This devastating war on the people of Iran by the murderous regimes of the U.S. and Israel has continued for two weeks, hitting over 6,000 locations across Iran, killing over one thousand civilians and displacing an estimated 3.2 million people. They have struck an elementary school for girls, killing at least 170 people, mostly young girls. They have bombed hospitals, power stations, residential buildings, infrastructure and more, devastating entire cities. They have bombed oil depots and refineries, igniting massive fires that sent thick clouds of toxic black smoke over Tehran, a city of 9 million people. As a result, Tehran is being hit with dangerous “black rain” – acidic rain contaminated with toxic chemicals that burn the skin and damage the lungs.
And their killing has not been limited to Iran. Israel has expanded its bombing into Lebanon, killing nearly 700 people in two weeks, about 50 people a day, destroying bridges and whole neighborhoods. Israeli forces have ordered forced evacuations in most of southern Lebanon, displacing over 800,000 people in a small and densely populated city. Israel has bombed families with nowhere to go as they sleep in tents on a beach in central Beirut. Israel claims it is defending itself from Hezbollah, an Islamist political and military organization in Lebanon supported by Iran, but this is a lie. Israel has spent the past three years destroying most of Hezbollah’s military capacity since the beginning of the genocide in Gaza. Israel’s real aim is to expand its borders, vowing to occupy southern Lebanon indefinitely.
Meanwhile, Trump, Pete Hegseth, and others in the administration brag about their callous destruction of Iran as they waste billions of dollars on this war, on top of the tens of billions the U.S. has already given to fund Israel’s genocide of Palestinians. The first six days of this war have already cost over $11.3 billion. And this war has provoked Iran to block the Strait of Hormuz, where 20% of the world’s oil supply passes through, causing oil prices to skyrocket and increasing gasoline and energy costs. As living costs for working people increase, U.S. oil companies stand to make an extra $60 billion from the increase in oil prices.
While billions of dollars a day go to destroy the innocent people of Iran, the Trump administration is carrying out the largest gutting of social programs in U.S. history, slashing trillions from healthcare, food assistance, education and more to fund $4.5 trillion in tax breaks for billionaires and to pay for their massive increases in military spending. It’s expected that the Trump administration will ask for at least an additional $50 billion more for this war, and plans to increase the military budget to $1.5 trillion dollars in 2027.
The Medicaid cuts alone will strip coverage from an estimated 7.2 low-income million people. On top of that, their cuts to health care subsidies from the Affordable Care Act mean that an estimated 4.8 million people that had private insurance will become uninsured. Overall, millions of people face losing access to health coverage. Nationwide, over 700 hospitals, nursing homes, and other facilities face huge service cuts or could shut down altogether from these funding cuts.
The administration is also cutting food assistance, eliminating $187 billion from SNAP over ten years, the largest cut to the program in its history. An estimated 4 million people, including 1 million children, will have their food assistance slashed or eliminated altogether. Work requirements are being expanded to cut off 2.4 million more people, including older adults, veterans, people experiencing homelessness, and young people. Millions of families who are already struggling to put food on the table will now have even less.
This is the priorities of their system laid bare. They have billions a day for a war to kill innocent people and bomb schools and hospitals, but they have no money for food assistance or healthcare or public transportation or any of the programs that working people rely on.
Working people have nothing to gain from this war. Our enemies are not the people of the Middle East under assault by the U.S. and Israeli military. Our enemies are the politicians and billionaires that work together to defend their system by bombing civilians abroad while gutting the programs that keep people alive at home. We must oppose both the war being waged in our name overseas and the war being waged against us here.
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