Trump Wages Illegal War on Iran – The Monday AM Quickie 6/23/25

By Whitney Curry Wimbish — Jun 23, 2025

This mini film of an endangered Gobi bear and cub(!) who found an oasis is a good reminder to drink enough water this week. It’s gonna be hot. - Whitney

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THE BIG NEWS

Trump Wages Illegal War on Iran

The insane wannabe king bypassed Congress to bomb Iran Saturday, then called for peace and threatened more strikes if the sovereign nation of 91 million objects. There are “many targets left” besides the three nuclear facilities he hit, Trump said Saturday evening. "If peace does not come quickly, we will go after those other targets with precision, speed and skill."

As of Sunday evening, the world was waiting for Iran’s response. At an emergency UN Security meeting Iranian ambassador Amir Saeid Iravan said the military was deciding the “timing, nature and scale” of a “proportionate response,” according to the AP, but some plans were already in motion. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Trump’s “warmongering and lawless administration in Washington is solely and fully responsible for the dangerous consequences and far-reaching implications of its act of aggression” and flew to Moscow to coordinate with ally Russia. The Iranian Parliament approved the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which would block oil tankers going to and from the Persian Gulf. An appointee of the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei makes the final determination, but the news has already pushed oil prices to record highs – a price increase drivers will feel just in time for the 4th of July holiday, Politico reported. And Iran’s Revolutionary Guard suggested it could attack the 40,000 US troops in the region, calling them a “point of vulnerability.”

Trump and his lackeys, meanwhile, were in disarray on Sunday. Pete Hegseth, the alcoholic defense secretary, said the goal of the attacks was not regime change. “This mission was not and has not been about regime change,” he brayed to reporters at the Pentagon yesterday morning. Yes it is, Trump shouted on social media, and hard launched a new acronym. “It’s not politically correct to use the term, ‘Regime Change,’ but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!” Vice President JD Vance, meanwhile, said the US isn’t even at war with Iran, if you really think about it. Bizarrely, Secretary of State Marco Rubio begged China to help with the Strait of Hormuz situation. Serious question: does Rubio have amnesia? Can’t he remember his confirmation hearing five months ago, when he called China the “most potent and dangerous” adversary in US history? Why on earth would China help him? I guess there’s just not a lot of memory to go around in Trumpworld given that this is exactly the kind of f*ckup that made George W. Bush roundly hated at home and abroad.

Experts told the NYT that Iran has a lot of options for what to do next. Iran could: exit the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty; expel nuclear inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency; target US bases in the region; ask Houthis in Yemen to resume attacks on US ships in the red sea; conduct cyberwarfare; and work with Al Qaeda to hit US and Israel targets around the world.

MORE STORIES TO WATCH

Mahmoud Khalil is Free!

Some good news at last. Political prisoner Mahmoud Khalil is back home after Trump’s racist regime illegally detained him for exercising his First Amendment right to call for a free Palestine, The Guardian and NYT reported. A federal judge in New Jersey forced the regime to let him leave detention while his immigration case proceeds; Khalil was released on bail Friday and traveled through the night to return to his wife and newborn son, his first child. Khalil spent more than three months in Louisiana after federal agents snatched him from his home in New York; he missed his son’s birth, a loss for which there is no compensation, Khalil said. He captured his anguish in a Father’s Day letter explaining and apologizing for his absence.

All the “know-your-rights” tips he’d read meant nothing the day federal agents disappeared him, Khalil said. “There are no rights in such situations,” he said. “It felt like a kidnapping.” But the experience did wreck his belief in American justice. “If you have money, there is rule of law,” he said. “If you are abiding by the very narrow definition of what this administration is defining an American value to be, you may get rule of law. Otherwise you have to fight tooth and nail to get your due process and your rights.” Khalil said his commitment to a free Palestine is unbroken and that he will immediately resume his advocacy. In a roadside press conference after his release, Khalil said he would fight for immigrants, too. “I leave some incredible men behind me, over one thousand people behind me, in a place where they shouldn’t have been,” he said. “I hope the next time I will be in Jena is to actually visit.”

Drugged ICE Detainee Dies in Custody

A grandfather born in Mexico died in ICE custody under mysterious circumstances, including that detention staff drugged him to the point of incoherence, The Guardian reported. He’s the first ICE detainee to die in transit from local jail to federal detention in at least a decade. More than a month later, family members still don’t have answers about what happened to him. All they know is that federal agents repeatedly refused to let them visit Avellaneda Delgado, 68, and when they finally relented, he was unrecognizable. Guards rolled him out in a wheelchair. His son, who shares Delgado’s name, said his heart dropped because he’d never seen his father like that. “I’m thinking, ‘What’s he doing in the wheelchair?’ Delgado Junior said. As the Guardian reported:

The two sat facing each other, with a glass partition between them. “I tried to get his attention and tapped on the glass. He was zoned out. At one point, he tried to stand up and fell back on his chair.”
“He didn’t make eye contact with me and kept bobbing his head left and right,” he said. Junior asked a jail staffer accompanying Abelardo, Sr. to hold the phone to his ear. “I said, ‘Dad, please answer me! Say something to me!’ He just said, ‘Hmmmm.’ It broke me.”
The staffer told Junior, “We gave him his medication, that’s probably why he’s that way.” He thought, what medication? His father never took any medications at home, he said.

Delgado’s children said their father had no health conditions before he was snatched. They also said that no one from ICE has contacted them about the death, though authorities allege that it is “under investigation.”

QUICKEST QUICKIES

Entire World Confused by Tariff Plan Because There Isn’t One Foreign officials and business leaders are getting different messages from the people handling trade talks – Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and US Trade Representative Jamieson – which one person described as “a loyalty contest, where they’re all trying to give Trump more of what he wants.” via Politico.
Texas Gov. Violates Separation of Church and State Greg Abbott announced Saturday that he had signed an unconstitutional and anti-American law requiring all public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments. via The AP.
Harvard Hired Researcher to Trace Ties to Slavery, Fired Him for Finding Too Many Researcher Richard Cellini and his team found more than 900 people who university affiliates enslaved and nearly 500 of their direct living descendants. via The Guardian.
Maybe Change Your Passwords because researchers at cybersecurity outlet Cybernews found that 16 billion login credentials to Apple, Facebook, Google, and “any other service imaginable” have been “leaked and compiled into datasets online, giving criminals ‘unprecedented access.’” via Cybernews and the AP.

SOME NUMBER

7,200

That’s how many United States Postal Service electric vehicles Republicans want to seize and auction off under the Senate version of Trump’s horrendous spending bill. The vehicles are brand-new and paid for with tax dollars. The Washington Post reported that they’re unlikely to generate much cash because “there is almost no private-sector interest in the mail trucks, and used EV charging equipment – built specifically for the Postal Service and already installed in postal facilities – generally cannot be resold.”

ON THE SHOW TODAY

6/23: Since there's not a lot going on in the world these days, MR will have three guests today. Matt Duss, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy and co-host of The Un-Diplomatic Podcast; Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi, senior lecturer in the history of the Middle East at the University of York in the United Kingdom; Anthony Conwright, writer of a new piece in The Nation, Will Black Americans Vote for a Socialist - Zohran Mamdani.

DON'T MISS MR CLIPS‌

Eternally Wrong CNBC Morons Celebrate AI Killing The Working Class

Any other old heads out there remember the time in 2008 when shrieky hysteric Jim Cramer told a viewer not to move his money out of Bear Stearns with the words “No! No! No! Bear Stearns is not in trouble” and then three days later Bear Stearns stock lost more than half its value and got taken over by JPMorgan Chase?

Ro Khanna Unmasks Pete Hegseth With Disturbing Results

What’s gonna stop Hegseth from ignoring court rulings? Chuck Schumer?

PARTING WORDS

“Calling your mom and expecting to hear her voice and hearing an AI voice is one of the most scary things I’ve ever experienced. I can feel it in my body.”

-- a 30-year-old living in New York, who tried to call her mom in Iran and, like others, got an unsettling, robotic voice. No one knows who is behind the voices. Some speculate it’s a terror campaign run by Israel; others blame Iran. Either way, the woman called it “psychological warfare.” One woman in the UK got this message as she desperately tried to check on her mom in Iran: “Thank you for taking the time to listen. Today, I’d like to share some thoughts with you and share a few things that might resonate in our daily lives. Life is full of unexpected surprises, and these surprises can sometimes bring joy while at other times they challenge us.”

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