Fourth & Democracy | Misguided Missiles and Another Forever War

Welcome to another edition of Fourth & Democracy.

Before we get started, it’s important to acknowledge the American service members who lost their lives during the atrocious operations carried out in Iran over the weekend. These are young men and women who volunteered to risk everything so the rest of us could live with a measure of security and freedom. Their deaths affect many on a personal level – families, units, communities – and at the very least, that sacrifice deserves to be acknowledged clearly and treated with seriousness.

Over the weekend, U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran triggered widespread instability across the Middle East. Reports of missile activity emerged from Qatar, Lebanon, Iraq, Kuwait, and other neighboring countries as Iran launched retaliatory strikes on neighboring bases following an assault that killed Ayatollah Khomeini and other senior figures within the regime. What began as a set of “targeted” actions escalated quickly with little clarity about the scope or objectives.

The human cost arrived faster than any explanations and civilian harm was only acknowledged vaguely despite what we were seeing on social media. American casualties were treated as an unfortunate footnote and the public was left to piece everything together. There’s a lot to get to, so let’s get started.

1st & 10: 100+ Children Dead, but How?

Early on the first morning of the joint U.S. and Israel strikes on Iran, a missile struck the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in Minab, in southern Iran’s Hormozgan province. Iranian officials say the building was hit as classes were in session, killing dozens of schoolchildren and wounding many more. Reported death tolls climbed throughout the day from dozens to well over 100 according to local sources. Video and images of the destroyed school circulated on social media almost instantly and were verified by outlets that geolocated the site.

The school sat roughly 600 meters from an IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) naval base, and Iranian state media attributed the strike to the U.S./Israeli operation. U.S. Central Command said that it was aware of reports of civilian harm and was “looking into them,” while Israel denied knowledge of operations in the immediate area.

Basic reality of military operations shows that precision weapons and modern targeting systems aren’t chaotic lottery ball scenarios. They follow a predictable procedure – from intelligence and target identification through coordinate plotting and risk assessment, all capped off with command approval. Every step exists to prevent exactly this kind of civilian catastrophe.

When the result on the ground is children buried under rubble, that isn’t a statistical inevitability. It’s a procedural failure – in data processing, identification, risk assessment, or command authorization. In professionally run militaries, such failures would trigger immediate, thorough, and transparent investigations:

• Who provided the target data.

• Who ran the legal and civilian risk assessments.

• Who signed off on the strike.

• Whether standard operating procedures meant to protect civilians were followed or disregarded.

There are standard operating procedures in place with munitions of this capability. Calculations of meteorological data, azimuths, deflections, safety boxes, multiple levels of checks and balances – all there to ensure that things like this never happen on behalf of the American military, and if it does, there are levers in place to punish those who failed to prevent it.

But that accountability rarely occurs when people like Pete Hegseth are dictating what our military does and what gets swept under the rug.

2nd & Forever Wars: How Long Is this Supposed to Last?

By Sunday afternoon, the people already got a preview of what this conflict might become: not a quick or decisive action, but a war that lasts. President Trump was asked how long the operations might run, and his answer wasn’t encouraging: “about four weeks or so,” according to reports. That’s not a throwaway line; it’s a political commitment to a timeline without any real strategy or endgame attached, and certainly not any form of regime change pipe dreams.

What should make every American uneasy is how familiar this sounds. “Short” wars in the Middle East never stay short. Iraq was supposed to be quick. Afghanistan was supposed to be over within months. Both turned into a two-plus decades long fight that seemed indefinitely expensive and politically corrosive.

A weeks-long bombing campaign won’t be something that happens in a vacuum. The minute an operation stretches beyond a few days, the consequences begin to stack up. Regional escalation, economic fallout, and domestic political strain with a public that wants nothing to do with this. A Reuters poll underscored that reality by showing that only about one in four Americans supported the initial strikes that set this in motion.

And yet here we are, talking about weeks of operations without a clear explanation of what “victory” looks like.

3rd & Short: The Replacement Plan in Iran

With the killing of Iran’s supreme leader in the conflict, one of the most consequential questions on the table is simple: what comes next in Tehran?

Iran’s Constitution lays out the process for choosing a new supreme leader, and the mechanisms are already in motion. As the country dealt with the shock of losing its long-time leader in the U.S. and Israeli strikes, the regime was moving quickly to fill a power vacuum. Iran has a clerical body known as the Assembly of Experts who are tasked with selecting the next supreme leader, and reports are that a successor could be chosen within days as the process unfolds amid the ongoing conflict.

Several figures have been discussed as potential replacements, with each carrying different implications for the country’s direction (APNews, 2026).

Mojtaba Khamenei is the son of the supreme leader and widely considered to be a contender. A mid-level cleric with deep ties to the IRGC, he has never held elected office and is part of a regime that has never used hereditary rule.

Ayatollah Ali Reza is a senior cleric and member of the provisional government council. He oversees a network of seminaries and represents institutional continuity within the establishment.

Hassan Khomeini, the grandson of the Islamic Republic founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and another moderate-leaning figure. He has never held government office but has the family name much like Mojtaba Khamenei. He currently works at a mausoleum in Tehran.

Ayatollah Mohammed Mehdi Mirbagheri, is a hardliner senior cleric who serves on the Assembly of Experts. He is the current head of the Islamic Cultural Center in Qom, a main center for Islamic education in Iran.

The line of succession in Iran has obviously been disrupted by the amount of officials killed in early airstrikes, but the path to any form of stability isn’t clear. The Trump administration could be looking at an extended process should they want to exercise any control over the future of the country, and that doesn’t look good for the American people.

4th & Democracy: You Didn’t Consent to This

I want you all to hear this: None of this is happening with your consent.

There was no congressional debate. No public case was made. No clear objectives laid out or tested. Polling has consistently shown that most Americans don’t support an escalation with Iran, don’t want another war in the Middle East, and don’t trust the regime making these decisions right now.

None of this is OK.

Yet, here we are.

It’s the democratic failure at the heart of the moment. Wars are being launched and expanded through executive power, political cowardice, and foreign pressure – not the will of the American people. Congress has been reduced to a battered child in the corner, reacting to its abuser’s every move, flinching in advance and acquiescing out of fear.

But that isn’t us.

We’ve grown calloused over the past decade of Trump – not numb, but hardened and informed in ways the political elite and mainstream media never accounted for. Less willing to accept lies, distractions, and manufactured inevitabilities. And the intolerance is only rising.

Yes, a war started over the weekend – an illegal and unjust one. Despite that war, despite the chaos the abuser-in-chief will continue to unleash on us, we will still have midterm elections and he will still lose.

Because we didn’t consent to this.

This wounded man who is dodging accountability in the most cowardly ways imaginable, has been exposed. And come November, his reign of bullshit ends and accountability will finally begin.

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What to Watch

Anything but Non-Stop War Coverage

Yes, the news will be moving constantly this week with the chaos going on in the Middle East and stories surrounding it, but we also need to protect our own mental health. There will be loss of life and tragedy, but anything that helps you disconnect from that is going to be key.

Lincoln Square shows, the latest season of Love is Blind, Real Housewives, the NBA, women’s hockey, cooking shows – whatever helps you disconnect from the chaos for a while, make sure you do that.

What to Read

Stay loud. Stay active. Stay engaged.