No, the United States of America is Not Exempt from the Moral Law

Believe it or not, a few readers have written to me to say that the government United States of America is exempt from the Just War Theory and from most other aspects of the moral law because it is not a Catholic nation and is so “exceptional” that God blesses whatever its leaders believe is best for the national security. Several readers have written to say that Donald John Trump is God's chosen vessel to, get this, "end Zionism." These readers, by the way, go to fully traditional chapels who are not in communion with the false “pontiff” and adhere to the conviction that the See of Peter has been vacant since the death of Pope Pius XII on October 9, 1958.

First, no one and no group of people is ever exempt from the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law.

Second, America is not the “New Zion” or the “shining city set on a hill” as Protestant ministers preached in the New England Colonies in the Seventeenth and early Eighteenth Century and in recent times by Presidents Ronald Wilson Reagan and George Walker Bush. The United States of America is founded on a complete indifference to the fact of the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity in Our Lady’s Virginal Womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary by God the Holy Ghost and thus upon a rejection of the fact a just social order depends upon the state of the souls of men.

Third, the government of the United States of America has engaged in moral crimes from its very beginning (the slaughter, displacement, and mistreatment of the American Indians in the name of “westward expansion,” the brutal suppression of the sovereignty of the southern states by the use of raw terror and the deliberate killing of noncombatants, the exportation of both Protestantism and Masonry into every part of Latin America, starting with Mexico in 1821, unjust wars with Mexico in 1848 and Spain in 1898, the involvement in World War I to make the “world safe for democracy” by the creation of secular states to replace the influence of Catholicism within the shards of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, military and financial support for the warfare that Plutarco Elias Calles and his stooges against the Cristeros in the 1920s, the use of obliteration bombing and atomic weaponry in World War II, and involvement in wars that have had no clear objectives while killing civilians believed to be supporters of the enemy, and, of course, turning a blind eye to the Israeli crimes against Palestinian civilians since 1948 and funding its genocide machine without reserve since the 1960s).

Perhaps worst of all, of course, the demigod of American “liberty” has been used as a cloak for the promotion of the malice of contraception, sterilization, the surgical slaughter of the innocent preborn, in vitro fertilization, sodomy and its related perversities, which the American government and multinational corporations have exported all around the globe, eclipsing most any sense of purity, modesty, and ordinary decency.

To be sure, Americans have been generous towards other nations in times of natural disasters and tragedies, and it was through the efforts funded by American taxpayers that Europe was rebuilt following the devastation caused by World War II. This is indisputable.

However, to believe in “American exceptionalism” to turn to a blind eye to the nation’s false founding principles and to the evils that have been advanced under the cover of this slogan as the rights of Christ the King and His true Church have been trampled underfoot in direct contradiction of the following admonition given to us by the first pope, Saint Peter, himself:

Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, to refrain yourselves from carnal desires which war against the soul, [12] Having your conversation good among the Gentiles: that whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may, by the good works, which they shall behold in you, glorify God in the day of visitation. [13] Be ye subject therefore to every human creature for God's sake: whether it be to the king as excelling; [14] Or to governors as sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of the good: [15] For so is the will of God, that by doing well you may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men:

[16] As free, and not as making liberty a cloak for malice, but as the servants of God. [17] Honour all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the king. [18] Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward. [19] For this is thankworthy, if for conscience towards God, a man endure sorrows, suffering wrongfully. [20] For what glory is it, if committing sin, and being buffeted for it, you endure? But if doing well you suffer patiently; this is thankworthy before God.

[21] For unto this are you called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving you an example that you should follow his steps. [22] Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth. [23] Who, when he was reviled, did not revile: when he suffered, he threatened not: but delivered himself to him that judged him unjustly. [24] Who his own self bore our sins in his body upon the tree: that we, being dead to sins, should live to justice: by whose stripes you were healed. [25] For you were as sheep going astray; but you are now converted to the shepherd and bishopb of your souls. (1 Peter 2: 11-25.)

Can anyone reading this truthfully say that the leaders of the  United States of America have, rather than promote the common good in light of man’s Last End by fostering those conditions wherein citizens can better sanctify and thus save their immortals souls, promoted a false notion of liberty that confounds liberty with license (unrestrained physical freedom) and vice with virtue?

Does anyone reading this believe that President Donald John Trump does not revile when he is reviled nor threatens when he does not get his way?

Pope Leo XIII explained the tendency of the modern civil state to confound liberty with license:

In the same way the Church cannot approve of that liberty which begets a contempt of the most sacred laws of God, and casts off the obedience due to lawful authority, for this is not liberty so much as license, and is most correctly styled by St. Augustine the “liberty of self-ruin,” and by the Apostle St. Peter the “cloak of malice.” Indeed, since it is opposed to reason, it is a true slavery, “for whosoever committeth sin is the slave of sin.”^] On the other hand, that liberty is truly genuine, and to be sought after, which in regard to the individual does not allow men to be the slaves of error and of passion, the worst of all masters; which, too, in public administration guides the citizens in wisdom and provides for them increased means of well-being; and which, further, protects the State from foreign interference.

38. This honorable liberty, alone worthy of human beings, the Church approves most highly and has never slackened her endeavor to preserve, strong and unchanged, among nations. And, in truth, whatever in the State is of chief avail for the common welfare; whatever has been usefully established to curb the license of rulers who are opposed to the true interests of the people, or to keep in check the leading authorities from unwarrantably interfering in municipal or family affairs; whatever tends to uphold the honor, manhood, and equal rights of individual citizens — of all these things, as the monuments of past ages bear witness, the Catholic Church has always been the originator, the promoter, or the guardian. Ever, therefore, consistent with herself, while on the one hand she rejects that exorbitant liberty which in individuals and in nations ends in license or in thraldom, on the other hand, she willingly and most gladly welcomes whatever improvements the age brings forth, if these really secure the prosperity of life here below, which is, as it were, a stage in the journey to the life that will know no ending.

39. Therefore, when it is said that the Church is hostile to modern political regimes and that she repudiates the discoveries of modern research, the charge is a ridiculous and groundless calumny. Wild opinions she does repudiate, wicked and seditious projects she does condemn, together with that attitude of mind which points to the beginning of a willful departure from God. But, as all truth must necessarily proceed from God, the Church recognizes in all truth that is reached by research a trace of the divine intelligence. And as all truth in the natural order is powerless to destroy belief in the teachings of revelation, but can do much to confirm it, and as every newly discovered truth may serve to further the knowledge or the praise of God, it follows that whatsoever spreads the range of knowledge will always be willingly and even joyfully welcomed by the Church. She will always encourage and promote, as she does in other branches of knowledge, all study occupied with the investigation of nature. In these pursuits, should the human intellect discover anything not known before, the Church makes no opposition. She never objects to search being made for things that minister to the refinements and comforts of life. So far, indeed, from opposing these she is now, as she ever has been, hostile alone to indolence and sloth, and earnestly wishes that the talents of men may bear more and more abundant fruit by cultivation and exercise. Moreover, she gives encouragement to every kind of art and handicraft, and through her influence, directing all strivings after progress toward virtue and salvation, she labors to prevent man’s intellect and industry from turning him away from God and from heavenly things.

40. All this, though so reasonable and full of counsel, finds little favor nowadays when States not only refuse to conform to the rules of Christian wisdom, but seem even anxious to recede from them further and further on each successive day. Nevertheless, since truth when brought to light is wont, of its own nature, to spread itself far and wide, and gradually take possession of the minds of men, We, moved by the great and holy duty of Our apostolic mission to all nations, speak, as We are bound to do, with freedom. Our eyes are not closed to the spirit of the times. We repudiate not the assured and useful improvements of our age, but devoutly wish affairs of State to take a safer course than they are now taking, and to rest on a more firm foundation without injury to the true freedom of the people; for the best parent and guardian of liberty amongst men is truth. “The truth shall make you free.” (Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885.)

To claim, therefore, that the myth of American exceptionalism grants it an “exception” from the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law is to believe in that which is opposed to the Holy Faith.

While we are called as citizens to love our country by willing its good, which is its Catholicization in every aspect of social, political, commercial, and cultural life, we are called to love God first and to oppose all that our country does that is opposed to His eternal laws as explicated infallibly by the teaching of His Holy Catholic Church:

5. Now, if the natural law enjoins us to love devotedly and to defend the country in which we had birth, and in which we were brought up, so that every good citizen hesitates not to face death for his native land, very much more is it the urgent duty of Christians to be ever quickened by like feelings toward the Church. For the Church is the holy City of the living God, born of God Himself, and by Him built up and established. Upon this earth, indeed, she accomplishes her pilgrimage, but by instructing and guiding men she summons them to eternal happiness. We are bound, then, to love dearly the country whence we have received the means of enjoyment this mortal life affords, but we have a much more urgent obligation to love, with ardent love, the Church to which we owe the life of the soul, a life that will endure forever. For fitting it is to prefer the good of the soul to the well-being of the body, inasmuch as duties toward God are of a far more hallowed character than those toward men.

6. Moreover, if we would judge aright, the supernatural love for the Church and the natural love of our own country proceed from the same eternal principle, since God Himself is their Author and originating Cause. Consequently, it follows that between the duties they respectively enjoin, neither can come into collision with the other. We can, certainly, and should love ourselves, bear ourselves kindly toward our fellow men, nourish affection for the State and the governing powers; but at the same time we can and must cherish toward the Church a feeling of filial piety, and love God with the deepest love of which we are capable. The order of precedence of these duties is, however, at times, either under stress of public calamities, or through the perverse will of men, inverted. For, instances occur where the State seems to require from men as subjects one thing, and religion, from men as Christians, quite another; and this in reality without any other ground, than that the rulers of the State either hold the sacred power of the Church of no account, or endeavor to subject it to their own will. Hence arises a conflict, and an occasion, through such conflict, of virtue being put to the proof. The two powers are confronted and urge their behests in a contrary sense; to obey both is wholly impossible. No man can serve two masters,[3] for to please the one amounts to contemning the other.

7. As to which should be preferred no one ought to balance for an instant. It is a high crime indeed to withdraw allegiance from God in order to please men, an act of consummate wickedness to break the laws of Jesus Christ, in order to yield obedience to earthly rulers, or, under pretext of keeping the civil law, to ignore the rights of the Church; "we ought to obey God rather than men."[4] This answer, which of old Peter and the other Apostles were used to give the civil authorities who enjoined unrighteous things, we must, in like circumstances, give always and without hesitation. No better citizen is there, whether in time of peace or war, than the Christian who is mindful of his duty; but such a one should be ready to suffer all things, even death itself, rather than abandon the cause of God or of the Church.  (Pope Leo XIII, Sapientiae Christianae, January 10, 1890.)

Thus, good readers, we must insist that those who govern us follow the moral law in all that they do, and part of that moral law is the Just War Theory, which prohibits preventive or preemptive warfare.

Even a Catholic “libertarian,” Andrew Napolitano, who does not accept the Social Teaching of the Catholic Church concerning the Social Reign of Christ the King, recognizes that leaders are bound to observe the precepts of the Just War Theory as it is part of the Natural Law, which is knowable, albeit imperfectly because of fallen human nature, by reason alone unaided by Divine Revelation:

Over the past weekend, some apologists for President Donald Trump’s recently ordered attacks on Iran argued that because Trump’s plans call for a quick strike, the attacks do not constitute a war. George Orwell is vindicated yet again.

These apologists believe that calling a war something else means it is not a war, and so moral and constitutional justifications are unnecessary.

No rational observer looking at 2,000-pound bombs being dropped on military targets and thousands of missiles being fired indiscriminately at both civilians and military personnel in Iran can conclude that these events constitute anything but a war.

That recognition triggers a series of analyses — moral, constitutional and legal.
The moral dimension addresses both the causes and the conduct of war.

The standard requirements for a just war are that war is a last resort to avoid truly imminent violence or profound massive injustice. It must be triggered by a legitimate authority, its purpose must be clear and just, and the damage it produces must not outweigh the evil it purports to eliminate. Its conduct must avoid killing non-combatants, and the weapons and tactics used must be proportionate to the war’s objectives.

Just war, of course, prohibits the employment of any weapons that fail to discriminate between combatants and non-combatants.

Trump’s war in Iran fails all these. It was not commenced by a legitimate authority as Congress has not declared war on Iran. The president and his folks have not identified any imminent violence Iran was about to inflict upon the U.S. They have confused the public on the war’s purpose. Is it to force out the current Iranian government or to destroy its offensive weaponry and nuclear capabilities or — the newest condition — to eliminate its navy?

None of these is a just cause as the U.S. has no moral or legal basis for removing a foreign government or emasculating it in the face of its enemies. As for damage, we have seen already the killing of 150 little girls while at a school last weekend and the attacks on a Tehran hospital.

The failure of Trump’s war to comply even minimally with moral standards is also exemplified by the constitutional implications raised by a presidentially initiated war. When James Madison and his colleagues were addressing the war clauses in the Constitution, they were in easy agreement that if the president could both declare war and wage war, he wouldn’t be a president, he’d be prince.

Hence the textual separation in the Constitution of war-making from war-waging. Only Congress can declare war and only the president can wage war. This is the power to initiate war, not to ratify it after the president has initiated it. The president can request of Congress a declaration of war, but the decision to start one is textually confined solely to Congress.

If we get into the business of congressional ratification of presidentially initiated wars, we will continue the slow and inexorable normalization of presidential force. That’s not what the Constitution requires.

This is not a rhetorical or theoretical argument. We live in a supposed constitutional republic. The Constitution is supposed to be the supreme law of the land. It is the sole source of power and authority for Congress, the president and the federal courts. If it can be violated or ignored in a matter as grave as that which results in the industrialized deaths of foreign persons at American hands and similar deaths of Americans at foreign hands, then it is of little value as the creator and restrainer of the federal government.

Even the 1973 War Powers Resolution, which requires reporting to the Congress within 48 hours of the onset of presidentially initiated military hostilities, contemplates the use of the military when a threat to the U.S. is imminent. This raises two issues.

First, the administration has not articulated with credibility any imminent threat. The secretary of defense has said, at best, that Iran has ambitions to attack the U.S. one day. That is hardly an imminent threat. An imminent threat must articulate a rational basis rooted in immediacy and grounded in the emergent need to protect U.S. national security. It cannot be speculative.

Second, the statute requires that the president report in writing the reasons for war to the full Congress so it can approve or disapprove. Trump sent a political diatribe to Congress with no articulation of immediacy, but he did so only after he had his secretary of state report in secret on immediacy to the Gang of Eight — the congressional and intelligence committees’ leadership from both parties.

But the Gang of Eight is not the Congress. And because these reports were made in secret, the eight recipients of them cannot inform their congressional colleagues or the media or their constituents. What kind of representative government is that? What did the secretary of state tell these eight members of Congress?

What’s going on here?

What’s going on is an immoral, unconstitutional and illegal war of choice. It violates the Geneva Conventions and the United Nations Charter, all treaties which the U.S. wrote and which the U.S. Senate ratified. The former requires conformity to just war principles and prohibits killing little girls and hospital patients. The latter prohibits war between member states unless to avoid imminent violence or with the consent of the U.N. Security Council. Under the Constitution, treaties are the law of the land.

These are dangerous times and this is a dangerous war — for the moral order, for constitutional government and for personal freedom. If the president can get away with killing people abroad under a scheme that meets no accepted moral or legal standards and violates the plain language of the Constitution, what can he get away with at home?

We might find out. The problem with going abroad searching for monsters who have ambitions to harm you is that they have a way of following you home. (Trump’s Unjust and Unconstitutional War.)

As has been explained before, Donald John Trump is unconcerned about the moral law or even the requirements of the Constitution of the United States of America as he “follows his gut” above and beyond anything and everything else:

Sitting beside Germany’s chancellor in the Oval Office on Tuesday, President Trump offered a brief moment of insight into the decision-making process in the White House on the most consequential of matters: Whether to take the country to war.

His decision to order the attack on Iran, he said, was mostly a matter of gut instinct about Iranian intentions.

“We were having negotiations with these lunatics, and it was my opinion that they were going to attack first,” he said, while his guest, Friedrich Merz, sat expressionless. “I think they were going to attack first, and I didn’t want that to happen. So if anything, I might’ve forced Israel’s hand. But Israel was ready and we were ready.”

Set aside for a moment that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had offered the opposite explanation the previous day, telling reporters that because Israel was going to act, Mr. Trump had no choice but to join what he called a “pre-emptive” strike before Iran counterattacked U.S. bases and allies.

The next day, Mr. Rubio tried to walk back his comments. Then on Wednesday, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said Mr. Trump acted because he had “a good feeling” that Iran would soon strike American interests.

The back and forth confirmed what his former aides almost universally report — that Mr. Trump’s determination to cut out the bureaucracy, to reduce his advisers to a tiny, leakproof few and to trust instinct over intelligence briefings — applied as he made the gravest decision any commander in chief can make.

Every president, of course, creates a decision-making structure tailor-made for his own style. Franklin D. Roosevelt relied heavily on a kitchen cabinet. Harry S. Truman created the National Security Council to formally weigh options and coordinate among departments fighting the Cold War. Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter turned the N.S.C. into an idea generator. In the Obama administration, members of the N.S.C. staff talked about “death by Situation Room meeting” and compared the process of policymaking to watching a python swallow a pig.

The Trump administration doesn’t have much patience for that. When he came to office, Mr. Trump reduced the size of the N.S.C. staff by at least two thirds, casting out some of its members because of vague suspicions about their loyalty. Mr. Trump has made clear that his N.S.C. is not there to generate options, but to execute his decisions.

And when debates take place, the number of players often shrinks to a tiny group. In the Iran case, Mr. Rubio, Vice President JD Vance, C.I.A. director John Ratcliffe, the four-star head of Central Command, Brad Cooper, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Dan Caine. (Mr. Trump loves the chairman’s nickname, Raizin’ Caine, just as he loved ‘Mad Dog’ for his first defense secretary, Jim Mattis, who hated the moniker.)

Not much leaks from those sessions, a major change from, say, the early Obama era, when Situation Room conversations sometimes appeared on news websites before the meetings were over. Still, it was widely reported that General Caine warned Mr. Trump that he needed to expect casualties and that he would have to deal with the real possibility of munitions shortages. Mr. Vance’s public silences could be explained by his initial, internal cautions against entering the war; once he lost that battle Mr. Vance told the president and his national security team that they should “go big and go fast.”

But what Mr. Trump gains in secrecy he loses in message control. On a range of issues, from the goals of the Iran strike to Mr. Trump’s objectives in Venezuela or even in threatening Greenland, there are a blitz of answers. Inconsistency is sometimes celebrated by the administration as wily strategic deception, rather than as a failure to think several chess moves ahead.

“Trump seems to think he doesn’t need options or contingency plans,” said Thomas Wright, a scholar at the Brookings Institution who worked on long-term strategic planning in the National Security Council during the Biden years. “He just wants a small team to execute his instincts. But when events go wrong, as they often do, a president without prepared choices will be gambling with a pair of twos.”

That is what has many foreign ministers, defense officials and world leaders worried. A top Arab diplomat said this week that his government has no real insight into the administration’s planning for a transition of government in Iran — or even whether it wants to play a role, given Mr. Hegseth’s repeated statements that “nation building” was not on the Pentagon’s list of tasks. People familiar with Mr. Merz’s visit say he pressed on whether the president has thought ahead to how, and under what conditions, the action in Iran might end.

In other administrations, these are the kinds of questions the National Security Council would be tasked to answer. It would also have been the N.S.C.’s role to make sure there was plenty of warning to U.S. citizens to leave the Middle East. Instead, that advice came from the government only after the fighting was well underway, leaving thousands of Americans stranded.

David Rothkopf, the author of “Running the World: The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects of American Power,” said he was struck by the absence of basic process.

“Never has so much risk or such sweeping military action of so much consequence been undertaken with so little apparent planning or weighing of potential consequences, both intended and unintended,” he said.

It is the military, he notes, that develops operational plans, which are then vetted at the N.S.C. “That process has atrophied to virtually nothing in this administration and what planning there has been is often ignored by a president who trusts his own instincts more than any advisers. That may work with actions that are narrow in scope, but it does not when waging war against a large, consequential country like Iran.”

Perhaps Mr. Trump was emboldened by the fact that his previous missions have worked out well. The June 2025 air attack on Iran’s three major nuclear sites was the product of months of careful planning, and the targets were all deep underground facilities that the United States thought it could damage severely with a dozen giant bunker-busting bombs. The calculations were more about physics than politics.

The mission was limited. Most of the targets were so remote that there was little worry about civilian casualties.

The operation to remove Nicolás Maduro from power was riskier, but Mr. Trump made no effort to truly change the government. Instead, he kept the power structure of the country in place, save for Mr. Maduro, and made it clear that he was not going to insist on the installation of the clear winners of a 2024 election — the Venezuelan opposition — as long as the United States had access to Venezuela’s huge oil reserves.

But veterans of that long, often drawn-out National Security Council process say that is exactly the kind of imperfect analogy that the president’s staff should be deflating. Iran and Venezuela could not be more different, in history, geography, culture or politics. Their biggest commonality is their reliance on pumping oil out of the ground.

Mr. Trump said in an interview with the Times that he hoped that the hardened members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Basij militia would just surrender their arms to “the people,” which sounded more like hope than a plan.

But his political supporters see the conversation about strategic planning as a wonky effort to keep Trump from being Trump. After all, they note, the Supreme Leader perished in one of the first strikes of the war.

Mr. Trump’s critics see in this conflict everything that is wrong with the working of the Trump White House. “The president and his administration keep shifting their rationale for the war, the length and level of commitment to the war, the goals for the war and whether or not we’re actually at war at all,” said Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat of Delaware. “The only thing that has remained consistent is the lack of strategy for how to wage it. That’s what happens when you launch a war based on gut feelings, rather than analysis and advice from experts.”  (Trump Follows His Gut. His National Security Advisers Try to Keep Up. Also see: Karoline Leavitt insists Trump had a ‘feeling based on fact’ before Iran strikes but still won’t detail imminent threat to US.)

Having a “good feeling” about the malicious intentions of another nation even though its military posed no immediate threat to the national security of the United States of America is not enough to launch military action, replete as it is with all of its attendant evil consequences.

Donald John Trump authorized military action against Iraq, which is now said to last four to six weeks (Karoline Leavitt — We expect Epic Fury to last 4 to 6 weeks), because Benjamin Netanyahu wanted to do so and because he wanted to do so. It is that simple, and it is simply the case that this is no basis for warfare, which is already resulting in the following consequences, each of which was completely foreseeable:

First, gasoline prices have risen sharply, something that industry analysts believe will continue, especially if the Strait of Hormuz continues to blocked to shipping by the Iran military:

Gasoline prices in the United States jumped again on Friday, the latest in a series of increases that has pushed up the price of a gallon by 34 cents, or about 11 percent, since the start of the war led by the United States and Israel against Iran.

The average price of unleaded gas hit $3.32 per gallon on Friday, the highest since September 2024, according to the AAA motor club. A surge in oil prices suggests that prices at the pump may continue to rise, with the U.S. crude benchmark rising more than 10 percent on Friday alone, hitting $90 a barrel for the first time in more than two years.

That’s the highest price for a barrel of oil since September 2023. Back then, gasoline averaged about $3.80 a gallon, well above the current average price.

The rise in costs could become a political problem for President Trump, who has frequently boasted about how gasoline prices have fallen during his second term, and exaggerated the extent of the decline. After the recent gains, prices are higher than when this term began.

Energy prices have jumped as oil and gas shipments out of the Persian Gulf were choked off by the fighting, as well as Iranian threats to oil tankers looking to traverse the narrow waterway that serves as the gulf’s exit.

In an interview on Thursday with Reuters, Mr. Trump suggested that the military operation in Iran was his priority and that he was willing to tolerate a rise in prices. “They’ll drop very rapidly when this is over, and if they rise, they rise, but this is far more important than having gasoline prices go up a little bit,” he said.

By Friday, domestic crude oil futures had gained more than 30 percent since the conflict began last Saturday, an increase that oil refiners have passed on to consumers at the pump, or to businesses in the form of increased diesel costs. Rising energy prices could also affect everything from the cost of an airline ticket to home heating. (U.S. Gas Prices Jump Again as Oil Tops $90 for First Time in Years.)

The American people are not going to be as sanguine about rising fuel costs as is President Donald John Trump. There is no guarantee that the war with Iran is going to be resolved within four to six week nor is there is any guarantee that, once resolved, the oil supply from the Persian Gulf will begin to flow immediately. This will cost the organized crime family of the false opposite of the naturalist “right” to lose control of both Houses of Congress if the price rise continues unabated until the date of the midterm elections, Tuesday, November 3, 2026.

Second, civilian casualties are beginning to mount, including the school children killed in southern Iran:

More than 700 civilians have been killed since the start of the US-Israel war on Iran last weekend, according to rights groups, as people inside Iran told the Guardian they were fearful of a rising death toll.

The Iranian Red Crescent Society said that at least 555 people had been killed across Iran. However, in its latest report, the US-based Human Rights Activist news agency, has reported at least 742 civilians have been killed, including 176 children. The near total internet blackout makes independent verification of the exact figures extremely difficult as rights group warn the numbers could rise.

Norway-based human rights group Hengaw said it was concerned about the rising number of civilian deaths, with the highest number of civilian fatalities recorded in Hormozgan province in southern Iran, after a missile strike on a girls’ elementary school in Minab at the weekend, which reportedly killed more than 150 people, including children.

Amid an ongoing barrage of joint US-Israeli strikes across several cities in Iran, residents who spoke to the Guardian said they had received a wave of alerts and messages from authorities on their mobile phones.

According to Hengaw, people in the city of Sanandaj, capital of Iranian Kurdistan in the north-west of Iran, received messages from the intelligence organisation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) warning that any public movement or presence in the streets would be deemed a “direct cooperation with the enemy”.

he message stated this was intended to avert “terrorist actions and street unrest”, described as the next steps in the “enemy’s plan”.

Some residents interviewed by the Guardian said people in other cities had also received the text messages from the authorities. IranWire, an Iranian news media in exile also reported similar texts warning recipients against “any movement”.

A student based in Tehran said: “The regime has shut down the internet again and now we are all trying to connect with each other and see what we can do to help weaken this regime and avenge our compatriots. Tehran is being bombed so heavily, it’s impossible to know when, where and how we can protest and mobilise because the streets are quickly turning dangerous. We don’t know where the IRGC hideouts are and that’s a huge risk for us ordinary people.”

In a message relayed to the Guardian via a relative based abroad, a Kurdish student said: “With the alerts and warnings coming in, even if we planned to flee [from the bombing], the regime’s agents will arrest us and slap terror charges. The whole point of these alerts is to ensure we are trapped so they can blame Trump and co and weaponise the attacks in the neighbourhoods adjacent to IRGC bases. We know this regime all too well and its tactics haven’t changed.”

Despite a near-total internet blackout, some people had managed to make calls to relatives abroad and send a few text messages. Civilians who managed to connect with human rights groups also said that in the north-western city of Mahabad, electricity had been completely cut off on Monday after US-Israeli airstrikes.

In the north-western city of Urmia, a prisoner called a family member to say that everything was under control in the prison and that no one had been executed in the ward on Monday. The windows had been taped to reduce the sound of nearby explosions.

Hiwa Bahrami, head of the department of foreign relations of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan, said the regime had “deliberately established military bases and deployed its forces within populated regions, putting civilians at significant risk” in many areas, including Iranian Kurdistan.

Meanwhile, civilians in Tehran said they were striving to flee to smaller cities as US-Israeli strikes intensify. Matin, a former journalist based in Tehran, said that although people had hoped for US help, clouds of smoke over the city’s skyline, continuous loud explosions and videos showing rubble in the heart of the capital had left him fearful.

“Look, we want freedom and we want the IRGC to pay for every single drop of blood our families have sacrificed for this fight. But since this morning, the videos I have been seeing, which are already few because I am only able to connect from time to time, are breaking my heart … who will bring back those among us who die at the hands of the incoming bombs?

“I blame the regime for bringing us here, but that doesn’t mean I am not scared the US attacks will kill the innocent. To also see my beloved city in this state is not something I can celebrate. I am really worried for the children of this country.”

Zhila, a film-maker based in Tehran, said: “Our young don’t have a future in this country, the sanctions and every other restriction which has crippled the economy is the regime’s doing because they kept getting rich. Despite this, I still hoped we could have brought this regime down.

“We tried it all, so even if I am against this war, I do not believe we have an option but to seek help. How many die is something that’s killing me inside, but also how many were killed by the regime is still fresh on our minds. We have become so numb after what we saw in January that now bwe are in a strange state of mind.” (Civilian deaths in Iran pass 700 amid fear of bombs and regime clampdown.)

Innocent Iranian civilians are at the “mercy,” such as it is, of the Israeli and American bombing campaign as well as the ruthlessness of their own Mohammedan regime whose leaders think nothing of liquidating them if they “get out of line.”

Third, the conflict, which is now in its eighth day, has spread to all the Gulf States while the Zionist marauders are busy bombing Beirut and have invaded southern Lebanon in their never-ending quest to crush the Iranian-financed and armed Hezbollah once and for all:

Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said “the consequences of this displacement, at the humanitarian and political level, may well be unprecedented”.

“Our country has been drawn into a devastating war that we did not seek and did not choose,” he added.

Lebanese state media said early on Friday that Israel had launched air strikes on several towns in southern Lebanon.

“Enemy warplanes launched nighttime strikes on the towns of Srifa, Aita al-Shaab, Touline, as-Sawana and Majdal Selem,” the official National News Agency (NNA) reported.

Another strike hit the eastern Lebanese town of Douris at dawn, the NNA said.

The Israeli army also reported a new attack on the suburb of Dahiyeh in Beirut.

When the bombing began on Monday, Mohammad, 39, who lives in Dahiyeh, fled with his family. He went back on Thursday to collect belongings, departing only minutes before Israeli authorities issued a forced evacuation warning. He described the scene to the AFP news agency as “total chaos”.

Israel has also continued attacks in southern Lebanon with raids on the area’s biggest city, Sidon. Lebanon’s of Ministry of Public Health said five people were killed and seven injured in the Israeli attacks on Sidon.

Hezbollah’s message to evacuate the border areas came less than a day after Israel threatened residents that they should leave Beirut’s southern suburbs, prompting a huge exodus from a swath of the capital’s densely populated area known as Dahiyeh, where some half a million people live.

The death toll from Israeli attacks on Lebanon this week has risen to at least 217 people, the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health says, as a new wave of strikes pounded the country, in one of the fiercest fronts in the wider United States-Israel war on Iran.

An additional 798 people have been wounded and an estimated 95,000 displaced, the Lebanese health ministry said on Friday.

The Israeli army said it has conducted 26 rounds of attacks in Dahiyeh before the latest announced strike. It claims to have hit various infrastructure used by Hezbollah, including the headquarters of the group’s Executive Council and a warehouse with drones.

“Your military’s aggression against Lebanese sovereignty and safe citizens, the destruction of civilian infrastructure and the expulsion campaign it is carrying out will not go unchallenged,” Hezbollah said.

Hezbollah claimed responsibility for a wave of attacks early on Friday on Israeli ground forces, including those who have entered Lebanon’s territory in recent days.

In a statement on Telegram, Hezbollah said its fighters had attacked Israeli forces in several areas, including Maroun al-Ras and Kfar Kila, within Lebanese territory.

Hezbollah also attacked Israel’s Yoav military camp in the occupied Golan Heights and a navy base in Israel’s Haifa port, the statement said.

There were no immediate reports of casualties.

Israel has said it will not evacuate its border towns and has sent more soldiers into Lebanon, claiming it was a defensive measure meant to protect its citizens who live nearby.

In contrast, tens of thousands of people in Lebanon have fled their homes after threats from Israel, with a mass exodus from Beirut’s southern suburbs leaving the area “almost empty”, the NNA said.

Hundreds of displaced families were left to seek shelter on a Beirut beach, where they waited despondently – many for the second time, after evacuating during a 2024 war between Israel and Hezbollah.

The Israeli army also issued a new forced displacement threat, telling residents of Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley to immediately leave the area.

Its spokesperson specifically singled out the villages of Nabi Chit, Khader, Sarain al-Fawqa and Sarain al-Tahta, where he said the Israeli military would soon be operating.

‘We are not animals’

Zeina Khodr, reporting from Beirut, said the humanitarian crisis is growing rapidly, as people seeking shelter can be seen “on the side of the roads on almost every corner”.

“There aren’t enough schools to shelter the hundreds of thousands of people who were forced to flee their homes after Israel’s forced displacement threat for Beirut’s southern suburbs yesterday,” she said.

“People are telling us: ‘We are not animals; we are human beings, our children are cold.'”

She noted that the Lebanese government has opened a number of shelters and told people to head to the north of the country.

Khodr added, “But many do not have any means of transport. It’s not just Lebanese who live in Beirut’s southern suburbs, but also Syrian refugees and Palestinian refugees.”

In the meantime, the UN human ‌rights chief decried on Friday, the large-scale ⁠evacuation orders issued by the Israeli army ⁠for southern Lebanon and Beirut’s ⁠southern suburbs. “These blanket, massive displacement orders we are talking here, about hundreds ⁠and thousands of ⁠people,” ⁠Turk said.

“This raises serious ⁠concern under ⁠international humanitarian law, and in particular when it comes ‌to issues around forced transfer, ” he added.

Hachem Osseiran, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) spokesperson for the Middle East said: “Those affected by the evacuation orders include the elderly, persons with disabilities, and the sick or wounded, for whom evacuation is not always feasible. In Beirut, our partner, the Lebanese Red Cross, has supported the evacuation of patients from hospitals located within areas affected by these orders in highly challenging conditions, sometimes putting their lives at risk.”

The ICRC “is planning to support the transport of critical medical equipment from impacted facilities to help safeguard people’s access to essential healthcare,* he added.

Lebanon was pulled into the war in the Middle East on Monday, as Hezbollah opened fire, prompting Israeli air strikes focused on Beirut’s southern suburbs and on southern and eastern Lebanon.

The war has rekindled fighting between Israel and Iran-aligned Hezbollah fighters, and Israel launched a series of deadly air raids late on Thursday into Friday in the southern suburbs of Beirut and other areas.

Missiles struck headquarters of Ghana’s UN peacekeeping battalion in southern Lebanon, the Ghanaian armed forces said.

The army did not attribute blame for the attack but two soldiers were critically injured when the strikes hit, the military said in a statement. (At least 217 killed in Israel’s Lebanon attacks as Beirut, south, east hit.)

When Israel abruptly ordered people to evacuate from Beirut’s southern outskirts on Thursday, a bustling district of markets and apartment towers was transformed into a scene of mass exodus.

Residents of the area known as Dahiya, a Hezbollah stronghold, were ordered to move east and north. Soon after, the neighborhood endured a night of heavy Israeli bombardment, with blasts that shook the walls and jolted residents across the city, continuing through Friday.

The evacuation order had rippled through Dahiya like a shock wave on Thursday, causing businesses to shutter and sending families into the streets with armfuls of hastily gathered belongings.

Many were unsure where they would end up that night, and some strapped mattresses to their car roofs. Residents streamed between the dense traffic, carrying plastic bags bulging with clothes, documents and mementos of home.

“We civilians are paying for the price of war,” said Mohamed Hjoula, 35, standing on Beirut’s waterfront promenade, where he had taken refuge with about 40 members of his family, including his ailing parents.

Mr. Hjoula said he learned on Friday afternoon that his home in Dahiya had been destroyed by airstrikes. “We are feeling so much pain,” he said.

Hezbollah fired rockets from Lebanon into northern Israel on Monday, and Israel retaliated with full force, attacking what it said were Hezbollah targets around the country as the hum of its drones filled the daytime skies.

The nights have been shattered by relentless bombardments, and more than 200 people have been killed in Lebanon so far, with almost 800 others wounded, the local health ministry said Friday.

An estimated 300,000 people have been displaced in the country since Israel began carrying out strikes and ordering mass evacuations this week, the Norwegian Refugee Council said.

The evacuation orders for Dahiya were followed by similar orders for parts of the eastern Bekaa Valley, another bastion of Hezbollah.

For many in Dahiya, the evacuation order upended their observance of the holy month of Ramadan, tearing them abruptly from the daily rhythms of breaking the fast and prayer.

Some said they had been displaced before, during clashes between Israel and Hezbollah more than a year ago. The two sides had agreed to a cease-fire in November 2024, but that broke down this week.

On Friday, many families had strung sheets together to pitch makeshift tents along the roadside. Some said they were turned away from government-run shelters because they were already full, and they did not know where to find food, water or diapers for their children.

Shefgar Othman, 32, said his brother had ventured back to Dahiya on Friday in order to retrieve some belongings from their home. Shortly after he got there, however, the bombing started again, and he had to flee, he said, returning empty-handed to their family of 10.

“We are stranded in the streets,” Mr. Othman said. Like many who had fled Dahiya, he said he and his family felt abandoned by the government, left to fend for themselves amid the bombardment.

Mr. Hjoula, on Beirut’s corniche, was particularly critical of Hezbollah, saying the group had drawn Dahiya into a war with little regard for the people living there.

Before fighting erupted on Monday, he said, he had hoped to support his parents and save enough money to buy his own apartment and find a bride — plans that now felt impossibly distant.

“My life here has failed,” Mr. Hjoula said, turning his ire on both Israel and Hezbollah. “They have taken us back a thousand years. They have taken us back to the Stone Age.”

For others fleeing the strikes, the worry extended beyond their own safety.

On Friday afternoon, Dahiya resident Zeinab Srour was in Martyrs’ Square, in downtown Beirut, carrying her two cats, Tuti and Virus, in separate pet carriers, and waiting to meet a contact from a pet shelter that would take them in.

One of the cats gave her an infectious kind of joy, Ms. Srour said, but with her family displaced, she could no longer care for them both, and hoped to find a safe place for them until she could return home.

“The sounds of bombings disturb them as much as they do us,” Ms. Srour, 23, said. “We hope this war won’t last long.” ((1) Iran Live Updates: Trump Demands Iran's 'Unconditional Surrender' as Israel Strikes Tehran.)

Yes, the Israelis are once again doing to the Lebanese people what they have done so many times in the past: displace and kill innocent Lebanese in their never-ending decades long quest to crush the equally murderous Hezbollah, but what is the United States of America doing: selling more equipment, totally $151—of bomb bodies to Israel:

The State Department approved a possible $151.8 million Foreign Military Sale to Israel for 12,000 BLU-110A/B 1,000-pound bomb bodies, according to a congressional notification released Friday.

The sale was authorized under an emergency determination by the Secretary of State, waiving the usual congressional review requirements under the Arms Export Control Act.

Officials said the transfer will help Israel meet “current and future threats,” strengthen homeland defense and deter regional adversaries.

The approval comes as President Donald Trump met Friday with major U.S. defense contractors at the White House to discuss expanding weapons production as the conflict with Iran continues.

Trump said after the meeting that defense industry leaders agreed to quadruple production of “Exquisite Class” weaponry used in current military operations.

Lockheed Martin later confirmed on X that it had agreed to quadruple critical munitions production, saying the effort began months ago with the Trump administration and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. (Live Updates: Trump touts US action as CENTCOM says troops are working to destroy Iranian Navy.)

Fourth, this was an easily foreseen consequence of the military action that started on week ago on Saturday, February 28, 2026, but Dosuch consequences evidently do not matter to the man who goes by his “gut,” Donald John Trump, who keeps changing his mind so much about “Operation Epic Fury’s” ultimate goals that even his own administration officials cannot keep up with him.

President Trump declared on Friday that he would settle for nothing short of “unconditional surrender” by Iran, the latest and broadest expansion of his goals for the conflict, and one that could portend a much longer war if he persists in that aim.

Six days into the Israeli and American bombing campaign, Iran has shown no interest, at least publicly, in surrendering. Instead, it has done the opposite, expanding the war to Arab states that host American bases and attacking them with missiles and drones, though in diminishing numbers in recent days.

But Mr. Trump demanded in a social media post that the country capitulate, after which he said would come “the selection of a GREAT & ACCEPTABLE Leader(s),” and promised that the United States and its allies “will work tirelessly to bring Iran back from the brink of destruction.”

The president’s bellicose statement reflects how he has melded his longtime vision of a powerful America that makes maximum use of its military might with his new confidence in his ability to decapitate hostile governments, and personally install a new generation of leaders who he believes will bend to American will.

It was also the latest in a series of ever-shifting goals Mr. Trump has laid out for the war in Iran, leaving his aides, and congressional allies, struggling to keep up and at times contradicting the president. In fact, just hours after Mr. Trump made his demand, his press secretary tried to couch his demand, at least in part, suggesting that the surrender would “essentially” occur when Mr. Trump concluded his war objectives have been met.

Throughout the week, those objectives have changed. In the opening hours of the U.S. attack on Saturday, Mr. Trump declared that the goal of the attack was to destroy the existing order so that Iran’s people could emerge from their homes, rise up and overthrow their government.

But in the following days, both Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth pivoted away from the emphasis on regime change, saying that the United States was simply focused on assuring that Iran’s nuclear program was permanently destroyed, and that it no longer had the missile capability to attack Israel, its Arab neighbors, or perhaps some day the United States.

Mr. Hegseth went further on Wednesday, telling reporters there would be no “nation-building,” and spoke dismissively of the Bush administration’s efforts to build new governments in Afghanistan and Iraq. But Mr. Trump keeps returning to exactly that goal. He has repeatedly cited the model of the American action in Venezuela, where U.S. forces removed Nicolás Maduro earlier this year and sanctioned the ascension of his vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, saying she could run the country as long as she complied with American demands, particularly access to oil.

Mr. Trump has resisted suggestions that Iran — a country with 92 million people, nearly three times the size of Venezuela’s population, and a government run by clerics and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps — differs in every respect from Venezuela.

“It’s going to work very easily. It’s going to work like in Venezuela,” he told CNN in a brief telephone conversation Friday.

The president said he was not concerned whether there was a democratic government elected in Iran, saying he was willing to work with moderate Shia religious leaders.

“I don’t mind religious leaders,” he said. “I deal with a lot of religious leaders.” As long as they were “fair” to Israel and to the United States, he said, he was willing to keep a clerical government.

Mr. Trump went on to say he expected Cuba to fall soon, which would give him a trifecta: a change in leadership in three countries that have been American adversaries. But he made no threats of invasion, and in the past has suggested that, cut off from fuel and support from Venezuela, the Cuban government might just collapse.

During the 2016 campaign, and episodically ever since, Mr. Trump has lamented that America doesn’t win wars anymore, with big surrender announcements, like the one Japan issued after the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“We won World War II,” he said last year, when he signed an executive order informally renaming the Defense Department the “Department of War,” wording which now appears on the entrance to the Pentagon. In more recent times, he added, “we were very strong, but we never fought to win. We just didn’t fight to win.”

Mr. Trump’s demand now that Iran issue an “unconditional surrender” — an unlikely scenario — immediately raised questions about how long the U.S. would be forced to stay in the fight, and at what cost.

The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told reporters that Mr. Trump would be the judge of whether the country has achieved victory, not actions by Iran.

“When he, as commander in chief of the U.S. armed forces, determines that Iran no longer poses a threat to the United States of America and the goal of Operation Epic Fury has been fully realized, then Iran will essentially be in a place of unconditional surrender,” Ms. Leavitt said.

But under such a scenario, surrender is in the eyes of the combatants. And already there are signs that Mr. Trump’s objectives and those of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel may overlap, but do not completely align.

The Trump administration’s goal — or goals, since there have been about a dozen variations — seemed to be close to what happened in Venezuela, what Mr. Trump described to The New York Times in an interview Sunday as a “perfect scenario.” He appears comfortable with installing a leader, or leaders, drawn “from within” the existing regime, as he said earlier this week.

The next day, the No. 3 official in the Defense Department, Elbridge Colby, described a limited set of military objectives in testimony on the Hill. Mr. Trump, he said, had ordered the U.S. military to “focus on degrading and destroying the Islamic Republic of Iran’s ability to project military power in the region and potentially beyond.” But he made no mention of regime change, even when pressed on the subject.

In contrast, Mr. Netanyahu had made clear, as Thomas Wright of the Brookings Institution noted on Friday, that Israel’s goal is “not merely to remove Iran’s supreme leader, but to dismantle the regime entirely.” In Israel’s view, Mr. Wright continued, that is the only way to assure that the nuclear program is not restarted, the missile arsenal is not restocked, and that Iran would be deprived of its most powerful weapons forever.

Neither Mr. Trump nor Mr. Netanyahu has explained what happens if the Iranian government does collapse, and it is unclear how willing Mr. Trump is to send American combat troops into Iranian territory.

The cases of “unconditional surrender” that Mr. Trump appears to have in mind from a previous generation — notably Japan and Germany during World War II — were followed by yearslong occupation by American forces. The U.S. occupation of Japan, led by General Douglas MacArthur, lasted seven years, during which time the United States wrote a constitution for Japan, dismantled and rebuilt the military and created entirely new government institutions.

That was difficult enough in a largely homogeneous society. It has never been attempted in a place like Iran, with its Shia Muslim majority, but with nearly 10 percent of its population believed to be Sunni. And then there are many other ethic minorities: Kurds, Arabs, Turkmen and Baluchis, among others. In that regard, the better comparison may be to Iraq — the example of nation-building that Mr. Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Mr. Hegseth have all cited as a huge error that depleted American strength.

While Mr. Trump on Friday asserted that he would settle for nothing less than surrender, other leaders touted efforts to mediate a cease-fire. President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran said Friday that many countries had offered to host peace talks, though he did not name them. Oman sought a diplomatic offramp before the war, and Egypt and Turkey might also play a role, according to Mideast diplomats. (Trump Demands ‘Unconditional Surrender’ by Iran, Shifting U.S. Objectives Again.)

No war or “military action” is morally justified without clear objectives that are attainable without incurring foreseen evil consequences that renders the pursuit of those objectives as immoral.

Moreover, the precepts of the Just War Theory require for hostilities to cease sooner rather than later to limit the harm of warfare, not to continue the hostilities until a perceived enemy is ready to surrender unconditionally.

Fifth, despite his earlier assurances that ground troops would not be necessary in Iran, the president is now seriously considering placing such troops in Iran:

President Donald Trump has privately expressed serious interest in deploying U.S. troops on the ground inside of Iran, according to two U.S. officials, a former U.S. official and another person with knowledge of the conversations.

Trump has discussed the idea of deploying ground troops with aides and Republican officials outside the White House while outlining his vision for a post-war Iran in which Iran’s uranium is secure and the U.S. and a new Iranian regime cooperate on oil production similar to how the U.S. and Venezuela are, the sources said.

The president’s comments expressing serious interest in deploying ground troops have not focused on a large-scale ground invasion of Iran, but rather on the idea of a small contingent of U.S. troops that would be used for specific strategic purposes, the U.S. officials, the former U.S. official and the person with knowledge of the discussions said. They said Trump has not made any decisions or given any orders related to ground troops.

“This story is based on assumptions from anonymous sources who are not part of the President’s national security team and are clearly not read into these discussions,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “President Trump always, wisely keeps all options open, but anyone trying to insinuate he is in favor of one option or another proves they have no real seat at the table.”

Publicly, Trump has not ruled out putting U.S. “boots on the ground” in Iran, though the war has so far consisted only of an air campaign. His private discussions about the idea show a president perhaps more willing to consider taking such a step than his public comments on the issue so far have suggested. Any deployment of American troops inside of Iran could increase the scale and scope of the war — and escalate the risks to American forces.

Since the war began on Saturday, six U.S. service members have been killed and 18 wounded in counterattacks from Iran, according to the Pentagon.

Trump has privately described to aides and Republican officials outside the White House that his ideal outcome in Iran is one like the emerging dynamic between the U.S. and Venezuela since American special forces captured Nicolás Maduro in January, the current U.S. officials and former U.S. official said. In post-Maduro Venezuela, the U.S. backed a new president, Delcy Rodríguez, under the condition that she implement policies that Trump views as favorable to the U.S., including that the U.S. benefits from Venezuela’s oil production.

The president said in an interview with the New York Post this week, “I don’t have the yips with respect to boots on the ground.” He said while other presidents have ruled out boots on the ground, “I say ‘probably don’t need them,’ [or] ‘if they were necessary.’”

Foreign policy experts offered various scenarios in which the president might choose to deploy U.S. troops on the ground in Iran.

“You could envision them doing some sort of special operations insertions if there were targets that they absolutely needed to take out or reduce but didn’t lend themselves to bombardment,” said Joel Rayburn, a former Trump administration official and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. “That’s the kind of thing where you do an insertion, you attack a target, or conduct a raid, and then you get out.”

But Rayburn said such a scenario is very different from what most Americans imagine when they think about deploying ground troops or putting “boots on the ground,” and that he had so far not seen the conditions emerging that would require that step.

Behnam Ben Taleblu, the Iran program senior director at the Washington, D.C.-based think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said in the event of collapse of the Iranian regime, U.S. forces could be used on the ground there to try to help facilitate a dynamic between the U.S. and Iran that mirrors Venezuela or to help keep track of Iran’s uranium stockpile, which is believed to be entombed beneath some of its nuclear sites.

“You don’t want it to become a failed state nuclear bazaar,” Taleblu said of Iran.

Nate Swanson, a senior fellow and director of the Iran Strategy Project at the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington, D.C., said the U.S. could rethink its military options if Iran “thinks it can win a war of attrition.” Such a scenario could lead the president to deploy ground forces into Iran or arm opponents of the Iranian regime. Trump is considering whether to arm opponents of the regime.

In an interview with NBC News on Thursday, Trump suggested he is not seriously considering a ground invasion of Iran at this time. He said he wants new leadership in Iran that he approves of and has said he expects the war, which began Saturday, to last four to five weeks while leaving open the possibility of it continuing indefinitely.

Leavitt said Wednesday that U.S. ground troops are an option that remains on the table for the president although “not part of the plan for this operation time.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told NBC News’ Tom Llamas on Thursday that Iran is prepared for U.S. ground troops. “We are waiting for them,” Araghchi said, adding that “we are confident that we can confront them, and that would be a big disaster for them.” (Trump has privately shown serious interest in U.S. ground troops in Iran.)

Sixth, the conflict is spreading throughout the Middle East and is involving an increasing number of countries in a manner that is reminiscent of how World War I began one hundred twelve years ago:

In Iran

• Ongoing US and Israeli military campaign: The US and Israel are continuing their military strikes on Iran, marking the seventh day of the conflict. At least 1,332 people have been killed in Iran since the attacks started on Saturday.
• The Israeli military claims to have achieved “near-complete air superiority”, stating it has carried out 2,500 strikes and destroyed 80 percent of Iran’s air defence systems.
• Targeting western Iran: Israel claims to have struck more than 400 targets in western Iran on Friday alone, destroying ballistic missile launchers and drone storage facilities.
• Missiles fired at Israel: Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) announced the start of its 23rd wave of strikes, and the Israeli military confirmed that defence systems were intercepting missiles launched from Iran.
• Leadership succession and US interference: Following the killing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a US-Israeli strike on Tehran on Saturday, the question over his succession remains, with reports circling that his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, could take over.
• However, on Thursday, US President Donald Trump said he intends to play a direct role in selecting Iran’s next leader, explicitly calling Mojtaba an “unacceptable” choice.
• Invasion warnings: Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, warned that Iranian forces are “waiting” for a potential US ground invasion and threatened to kill and capture thousands of US troops.
• Iran strikes: The US says Iran’s ballistic missile attacks have fallen by 90 percent since the first day of the conflict, while drone attacks have dropped by 83 percent over the same period.
• Kuwait: The US suspended operations at its embassy in Kuwait City following retaliatory Iranian strikes, as Kuwait’s air defence systems intercepted missiles and drones.
• Bahrain: An Iranian missile hit a state-run oil refinery in a Bahraini industrial town, but the resulting fire was contained.
• UAE and Qatar: The UAE said its air defences intercepted multiple Iranian missiles and more than 120 drones. Qatar also reported being targeted by a barrage of Iranian missiles and drones on Thursday after loud explosions were heard in the capital, Doha.
• About 20,000 Americans have left the Middle East: The State Department reported that thousands have already left the region, primarily unassisted, but the government is arranging charter flights for private citizens still looking to evacuate.
• Evacuation disruption: A French evacuation flight charted by the government to rescue citizens stranded in the United Arab Emirates was forced to turn back mid-flight due to missile fire in the region.
• Military redeployments: Germany has already withdrawn troops stationed in Bahrain back to Germany and is actively preparing to withdraw its forces from Kuwait.
• Satellite imagery delayed: Planet Labs, a major provider of high-resolution space imagery, announced a mandatory 96-hour delay on all new images collected over the Gulf states. This measure is intended to prevent adversarial actors from using the images to endanger allied, NATO, and civilian personnel in the region.
• CENTCOM warnings: Brad Cooper, the head of the US military’s Middle East-based Central Command (CENTCOM), accused Iran of deliberately firing seven attack drones at civilian neighbourhoods in Bahrain. He warned that Iran’s actions are “unacceptable and will not go unanswered”.

In Israel

• Tel Aviv targeted: Iran’s Revolutionary Guard announced it had launched a combined drone and missile attack on Tel Aviv and central areas of Israel.
• Domestic closures and West Bank violence: Amid the security threats, Israel’s Civil Administration has closed all holy sites in Jerusalem’s Old City and cancelled Friday prayers.
• Rhetoric from officials: Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich warned that the Dahiyeh area of Lebanon’s capital would soon look “like Khan Younis,” referring to the city in southern Gaza that was decimated during Israel’s war against Palestinians.
• Iraq military base: Iraqi forces shot down a drone targeting a military base with US assets near Baghdad International Airport. The drone approached Victoria airbase overnight on Wednesday but was intercepted before reaching its target, according to reports.
• Iran attacks Kurdish groups: Iranian Press TV, reported early on Thursday that Tehran was striking “anti-Iran separatist forces”, referring to Iranian and Iraqi Kurdish groups believed to be based in mountainous, hard-to-reach areas near the Iran-Iraq border. It is understood that US President Donald Trump has been in talks with some of these groups with a view to their joining attacks against Iran.
• Escalating offensive in Lebanon: Israel is heavily bombarding Lebanon and has issued evacuation warnings for Beirut’s southern suburbs and parts of the Bekaa Valley.
• Israel has also said it carried out strikes on more than 500 targets this week, including a strike in Beirut’s Dahiyeh suburb targeting a command centre used by the Revolutionary Guard’s navy unit.
• Egypt’s economic warning: Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has warned that the country is economically in a “state of near-emergency,” as the ongoing Middle East war threatens to drive up prices.

In Europe

• Europe under pressure: European governments are divided over how to respond to the escalating conflict in the Middle East, with some deploying defensive military assets while others emphasise diplomacy.
• The United Kingdom and France have moved naval and air-defence resources to the eastern Mediterranean to help protect allied interests. A drone attack hit the British Royal Air Force base at Akrotiri on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus on Monday. Other European countries, including Germany, Ireland, Belgium and the Netherlands, have so far focused on diplomatic responses and have not announced direct combat deployments.
• Azerbaijan: The country halted cross-border truck traffic with Iran and is preparing “retaliatory measures” after an Iranian drone attack injured four civilians in its Nakhchivan exclave. (Iran war: What is happening on day seven of US-Israel attacks? | Israel-Iran conflict News.)

This whole thing is a mess that is escalating out of control as many innocent lives are lost needlessly and as mentioned earlier, the economies of various nations are threatened by the rising costs of crude oil.

Seventh, as usually happens in Middle East conflicts, the long-suffering Chaldean Rite Catholics have once again come under attack in Iraq by Iranian-sponsored terror cells, which just happened to have obtained free access to Iraq following the so-called American “liberation” and subsequent occupation of that country on March 19, 2003, and for a decade thereafter:

An apartment complex built by the Knights of Columbus in Ankawa, Iraq, a suburb of Erbil, has been struck in a drone attack.

“Fortunately, the building had been largely evacuated several days earlier due to its proximity to the Erbil International Airport,” the archdiocese said in a statement. The building had housed workers for the archdiocese as well as young families displaced by earlier violence in the region, which is roughly 60 to 90 miles west of the Iranian border. No casualties were reported.

ACI MENA, the Arabic-language sister service of EWTN News, posted video of the attack on social media, saying a “a missile and a drone fell in two separate instances” throughout the evening.

The attack took place around 8 p.m. local time, March 4, the archdiocese said. Named after Blessed Michael McGivney, founder of the Knights of Columbus, the apartment complex was funded entirely by the Knights to house Christian refugees displaced during the war in 2014–2018.

A nearby convent belonging to the Chaldean Daughters of Mary Immaculate also was damaged during the attack.

‘Remember and pray’

“We are now in a time once again where we pray for the solidarity and support from our brothers and sisters around the world, that these times of violence and war will come to an end, and that our suffering people may yet have a chance to return to lives of peace and dignity,” Archbishop Bashar Warda of Erbil said in a statement.

The archdiocese encouraged Christians around the world “to remember and pray for the many marginalized people in Iraq, including the small and still threatened Christian minority struggling to remain in their native land.”

Patrick Kelly, Knights of Columbus supreme knight, said in a statement, “We rejoice that no lives were lost, and we will continue to stand with the families who called McGivney House their home. We join with our Holy Father, Pope Leo XIV, who has encouraged us all to ‘pray for peace, work for peace.’” (Chaldean Archdiocese of Erbil suffers drone strikes on Christian apartment complex. Also see my own George Walker Bush's "Liberation" of Iraq Has "Liberated" Iraq of Most Its Chaldean Rite Catholics from three years ago.)

There is no question but that the so-called Islamic Republic of Iran is a terrorist state.

However, so is the so-called People’s Republic of China, which has a network of its own police stations overseas, especially here in the United States of America, to spy even on ethnic Chinese who are native born citizens of another country and, of course, any citizens of Red China who are permanent residents of other countries, and has killed more of its own people by means of political executions that any other regime in human history.

No one is talking about invading Red China, whose authorities have imprisoned the courageous Catholic of Hong Kong, Jimmy Lai, who has never had so much of a word of support from either Jorge Mario Bergoglio or Robert Francis Prevost/Leo XIV, who said recently that he “can’t comment” (Leo the Cowardly Lion ‘cannot comment’ on Jimmy Lai’s imprisonment) on Lai’s case, which, to give him the benefit of the doubt in this case as he did meet with Mr. Lai’s family recently, I hope means that the conciliar authorities are engaged in negotiations to secure his release but, more realistically, probably means that he is afraid of the “endangering” the secret agreement with the so-called Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association that has resulted in an open season upon underground Catholics by the Chicom totalitarians (see, for example A Betrayal Worthy of the Antichrist, Red China: Still A Workshop For The New Ecclesiology, Still Selling The Rope After All These Years, part two, Neville Bergoglio's Appeasement of the Chicom Monsters, Doubly Betrayed by Jorge and His False Church, Bergoglio the Red Surrenders Faithful Catholics to Their Persecutors, and Vanquished by Our Lady: Comrade Bergoglio).

Finally, the Trump White House is so concerned about the lack of public support for the president’s “Operation Epic Fury” that it stopped the Department of Homeland Security from issuing a terror alert within this country itself:

The FBI, Homeland Security, and the National Counterterrorism Center were preparing to put out a joint intelligence statement on Friday to state and local authorities alerting them of a heightened threat due to the ongoing war in Iran, a senior DHS official said.

The bulletin, which was reviewed by the Daily Mail, details 'elevated threats by the government of Iran to US military and government personnel and facilities, Jewish and Israeli institutions and their perceived supporters, and Iranian dissidents and other anti-regime activists in the United States.'

'Radicalized individuals with a variety of ideological backgrounds also may see this conflict or other geopolitical events as a justification for violence,' the report continues.

The five-page bulletin blocked by the White House provides specific details on how Iranian proxies may carry out attacks across the country. One section explains how local law enforcement can respond to this type of violence.

The official title is 'A Public Safety Awareness Report: Elevated threat in the United States during US-Iran conflict'. 

Homeland Security broke protocol and gave the White House a heads-up about the nationwide bulletin hours before it was set to be released. 

Top Trump officials ordered it placed on ‘hold’. The White House did not deny blocking the terror bulletin in a statement to the Daily Mail.

'The White House is coordinating closely with all government agencies to ensure information being disseminated is accurate, up to date, and has been properly vetted — even if that means taking additional time to review to ensure nothing is done in a vacuum,' said White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson.

The senior DHS official disputed the White House explanation: ‘The three [agencies] were going to release a joint intelligence statement that would elevate the threat level and start addressing the Iranian threat on American soil.'

‘The White House stopped it, and verbalized down to DHS that any unclassified “for official use only” information going forward concerning Iran has to be reviewed by the White House before any dissemination.’

DHS’s decision to inform the White House was done against the wishes of the FBI leadership, the Daily Mail has learned.

‘White House is now inserting themselves. This can have a chilling effect on keeping state and local law enforcement informed about ongoing terrorist threats to the homeland posed by Iran,’ the official added.

‘They don’t want anything getting out that says what they’re doing in Iran is raising the threat level at home.’

Typically, these intel bulletins would be issued to law enforcement without input from the White House to avoid politicizing intelligence communications.

‘Intelligence products for law enforcement are supposed to be neutral, and fact based,’ the official asserted.

The Daily Mail contacted the FBI, and DHS for comment.

The counterterrorism center, which is run by Joe Kent, falls under the jurisdiction of the Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.

Homeland Security’s decision to provide the White House notice about the increased terror threat comes one day after Secretary Kristi Noem’s firing from the department. She is due to officially step down from her role at the end of the month.

Trump launched ‘Operation Epic Fury’ one week ago in a joint military operation with Israel against Iran that killed the regime’s senior leadership, including Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The war has since spiraled across the Middle East, with Iran launching retaliatory strikes against US military bases and allied Gulf nations.

Six American troops have been killed and more than a dozen others injured in an Iranian drone attack. Trump previously warned that US troops could lose their lives, adding that 'we may have casualties.'

Iran uses a network of proxy Islamic militant groups around the globe to carry out violent attacks against Western countries, including Hezbollah and the Houthis.

Days after Trump launched his war against Tehran, a gunman opened fire at a bar in Austin, Texas, killing three people and wounding 15 others before police shot him dead. Investigators later discovered that the shooter had expressed support for the Iranian regime online before opening fire.

Trump was reportedly warned by his top military advisers that Iran could respond to strikes with terror attacks with proxies on US soil.

Last week, FBI counterterrorism and counterintelligence teams were placed on elevated alert across the country by Kash Patel.

At the time, the agency did not say how long the terror alert would remain in effect. (White House blocks intelligence report warning of rising US homeland terror threat linked to Iran war.) 

Let’s get this straight.

The president has undertaken a joint military operation under Iran because its leaders were said to pose a grave and imminent threat to the security of the United States of America.

However, because it is patently evident that “Operation Epic Fury” is going to unleash Mohammedans to commit acts of violence in this country that makes us less safe than before the “operation” began, the White House—and this probably means White House Chief of Staff Susan Summerall Wiles, who is said to be scared witless about the rise of gasoline and diesel fuel)—is afraid that the pretext of waging the war for the sake of American national “security” would be exposed for the farce that it is.

Once again, Iran posed no imminent threat to the national security of the United States of America and to the extent that it poses such a threat to the State of Israel, the latter has more than sufficient means to deal with it Iran on its very own without this country putting its own military personnel in harm’s way so that the Zionists can pursue their “Greater Israel” project that some of its leaders believe will usher in what they think will the coming of their false “messiah” to restore “Israel” to its “rightful place” in the world even though the Israel referred to in Holy Scripture is the New Zion, that is, the Catholic Church.

Let’s get this straight.

The president has undertaken a joint military operation under Iran because its leaders were said to pose a grave and imminent threat to the security of the United States of America.

However, because it is patently evident that “Operation Epic Fury” is going to unleash Mohammedans to commit acts of violence in this country that makes us less safe than before the “operation” began, the White House—and this probably means White Hous Chief of Staff Susan Summerall Wiles, who is said to be scared witless about the rise of gasoline and diesel fuel)—is afraid that the pretext of waging the war for the sake of American national “security” would be exposed for the farce that it is.

In this time of upheaval and uncertainty, therefore, we must use this First Saturday of the month of March, the month of our Good Saint Joseph, to fulfill her First Saturday requests as well as can be done during this time when the true Sacraments are not readily available in many parts of the world by remembering the intentions for which Our Lady herself told Sister Lucia associated with the First Saturday devotions.

The Five First Saturdays of reparation were requested on December 10, 1925, in the following manner:

Have compassion on the heart of your most holy Mother, covered with thorns with which ungrateful men pierce it at every moment, and there is no one to make an act of reparation. Look, my daughter, at my heart, surrounded with thorns with which ungrateful men pierce it at every moment by their blasphemies and ingratitude. You at least try to console me and say that I promise to assist at the hour of death, with the graces necessary for salvation, all those who, on the first Saturday of five consecutive months, shall confess, receive Holy Communion, recite five decades of the Rosary, and keep me company for fifteen minutes while meditating on fifteen mysteries of the Rosary, with the intention of making reparation to me." 

There are five specific offenses against the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary for which the Five First Saturdays devotion was instituted, explained by Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Himself to Sister Lucia on Ascension Thursday, May 29, 1930: 

1. Attacks upon Mary's Immaculate Conception.
2. Attacks against her Perpetual Virginity.
3. Attacks upon her Divine Maternity and the refusal to accept her as the Mother of all mankind.
4. For those who try to publicly implant in children's hearts indifference, contempt and even hatred of this Immaculate Mother.
5. For those who insult her directly in her sacred images.

Some of these, obviously, apply to how the counterfeit church of conciliarism has attacked the sublime privileges and titles of the Mother of God, especially as Jorge Mario Bergoglio did rather regularly (see Blessed Among Women: Defending the Sublime Privileges of the Blessed Virgin Mary) and that Victor Manuel Fernandez authored and that  Robert Francis Prevost/Leo XIV approved (see Mater Populi Fidelis: Authored by Antichrist and Propagated by His Conciliar Agents, part one, and Mater Populi Fidelis: Authored by Antichrist and Propagated by His Conciliar Agents, part two).

The Church has given, at least in a de facto sense, recognition to this private apparition made in 1925, making it plausible, at the very least, that the 1929 apparition of Our Lady to Sister Lucia in the convent at Tuy, Spain, in which Our Lady called for the collegial consecration of Russia by a pope with all of the world's bishops to be an elaboration on that same July 13, 1917, message in the Cova da Iria in which she first called for the Communions of reparation on the First Saturdays and called for the consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart by the pope. Although even some who accept the legitimacy of the 1929 apparition contend that the time for such a collegial consecration has passed, noting correctly that World War II could have been prevented by such a collegial consecration, Sister Lucia continued to insist that the collegial consecration needed to be done.

Pope Saint Pius X was very devoted to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, drawing inspiration from the writings of Saint Louis de Montfort, which he studied closely, as can be seen from our last true pope to be canonized thus far in Ad Diem Illium Laetissimum, February 2, 1904, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Pope Pius IX's issuance of the Papal Bull Ineffabili Deus, which decreed infallibly the dogma of Our Lady's Immaculate Conception:

18. If anyone desires a confirmation of this it may easily be found in the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. For leaving aside tradition which, as well as Scripture, is a source of truth, how has this persuasion of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin appeared so conformed to the Catholic mind and feeling that it has been held as being one, and as it were inborn in the soul of the faithful? "We shrink from saying," is the answer of Dionysius of Chartreux, "of this woman who was to crush the head of the serpent that had been crushed by him and that Mother of God that she had ever been a daughter of the Evil One" (Sent. d. 3, q. 1). No, to the Christian intelligence the idea is unthinkable that the flesh of Christ, holy, stainless, innocent, was formed in the womb of Mary of a flesh which had ever, if only for the briefest moment, contracted any stain. And why so, but because an infinite opposition separates God from sin? There certainly we have the origin of the conviction common to all Christians that Jesus Christ before, clothed in human nature, He cleansed us from our sins in His blood, accorded Mary the grace and special privilege of being preserved and exempted, from the first moment of her conception, from all stain of original sin.

19. If then God has such a horror of sin as to have willed to keep free the future Mother of His Son not only from stains which are voluntarily contracted but, by a special favor and in prevision of the merits of Jesus Christ, from that other stain of which the sad sign is transmitted to all us sons of Adam by a sort of hapless heritage: who can doubt that it is a duty for everyone who seeks by his homage to gain the heart of Mary to correct his vicious and depraved habits and to subdue the passions which incite him to evil?

20. Whoever moreover wishes, and no one ought not so to wish, that his devotion should be worthy of her and perfect, should go further and strive might and main to imitate her example. It is a divine law that those only attain everlasting happiness who have by such faithful following reproduced in themselves the form of the patience and sanctity of Jesus Christ: "for whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be made conformable to the image of His Son; that He might be the first-born amongst many brethren" (Romans viii., 29). But such generally is our infirmity that we are easily discouraged by the greatness of such an example: by the providence of God, however, another example is proposed to us, which is both as near to Christ as human nature allows, and more nearly accords with the weakness of our nature. And this is no other than the Mother of God. "Such was Mary," very pertinently points out St. Ambrose, "that her life is an example for all." And, therefore, he rightly concludes: "Have then before your eyes, as an image, the virginity and life of Mary from whom as from a mirror shines forth the brightness of chastity and the form of virtue" (De Virginib. L. ii., c. ii.)

21. Now if it becomes children not to omit the imitation of any of the virtues of this most Blessed Mother, we yet wish that the faithful apply themselves by preference to the principal virtues which are, as it were, the nerves and joints of the Christian life -- we mean faith, hope, and charity towards God and our neighbor. Of these virtues the life of Mary bears in all its phases the brilliant character; but they attained their highest degree of splendor at the time when she stood by her dying Son. Jesus is nailed to the cross, and the malediction is hurled against Him that "He made Himself the Son of God" (John xix., 7). But she unceasingly recognized and adored the divinity in Him. She bore His dead body to the tomb, but never for a moment doubted that He would rise again. Then the love of God with which she burned made her a partaker in the sufferings of Christ and the associate in His passion; with him moreover, as if forgetful of her own sorrow, she prayed for the pardon of the executioners although they in their hate cried out: "His blood be upon us and upon our children" (Matth. xxvii., 25).

22. But lest it be thought that We have lost sight of Our subject, which is the Immaculate Conception, what great and effectual succor will be found in it for the preservation and right development of those same virtues. What truly is the point of departure of the enemies of religion for the sowing of the great and serious errors by which the faith of so many is shaken? They begin by denying that man has fallen by sin and been cast down from his former position. Hence they regard as mere fables original sin and the evils that were its consequence. Humanity vitiated in its source vitiated in its turn the whole race of man; and thus was evil introduced amongst men and the necessity for a Redeemer involved. All this rejected it is easy to understand that no place is left for Christ, for the Church, for grace or for anything that is above and beyond nature; in one word the whole edifice of faith is shaken from top to bottom. But let people believe and confess that the Virgin Mary has been from the first moment of her conception preserved from all stain; and it is straightway necessary that they should admit both original sin and the rehabilitation of the human race by Jesus Christ, the Gospel, and the Church and the law of suffering. By virtue of this Rationalism and Materialism is torn up by the roots and destroyed, and there remains to Christian wisdom the glory of having to guard and protect the truth. It is moreover a vice common to the enemies of the faith of our time especially that they repudiate and proclaim the necessity of repudiating all respect and obedience for the authority of the Church, and even of any human power, in the idea that it will thus be more easy to make an end of faith. Here we have the origin of Anarchism, than which nothing is more pernicious and pestilent to the order of things whether natural or supernatural. Now this plague, which is equally fatal to society at large and to Christianity, finds its ruin in the dogma of the Immaculate Conception by the obligation which it imposes of recognizing in the Church a power before which not only has the will to bow, but the intelligence to subject itself. It is from a subjection of the reason of this sort that Christian people sing thus the praise of the Mother of God: "Thou art all fair, O Mary, and the stain of original sin is not in thee." (Mass of Immac. Concep.) And thus once again is justified what the Church attributes to this august Virgin that she has exterminated all heresies in the world.

23. And if, as the Apostle declares, faith is nothing else than the substance of things to be hoped for" (Hebr. xi. 1) everyone will easily allow that our faith is confirmed and our hope aroused and strengthened by the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin. The Virgin was kept the more free from all stain of original sin because she was to be the Mother of Christ; and she was the Mother of Christ that the hope of everlasting happiness might be born again in our souls.

24. Leaving aside charity towards God, who can contemplate the Immaculate Virgin without feeling moved to fulfill that precept which Christ called peculiarly His own, namely that of loving one another as He loved us? "A great sign," thus the Apostle St. John describes a vision divinely sent him, appears in the heavens: "A woman clothed with the sun, and with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars upon her head" (Apoc. xii., 1). Everyone knows that this woman signified the Virgin Mary, the stainless one who brought forth our Head. The Apostle continues: "And, being with child, she cried travailing in birth, and was in pain to be delivered" (Apoc. xii., 2). John therefore saw the Most Holy Mother of God already in eternal happiness, yet travailing in a mysterious childbirth. What birth was it? Surely it was the birth of us who, still in exile, are yet to be generated to the perfect charity of God, and to eternal happiness. And the birth pains show the love and desire with which the Virgin from heaven above watches over us, and strives with unwearying prayer to bring about the fulfillment of the number of the elect. (Pope Saint Pius X, Ad Diem Illium Laetissimum, February 2, 1904.)

Yes, a great reward awaits us for our fidelity to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary and to the Most Sacred Heart of her Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, if we persist until our dying breaths in states of Sanctifying Grace. We must keep close to them, therefore, by the time we spend each day outside of Mass before Our Lord in His Real Presence (where we keep company with all of the angels and the saints, including Our Lady Immaculate, the Queen of All Angels and Saints), by our wearing the Brown Scapular and fulfilling the terms associated with it, by wearing the Miraculous Medal, by distributing the Green Scapular and Rosaries and instructional booklets about the Rosary to those God places in our paths on a daily basis--and, most importantly, by our assiduous, reverent and faithful recitation of the Mysteries of Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary each and every day in our lives.

Will we make use of these two last remedies, the Holy Rosary and devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary?

The answer is up to you.

We have a Blessed Mother who loves us, without whose perfect fiat to the will of the Heavenly Father at the Annunciation we would not have been saved.

 Isn't this a cause of offering great thanks to the Blessed Trinity and of obeying her Heavenly messages perfectly?

The path to peace in Iran, Israel, Red China, the European Union, the United States of America everywhere in the world runs exclusively through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, and anyone who does not believe this is a fool.

The following prayer is one that we should pray every First Saturday.

O Heart of Mary, Mother of God and our Mother; Heart most worthy of love, in which the adorable Trinity is ever well-pleased, worthy of the veneration and love of all the Angels and of all men; Heart most like to the Heart of Jesus, of which thou art the perfect image; Heart, full of goodness, ever compassionate toward our miseries; deign to melt our icy hearts and grant that they may be wholly changed into the likeness of the Heart of Jesus, our divine Saviour. Pour into them the love of thy virtues, enkindle in them that divine fire with which thou thyself dost ever burn. In thee let holy Church find a safe shelter; protect her and be her dearest refuge, her tower of strength, impregnable against every assault of her enemies.

Be thou the way which leads to Jesus, and the channel, through which we receive all the graces needful for our salvation. Be our refuge in time of trouble, our solace in the midst of trial, our strength against temptation, our haven in persecution, our present help in every danger, and especially at the hour of death, when all hell shall let loose against us its legions to snatch away our souls, at that dread moment, that hour so full of fear, whereon our eternity depends. Ah, then, most tender Virgin, make us to feel the sweetness of thy motherly heart, and the might of thine intercession with Jesus, and open to us a safe refuge in that very fountain of mercy, whence we may come to praise Him with thee in paradise, world without end. Amen. (The Raccolta: A Manual of Indulgences, Prayers and Devotions Enriched with Indulgences, approved by Pope Pius XII, May 30, 1951, and published in English by Benziger Brothers, New York, 1957, No. 393, p. 286.)

May Our Lady always send us the graces we need to save and sanctify our immortal souls as the consecrated slaves of her Divine Son, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, through her ow Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart and thus to recognize that it is our duty to rise to her defense when the occasion necessitates.

May each Rosary we pray today and every day help us to spread true devotion to Our Lady, she who is indeed our Co-Redemptrix and Mediatrix of All Graces, and thus advance the Peace of the Prince of Peace, Christ the King, around the world.

All to thee, Blessed Mother. All to thy Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, we love you. Save souls!

Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!

Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us now and the hour of our death. Amen.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

Saint Thomas Aquinas, pray for us.