The Lead
Trump Declares War on Iran: A Bridge Too Far?
by Dennis Small (EIRNS) — Feb. 28, 2026
President Donald Trump was swept into the White House with a landslide victory in November 2024 on the overwhelmingly popular policy of stopping the “forever wars” abroad, and putting an end to regime-change adventures overseas. In the early morning hours of Feb. 28, that same President joined Israel in launching a combined military attack on Iran whose stated purpose is to decapitate that country’s government, destroy its energy and industry sectors, and bring about regime change: “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take,” Trump told Iranians, hoping they would topple their government.
Two days earlier, Vice President JD Vance had justified the coming war with aplomb: “I do think we have to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. I also think that we have to avoid overlearning the lessons of the past. Just because one president screwed up a military conflict doesn’t mean we can never engage in military conflict again.”
And so, the Trump administration has again launched an illegal war of aggression, this time against Iran, codified as such under the Nuremberg precedent; violated international law prohibiting interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state; and transgressed the War Powers Act and the U.S. Constitution itself, which grants Congress, and only the Congress—not the President—the power to declare war.
Like all Leviathans and similar narcissists oblivious to the reality around them, Trump fervently believes that he is making his own decisions—that he is the unpredictable Master of his own fate and that of the entire world. But he is not. Trump’s behavior is actually fully predictable, as the captain of the sinking Titanic of the trans-Atlantic system. In fact, Lyndon LaRouche warned a half-century ago that, if the West remained committed to its bankrupt speculative financial system, then its fate was sealed: wars, domestic fascism, and escalating economic austerity. Trump has allowed himself to become the empty vessel for carrying out those policies.
No matter the sycophants he surrounds himself with, Trump is not a great force. He is a self-important branch tossed on the seas by a storm that he neither understands nor controls.
And that is the reason why this weekend’s war of aggression against Iran may turn out to be “a bridge too far.” It has triggered a wave of revulsion among most nations around the world. Normally submissive U.S. congressmen are demanding an immediate Congressional session to invoke the War Powers Act, to bring Trump to heel. Street protests against the war began in the U.S. within hours of the attack.
“This is the death knell of the credibility of the West,” Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche stated on Feb. 28. We will now see a real test of the strength of those who are demanding an end to 500 years of colonialism. The Global Majority will conclude that the West has become thoroughly lawless; that Trump’s Board of Peace is really a Board of War; that Anglophile neocon circles have taken full control of the Trump presidency. Although the short-term military course of developments is unpredictable, Zepp-LaRouche noted, there will be a longer-term, qualitative reaction around the world: This is too much; a new security and development architecture must be crafted and brought into being.
That is the central policy discussion that LaRouche candidates Diane Sare (for President) and Jose Vega (for Congress) are bringing into the national political debate in the U.S. And it is the central focus of the upcoming March 2 EIR international roundtable discussion, “Epstein and the Bottomless Depravity of the ‘Elites’ —Urgent Need for a Cultural Renaissance!”
Contents
Strategic War Danger
- U.S. and Israel Launch Bombing Campaign Against Iran (↓)
- Trump Calls on Iranians To Topple Their Government (↓)
- Russia and China Condemn Illegal U.S.-Israeli Attack on Iran (↓)
- South Africa, Brazil, India Respond to Assault on Fellow BRICS Member Iran (↓)
- London’s The Economist Has a Sober Evaluation of the Iran War (↓)
New World Paradigm
U.S. and Canada
- Will the U.S. Congress Take Up Its Constitutional Responsibility for Declaring or Stopping Wars? (↓)
- Anthropic Refuses To Cave to Hegseth's Demands; OpenAI Gleefully Jumps In (↓)
