Wednesday, March 18, 2026

Iran threatens Gulf energy facilities after Israeli attack on its largest gasfield

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/18/iran-gulf-energy-facilities-israel-south-pars-gas-field-saudi-arabia-uae-qatar

Iran threatens Gulf energy facilities after Israeli attack on its largest gasfield

Revolutionary Guards say they will strike infrastructure in Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar after South Pars field hit

Iran has threatened to attack energy infrastructure across the Gulf region in retaliation for Israeli strikes on its largest gasfield, the first targeted attacks on its fossil fuel production since the war began.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have threatened counterstrikes on several energy facilities across Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar “in the coming hours” after state media reports that missiles had targeted its gas facilities at the giant South Pars field, the largest gas reserves in the world.

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Trump Accidentally Reveals What He Really Thinks of MAGA Voters

To be a member of MAGA in good standing, you must forget Trump’s promise of “no new wars” and instead believe whatever he tells you to believe at any given moment.

Aaron Schwartz/Getty Images

It’s become a stock social media joke to point out that MAGA stands for whatever Donald Trump says it does at any given moment, but now Trump himself has essentially confirmed the point. Faced with a battle among MAGA influencers over his attack on Iran, Trump unleashed a harsh broadside against some of the dissenters.

“THEY ARE NOT MAGA, I AM,” Trump raged on Truth Social, adding that MAGA entails “not allowing Iran, a Sick, Demented, and Violent Terrorist Regime, to have a Nuclear Weapon.”

In short, anyone who dissents from Trump’s war of choice—anyone who points out that the invasion contradicts his longtime promise of “no new wars”—faces potential excommunication from the MAGA movement. The contempt this shows for the aspirations and fears of ordinary voters who happened to pick Trump in 2024—and might have legitimate worries about the Iran war—is basically boundless.

The immediate target of Trump’s fury was podcaster Megyn Kelly, who opposes the war and is feuding with pro-war Fox News host Mark Levin. Kelly and others, like Tucker Carlson and the non-MAGA Andrew Sullivan, oppose the war as doing Israel’s bidding. The battle has gotten vicious, with Kelly deriding Levin as “Micropenis Mark” and pro-war voices like Ben Shapiro slamming Kelly as an “unbelievable coward.” MAGA debates unfold at a lofty level.

This conflict among influencers primarily involves MAGA voices turning against the America-Israel alliance. It seems less focused on the general suspicion of foreign entanglements—and anger at elites who brought us the Forever Wars in the Mideast—that supposedly drive MAGA.

To be sure, those anti-interventionist leanings have long been overhyped. Yet some swaths of MAGA do at times appear to harbor such views. In a bombshell, Joe Kent, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, just resigned his post over the war. Kent, an extremist with vile views, did cite Israel’s influence as a key reason, but he also declared that “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation,” adding: “I cannot support sending the next generation off to fight and die in a war that serves no benefit to the American people.”

It’s noteworthy that a MAGA diehard like Kent directly contradicted Trump’s claims about the Iran threat and the benefits of attacking Iran—while warning of exactly the sort of quagmire that Trump supposedly opposes. The way Kent blamed Israel in his letter was certainly ugly; a big motivator of some of these critiques is antisemitism. But we can distinguish between the likes of Kent and Carlson and their followers. Clearly some segments of their audiences genuinely oppose wars of choice.

Trump and his advisers have responded to this by simply writing the “no new wars” pledge out of the MAGA story. In suggesting that critics of the war on Iran “ARE NOT MAGA,” Trump also declared that “MAGA is about stopping them cold” before they get a nuke to “blow up” the United States and “the world.”

Note that this simply erases any debate over whether Iran’s nuclear ambitions actually constituted a dire enough threat to America—and the world—to justify our attack. Trump’s own intelligence officials have privately said they did not, and this now includes Joe Kent saying so publicly, whatever his twisted motivations. But in Trump’s formulation, anyone who harbors doubts about the threat Iran posed is commanded to accept it as a settled question. Because Trump said so.

“President Trump is the leader of MAGA,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt similarly insisted recently. “And there is nothing more ‘America first’ than taking out terrorists.” This again treats it as unassailably true that the war actually does constitute doing what’s urgently needed to combat terrorism. It suggests the only people the war is killing are terrorists, whereas it has likely killed over a thousand Iranian civilians.

But the “leader of MAGA” has decreed that the war is only killing “terrorists.” Being “MAGA” requires robotically accepting this as truth.

That’s just not sustainable. To see why, just look at the gyrations of JD Vance. Asked this week to reconcile his support for Trump’s war with his long-stated suspicions of previous foreign entanglements, Vance said: “One big difference is that we have a smart president, whereas in the past, we’ve had dumb presidents.” Trump, said Vance, will avoid the “mistakes of the past.” Vance has also said: “Now we have a president who knows how to accomplish America’s national security objectives” and won’t get sucked into “some long, drawn-out thing.”

Vance’s argument, then, is that the “smart” Trump has defined a precise objective—the dismantling of Iran’s nuclear program, as Vance puts it—and is now using overwhelming force to accomplish this immaculately. Trump will get out before falling victim to the sort of quagmire that befell “dumb presidents.”

But this is not faithful to Vance’s previous positions, no matter how hard he tries to make it so.

You cannot overstate how central suspicions of foreign entanglements have been to Vance’s political identity as a champion of working-class heartlanders abandoned by “elites.” Central to this has been the idea that these wars were not worth their cost in lives and treasure, and thus were sold with “lies.”

Vance, for instance, marked the 20th anniversary of the Iraq invasion with a solemn declaration. “The war killed many innocent Iraqis and Americans,” he said, noting that “it cost over $1 trillion” and thus was an “unforced disaster.”

Now contrast that with Vance’s current stance. He only purports to evaluate Trump’s war based on whether it’s accomplishing a precise aim—disabling Iran’s nuke ambitions. But Trump’s official rationales have lurched in all directions, and what’s missing now is any wrestling with whether the supposed benefits we’re gaining are worth what we’re sacrificing.

They plainly are not. Our own intelligence officials didn’t see Iran’s nuclear program as anything like the threat Trump proclaims. The war cost over $11 billion in its first week. It has killed over a dozen Americans and apparently over a thousand Iranian civilians, many of them children. Vance expressed concern about the Iraqi dead in evaluating that catastrophe. What does he say about Iranian civilians now? What about the financial burdens? What about the global consequences of the choked-off Strait of Hormuz, let alone whatever will be required to reopen it?

Vance—who used to talk about the costs of foreign wars in posing as a kind of Avenger of the Abandoned Heartland—should be pressed to account for all of it.

Then there’s the official lying. As Damon Linker notes, the Iran war echoes many of the broader foreign policy establishment’s previous world-historical errors. The lies, hubris, and folly of the old elites were central to Vance’s case against them. But this war, too, was sold on lies about the Iran threat—and in its catastrophic planning failures, it too has been marked by hubris and folly. What does Vance have to say about all that?

Trumpworld’s redefinition of MAGA is a farce. Not just in the hands of Trump and Leavitt, but also in the hands of Vance, who is recasting it almost as crudely. It’s hard to know what’s more galling—the brazen shamelessness of this effort, or the naked contempt it shows for the voters who are obviously expected to simply roll over and unthinkingly accept it.

Greg Sargent

Greg Sargent is a staff writer at The New Republic and the host of the podcast The Daily Blast. A seasoned political commentator with over two decades of experience, he was a prominent columnist and blogger at The Washington Post from 2010 to 2023 and has worked at Talking Points Memo, New York magazine, and the New York Observer. Greg is also the author of the critically acclaimed book An Uncivil War: Taking Back Our Democracy in an Age of Disinformation and Thunderdome Politics.

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$TRUMP Coins, Secret Dinners, and a $2.5 Billion Congressional Conflict

https://accountable.us/trump-coins-secret-dinners-and-a-2-5-billion-congressional-conflict/

$TRUMP Coins, Secret Dinners, and a $2.5 Billion Congressional Conflict

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Trump Accountability Watch: Trump Profits Off the Presidency While Congressional Republicans Put Health Care on the Line

This week, Donald Trump and his allies in Congress are marching toward another betrayal of working families as they push forward deep cuts to health care and food assistance. It comes as House Republicans advanced the largest cuts to Medicaid and SNAP in history – which would result in 14 million Americans losing health coverage, 3 million households going without food assistance, and an increased burden for millions with higher education and energy costs. All while adding over $4 trillion to the deficit.

The devastating cuts are all to fund a tax giveaway to benefit Trump, his family, and their billionaire friends. A recent analysis from Accountable.US revealed that of the top 35 richest congressional Republicans, worth $2.5 billion collectively, 28 sit on key committees overseeing cuts, and all are able to take advantage of Trump-endorsed tax cuts aimed to benefit the wealthy. It’s the latest example laid bare in Accountable.US’s Cash in Congress project, which has made clear how Congressional Republicans are putting their own bottom line ahead of regular Americans.

As Americans see essential benefits intended to help those in need wiped away, Trump’s failed agenda is making it harder and harder for ordinary families to get ahead. Trump’s tariff rollercoaster is injecting chaos and uncertainty into the economy – hurting small businesses, tanking consumer confidence, shrinking American manufacturing, and driving up costs on everything from cars and electronics to shoes.

But none of that has mattered much to Trump, who continues to use the bully pulpit to sell presidential access to the highest bidder. In his latest potential pay-to-play scheme, this week, Trump’s SEC announced it had voluntarily dismissed its lawsuit against Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, for allegedly misleading investors about trading controls, among other accusations. The news comes after Binance was involved in a $2 billion business deal using Trump’s cryptocurrency coins – potentially generating “tens of millions of dollars a year in revenue for the Trump family and its partners at World Liberty.” While Americans struggle to get by, Trump and his family are cashing in at their expense. It comes after Trump held an openly corrupt gala for top holders of Trump’s cryptocurrency meme coin $TRUMP, in which 80% of the Top 25 winners appeared to be either foreign or regulation dodgers. Last month, Accountable.US hosted a press call sounding the alarm on the dinner, which was one of Trump’s biggest corrupt self-enrichment crypto schemes to date.

As Trump and his allies in Congress advance a massive tax scam for the wealthy, the out-of-touch records of the President’s initial judicial nominees have come to light:

Trump handpicks his defense attorney and “hatchet man,” Emil Bove for lifetime judicial nomination: Last week, Donald Trump made one of his most extreme judicial nominations to date by nominating Emil Bove III to a lifetime appointment on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. Bove is a far-right ideologue who has emerged as Trump’s “enforcer” and his “hatchet man” in the Justice Department. At DOJ, Bove has forced transfers of top nonpolitical officials opposing political interference, fired Capitol riot prosecutors, and sought after FBI agents involved in January 6th cases. Bove repeatedly made longshot arguments, often shot down by judges. Earlier this year, Bove created chaos in the Justice Department after dropping the corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Eight veteran attorneys resigned in protest, and Bove represented the government himself, alone, in a highly unusual move following the internal turmoil and chaos.

Trump judicial nominees at the center of effort to revive case to ban mifepristone: Last week, new research from Accountable.US revealed that two of President Donald Trump’s initial judicial nominees, Joshua Divine and Maria Lanahan, are at the forefront of the push to revive a court case banning medication abortion. Last year, the Supreme Court ruled against an extreme far-right effort to strip the FDA of its science-based, decades-long approval of mifepristone. Now, Trump nominees Divine and Lanahan are pushing to resurrect the case with an amended complaint, which absurdly argues states are being harmed by fewer teen pregnancies because loss of potential population caused “diminishment of political representation” and “loss of federal funds.” The lawsuit also peddles false claims that mifepristone is unsafe for patients, despite over 100 scientific studies confirming the safety of the pills. Divine and Lanahan’s efforts have also been called out as a “nakedly political and judge-shopping ploy,” as the case was refiled out of state in Amarillo, Texas, to ensure it’s heard by a favorable judge.

ACCOUNTABLE.US IN THE NEWS:

Bloomberg: Trump’s World Liberty to Mainly Sell Digital Tokens to Investors Outside the US: “‘Congress should demand the President disclose who’s paying him tribute in the shadows to assess whether the public interest is being compromised,’ said Tony Carrk, executive director of Accountable.US, a nonprofit interest group that has set up a ‘Trump Accountability War Room; online. Accountable found that at least 14 of the top 50 holders of World Liberty Financial tokens have also used cryptocurrency services that aren’t available in the US. Bloomberg’s own analysis found an additional eight wallets that did so. World Liberty disclosed in November that its initial $300 million offering was primarily being marketed offshore.”

Rolling Stone: TRUMP FAMILY’S CRYPTO VENTURE NETS $25 MILLION INVESTMENT FROM FIRM SUSPECTED OF FRAUD: “As noted in research from Accountable.US, DWF has come under scrutiny for alleged market manipulation. In 2024, The Wall Street Journal reported that Binance had responded to a 2023 lawsuit by the SEC over alleged misuse of customer funds and illegal operations within the U.S. by beefing up its market surveillance team and hiring outside financial investigators to root out fraud. These investigators found that DWF, a ‘VIP’ client of Binance, had ‘manipulated the price of YGG and at least six other tokens, and made over $300 million in wash trades in 2023,’ violating Binance’s terms and conditions. After the team recommended removing DWF from the platform, Binance instead had the team itself investigated and concluded that there was ‘insufficient evidence’ of the alleged market manipulation, then fired the lead investigator, with others laid off over the next few months. ‘Something smells rotten about the Trump administration squashing its crypto crime unit one business day after a Russia-tied foreign investor suspected of illegal market manipulation poured millions into one of the opaque Trump family crypto ventures,’ Accountable.US executive director Tony Carrk tells Rolling Stone. “President Trump has deliberately left the barn door open for potential corruption and self-enrichment by maintaining ties to his largely unregulated crypto interests, and even jumping into more since taking office. If the President’s business is going to continue openly taking foreign money this way, including from likely criminal elements, he must be transparent about what these foreign investors are asking for in return.’”

Reuters: Dinner with the president: Trump meme coin surges on offer to top buyers: “Trump’s planned dinner with $TRUMP coin holders is ‘a race to the bottom for presidential grifting,’ said Tony Carrk, executive director of Accountable.US, a nonpartisan government ethics watchdog group. ‘There has never been a clearer case of a president using their office to put money in their pocket, or greater potential for special interests to buy an administration’s favor that could threaten the public interest,’ Carrk said.”

HuffPost: Company Boasts Spending Up To $20 Million On Trump Crypto Coin To Buy Influence: “An international trucking logistics firm is buying as much as $20 million worth of President Donald Trump’s crypto coins to influence the administration’s trade policy — the precise sort of corruption that experts warned Trump was encouraging when he unveiled his venture. […] ‘It’s just another day for Donald Trump that an international freight company is paying a $20 million tribute towards the Trump family fortune after openly wishing it will lead to administration tariff relief,’ said Tony Carrk, executive director of Accountable.US. The watchdog group discovered Freight Technologies’ plan through a social media post bragging about it by GetTrumpMemes.com, the company that sells the Trump coins. […] ‘There’s little doubt this company is expecting some administration policy relief in return for their generous investment in the growing Trump crypto empire,’ Carrk said. ‘It’s an indictment in and of itself that the president has paved the way for so much potential corruption for his own personal gain and at the public expense that few can keep up.’”

CNBC: What the House Republican budget bill means for your money: “As a result of the changes in the bill, which include stricter work requirements to qualify for the programs, 14 million individuals may lose health coverage, while 3 million households may go without food assistance, according to Accountable.US, a nonpartisan watchdog group.”

Scripps News: Trump’s private crypto dinner draws criticism over access and the president’s ties to cryptocurrency: “During a press call organized by Accountable.US, a nonpartisan watchdog group in the crypto space, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) also harshly criticized the President’s dinner. ‘What’s happening tonight at Trump’s golf course — where he is hosting a dinner for the top investors in his meme coins — is in effect, putting a ‘For Sale’ sign on the White House. It’s auctioning off access,’ said Senator Blumenthal.”

HuffPost: 2 Of Trump’s Court Picks Argued Abortion Pill ‘Starves The Baby To Death’ In Womb: “‘Donald Trump is picking up right where he left off using the courts to impose an agenda that takes away our rights and control of our lives,” Caroline Ciccone, Accountable.US president, told HuffPost. Ciccone said Divine and Lanahan have a ‘record of eliminating Americans’ freedoms’ which ‘is out of step with the vast majority of the public and calls into question their ability to rule impartially.’”

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Wednesday, March 18, 2026