The Trump administration’s foreign policy decisions have thrust the United States into another armed conflict with a hostile foreign nation that happens to have significant amounts of oil. However, where the operation in Venezuela took less than three hours, the current war on Iran is rapidly turning into a long-term military engagement, with no clear war aims and no evident win condition for the United States despite rising death tolls and serious infrastructure damage not only for Iran but also for the United States, NATO allies, and other Middle Eastern nations. Let’s briefly discuss the what, the why, and the future of the Iran war.

Operation Epic Fury

The attacks against Iran, known by the United States as Operation Epic Fury and by Israel as Operation Roaring Lion, began with a quite literal bang. A massive surprise wave of airstrikes, launched by both the United States and Israel, targeted military and government sites across Iran. This wave included a series of decapitation strikes aimed at assassinating key Iranian leaders, including the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Other strikes hit civilian infrastructure, including one Tomahawk missile that landed in a girls’ primary school, killing 170 civilians.

The U.S. Navy has also begun to deploy submarines into anti-ship warfare. The Iranian warship IRIS Dena was struck by a torpedo in international waters off the coast of Sri Lanka, an attack that Secretary of Defense Hegseth rapidly announced was the result of an American submarine. Several sources have reported that the Dena was returning from a multinational naval drill organized by India and was not armed for war, though this does not mean that sinking it constituted a war crime. As a hostile nation’s ship in international waters, the Dena was a legitimate military target. It was just one of many Iranian ships destroyed early in the war, with the U.S. reporting that at least 30 Iranian ships had been sunk over the first week of the conflict.

Iranian retaliation was swift, aggressive and wide-ranging. Within the first 24 hours, Iranian missiles had hit seven countries across the Middle East, largely targeting U.S. military bases but also hitting major civilian infrastructure. Dubai International Airport (hub of Emirates and the busiest airport on the planet in terms of international passengers) and the UAE’s largest port and oil export facility were targeted by Iranian drone attacks. 

While American losses have been limited in comparison to those suffered by Iran, the U.S. military has not gone without losses. Time reported that 13 servicemembers from the American military had been killed in action during the conflict and approximately 200 have been injured. Three American F-15s have been shot down by Kuwaiti air defenses in a friendly fire incident, and there are also reports that Iranian anti-air fire has damaged an American F-35. If true, this would be the first known instance of an F-35 fighter jet being damaged by enemy fire. This last report is, however, poorly substantiated, so it’s unclear if Iranian attacks caused that damage.

Uncertain objectives

While the events of the war have been comparatively well documented, the objectives of the conflict are uncertain. The U.S. Central Command describes Operation Epic Fury as intending to “dismantle the Iranian regime’s security apparatus, prioritizing locations that pose an imminent threat.” The Trump administration’s press releases have consistently emphasized that the operation is aimed at destroying Iran’s capacity to wage war and its ability to build a nuclear bomb. It is worth noting that the U.S. had previously hit several Iranian nuclear sites during a targeted bombing campaign in June 2015, after which administration officials claimed that Iran’s nuclear program had been set back by at least a year. 

The administration’s claims about Operation Epic Fury have been consistent, but President Trump’s statements about the war indicate a far wider range of aims. After the opening strikes, Trump announced that the Iranian people had been given an opportunity to revolt and take down their regime. Trump has also claimed that the war will continue until the U.S. manages to achieve peace in the Middle East, though both this claim and his emphasis on regime change have been walked back steadily as the war has dragged on. Where Trump has stopped advocating for regime change in Iran and seems to acknowledge that a public uprising is unlikely, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to advocate revolution, and this divide in aims may create a rift between the allies in the coming weeks.

Out with Khamenei, in with… Khamenei?

If the objective of the joint American/Israeli campaign was regime change, its effectiveness has been limited despite promising early signs. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Iranian supreme leader, was killed in the opening minutes by an Israeli missile strike, with CIA intel leading Israeli missile strikes directly to Khamenei’s location. Numerous key figures in the Iranian government and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard were also killed in the first round of strikes, with Israeli intelligence reporting the deaths of seven key officials, including one of the Ayatollah’s key advisors.

While Ali Khamenei may be dead, the Iranian government remains firmly under control of the same Islamic regime as before. The Ayatollah’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, has been selected to replace his father as the head of the Iranian state. There is some evidence that the senior Khamenei was uncertain about giving power to his son, but in his absence, Mojtaba was the clear choice of leader, and with much of his family dead from American and Israeli bombing campaigns, many predict him to be a strict hardliner on the current war, unlikely to bow to international pressure.

The junior Khamenei, however, has recently been difficult to find. The Wall Street Journal reports that Khamenei has not been heard from or seen since his selection as supreme leader, with press releases read by journalists and AI-generated social media profile photos. It’s unclear why exactly Mojtaba Khamenei has been so reclusive, though Trump administration leaders believe that he may have been wounded, or possibly even killed, in the airstrike campaign.

The Strait of Hormuz and oil prices

While this war may have begun as a decapitation effort to promote regime change, the main focus is now the Strait of Hormuz. This strait, with Iran to its north and the UAE and Oman to its south, is a vital hub of global trade, with nearly 150 ships sailing through it each day prior to the current conflict. The BBC has reported that 20 ships have been attacked off the Iranian coast since the start of the war, while the average daily number of ships passing through the strait has dropped from 150 to under 6. Oil prices have also skyrocketed to over $100, reaching prices not seen since 2022 during the early stages of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Re-opening the strait has now become a significant aim of the American war effort, with Trump pledging to use American naval ships to escort tankers through the strait. He has also called on American allies to send their own ships to the strait, though no concrete efforts have been made by other nations so far.

Prospects for peace

With the son of the assassinated Supreme Leader now in command of Iran, and with both Israel and the United States seemingly unwilling to commit to thorough negotiations, the odds of a peace deal coming to fruition soon are not high. However, in the last few days Trump appears to have shifted his view and become more tolerant of a potential peace deal. During a press conference on Mar. 24, he mentioned that the Iranians had given “a very big present” that had helped move him towards accepting a potential peace deal.

Despite this move, the two sides are still no closer to an actual deal. The American peace plan reportedly requires Iran to give up all its nuclear capabilities (both for civilian-grade power plants and nuclear weapons) and limit its ballistic missile program, while Iran demanded that the United States recognize its authority over the Strait of Hormuz and pay reparations for damages inflicted in the war. Israel, meanwhile, continues to push for extending the war. Israeli officials have said that Israel will need several more weeks to achieve their primary war aims, and that there are further military and governmental targets within Iran that they would like to eliminate. 

With the inconsistency of President Trump’s own claims about the war, vacillating between sending additional forces to the region and declaring the war to be effectively over, it is hard to know exactly where the future leads. Productive talks appear unlikely, especially as Iran states that they have no intention to negotiate at this point and do not trust the American side to negotiate authentically. Peace, at this point, will most likely involve both parties making some concessions; the real challenge will be forcing American, Israeli, and Iranian leadership to accept concessions.

On Sep. 10, 2025, American podcaster and right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk was killed during a question-and-answer session at Utah Valley University (UVU). Preliminary reports tell us that the individual who allegedly shot him is in custody. American politicians of all stripes have condemned the shooting as a travesty, and President Trump ordered flags to be flown at half-mast until Sep. 15 in his honor.

Mr. Kirk’s killing is certainly disastrous for the American body politic, and I do not take his death lightly. Political assassination has no place in any society that calls itself free. But I do not mourn his death and shed no tears for his loss. The response from the Trump administration—labelling Kirk as an American hero and “free speech warrior”—sanitizes Kirk’s destructive history, and lowering the flag for him is a disgrace to both the American flag and what the country claims to stand for. The precedent the government’s response sets is unjustifiable.

Political violence is clearly on the rise in America. Since Sep. 11, 2001, there have been two hundred and ninety-three lives lost to terror attacks in the United States. Terrorists come in all political stripes, from extreme left to extreme right. New America describes a modern terrorist threat—a label that includes political violence—that “crosses ideologies and is largely disconnected from traditional understandings of terrorist organizations.”

This upward trend in violence occurs among students as well; the increasing population of American students who believe the use of force can be justified against speakers exceeds three in ten. This figure has increased among both self-identified Democrats and Republicans and represents a grave danger to the American project.

Voices in the American right have called Kirk’s shooting the start of a civil war. They perceive Kirk’s killing as part of a “common threat” from leftists—that “The Left,” vaguely defined, poses an existential threat to the conservative movement and its members. Trump said the same, claiming that “[r]adical left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives.” He cited the assassination attempt against himself to back up his claim.

The data, where we have it, does not back Trump up. The suspect in Trump’s attempted assassination in Butler, PA, was a registered Republican. More broadly, extreme-right violence was the most common of the types New America considered, responsible for 139 of 293 (47%) recorded deaths. (For comparison, extreme-left violence was responsible for 3 [<1%]).

By any and all measures, Kirk was an extremist figure with substantial ideological biases. Here is a brief and definitely non-exhaustive list of problematic things he has called for:

• He called on Taylor Swift to “Reject feminism [and] Submit to your husband,” noting that Ms. Swift “wasn’t serious” about her engagement if she did not change her surname.
• He claimed that Black professionals should be treated with skepticism, before walking it back: “If I see a Black pilot, I’m gonna be like ‘boy, I hope he is qualified.’”
• He labelled the Civil Rights Act “a huge mistake.”
• He believed in a Jewish conspiracy, claiming that “the philosophical foundation of anti-whiteness has been largely financed by Jewish donors in the country.”
• He said of transgender individuals, “Someone should’ve just taken care [of them] the way we did in the ‘50s and ‘60s.”
• He advanced the debunked “great replacement theory,” which believes that “they [unspecified, but likely non-White immigrants from context] won’t stop until you [White rural America] and your children and your children’s children are eliminated.”

Despite these moral shortcomings, Kirk does not deserve to die. He may deserve harassment charges, but he does not deserve to die.

The government’s response to Kirk’s death is distasteful at best and a national disgrace at worst. In his address to the nation, Trump mentioned attacks against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers. He mentioned the attack on his own life. He mentioned a 2017 attack on Rep. Steve Scalise. Yet he did not mention attacks on key Democrats: Trump’s list omits the arson attack against Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro (2025), shooting of Minnesota Dems Melissa Hortman and John Hoffman (2025), “the 2020 attempted kidnapping of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, [and] the brutal attack on former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband in 2022.” In the last case, Trump publicly mocked Mr. Pelosi.

In response to Mr. Kirk’s death, Trump ordered flags to be flown at half-mast for three days. At first glance this seems consistent, as it was an honor he gave to two children killed while worshipping in August. Yet this administration’s general policy on lowering the flag for political deaths is simple: if he likes you, the flag comes down. He demanded the flag be raised early after Jimmy Carter’s death and kept it raised after Hortman’s death, though she (like Kirk) was assassinated in cold blood.

American politics is not a war, not in the traditional sense. Its instruments are words, not weapons; ballots, not bullets; legislation, not legions. Kirk had First Amendment rights to speak for what he believed, just as I do and just as every person in this country does. He can reasonably be described as an activist, a conservative firebrand, or a beacon to young people who saw themselves as conservative. But he was not a national hero, nor should he be treated as one. Kirk’s policy positions and extremist rhetoric caused significant damage to the United States of America and significant distress to those I love. While others may be mourning, I shed no tears for him.

History is written by the winners

In March 2025, President Trump signed an executive order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” This directive targeted the Smithsonian Institution, demanding that the Smithsonian Vice President remove “improper ideology” (Sec. 2a) from its museums, exhibits and educational materials. It also instructed the Department of the Interior to restore any monuments or content removed since 2020, claiming that these memorials have been removed or changed “to perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history, inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures, or include any other improper partisan ideology” (Sec. 4ai).

Trump justified the order by claiming that “Over the past decade, Americans have witnessed a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.  This revisionist movement seeks to undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light.” (Sec. 1)

By summer, the White House had escalated its interference. Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch met with Trump following mounting pressure from the administration to sanitize exhibits. The White House even released a “woke list” of Smithsonian exhibits deemed problematically ideological, including those involving race, gender identity, slavery, immigration, and social justice.

In addition, Trump has publicly lambasted the Smithsonian’s portrayal of American history, complaining on social media that “The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future.” He also took direct action to erase unflattering parts of his presidency from the museum’s record. Under pressure from his administration, the Smithsonian removed references to his two impeachments from a presidential exhibit—effectively rewriting a chapter of history. The Smithsonian has since restored the plaque, but with significant changes. The description of his second impeachment has been changed to remove claims that he repeatedly made “false statements” about losing the 2020 election, along with a quote from the impeachment article saying his speech “encouraged — and foreseeably resulted in — lawless action at the Capitol.”

Critics and historians have compared these moves to authoritarian censorship. Trump’s effort to recast public memory in a narrower, cheerier light by minimizing slavery, race and systemic injustice, cuts at the heart of historical truth. His framing of history as a tool for “unity” pretends that national pride can only thrive if its dark moments are swept under the rug.

This is concerning. When politicians try to dictate what belongs in our textbooks or museums, they are not just debating facts; they are deciding whose voices matter, whose suffering counts and whose victories get remembered. Trump’s push for a “patriotic” version of the American past is part of a broader effort to sanitize our nation’s story. It may sound like a call for “unity” or “progress,” but in reality, it is propaganda: an attempt to reshape the national narrative so that the “winners,” overwhelmingly white, male and privileged, look not just powerful, but benevolent.

This problem is not new. History has always been written by those who hold power. In the United States, that has meant presenting slavery as a sad but secondary footnote rather than the engine of the economy, erasing the genocide of Native Americans behind the language of “westward expansion” and downplaying the violence faced by those who fought for civil rights. For generations, textbooks, monuments, and films presented the Confederacy not as a rebellion to preserve slavery, but as a noble struggle for “states’ rights.” This deliberate rewriting of history wasn’t an accident. The story that emerges is one where America steadily marches toward freedom, led by wise men who occasionally stumbled but ultimately always knew best. That is not history — it is mythmaking.

When politicians argue that we must minimize these uncomfortable truths in the name of “unity,” they are not protecting the country; they are protecting themselves. A country cannot move forward if it refuses to confront the full weight of its past. If we instead explore history honestly, learning that “winning” often comes at the expense of others’ dignity, land and lives, then we are better equipped to build a future that does not repeat those patterns.

That is why the fight over history is never just about the past. It is about who gets to define America’s identity today and who will be allowed to shape its future. Leaders who call for “patriotic” education are not asking us to love our country more; they are asking us to love their version of it: a version that erases the people their power has oppressed.

Photo by Markus Spiske via Uplash.

It’s been almost two months since President Donald Trump was inaugurated, and the United States has already experienced drastic changes. From pulling out of the World Health Organization to changing the Gulf of Mexico’s name, America’s new president has made interesting modifications to the country as a whole. However, one of the most notable of these orders is the withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement. 

The European Bank defines the Paris Climate Agreement as an international treaty that aims to “hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.” Trump’s abandonment of this agreement was predicted during his first presidency in 2017 when he stated that the U.S. would eventually leave the treaty. However, even though this decision was viewed as a foreseen circumstance, there are still concerns about what this means for Americans battling climate change. 

An article published by The New York Times, “Yes, There Has Been Progress on Climate. No, It’s Not Nearly Enough,” says that scientists believe that more drastic action is needed to keep global temperature at a safer increased limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius. In the same article, Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency, stated “we really don’t have much time left to shift course.” By most scientific accounts, the world is reaching the  point of no return regarding the global climate, but is it an active emergency? Many climate activists and scientific experts say yes. 

CEO of the European Climate Foundation, Laurence Tubiana, says, “The impacts of the climate crisis are also worsening.” He follows this by discussing the wildfires sweeping across Los Angeles and how America withdrawing from the exchange was unfortunate. However, he also says not to worry because the effort to slow climate change “is stronger than any country’s politics and policies.” 

While this might sound scary to Americans, solutions are still being explored to help the country slow climate change. In his new book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, former CEO and chairman of Microsoft Bill Gates writes that the best way forward is to lower the Green Premiums. Green Premiums refer to the difference in cost between carbon-emitting products and non-carbon-emitting products. Therefore, if America wants to see a difference in its carbon emissions, it must focus on lowering prices and adopting healthier, greener technology. 

Pulling out of the Paris Climate Exchange has been criticized by both sides of the political spectrum. However, President Trump stands behind his actions as he did back in 2017 when he stated, “The Paris Climate Accord is simply the latest example of Washington entering into an agreement that disadvantages the United States to the exclusive benefit of other countries…” With this statement and the country’s leadership, it’s up to the American people to decide if they are up against a climate challenge or a crisis. 

The Hilltop Monitor thanks Dr. Gary Armstrong for providing insight and sources to help further the exploration of the topic at hand.