President Donald Trump and his administration insist their war of choice in Iran bears zero similarity to the bitter Iraq War the U.S. plunged into 23 years ago. I disagree.

Both wars were based on lies about imminent threats from nuclear weapons to justify wars of choice. In 2003, the intelligence on Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program was cherry-picked and false. In 2025, Trump himself told Americans that Iran’s nuclear program had been “obliterated” by U.S. and Israeli airstrikes in June, and there is no evidence that Tehran is able to reconstitute the program — so there was no “imminent threat” to America.

The new White House line that Israeli pressure prompted Trump’s decision to bomb, has already been rejected by the president (although it may contain several kernels of truth).

In 2003 as today, the U.S. president had trouble clarifying the strategic goals of the war. Unlike George W. Bush, Trump denies he seeks “regime change” (after calling for it). But then as now, there was little to no preparation for “the day after” the war ends.

Such lack of vision — or ample self-delusion — propelled Americans to disaster in Iraq, even with some competent advisers in the White House. As Trump directs policy solo, based on whim and ill-informed whispers from Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, it’s hard to see a happy ending in Iran.

Yet, having covered the 1991 Gulf War and the 2003 Iraq War (in all its phases through 2017), what I find most tragic is the potential for ordinary Iranians to be harmed as badly by Trump as Iraqis were hurt by Bush’s war.

Few Iranians will mourn the demise of the cruel and murderous Ayatollah Khamenei or his cohorts, and a large segment of Iranians want the corrupt religious regime gone. But despite Trump’s treacly protestations of sympathy with the brave Iranian civilians whom he keeps urging to rise and overthrow the ayatollahs, all signs point to his willingness to abandon them if he needs a quick exit from his new war.

It is this aspect of Trump’s Iran war that hits me hardest in the gut, because I saw it happen in Iraq.

In 1991, when I was covering the first Iraq War, President George H.W. Bush called for Iraqi Kurds and Shiites to revolt against Saddam Hussein (whose mainly Sunni followers controlled Iraq), as the United States pushed into southern Iraq from liberated Kuwait. They followed his call.

But Bush 41 chose not to continue on to Baghdad and depose the Iraqi regime, because his advisers warned this would set off an Iraqi civil war. Moreover, he left much of Hussein’s army intact, along with their attack helicopters. Around 10,000 Shiites were slaughtered; several hundred Kurds in Iraq’s north had to flee into the freezing mountains in winter, until the U.S. Air Force established a no-fly zone over Iraqi Kurdistan and they could return home.

In February 2003, I crossed from Iran into Iraqi Kurdistan to await the invasion of Iraq by Bush 43, who claimed he had to destroy the (non-existent) Iraqi nuclear program and bring democracy to the country. At the time, it was hard not to get swept up in the enthusiasm of Iraqi Kurds for the regime change the Americans were promising in Baghdad.

America’s regional allies, especially Israel, urged us to decapitate the Baghdad dictatorship — and White House hawks insisted “regime change” would quickly bring peace and democracy to the entire Mideast. So did exiled members of multiple Iraqi opposition groups, with whom I had been in contact since covering the 1991 Gulf War.

Bush disbanded Iraq’s military and fired much of its government. But he had no grasp of the complex ethnic and religious politics of Iraq, which engulfed U.S. forces and created an internal Iraq civil war between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

Fast forward to Trump, who (at least for today) says his goal isn’t regime change. He insists he will not put boots on the ground and that the war will last a few weeks.

Even though Iran’s 86-year-old supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, was killed by an Israeli airstrike, along with around 40 other Iranian leaders, that’s not likely to end the regime, but more likely to produce a military-backed dictatorship. Both sides may need a breather in a few weeks as Iranian missiles, and U.S. interceptors run short.

But the president has already made clear he has little interest and no concrete plans for what should happen in Iran after the death of its religious leaders. Trump has upturned the famous doctrine that the late Secretary of State Colin Powell applied to 2003 Iraq, namely “If you break it, you own it.” The Trump Doctrine posits: “We break it, you own it. Goodbye and good luck.”

He has stressed that it is up to Iran’s people to rise up and take over their country, even though civilians are bereft of leaders, organization, guns or even internet connections (and Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the last Shah, who hasn’t stepped foot in Iran for decades, has no armed forces of his own).

Squeezed by the MAGA faithful, and partial to quick hits, Trump insists there will be no long-term U.S. involvement. This may avoid U.S. military casualties but will probably leave Iran in chaos, ruled by hard men who still retain weapons.

That’s because the strongest remaining military force in Iran is the hard-line Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which is deeply rooted throughout the country. Behind them are hundreds of thousands of Basij militiamen, who have proved ready to kill demonstrators.

Trump has told journalists he would like to model the Iran venture on the U.S. intervention in Venezuela, where the top leader, Nicolás Maduro, was kidnapped, and Trump then made a deal with his vice president. In Caracas, Trump eliminated a leader he disliked, but kept the previous regime, which in turn handed him control over Venezuelan oil.

Iran, however, could not be more different. Trump would like to see the IRGC, or one faction, make a deal to totally eliminate Iran’s nuclear weapons program and missile production. The president told journalists, apparently with regrets, that some potential new leaders had been killed in the bombing, and speculated that Iran’s future leader could be “as bad” as the last.

More likely, the IRGC will fight to the end to maintain power and won’t be dislodged without sending ground troops. It has proved willing to slaughter tens of thousands of civilians to keep power and would be willing to do so again.

I worry that Trump’s continued call for a civilian uprising to “take over” Iran only holds out the prospect that Iranian civilians will once again be slaughtered, even as Trump chooses to declare victory and send the fleet home when missile interceptors run short and his followers grow antsy. Israel may continue bombing, but that won’t help Iranian protesters.

In a further sign of how the administration may use and abuse Iranians, CNN reported that the CIA is arming Iranian Kurds to spark a wider uprising vs. the regime (even as Trump abandons Syrian Kurds, who helped U.S. forces fight ISIS 10 years ago, but now are of no more use to him). Would Trump then abandon Iran’s Kurds if he decided to ink a pact with some IRGC general whom he thought could become a flexible dictator of Iran?

For Trump, the Iran war is an exhibition of U.S. power, designed to enhance his imperial stature as the GOP faces dicey midterms and the Epstein hangover. For Iran’s people, Trump’s reality show is a life threatening matter. His “we break it, you fix it” doctrine could consign many of them to death.

Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial-board member  for The Philadelphia Inquirer, P.O. Box 8263, Philadelphia, Pa. 19101. Her email address is trubin@phillynews.com.

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Killing the tyrant doesn’t assure the tyranny will end.

Regime change efforts by the United States in this century confirm that when despots are toppled, it is likely one form of oppression will be replaced by another.

Instead of peace and democracy, externally driven nation-building most often ends in chaos. One set of bad guys goes, and another set marches in. Or the old ones come back.

Americans should look to that history in setting expectations for what happens next in Iran now that another batch of maniacal Middle East murderers have been sent hurtling through the gates of hell.

In 2001, the United States and its allies stormed into Afghanistan, aiming to destroy the Taliban and round up the instigators of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Twenty years later, after spending $2.3 trillion and losing nearly 2,500 American troops, then-President Joe Biden ordered a hasty withdrawal. Now, the Taliban are back exporting terror, women are shrouded and girls have again been shut out of classrooms.

Remember the jubilation in Baghdad in 2003 as long-abused citizens tore down the statue of Saddam Hussein and the real-life strongman was driven into hiding and eventually killed? Iraqis breathed a few gulps of freedom before secular warfare between Sunni and Shia militias began tearing the country apart.

Americans sent to help reconstruct the country and build a functioning government were relentlessly attacked.

The Islamic State, or ISIS, the most vicious terror group ever, found Iraq to be the perfect launching pad for its marauders. Today, the country is considered a shaky democracy at best, and civil rights abuses abound.

Bringing “freedom” to Iraq cost America just under 4,500 troops and nearly $3 trillion.

A U.S.-led NATO coalition aided a 2011 military coup in Libya that left the sadistic dictator Muammar Gaddafi dead in a ditch. The North African nation today is in a power vacuum and roiled by conflicts between rival armed gangs, some with ties to international terrorism.

That history should inform American decisions and its expectations as it moves ahead with extracting the Islamic radicals from Iran.

While the Iranian people have demonstrated fervently for freedom, there seems to be an endless line of mullahs willing to step into the shoes from which Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was just blown out.

President Donald Trump has rallied the Iranians to rise up and take over their country. But the people lack significant arms. Their economy is being shattered along with their infrastructure. They have to work. They have to eat. They have to focus on survival.

They have watched up to 30,000 of their countrymen be slaughtered for protesting the regime, including many who might have led Iran’s rebuilding.

There’s bound to be an extended period of chaos, power struggles and hardship even under the best scenario.

Removing the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and the radical clerics with bombs alone will be an arduous and uncertain process. A ground war seems inevitable, and Trump has not ruled one out.

But the principle of “you broke it, you own it,” will be hard to resist. The argument will be that some form of peace-keeping force will be necessary to restore order in the country and keep it from re-radicalizing. It will be another dangerous, expensive quagmire, despite assurances from the administration that things will be different this time.

Considering the poor return on investment of previous regime change mobilizations, will America be willing to sacrifice more of its children to a cause with such a dubious chance of success?

Nolan Finley writes for the Detroit News.

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Today is Friday, March 6, the 65th day of 2026. There are 300 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On March 6, 1981, Walter Cronkite signed off for the last time after nearly two decades as the anchor of “The CBS Evening News.”

Also on this date:

In 1820, President James Monroe signed the Missouri Compromise, which allowed Missouri to join the Union as a slave state and Maine to join as a free state, while banning slavery in the northern portion of the Louisiana Territory.

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In 1836, the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas, fell as Mexican forces led by General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna stormed the fortress after a 13-day siege; the battle claimed the lives of all the Texian defenders, including William Travis, James Bowie and Davy Crockett.

In 1857, the U.S. Supreme Court, in the Dred Scott v. Sandford decision, ruled 7-2 that Scott, an enslaved person, was not a U.S. citizen and therefore could not sue for his freedom in federal court; it also ruled that slavery could not be banned from any federal territory. The decision deepened the national divide over slavery in the years leading up to the Civil War.

In 1869, chemist Dmitri Mendeleev introduced his concept of a periodic table of elements at a meeting of the Russian Chemical Society in St. Petersburg.

In 1912, Oreo cookies were first introduced by the National Biscuit Company (later known as Nabisco).

In 1951, the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg on federal espionage charges began in New York. (Both were subsequently found guilty, sentenced to death and then executed in 1953).

In 1964, heavyweight boxing champion Cassius Clay took a new name given to him by Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammed: Muhammad Ali.

In 1970, a bomb being built inside a townhouse in New York’s Greenwich Village by members of the Weather Underground militant leftist group accidentally exploded, destroying the house and killing three group members.

In 1990, Ed Yeilding and Joseph T. Vida flew a Lockheed SR-71 “Blackbird” spy plane east across the U.S. from coast to coast in a record 67 minutes, 54 seconds. (The since-retired U.S. Air Force reconnaissance plane played an outsized role in American military and intelligence gathering since 1968.)

In 2009, NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope was rocketed into space from Cape Canaveral, Florida, to hunt for Earth-sized planets orbiting distant stars. The spacecraft discovered 2,681 exoplanets outside the solar system before it ran low on fuel and was retired in 2018 after 9 1/2 years of scouring space for alien worlds.

In 2021, Pope Francis met with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, one of Shiite Islam’s most senior clerics, in Iraq’s holy city of Najaf to deliver a message of peaceful coexistence, urging Muslims to embrace Iraq’s long-beleaguered Christian minority. The historic encounter followed months of negotiations between the ayatollah’s office and the Vatican.

Today’s birthdays:

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan is 100.
Former Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova is 89.
Opera singer Kiri Te Kanawa is 82.
Rock musician David Gilmour (Pink Floyd) is 80.
Actor-comedian Tom Arnold is 67.
Actor-comedian D.L. Hughley is 63.
Actor Connie Britton is 59.
Basketball Hall of Famer Shaquille O’Neal is 54.
Rapper-producer Tyler, the Creator is 35.
Actor Millicent Simmonds is 23.

MIDDLETON, Wis. – There are rallies, and then there are Jane Volgren-led rallies.

Volgren scored four consecutive goals over the final 5:31 of the second period to help the St. Croix Valley Fusion overcome a three-goal deficit for a 7-4 victory over Superior/Northwestern on Thursday in the semifinals of the Wisconsin girls state hockey tournament.

The second-seeded Fusion (24-4) bring a 17-game winning streak into Saturday’s title game against the top-seeded Bay Area Ice Dogs (25-2), a De Pere co-op of Green Bay-area schools. Bay Area defeated fourth-seeded Sun Prairie West co-op 5-1 in the opening semifinal.

“We fell behind and kind of, not gave up, but we were just slow and methodical, and they took advantage of it,” Fusion coach Matt Cranston said. “I was talking about getting the momentum … all we’ve got to do is get one. Get the momentum because momentum is such a powerful thing.

“And we got it and we just kept on rolling.”

Volgren’s outburst erased a 4-1 deficit after the Spartans scored the first three goals of the period.

Superior/Northwestern blitzed the Fusion with a pair of goals nine seconds apart in the opening minute of the second period. Adalyn Benson capped a two-pass rush with a goal from the slot to make it 2-1 just 44 seconds into the period.

On the ensuing possession, Aaliyah Haroldson punched in a rebound from outside the left post for a two-goal lead.

The Spartans continued their surge on a rush by Gianna Geissler, whose shot from the left side hit Katelyn Gustafson’s stick and trickled up over her shoulder and into the back of the net to make it 4-1.

Volgren got the Fusion back in it with a pair of goals three minutes apart, scoring on a putback and then a shot from the left circle with 2:29 left in the period. She tied it with another shot from the left circle, then capped the comeback with her fourth consecutive goal with 11 seconds remaining in the stanza.

“Obviously, I was kind of upset that we were losing 4-1. I really was looking for only one at a time,” said Volgren, playing with a stick borrowed from a teammate after leaving her sticks at home.

Jenna Volgren, Jane’s freshman sister, made it 6-4 midway through the third period, weaving in from the left side and tucking a backhander under the crossbar.

Morgan Kivel added an empty net goal with 2:45 left.

“I think we started to unravel a little bit,” Spartans coach Doug Trentor said. “Our kids have been really good at resolve this year, but at that point in time, we had a hard time kind of stopping the flow and one thing led to another.”

Freshman Lila Sislo put Superior/Northwestern up 1-0 with an opportunistic goal with seven minutes remaining in the first period, pouncing on a loose puck in front of the crease.

Sophia Munson brought the Fusion even three minutes later with a bullet from the high slot.

Gustafson finished with 22 saves as Superior/Northwestern outshot the Fusion 26-25. Peyton Benoit had 18 saves for the Spartans.

The Fusion lost to Bay Area 5-1 in the third game of the season.

“We’re much, much improved, I think,” Cranston said. “We’re better, I think, but obviously they’re fantastic,”

The current version of the Fusion is a co-op with River Falls/Baldwin-Woodville/St. Croix Central. A previous configuration of the River Falls co-op that also included other area schools with the current three won three consecutive state titles from 2009-11.

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