Life During Wartime
Rick Wilson has some short fiction nightmare fuel. What happens when Trump gets really desperate in Iran?
June 2026
The air in the Situation Room had the usual artificial, recycled chill that did nothing to cool the temper of the man at the head of the mahogany table. Donald Trump tapped a Sharpie pen against a briefing folder embossed with the seal of the Central Intelligence Agency.
“They’re parading our boys on Telegram, General. It looks like a low-budget movie,” Trump said, his voice dropping into that dangerous, breathy register that signaled an impending storm. “I was told the 75th Rangers were the best. I was told Delta was tough, really tough. You embarrassed me. Made me look bad.”
General Dan Caine, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, looked like he hadn’t slept since the SM-6 missiles ran out three weeks ago. The missile math, the cold, hard reality of Vertical Launch System cells, Patriots, and THAADs running out had finally turned zero-sum.
The U.S. Navy had spent four months shooting down $20,000 Iranian drones with $2 million interceptors. Now, the cupboards were bare. The USS Abraham Lincoln was sitting in the Arabian Sea, a trillion-dollar airfield with no shield, while Iranian sea mines, clunky, cheap Soviet-era M08s, turned the Strait of Hormuz into a lethal lottery.
July 2026
“Sir, the raid on the Fordow enrichment site was compromised from the jump,” Caine said, his voice a flat, tactical drone. “The IRGC Saberin Unit didn’t just have high ground; they had the sensor data. We suspect that Russian and Chinese intel and advisors were providing them with targeting and ISR. We lost seven aircraft: four rotary-wing aircraft and three C-17s during the extraction. The hostages are being held in the ‘Sarcophagus’ … the hardened bunker complex. We can’t get them out without a full-scale invasion.”
“Then we invade,” Trump said. “Operation Iranian Lion. We don’t just ‘degrade’ them. We end them. We liberate the people. They’ll be throwing flowers, folks. Believe me.” Even Pete Hegseth stopped rocking quietly in his chair and went pale.
Caine said, “Sir, the Joint Chiefs strongly recommend we seek a negotiated, diplomatic resolution for the return of our surviving troops. As you know, we offered numerous other options than deploying Delta and the Rangers.”
Trump’s face was red, his lips popping with rage, spitting mad both literally and figuratively. “Fuck you, you pussy. Fuck you, weak-dick nobody. I made you, and you failed me big time. You fucked me over.”
Caine looked at his briefing book and said, “Mr. President, I will offer my resignation immediately.”
Trump took a breath, his piggy, feral eyes slitting nearly shut. “Oh no, you don’t. I’ll have you hanged for treason if you quit now.”
Outside the West Wing, the world was screaming.
In the trading pits of Chicago and London, the price of Brent Crude hadn’t just spiked; it had achieved escape velocity. It blew past $200 a barrel as the sun rose over a shuttered Strait of Hormuz. At a Shell station in Northern Virginia, a digital sign flickered to $8.95 for 87-octane. The American consumer, the ultimate voter, was feeling the big tremors of a structural collapse. Trump suspended the stock markets by executive order, claiming the double-digit collapses were “Muslim hacking.”
Late July 2026
The “One-in-a-Million” hit on Bibi Netanyahu had been the final domino.
A swarm of “Zolfaqar” drones, guided by a sophisticated GPS-spoofing-proof INS guidance system made in China, bypassed the IDF’s Iron Beam and found the Natanyahu’s plane as it departed Tel Aviv for a meeting with Trump in Washington. The image of the empty carcass of the Prime Minister’s 767-338 was the only thing playing on a loop on every screen from Times Square to Tokyo.
Trump didn’t hesitate. He took to Truth Social: “THE MULLAHS HAVE COMMITTED THE ULTIMATE SIN. ISRAEL WILL BE AVENGED. WE ARE COMING. OPERATION IRANIAN LION STARTS NOW. TOTAL DESTRUCTION.”
By late July 2026, the “Lion” was bogged down in the red dust of the Iranian plateau. The 1st Marine Expeditionary Force (I MEF) had taken the port of Bandar Abbas, but they were taking “constant, annoying, lethal” fire from every window. It wasn’t a front line; it was a 360-degree shooting gallery. The Marines there had fathers who’d faced Iranian IEDs and snipers 25 years ago. This was worse.
Trump sat in the residence, the blue light of a television reflecting off his silk tie. The “Rally ‘Round the Flag” effect had evaporated faster than the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The Heartland was angry. The “MAGA” base, once insulated by cheap gas and isolationist rhetoric, was now facing a winter of triple-digit heating bills and sons coming home in flag-draped transfer cases.
Trump no longer attended the dignified transfer ceremonies. “Too depressing,” he told Sean Hannity. “I’ve got to focus on victory. And finishing the ballroom. It’s the best ballroom, some people say, ever built.”
“They’re calling it ‘Trump’s Verdun,’” a political aide whispered in the corner. “What the fuck is a Verdun?” said another.
“I don’t care what the failing New York Times calls it,” Trump snapped, clearly overhearing it. He yelled to Natalie Harp, “Get me, Pete. And get me the Director of the NSA. We’ll turn their lights off. Forever.”
Early August
August began with a digital apocalypse. Trump ordered the deployment of “Black Ice,” a Tier-1 cyber-weapon designed to wreck the entire Iranian power grid and oil production system. It worked.
Tehran went dark, but the code got into the wild, hitting SCADA systems across the Gulf, desalination plants in Dubai, and the pumping systems of Saudi oil fields. The Abraham Accords partners, once silent allies, suddenly found their populations without water or power in 115-degree heat. The damage was catastrophic, the death toll more so.
The Saudis shuttered their airspace to U.S. tankers and fighters. Qatar and Kuwait followed suit. Bahrain asked the 5th Fleet to “temporarily evacuate.” The British Prime Minister, facing a collapsed Pound and riots in London, signaled a “strategic withdrawal” from the coalition. Chinese advisors offered a quick fix for the Black Ice worm and were welcomed with open arms.
August 25, 2026
The White House felt like a besieged fortress. Protesters weren’t just at the gates; they were in the suburbs, furious at the “Oil War” that had decimated their 401(k)s. Trump, cornered and desperate, looked at a map of the Iranian coastline. He needed a win. He needed a deal.
“Tell the Qataris,” Trump told Susie Wiles, his eyes narrow and bloodshot. “Tell them I’ll pull the Marines back to the beach. I’ll give the Mullahs their coast back. But I want my soldiers. I want them on a plane by Monday. And I want the Iranians to announce a ‘Price Cap’ on every barrel they pump. If they don’t, tell them I’m looking at the ‘B-2 Option.’ Tell them I don’t care about the ‘Fallout’ … political or otherwise.”
His offer was swiftly, mockingly, and finally rejected.
In a gaggle that afternoon, Trump was asked if he was threatening a nuclear strike on Iran. “Maybe. Many people say I should. Many people know it would be effective. I have that power. The nuclear. So powerful.”
In a rare moment of moral clarity, the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff walked into the Pentagon Press room 15 minutes later and resigned. The political DOD Public Affairs team tried to stop the press conference, but it was too late.
The resignation of the Joint Chiefs wasn’t a quiet affair of folded flags and hushed memos; it was a televised decapitation of the American military establishment.
Standing on the steps of the Pentagon, Chairman Caine and the service chiefs surrendered their positions to the cameras, a grim protest against a mission that violated every value they’d sworn to uphold.
Within the hour, the DHS was ordered to arrest the former Chiefs and remanded them int into the custody of a newly deputized Federal Presidential Security Force. They were whisked away to an unknown site under the Insurrection Act.
Hegseth and Trump didn’t blink. They reached down into the “B-List” men like Lieutenant General “Iron Mike” Sterling, a firebrand who viewed the nuclear taboo as a relic of a “weak-willed” century. Sterling didn’t ask for a legal review; he asked for the targeting coordinates and a secure line to the Global Strike Command.
August 30, 2026
At 35,000 feet, the B-2 Spirit of Mississippi felt like a ghost in the machine, its radar-absorbent skin drinking in the few, desperate pulses of the remaining Iranian S-300s. Inside the cockpit, the “ready” light for the B61-12 pulsated with a soft, amber glow.
Inside the cockpit of the Mississippi, the world was reduced to the sterile, green glow of Multi-Function Displays and the rhythmic hiss of their oxygen system.
Major “Veep” Vance and Captain “Rip” Rossi were no longer men; they were the final, cold processors in a kill-chain that bypassed the moral hesitation of the Pentagon. When the Emergency Action Message (EAM) chirped through their MILSTAR, it arrived as a string of alphanumeric gibberish; the “biscuit” that Rossi and Vance validated against the sealed authenticator card held in a tethered pouch.
There was no “War Games” hesitation, no cinematic pause for conscience. They performed the two-man rule with the practiced synchronicity of a high-speed ritual: the weapon’s Permissive Action Link (PAL) code entered, and the yield dialed to its terrifyingly precise sub-kiloton setting.
As the bomb bay doors cycled open with a hydraulic groan that vibrated through their flight suits, the B61-12 dropped into the blackness. Mississippi flew on, silent and invisible, a ghost shedding a deadly gift to a world that would never be the same.
This wasn’t a city-buster; it was a “dial-a-yield” surgical instrument, set to 0.5 kilotons of earth-shattering authority. When the weapon was released, it didn’t drift; it screamed, its guidance system in the tail fins guiding it through the layers of Iranian granite like a hot needle through wax. The detonation occurred well below the surface. There was no mushroom cloud, only a terrifying, subsonic “thump” that liquified the earth for a mile in every direction, turning the Natanz centrifuges into a molten slurry of steel and uranium before the shockwave even reached the surface.
It also killed every American hostage held in the facility. American intelligence had placed them in Tehran. They were wrong.
The taboo had been shattered. Trump, desperate for a win, had turned the final key.
On the glass-and-aluminum set of The Five, the air was thick with a frantic, performative ecstasy. Jesse Watters leaned back, a shark-like grin plastered across his face, as the chyron below him screamed “PERMANENT DENUCLEARIZATION.”
“The pundits told you it couldn’t be done,” he chirped, “they told you the ‘Rules of War’ meant we had to let the Mullahs hold us hostage forever. Well, the ‘Art of the Nuke’ just closed the ultimate deal.” Over on Truth Social, the President’s feed was a digital explosion of all-caps proclamations, branding the arrested Joint Chiefs as “ISLAMIC DEEP STATE TRAITORS” who “lacked the balls for victory.”
Across the MAGA ecosystem, the narrative shifted from isolationist caution to a feverish Crusader triumphalism. To the base, the flash over Natanz wasn’t a breach of international law; it was the ultimate America First flex, a cleansing fire that proved the President was the only man willing to do the unthinkable to keep gas under ten dollars and American prestige off the floor.
The irony was that the strike had actually frozen global oil shipping and turned the U.S. into a pariah state, but that’s a longer story.
A few hours later, Kyiv and Taipei were destroyed by low-yield nuclear weapons of the same yield. Hours later, Seoul was immolated, followed swiftly by Jalalabad and Mumbai.
And after that, this tale would be told in a world of ruins.
Truth is stranger than fiction! Can anyone remember there is a 25th Amendment?
Your story assumes that Congress did nothing. Sounds about right.