions with current officials, he assesses an 80-90% likelihood of U.S. strikes within weeks.

Iran realizes that it is facing an unprecedented threat from the U.S. if a deal that conforms with Trump’s terms is not reached, former Pentagon official Jasmine El-Gamal told Drop Site. “This is not a dress rehearsal,” she said. “This is it. This is not the negotiations of last year or the year before or the year before that. They’re backed into a corner. There’s no off ramp.”

        • barrbaric [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          1·
          2 hours ago

          The invasion of Afghanistan began with a wave of bombings/air strikes that killed thousands of civilians and destroyed infrastructure because the Taliban/Al Qaeda were located in areas in which other people lived. Especially the Taliban, as they were the ruling government. A decent analogy is actually 9/11: sure, they targeted the white house and pentagon, but also the WTC which were civilians. Given what we know of US intel, I would actually wager that 2/3 of the hijackerss targets being military installations makes them more precise than the US forces. There are then second-order deaths, such as from starvation and disease, due to disruption of infrastructure, power being cut, factories shutting down, etc.

          Likewise, the “Shock and Awe” phase of the invasion of Iraq was a terror bombing campaign that aimed (and failed) to cause Saddam’s government to be overthrown by popular uprising due to mass civilian death and destruction of infrastructure. IIRC Iraq’s power grid still hasn’t been repaired to pre-war levels over 20 years later.

          We can get semantic about what the phrase “bombing to pieces” means, but come on. The invasions kill over a million people, primarily due to second-order deaths from the initial and ongoing bombing campaigns. Seriously, look at the history of how the US wages war. It always relies on having air superiority and bombing the shit out of the countries it invades and then following up with special forces. Nowadays, that’d be JSOC because that branch of the special forces are directly controlled by the president.

          As far as ground invasion, that depends on what their goals are. If they want to use the playbook from Venezuela and kidnap (or assassinate) all leadership then “no” because while they’ll have special forces on the ground they won’t be staying long-term. If they want to use the playbook from Iraq and Afghanistan, then yes, they will have to do a ground invasion as strategic terror bombings never actually succeed at causing the popular uprisings (see: Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc). The only place it allegedly ever worked was Japan in WWII, but that seems to have been largely incorrect and their surrender was much more due to the soviets declaring war on them.

            • barrbaric [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
              1·
              1 hour ago

              I think it’s about 50/50. I’m still pretty surprised Venezuela ended up working as well as it did, so that’s a point in its favor, but that doesn’t mean it’ll work every time. Obviously public sentiment is against a ground invasion but when has that stopped anything Trump has done in the past? If his supporters can pardon him being a pedophile they certainly won’t care about another invasion of some distant country.

              If I had to guess I think most likely is they try to do another kidnapping campaign that then fails and turns into a prolonged invasion.