(Writers and Editors blog, updated 4-2-26)
IRAN WATCH HUBS AND SITES: If any of these sites doesn't still post live updates, do a search for their site and see if there's a new link.
---AP News hub
---New York Times (Your Iran Questions)
---Iran War Live Updates (New York Times)
---Live Updates (The Guardian, UK) Good live updates
---Twenty questions (and expert answers) about the Iran war (Dispatches, The Atlantic Council)
---Iran Watch (Listen, Apple podcasts)
(Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, a non-profit, non-partisan organization based in Washington, D.C., established in 2003.
---The Iran Strikes, Explained: How We Got Here and What It Means
(American Jewish Committee, 3-12-26) Questions and answers.
---Iran Watch Table of Iran's Missile Arsenal
---Drop Site News
---BBC Live updates
ARTICLES AND POSTS:
• Iran–United States relations (Wikipedia) Yes, it's Wikipedia, but it provides a long overview with many links, including a long final section on Trump and relations with Iran (with links to more resources).
--- Lists of massacres in Iran (Wikipedia)
--- Prelude to the 2026 Iran war (Wikipedia) Among other things: Tensions between Iran and the United States over Iran's nuclear program began to intensify in January 2026 amid Iran's ongoing massacres of Iranian civilians following the 2025–2026 Iranian protests. The United States began amassing air and naval assets in the region at a level not seen since the outset of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The U.S. government signaled that airstrikes remained an option, emphasizing that all responses were under consideration while maintaining that diplomacy was still preferred. Regional actors, including Qatar, cautioned that any escalation could have severe consequences for the Middle East. Negotiations regarding the Iranian nuclear program were held in February, on 28 February 2026 the United States and Israel conducted military strikes in Iran.
• Trump’s Staggering Humiliation in Iran (Alex Shephard, New Republic, 4-8-26) Desperate for an off-ramp, the president is setting up the U.S. to lose another war in the Middle East—even if the ceasefire doesn’t hold.
'There were two ways to read Donald Trump’s unprecedented threat on Tuesday that Iran’s “whole civilization will die” if the Strait of Hormuz was not opened by 8 p.m. Eastern time. The first was that the president was threatening to drop a nuclear weapon on a nation that he had started a war with, as punishment for that nation’s fighting back. The second was that Trump wasn’t just bullshitting, and instead was desperate for a deal—so desperate he would utter perhaps the most horrific, murderous words an American president has ever spoken.
"That second reading now looks to be the right one. Shortly before the Tuesday evening deadline, Trump announced that the United States and Iran had reached a two-week ceasefire and would be working on a potential peace deal. True to form, Trump boasted that he had won a massive victory and that the U.S. had “already met and exceeded all Military objectives.” Subsequent reporting—and the fact that Trump called Iran’s 10-point proposal “a workable basis on which to negotiate”—suggests something rather different.
'Even if the U.S. agreed to just a few of Iran's 10 demands, or even if the demands were significantly watered down, a peace deal based on that framework would lead to an unmistakable conclusion: The U.S. has lost yet another war in the Middle East. The reality may in fact be much worse. The Iran war increasingly looks not only like another shocking humiliation but perhaps the greatest strategic blunder in American military history.'
• A Cease-Fire for Now in Iran, but a Blow to American Credibility (Steven Erlanger, NY Times, 4-9-26) Critics wonder if this is America’s “Suez moment,” when a leading power signals the start of its international decline. The Suez analogy works in that the war in Iran demonstrated “in a single incident the danger of American misgovernance and poor judgment.” America’s allies may be unhappy, perplexed and even angry about Trump administration policies, but many of them, especially those in the Persian Gulf and Asia suffering the impact of energy shortages and restrictions, have few other options for security partners.
• Iran Rejects U.S. Narrative That It Must Adhere to Trump’s ‘Disingenuous’ Negotiation Framework
(Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Grim, Drop Site News,3-27-26)
Tehran put forward its own terms to end the war, a senior Iranian official tells Drop Site, despite claims it has not responded to Trump. Iran has expressed deep concerns about the U.S. negotiating team consisting of Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. In the 2009 and 2015 negotiations with Iran, President Barack Obama dispatched multi-disciplinary teams consisting of senior U.S. officials and subject area specialists. During the February negotiations, according to The Guardian, Trump did not send U.S. technical experts to accompany Witkoff and Kushner.
“We made it clear to the mediator that these individuals have no familiarity with diplomacy,” the Iranian official told Drop Site. “The U.S. delegation in the negotiations should include people who are technically well-versed in regional issues, nuclear matters, and peace processes.”
• Trump accused of ‘corruption, plain and simple’ after UAE invested in family firm (Lauren Aratani, The Guardian, 2-2-26)
Donald Trump has been accused of “corruption, plain and simple” after it was revealed that a member of the Emirati royal family was behind a $500m investment into the Trump family’s cryptocurrency company. Ethics experts say the deal – struck just days before the US president’s inauguration last January – amounts to a deep conflict of interest for the White House, amid calls for a congressional investigation into the transaction. White House says president is not involved in running his businesses. Ethics experts remain concerned
• Trump makes his case for war with Iran, saying the conflict is 'nearing completion' (Danielle Kurtzleben, NPR, 4-1-26)
"In these past four weeks," he said, "our armed forces have delivered swift, decisive, overwhelming victories on the battlefield." However, the Trump administration has given shifting explanations of its goals, and its list of accomplishments in the conflict are mixed and unclear, at a time when the president has been talking about finding a way out of the war.
• Why the Gulf Monarchs Shower Trump With Gifts
(Franklin Foer, The Atlantic, 11-30-25)
Until Donald Trump, no U.S. president had ever yielded to royal temptations from abroad.
But in his second term, Trump has discarded that old inhibition in its totality.
Since 2022, the Trump family has been promised hundreds of millions of dollars—in the form of investments, real-estate licensing deals, even an airplane—from Gulf monarchies and the business entities they control.
During his second term, and especially during Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s recent visit to Washington, Trump has rewarded his benefactors with sweeping geopolitical favors. Their huge investments in his family’s businesses are hard to describe as anything other than the spectacular subversion of American sovereignty, wherein the nation’s foreign policy reads as a thank-you note to the president’s biggest financial boosters.
(Lucian Truscott newsletter, 3-13-26)
Iran has Donald Trump right where they want him: Trapped in the Strait of Hormuz like an oil tanker wearing a suit and red tie and a pair of Florsheim’s. How is he going to end the war that he alone is responsible for?
• Trump Is Flailing on Iran (Jonathan Chait, The Atlantic, 3-31-26)
He can’t scare Iran and reassure the markets at the same time. But he’s trying.
Since the conflict with Iran began, however, the cycle between aggression and conciliation has spun more rapidly. The president issues new and more terrible threats against Tehran, then backs off with soothing praise. He has now begun to do these things simultaneously.
Trump has learned that he can encourage the markets to expect a speedy end to the war by promising that talks are proceeding toward a settlement, or at least that he intends to quit the conflict and frame it as a victory. However, the Iranians can also read these messages. Every time Trump signals that he wants the war to end, they recognize his desperation. So, to counter this effect, Trump attempts to threaten Iran with new punishments should it fail to make a satisfactory deal. But of course, the markets can also read the threats. So Trump must counteract the impression caused by his saber-rattling with promises of peace.
• Global Disruption and the War in Iran (Heather Cox Richardson, 3-20-26) Listen to audio or click on transcript.
Trump told reporters he was not sending troops to Iran, saying, "'No, I'm not putting troops anywhere. If I were, I certainly wouldn't tell you, but I'm not putting troops.'"
Today, Jennifer Jacobs, James Laporta, and Eleanor Watson of CBS News reported that the Pentagon has made detailed preparations for sending troops to Iran. The administration is currently moving thousands of Marines to the Middle East. They will not be in place for a few weeks, suggesting the administration is expecting the engagement to continue. Barak Ravid and Mark Caputo of Axios reported today that the administration is considering an assault on Iran's Karg Island, the center of Iran's oil processing facilities, to force Iran to allow free passage through the Strait of Hormuz. That operation would require the U.S. military to pound Iran's military capacity near the strait before sending in ground troops. A source told Ravid and Caputo, we need about a month to weaken the Iranians more with strikes.
Rather than hold public hearings that would allow the American people to hear the administration's justification for the war and plans for its execution, as Democrats demand, Republicans are permitting the administration to inform Congress as it wishes, behind closed doors.
• Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American (posted 3-15-26)
"Today, as the country enters its third week of war against Iran, President Donald J. Trump was on the golf course, illustrating the observation of journalist E.J. Dionne in the New York Times that “from the very beginning of this war, we got a sense that there wasn’t a great deal of serious thought put into it by the president of the United States about how it might end, what our objectives were, what needed to be done to protect Americans who are in the Middle East, what might happen to oil in the Strait of Hormuz.”
"Although the administration appears to be trying to convince Americans that the U.S. military’s destruction of the Iranian military means the U.S. has won the war, Iranian leadership needed simply to continue in power to declare victory. Then, blocking the 20% of the world’s oil that flows through the Strait of Hormuz would give them leverage over the war’s outcome.
"On March 10, Helene Cooper and Eric Schmitt of the New York Times reported that senior defense officials told them the Iranian military is adjusting its tactics to strike at the communications and defense systems protecting U.S. troops. Those tactics include drone strikes. The same day, Marc Caputo, Barak Ravid, and Colin Demarest of Axios reported that Ukrainian officials had tried several months ago to sell the U.S. anti-drone technology for downing Iran-made drones as a sign of thanks for U.S. support and as a way to strengthen ties between the U.S. and Ukraine, but the U.S. did not pursue the offer."
• What’s Behind Trump’s New World Disorder? (Daniel Immerwahr, New Yorker, 3-23-26)
A foreign policy freed of liberal pretenses and imperial ambitions could lead to restraint—or, as the Iran attack shows, simply license hit-and-run belligerence. Past Presidents held back on attacking Iran for fear of damaging America’s legitimacy or its interests, broadly construed. Trump, caring little for either, has entered a major conflict with astonishing blitheness; the White House press secretary explained that Trump acted on a “feeling” that Iran would attack. His minimal commitments, rather than yielding a restrained foreign policy, have lowered the barrier to war.
• Why Trump Didn’t Plan for the Strait of Hormuz (Phillips Payson O’Brien, The Atlantic, 3-13-26)
In its failure to anticipate Iran’s reaction, the administration ignored a dynamic that former Defense Secretary James Mattis, a first-term Trump appointee, was fond of pointing out:
Once hostilities begin, “the enemy gets a vote.” U.S. leaders have drastically underestimated the Iranian regime’s ability to survive, adjust, and strike back.
Just two weeks into a war that began at a time of the president’s choosing, the U.S. appears uncertain about what to do next.
What will “finish the job” look like?
Iran’s regime didn’t collapse. They fought back with missile and drone strikes on 12 countries and American military installations in the Middle East.
And they closed the Strait of Hormuz. Twenty percent of the world’s oil stopped flowing.
Oil prices went up, then they went up further. Gas prices are up. Air travel is disrupted. The American economy is threatened right along with the rest of the world’s economy. Donald Trump’s poll numbers tanked.
• Iran and Secretaries (Timothy Snyder, Thinking About... Iran and Secretaries, The Browser newsletter, 2-28-26) Historian examines the US attacks on Iran. Propaganda encourages acceptance without interrogation, but it is vital to do the opposite. "A war is a time when we will be told not to ask questions. But a war is actually when questions must be asked. And they must be asked in light of what we already know." What might seem like "foreign policy" can be better understood as personal politics.
• Trump makes his case for war with Iran, saying the conflict is 'nearing completion' (Danielle Kurtzleben, NPR, 4-1-26)
• Trump makes his case for war with Iran, saying the conflict is 'nearing completion' (Danielle Kurtzleben, NPR, 4-1-26) In a roughly 20-minute address to the nation last night, President Trump made the case for the war with Iran, which began over a month ago. He said that the war has been a military success and he expects U.S. forces to leave the country in a few weeks. The president was critical of U.S. allies, saying it is their responsibility to reopen the Strait of Hormuz for oil access. "In these past four weeks," he said, "our armed forces have delivered swift, decisive, overwhelming victories on the battlefield." However, the Trump administration has given shifting explanations of its goals, and its list of accomplishments in the conflict are mixed and unclear, at a time when the president has been talking about finding a way out of the war.
• Trump Had No Plan B for Iran (Tom Nichols, The Atlantic, 3-20-26)
And it shows.
• The Murdoch Empire Shows Trump’s Enemies No Mercy
(Jem Bartholomew, Columbia Journalism Review, 3-16-26)
To say the Murdoch media empire has been only a cheerleader for Trump’s war on Iran would be to ignore Fox News’s role in inciting the conflict. Sean Hannity has been persistently hawkish on Iran on his weeknight show, and a report from Zeteo, citing two inside sources, said that Trump, in internal conversations with US officials, directly cited Hannity on why the war should be waged. Watching the gears grind on the Fox News sanewashing machine is almost enough to make you forget the total vacuum where Trump’s strategic decision-making should be. As MAGA media splinters over Trump’s foreign wars, the Murdoch empire has stayed loyal—but what happens when Lachlan succeeds Rupert?
• The War Trump Doesn’t Want to Talk About (Susan B. Glasser, Letter from Trump's Washington, 3-12-26)
“We won,” the President who’s treating the conflict with Iran like a video game says, but “we’re not finished yet.”
In Donald Trump’s first term, he might have live-tweeted the war in Iran.
These days, his presence on Truth Social, the social-media platform that he owns, is more targeted at Trump superfans, many of whom are not entirely enthusiastic about their MAGA leader’s decision to launch a new war of choice in the Middle East.
• The Path to the Trump Doctrine (Aslı Ü. Bâli Aziz Rana, Boston Review, Winter 2026)
From Syria to Lebanon to Gaza, the coercion central to the new regime has been incubated in the Middle East. Trump sees the United States standing first in a world divided among “civilizationally” distinct ethno-national communities.
Biden’s practices in the Middle East already demonstrated the extent to which Pax Americana was disintegrating. Instead of downsizing its Middle East footprint, Washington’s “ironclad” commitment to Israel became the defining feature of its foreign policy and global posture.
The Gaza plan doubles down on American presumptions that force can substitute for legitimacy and that the weak will suffer what they must. What matters is not peace and stability, but the “deal” struck by the world’s strongest power, with the promise of lucrative contracts.
The Trump doctrine seeks control in a world that resists domination. By substituting coercion for consent, it multiplies the very crises it ostensibly aims to end. Not only does it underscore the degree to which the United States’s global credibility has eroded; it demonstrates how pure coercion, in a context of real multipolar competition, is inevitably costlier and less effective at pursuing strategic ends.
• Iran War Live Updates: Trump Disparages Allies for Rebuffing His Requests for Military Assistance
(Anton Troianovski, Erica L. Green, David E. Sanger and Aaron Boxerman, Live Updates, NY Times, 3-16-26)
“We don’t need anybody,” the president declared, even as he said several countries had agreed to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
"We're the strongest nation in the world," Mr. Trump said.
He suggested his request for assistance in reopening the Strait of Hormuz instead amounted to a loyalty test of America's allies.
"I'm almost doing it in some cases not because we need them but because I want to find out how they react," he said.
The Israeli military escalated ground attacks against Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.
(The Guardian, 3-16-26)
'Iran war ‘not a matter for NATO’, says Germany’s Merz as European countries react cautiously to Trump’s calls for assistance.
European countries have demanded to know more about US president Donald Trump’s plans for the war on Iran and when the conflict might end as they weighed whether to agree to his call to send warships to help shore up security in the Persian Gulf.
• U.S. Intelligence Saw No Change in Iran’s Missile Capabilities Before War
(Robert Jimison, NY Times, 3-18-26)
On Wednesday, the director of national intelligence and C.I.A. director contradicted one of the justifications the Trump administration had given for its attacks on Iran.
Ms. Tulsi Gabbard affirmed the conclusion reached by the Trump administration’s Defense Intelligence Agency last year that it would be a decade before Iran could get past the technological hurdles to produce weapons capable of reaching the United States.
Likewise, Mr. Ratcliffe did not give a timeline when asked whether Iran would have been able to strike the United States within six months, instead focusing on its ability to reach as far as Europe and threaten U.S. bases and interests in the region.
Ms. Gabbard noted that the agencies she oversees monitor and work to deter the development of nuclear-capable weapons among U.S. adversaries. Iran was not presented as one of nations with advanced weapons capabilities.
• The killing of Ali Larijani weakens Iran—but at a cost (The Economist, 3-17-26)
The regime is now less predictable.
• How the Iran war is weakening Donald Trump (The Economist, 3-18-26)
An unpopular conflict and costly fuel could hobble his presidency.
Although President Donald Trump says he has “destroyed 100% of Iran’s Military Capability”, the 0% that remains is playing havoc with the global economy by choking off 10-15% of its oil supply. Mr Trump’s war of choice is more unpopular with American voters than any recent conflict, and the odds of a thumping for Republicans at the midterms in November just grew shorter. “It’s a wild mess,” says Curt Mills of the American Conservative.
• The Iran war could end US hegemony (Owen Jones Battlelines, 3-19-26) This is a perilous moment in the war. Whatever the truth here, Donald Trump has lost complete control of the war of aggression he decided to launch. For Iran’s regime, getting through the war without surrender is existential. But for the US, this is now an existential question about its own hegemony. That’s why it is trapped in a cycle of escalation, with serious talk of US ground troops - which would land the country in a disastrous quagmire, not least given Iran’s geography. The question facing humanity now is not about the fall of US hegemony - but how steep and chaotic that descent turns out to be.
• Trump’s Fateful Choice (Nancy A. Youssef and Jonathan Lemire, National Security, The Atlantic, 4-1-26)
"The military is waiting for the president’s go-ahead for high-risk ground operations in Iran.
"Some in the military privately hope that the risks to U.S. forces—and doubts about whether such missions could end the war—will push the administration toward restraint. But the president could then face prolonged Iranian control of a vital waterway and soaring energy prices. He’d be reliant on faltering diplomatic efforts to end the conflict, or, as he has begun to threaten, he might abruptly pull out of the conflict and place the problem in the hands of allies. If he were to do so, he would leave behind an embittered, empowered regime ready to lash out at its Gulf neighbors and the West.
"Whether to order either of the ground assaults, both, or neither will be Trump’s most consequential decision in his war of choice, with far-reaching implications for both the Middle East and the U.S. midterm elections."
• Greed is the only thing keeping Trump from dropping a nuke on Iran
(Lucian N. Truscott IV, 3-19-26)
Here is something I never thought I'd say: Greed is good, especially when it's Donald Trump's greed. It's going to save us…hopefully.
• Trump Is Betraying Iran’s Pro-Democracy Protesters (Franklin Foer, The Atlantic, 3-19-26)
He toyed with their hopes, raising expectations he never meant to fulfill.
• The Iran war could sap American military power for years
(The Economist, 3-18-26)
It is devouring munitions and exhausting an already stretched navy
• Can Trump's 'gunboat diplomacy' stop Iran from blocking the flow of oil? Not likely, say experts
(Saša Petricic, CBC News, 3-12-26)
Shipping lanes in Strait of Hormuz are no more than 2 km wide. Mines remain the most lethal weapon in Iran's arsenal, and likely the biggest threat to commercial ships as well as U.S. naval vessels.
• The Iran War’s Next Threat Is to Food and Water
(Vivian Salama, The Atlantic, 3-18-26)
"Governments are already tapping strategic food reserves and pivoting to alternative land and sea routes to try to ensure the food supply. The UAE’s strategic reserves of vital goods cover four to six months, the government has said, and it urged residents to report unjustified price increases (a.k.a. price gouging) through a dedicated hotline. Saudi Arabia has about four months of wheat supply after the state grains agency purchased nearly 1 million metric tons of wheat in January.
"A prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz could unleash a humanitarian crisis. Iran’s throttling of traffic in the strait—one-fifth of the world’s oil supply runs through the roughly 20-mile-wide channel—already has driven oil above $100 a barrel, pushing up prices at the pump. But for the wealthy countries on the opposite bank of the strait from Iran, the bigger threat is a shortage of food and the soaring costs that could trigger.
"Fresh water is also at risk. Iran has expanded its military targets to include water-desalination plants, the primary source of drinking water for millions in the Gulf.