President Trump publicly called Monday for Iran's leaders to be prosecuted for "war crimes against humanity" after trashing the Islamic Republic as a "failed nation."
Page A7From§Eachthe coffee break edition — 31 August 2026
U.S. strikes Iran's missile launchers, then Trump demands Iran's leaders face war crimes trials.
As it ran on the front
Here's how the racket usually works. You take an action, you call it a strike, a raid, a targeted operation — never an attack, attacks are what the other guy does. Overnight the United States hit Iranian missile launchers near the Strait of Hormuz. Nobody in Washington called that an attack. Then Iran hit back, and that got called an attack immediately, same day, no delay for the paperwork. Funny how the dictionary only opens for one side.
Then comes the part that should stop you mid-sip. The President who ordered the strike on the missile launchers turned around and said the leaders of Iran, a 'failed nation' in his words, should be tried for war crimes against humanity. Not asked for an investigation. Not called for a tribunal with lawyers on both sides. Called for the trial of the other guy, the day after his own military dropped ordnance on that guy's country. That's not foreign policy, that's a stickup man calling the cops on the guy he just robbed, and expecting the cops to take the report seriously because he's got a badge too.…
…(cont) Nobody's asking who profits from a Strait of Hormuz that stays hot. Nobody's asking why the retaliation cycle always seems to need one more round before anybody talks about stopping it. The oil tankers that go through Hormuz aren't going anywhere, the shipping insurance rates aren't going down, and somewhere there's a line item that gets bigger every time a missile launcher gets hit and a missile launcher hits back. War crimes trials take years, sometimes decades, sometimes they never happen at all. Strikes happen overnight and get authorized before breakfast.
The stakes part isn't complicated: the man calling for a war crimes tribunal has the authority to order the next strike himself, tonight, without asking anyone. That's not a conspiracy theory, that's the job description. When the same hand that presses the button also gets to define who the criminals are, the definition tends to bend toward whoever's still standing at the end. Keep an eye on the barrel price. It never lies about who's winning.
“They hit Iran's missile sites overnight and by morning the same guy who gave the order is calling for war crimes trials of the other side. That's not diplomacy, that's a stickup artist filing a police report on the guy he just robbed. Somebody's going to get billed for this and it isn't going to be the guy who ordered the strike.”
“The strikes were surgical, targeted, entirely defensive — Iran fired first, technically, if you count the whole last decade. Look, the President is simply holding Tehran to the same standard we — wait, we also just bombed missile launchers on their soil, didn't we. That's not the point I was making.”
The receipts
The United States and Iran are trading attacks for the first time in weeks, just days after the war reached the six-month mark. US CENTCOM says it struck Larak Island where missile launchers were preparing to deploy mines into the Strait…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.