President Donald Trump has admitted that Americans are likely to die as he launched a major new war against Iran—even though he claimed it is necessary to save American lives.
“The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties, that often happens in war,” he said in a video he posted early on Saturday morning, wearing no tie and a white USA trucker hat to launch America’s first new full-scale war since 2003.
Already, Iran is striking back. Within a few hours of the U.S. attack, explosions had been reported in several areas across the Middle East, including Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, UAE, Iraq, and Jordan—all of which are home to major U.S. military installations.
Trump posted the clip on Truth Social to announce “major combat operations in Iran” to “defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime, a vicious group of very hard, terrible people.”
Trump made the announcement while wearing a white “USA” trucker hat.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for further comment.
Forces involved in Saturday’s operation include personnel aboard two U.S. aircraft carriers—the USS Abraham Lincoln, near Oman, and the USS Gerald R. Ford in the eastern Mediterranean—and likely at nearby major U.S. bases in the aforementioned targeted countries. This would include air defense crews, base security, intelligence teams, and medical staff.
Some of those bases have been involved in prior confrontations with Iranian forces.
Iranian strikes targeted the Al-Asad Air Base in Iraq following Trump’s assassination of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps leader Qasem Soleimani in 2020; 110 service members suffered traumatic brain injuries as a result of those attacks.
Qatar’s Al Udeid Air Base also came under attack following Trump’s strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities last June. Seven U.S. service members were also injured in the course of the MAGA leader’s January invasion of Venezuela.
It’s estimated that around 7,000 American troops died in the course of previous U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. There is presently no indication that Trump plans to deploy ground troops as part of what, for now, remains largely an air-and-sea campaign.
The Republican president has previously referred to fallen American service personnel as “suckers” and “losers.” He has never served in the military, having in fact dodged the Vietnam War draft on five occasions. The last of those owed to a bone spur diagnosis. It’s a condition that usually affects elderly individuals. He was 22 at the time.
Trump’s new war contradicts explicit promises made to voters on the 2024 campaign trail to lessen, rather than increase, American involvement in active conflicts and other military entanglements abroad.
This is Trump’s second attack against the Iranian regime after targeted strikes against the country’s nuclear facilities last June. It flies in the face of Trump’s efforts throughout his first year back in office to model himself as a “President of Peace,” dubiously claiming to have “solved” a constantly shifting number of wars around the world.
What now appears set to become the 2026 U.S.-Iran War comes after the president launched military strikes against Islamic insurgents in Nigeria, a U.S. ally, on Christmas Day. Plus, the shock U.S. incursion into Venezuela in January to abduct former President Nicolás Maduro, who now faces narcoterrorism charges in a New York federal court.
Trump has similarly threatened to invade U.S. allies Panama, Canada, Colombia, Mexico, and Greenland, which is an autonomous territory of Denmark, a fellow NATO member.
The MAGA president’s growing, campaign-promise-busting appetite for military engagement also comes amid his bitter disappointment at being passed over for last year’s Nobel Peace Prize, despite a concerted public and private push by his allies. It was previously awarded to his Democratic predecessor, President Barack Obama.
In a letter regarding that snub, Trump wrote to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre in January that “considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace.”
The Norwegian government is not affiliated with the Nobel Committee, which decides independently to whom it will grant its awards. Trump’s claim to have stopped eight wars remains highly disputed.
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