The United States and Israel launched a massive aerial attack Saturday [February 28, 2026] on Iran after negotiations failed to strike a deal over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, and President Donald Trump urged the Iranian people to use the moment to seize control of their government.
“I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump told Iranians in an eight-minute video posted on his TruthSocial platform in which he confirmed the U.S. military had launched major combat operations against Tehran alongside Israel.
“Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime, a vicious group of very hard, terrible people," he added. “Its menacing activities directly endanger the United States, our troops, our bases overseas and our allies throughout the world.”
Iran vowed immediate retaliation, and the Israeli military ordered civilians to remain in secure locations and to avoid public gatherings amid fears of counterstrikes. Israel said a volley of missiles had been launched toward its country.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a video message that the joint attack was launched to remove the existential threat posed by Iran and to create the conditions for Iranian regime change.
“Our joint action will create the conditions for the brave Iranian people to take their destiny into their own hands," he said. “The time has come for all parts of the Iranian people — the Persians, the Kurds, the Azeris, the Baloch, and the Ahwazi — to cast off the yoke of tyranny and bring about a free and peace-seeking Iran."
Its air defenses proved effectively nonexistent over Tehran. Israeli media noted with astonishment that the capital’s skies were uncontested.
The Russian and Chinese defense systems Iran had acquired produced no observable results.
The command infrastructure is shattered. Communications are severed. Key figures may be dead.
The IRGC’s retaliatory strikes were real — missiles reached Israeli territory, hit a US base in Bahrain, and triggered alarms across the Gulf — but the opening exchange suggests a fundamental asymmetry in capability that Tehran cannot overcome through volume of fire alone.
The war has begun. The question now is whether it ends with the Islamic Republic still standing.
Iran’s own semi-official ISNA news agency published a remarkable statement: the intensity and scope of the initial attacks, especially at sensitive points, led to the killing and destruction of “a significant number of personnel of the Revolutionary Guards Corps" many of whom held “important operational and specialized posts". For a regime news agency to acknowledge such losses in real time suggests the damage was catastrophic.
Simultaneously, cyber operations crippled Iranian communications. The IRNA news agency was hacked. Landline phone networks went down across Tehran. Internet connectivity collapsed into a near-total blackout. Iran’s state broadcasting organization was reportedly attacked. The regime’s ability to coordinate a response was systematically degraded.
Trump and Netanyahu. Exactly the 2 people I want in charge of this. And you can bet the groundwork for the cyber attack has been laid for a long time. Here’s hoping for the best.
