The Trump administration has repeatedly claimed it is targeting the Iranian government and coming to the aid of the nation's people by waging all-out war on the Middle East country, but an analysis of US policy changes announced this week…
Page A2From§Eachthe supper edition — 2 September 2026
Trump threatens to hit Iran 'anytime,' six months into a war his oil filings show him profiting from.
As it ran on the front
Six months ago, on a Friday the West Wing didn't mention, this war turned quiet in Washington and stayed loud everywhere else. The Hill marked the day, Aug. 28, with a phrase almost administrative: the war had "shifted into neutral," six months after a president who told the country it would run four to five weeks. The Washington Examiner checked the same day and found nothing — no statement, no ceremony, the anniversary of what Common Dreams and the National Iranian American Council call an illegal war passed with the White House press shop declining to notice. In Cleveland that week, activists who never got the memo about neutral gears held signs reading "Hands off Iran," marking six months since the war's first strike.
Then this week arrived with the receipt the quiet couldn't hold. A US missile struck a wedding in Iran; Novara Media counts five dead. CBS confirms the Pentagon is now "looking into" allegations that people at a wedding party were killed — a phrase that commits the department to nothing but time. The New York Times calls what follows a return to "a familiar playbook," a way of saying six months of bombing has produced a country still standing and a president still promising the knockout punch. That punch, in his words this week: the US is prepared to hit Iran "anytime we want."…
…(cont) Anytime is doing a lot of work in that sentence, and so is the strait he's threatening to put his own name on. The Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world's oil moves, closed at the war's start, and diesel prices spiked with it — that's the record, not a guess, straight out of this week's reporting. Trump wants to call it Trump Strait. He doesn't control it. Iran does, and has banned more than fifty vessels from passing through.
Which leaves the number the White House didn't attach to the six-month mark: over a thousand stock trades in June, filed with the Office of Government Ethics, a chunk of it in energy companies posting record profits off a war their commander in chief started and, filing by filing, is now profiting from. Congress passed a war powers resolution months ago ordering him to end it. He hasn't. NIAC Action says the only move left is to sue him. That's not a policy debate. That's litigation standing in as the only brake left on a war that's already outlasted its own promised timeline by a factor of six.
“Six months of a war he promised would take weeks, and the White House didn't say one word about the anniversary — but the President found plenty of words for hitting Iran "anytime we want." His own financial disclosure, filed that same quarter, shows him loaded up on energy stocks while the war sent oil profits through the roof. That's not a policy, that's a stock tip with a flag pin on it.”
“The anniversary wasn't ignored, the administration just didn't see the need to throw a parade for restraint, and the Pentagon looking into the wedding allegations is due diligence, not a cover-up. The stock disclosures are routine paperwork every president files — it's not like a thousand trades in energy stocks during a war he's running proves anything, aside from, well, actually — did I just say "the war he's running"? That's not — that's not what I meant.”
The receipts
More than six months after starting an illegal war with Iran, President Donald Trump is now threatening to rename the Strait of Hormuz, whose closure at the start of the conflict led to a global spike in energy prices. In a Wednesday social media post , Trump falsely claimed that the strait is "under USA control" and then mused on…
With no end in sight to President Donald Trump's illegal war with Iran, Congress is being urged to take legal action to bring the conflict to an end. Jamal Abdi, executive director at National Iranian American Council (NIAC) Action, said on Wednesday that Congress must go to court to enforce the war powers resolution that passed in the…
The White House made no major public recognition Friday of the six-month anniversary of the Iran war, a conflict President Donald Trump predicted earlier this year would last only a matter of weeks. Neither Trump nor his administration…
The illegal war with Iran that President Donald Trump said would be over in a matter of weeks entered its sixth month on Friday, and there is little sign of it wrapping up in the near future. A Friday report in The Washington Post marking the six-month anniversary of the illegal war noted that Trump's ability to decisively win the…
In a mandated filing with the Office of Government Ethics released Thursday, President Donald Trump was found to have made more than 1,000 stock transactions in June, including thousands of dollars invested in energy companies that were…
In today's issue: ▪ Iran war approach shifts ▪ Trump gives Paxton a boost ▪ Warsh makes key Fed speech ▪ Leavitt’s last day Today marks six months since the start of the war with Iran, which President Trump said would last for four to five…
The United States seems increasingly bogged down in Iran after six months of conflict, despite President Trump’s declarations of military dominance.
Cleveland anti-imperialist activists demonstrated on Aug. 28 to say “Hands off Iran.” The date marked the six-month anniversary of the start of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran.
Fox News host Bret Baier defended his colleague after President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social panning his show’s segment on the latest Iran war news. Trump posted on social media on Thursday evening telling Baier to “straighten out…
The U.S. military was looking into Iran's allegations that people at a wedding party were killed in the American strikes, a spokesman said.
A US missile strike has killed at least five people at a civilian wedding in Iran. Plus: Andy Burnham faces Kemi Badenoch in his first PMQs, a new study has found that almost half of the world’s farmers are poisoned by pesticides every year, and Gal Gadot has defended her role an upcoming movie about […]
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.